Caravans

  The poignancy grew more intense when I happened to look toward the Hindu Kush and saw the Kochis coming out of the mountains on their way to the camp ground, and for the first time I saw our caravan in its entirety and realized what an impressive aggregation it was: two hundred people, nearly a hundred camels laden with costly goods, several score of donkeys, some goats and more than five hundred choice sheep. This was my caravan, these were my people; and when I remembered the warm family life I had enjoyed in Boston, I felt grateful that I had been allowed to know this larger family.

  And then I saw, marching together, dark little Mira in her red skirt and pigtails and shining Ellen, the hood of her burnoose thrown back, so that her beauty flashed in sunlight, and I was unable to move or think or speak. I merely sat on the white horse and looked at these two persons as they came toward me, the nomad whom I loved so much and the strange, fair woman whom I wanted to help and whom I found so difficult to understand, and as I looked at them the thought came from outside me: They are your life, the essence of your caravan.

  In a kind of repose—quiet and unfathomed and undisturbed by the men of Asia moving around me —I watched as the Kochis approached, until three of our men spotted me and shouted, “Here we are!”

  “This is the place,” I called back, and with a whip of the bridle I sent the white horse speeding toward the caravan, where I leaped to the ground, kissed Mira in front of everyone and whispered, “I was afraid …”

  “Of what?” she asked quietly.

  “That … well, that you might not come.”

  She did not laugh, nor did Ellen, but she plunged her quick hand into my pocket and asked, “Miller, you got any afghanis?”

  I came up with a few local coins and when I handed them to her she smiled like a little child, and rounded up all the youngsters of our caravan and led them across the plateau toward the sound of music. I followed my pigtailed Pied Piper until she brought her charges to a traditional spot where some Russian Uzbeks had erected a primitive merry-go-round: a wooden socket had been sunk in the ground and into it was fitted a strong, upright pillar, from whose top branched out ten arms. At the end of each arm hung a free-swinging iron pole, which ended in a rudely carved wooden horse. In half a dozen different languages the Uzbeks shouted, “The wildest rearing horses in the world!”

  “Give them all a ride,” Mira told the Uzbeks, and our Kochi children were piled on the rough horses, quivering with apprehension and joy. Then two burly Uzbeks, pressing their chests against poles that projected from the pillar, began moving slowly in a tight circle, which made the pillar and the horses revolve, and everything was so neatly balanced that soon the Uzbeks had their contraption spinning smoothly, whereupon they ran faster and faster until at last they had to spend little effort, while the squealing children on the horses spun at great speed, their little bodies almost parallel to earth.

  “These horses are the first exciting thing I can remember,” Mira shouted, as children from scores of different tribes cheered the flying Kochis. “When I was young, Zulfiqar always gave me a ride.” Her face was radiant, as if she were again one of the wild and happy children. Then without warning, she turned and pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered, “Oh, Miller! I am again so happy.”

  It was in this manner—from Mira’s spontaneous turning to me while mothers from many caravans watched—that the nomads of Qabir discovered that we were in love, and if there was any one thing that made my mission at the encampment easier it was this fact: as a strange American set down on the high plateau I was bound to be conspicuous and ineffective; but a young man in love with a spirited Kochi girl I was so obvious that the nomads felt sorry for me and I was accorded freedoms that no other stranger would have been permitted.

  Then, as the Uzbeks halted their merry-go-round and Mira recovered her children, I saw that on the other side of the circle Ellen had gathered a group of nondescript children whose mothers were not present with coins, and she brought these round-faced youngsters to the Uzbeks and there was some haggling in Pashto. Finally Ellen took off two of her bracelets and gave them to the Uzbek, who tried to bend them in his fingers. He accepted them, and Ellen’s children were placed on the horses and again the burly Uzbeks groaned against the poles to get the pillar spinning; and as the children rose higher and higher, speeding through the air, Ellen stood in the afternoon sunlight, biting her knuckles and watching.

