Qabir is an invented name, but the facts associated with it are not. The massive nomad convocation met at no regular place, and where it did meet bore no proper name, for the land is unbelievably wild, empty and unknown. It was called merely The Abul Camp and was probably larger than I suggest. Also, the subsidiary camps for attendant families seem to have been farther from the trading center than I have indicated. The Abul Camp was for men only. Until 1954 no known outsider had ever visited the camp, so that events depicted in this novel are anachronistic by eight years. As for a foreign woman’s visiting the camp, there is no record of its having happened.
The archaeological sites referred to—Qala Bist, The City, Bamian, Balkh—are faithfully described. Bamian remains one of the compelling sights of Asia. My notes, penciled hurriedly as we approached from the east, tell the story:
Bamian: at eastern approach the Red City (name Zak?) high on hill and cliffs several hundred feet high. Note little castles guarding trail all the way up. City 4 main levels. It was here Genghis Khan lost his son. Destruction of Bamian followed. Red City on right bank of Bamian River. City at Bamian named Ghulghulah and stood back at present hostel. KOCHI is Farsi word (those who move).
Cliffs 350 feet high, reddish tan. Probably over 500 cave entrances visible, each leading to 4 or 5 rooms. Some caves 300 feet high, sheer drop. Magnificent corridors. Frescoes. All faces routed out. Located foot of soaring sepia and purple-brown mountains facing Koh-i-Baba.
From one room in the highest level of caves I counted 61 snow-covered peaks in midsummer, all over 15,000 feet high.
The Caravanserai of the Tongues, its location and its pillar are inventions, but each is true to the spirit of Afghanistan. I camped in many of these deserted caravanserais, great lonely structures scattered over the land, and never failed to be impressed with their mood and their function. It was at one that I met my first Kochis in Afghanistan and jotted down the outline of a novel much different from this one. As for the pillar, I forget where I heard about an event of similar