  At dusk, when the four sheep were well roasted and Ellen had taken her accustomed place to serve the portions, we heard a shout at the edge of our caravan and Zulfiqar appeared, bringing with him some thirty leaders of other caravans plus an orchestra of Tajik musicians, who found a place by the fire and started banging their drums. “Ellen!” Zulfiqar shouted. “Leave the cooking!” And with a sweep of his arm he brought the American girl into the center of the crowd and danced with her vigorously. The visitors watched, then reached out for Kochi women and launched a hilarious celebration. Soon Zulfiqar passed Ellen along to one of the Russians and came to me, out of breath. “Millair,” he laughed, “I want you to meet one of the leaders,” and he took me through the gyrating dancers to where a tall, heavy, baldheaded man in his late forties stood in fur boots, rough wool jacket and brass-studded belt. His big face was round and clean-shaven, while the slant of his eyes indicated Mongolian ancestry. Grasping him by the shoulder, Zulfiqar said, “This is Shakkur the Kirghiz. He smuggles guns and sells most of the German rifles on the high plateau. He sold me mine.”

  The big Kirghiz nodded pleasantly, showing large white teeth with a prominent space in the middle. “You English?” he asked in broken Pashto.

  “American,” I replied.

  He burst into a generous laugh and made a machine gun with his arms. “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, Chicago!” he cried. “I see cinema.”

  I respected the man’s vitality, but was irritated by his view of Americans, and on the spur of the moment I dropped so that I was sitting on my ankles, and with my arms folded I did a poor imitation of a Russian dance. “I see cinema too,” I laughed.

  “No!” he protested boisterously. He shouted at the Tajik musicians and they began a new selections to which he danced a passage of real Kirghiz violence. Here there was no mock clicking of the heels but rather the heavy-booted stamp and whirl of the steppes. Seeing Ellen standing near the roast sheep, he leaped at her, grabbed her by the waist, and swung her into a sweeping, dipping step which made her burnoose swirl over the earth. They were a handsome couple, and although she could not follow the intricate steps, the Kirghiz kept her moving so easily that it looked as if she were indeed dancing with him. The Tajik orchestra brought its music to a climax and the big dancer swept his partner high in the air, turned her about, and put her down gently beside the waiting sheep.

  “Time to eat!” he shouted, and Ellen started handing out chunks of mutton to the hungry visitors.

  When the feasting ended, Zulfiqar asked Dr. Stiglitz to stand beside him while he announced, “This is a German doctor. He has many medicines.” Turning toward one of the tents he shouted, “Maftoon! Bring the box of medicine,” and when the impressive collection was displayed Zulfiqar said, “if you have any sick, bring them here tomorrow.”

  “What charge?” Shakkur the Kirghiz asked.

  “No charge,” Zulfiqar assured him, and next morning outside our tent a line of men and women, dressed in many different tribal costumes, sought aid. In caring for them Stiglitz was assisted by Ellen, who acted as his nurse, and once while she talked with patients in Pashto the doctor wandered over to me to observe, “You’ve no idea, Miller, how refreshing it is to treat a woman patient who takes off her clothes and says, ‘It hurts here.’ Believe me, if I ever get to Kabul the men will turn their wives over to me and leave. No more chaderies in my office.”

  I had not been at the sick line long when Zulfiqar appeared, leading my white horse. After noticing the patients approvingly, he said, “Come along,” and we rode to the other end of the encampment, where
he began a systematic visit to all the caravans. At each he did two things; he advised the traders in that caravan how to earn more profit from their goods, and he invited each group to send its sick to his German doctor.

  I was impressed with Zulfiqar as he moved among the caravans: a smile, a joke, a reference to me … It all made commercial bargaining something more than a mere business occupation. I found that I was in the presence of a real political talent, a man who knew that his simple smile and transparent honesty could win him rewards that another might miss. He was politicking like mad, but I didn’t know what for.

  Thus I made my way into the yurts of the north, those brown hide-walled circular tents where men with Oriental eyes laughed easily while their buxom wives served yak cheese and roast mutton. Casually I shared hospitality with nomads who had come from all parts of Central Asia and I learned how they made their pilgrimages, what goods they traded, the condition of life in their valleys. I was satisfied that no Russian soldiers accompanied the nomads and probably no political commissars, but of this latter I could not be certain. The great gathering at Qabir seemed to be just that: one of the largest commercial fairs in the world, rivaling Nizhni Novgorod and Leipzig. But there was one thing I was not allowed to learn, perhaps the most important of all, and my defeat on this score was a disappointment. I never did find out where these Russian migrants crossed the Oxus.

  Richardson had ordered me not to take notes, but at night I memorized the various tribes and subdivisions I had been with that day. From India came the true Provindahs, the Baluchis, and the stocky men from the kingdoms of Chitral, Dir and Swat.

  From southern Afghanistan came the Pashtuns, the Brahuis and the Kochis.

  From central Afghanistan came the Durani tribe of the Pashtuns, who now ruled the kingdom, the Ghilzais, who used to rule it, and the curious Kizilbash, a Persian tribe of gifted traders.

  From northern Afghanistan came the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Kirghizes, all of whom had related tribes north of the Oxus in Russia, the Karakalpaks, the Nuristanis, who were supposed to be of Greek origin, and the Hazaras, who were the descendants of Genghis Khan’s troops.

  From western Afghanistan came the Jamshedis, the Firuzkuhis, the Taimuris and the Arabs.

  From Persia came the nomads of Meshed and Nishapur, the Sakars, the Salors, and additional tribes of Kizilbash.

  From Russia came its segments of the Tajik, Uzbek, Sart and Kirghiz tribes, plus the Kazaks and traders from the old market city of Samarkand.

  From remote areas came the nameless tribes of the Pamirs, the Chinese from Kashgar and Yar-kand, and the handsome mountaineers of Gilgit and Hunza.

  And from everywhere—Persia, Afghanistan, Russia, China—came members of that mysterious and omnipresent group, the Turkomans, a people not clearly defined but brave and canny traders.

  When I had spent some time in the tents and yurts of all these tribes, I began to feel a certain smugness that I, of all the foreigners in Afghanistan, should have been the one to penetrate Qabir, but so far I had seen only the externals. On the fifth day Zulfiqar saddled up the horses and said, Today you will see Qabir,” and he led me to the confluence of the rivers where an area had been marked inside of which only men were allowed, and only the leaders of the men. We pulled up before a large Russian-style yurt, whose primitive sides were made of skins and whose spacious interior was decorated with guns, daggers, sabers and three handsome red-and-blue Persian rugs. This was the center from which the encampment was governed.

  At the far end a small, low table stood on a white rug brought down from Samarkand, and on this rug, cross-legged, were seated the two sharifs who controlled Qabir. The first was Shakkur, the Kirghiz gunrunner who had danced at our feast, and as he sat in the place of honor he was impressive indeed, a big hulk of man with shining head and penetrating eyes. The humor that had marked him at our feast was gone, for ruling this large encampment was a serious business.

  The other sharif was an elderly Hazara, a man whose Mongol ancestry would have placed him beneath contempt in Kabul, but who had built a substantial trade in karakul, so that a fair portion of the skins bartered that year at Qabir would come under his jurisdiction. He wore the tattered clothes of a peasant and often listened to argument with his eyes closed, but he was known as a shrewd trader. “He was sharif when my father first brought me here,” Zulfiqar explained, and I asked if I might speak with the old man.

  He spoke good Pashto and told me, “You’re the first westerner ever to see this yurt.” I asked him if Russians from Moscow had attended the camp and he smiled indulgently, saying, “No Communists.” Then he added, “This year we have a special event which will make the bazaar exciting for you.” I replied that it already was.

  Almost every man I met in that yurt was an authentic epic, but my favorite was an old Mongol in his seventies wearing a Gilgit cap. He had come from far beyond the Karakorams with two donkeys and a horse. Of the men who frequented the yurt he wore the filthiest clothes, yet his white beard and toothless mouth were constantly flapping in negotiation. He had been alone on the highest road in the world for eight weeks, starting as soon as snow melted in the high passes, and he carried a considerable quantity of gold, one of the few nomads who did. He told me, “I’ve been traveling this route sixty-six years. Everyone knows me as the old man with the gold.”

  “Ever run into any trouble?”

  “Never shot a bandit in my life.”

  Later Zulfiqar told me, “He’s telling the truth. All he shot were honest people. For the first forty years on the trail he was a robber in the Karakorams.”

  Toward the end of the fourth week a Tajik was caught stealing goods from an Uzbek and the culprit was dragged to the big yurt, where the two sharifs were discussing other business. The Tajik had no defense. Witnesses had apprehended him with the goods and he had to confess.

  We gathered about the white rug as the two sharifs discussed the matter, and I realized that no nation exercised any sovereignty over this congregation of seventy or eighty thousand people. By consent these two sharifs, one a gunrunner and the other an outcast, enjoyed absolute control. If they now decided to execute the trembling Tajik, they could, but after a short consultation Shakkur the Kirghiz announced the verdict: the right hand to be cut off.

  I gasped at the severity of the judgment and impulsively stepped forward. In Pashto I offered to pay the value of the goods stolen, but the old Hazara pointed out that my gesture made no sense. “The goods have already been recovered. What we try to accomplish is not punishment of this poor thief but prevention of further stealing. Carry out the order.”

  The Tajik began to whimper, but attendants whom I had often seen in the yurt and had taken as mere loungers grabbed the thief and whisked him outside. There was a pitiful scream, after which an Uzbek returned with a red dagger and the man’s right hand.

  The Hazara sharif, seeing that I was shaken to the point of sickness, took me aside and said, “We must be harsh. I’ve been sharif here for many years and this is the last cruel judgment I shall make. Don’t think unkindly of me.”

  “Are you retiring?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow,” he replied with no regrets, “and there are many who think that your friend Zulfiqar should be the next sharif.”

  Then it became clear! Zulfiqar, having shrewdly guessed the old Hazara’s intention to step down, had been conniving for twelve months to be his successor. He had used Ellen, Stiglitz and me exactly as he would have used us had he been bucking for a promotion at the General Motors office in Pontiac, Michigan. In a perverse way I was delighted with my discovery of Zulfiqar’s frailty, for it proved that my view of the world was correct and not Ellen Jaspar’s. Men everywhere behaved pretty much like her father in Pennsylvania; they had the same banal ambitions, which they expressed in the same banal phrases. But no sooner had I reached this conclusion than a chilling thought possessed me: This isn’t Pennsylvania, and there are differences. If Zulfiqar tolerated Ellen’s common-law adulter
y only because he wanted to achieve a goal here in Qabir, what will he do to Ellen and Stiglitz when he’s through using them? Then an even more disburbing thought: For that matter, what will he do to me? Because as sharif of the camp he could order anyone destroyed, and who would halt him?

  In this gloomy frame of mind I returned to our tents and hurried to see Dr. Stiglitz. “A dreadful thing happened at the yurt,” I began, but my news was unnecessary, for in the glow of a lamp Ellen stood holding the right arm of the Tajik thief while Dr. Stiglitz cauterized the wound.

  “How did this occur?” Stiglitz asked.

  “In this camp two sharifs hold absolute power. Half an hour ago this Tajik was caught stealing; his trial took about four minutes. This is the clean-cut primitive life you wanted, Ellen.”

  The sight of the bloody stump, plus my news of how the camp was run, became too much for Ellen, and she started to faint, but the Tajik, sensing that she was about to fall, tried instinctively to catch her, and his bloody right arm tore across her burnoose, lacerating the nerve ends so that he screamed with pain. His cries brought Ellen to her senses and she gripped the table. The sight of her ashen face dispelled any sense of triumph I might have had. Afghanistan was much different from Pennsylvania and I wondered how this beautiful woman was going to extricate herself from the complications into which she had so willingly marched.

  The next day Zulfiquar shaved with special care and asked me to accompany him to the yurt, where I entered a formal meeting in time to hear the old Hazara karakul merchant announce that he wished to relinquish his duty as sharif. He said, “You must choose a younger man, who can be depended upon to serve you for many years.”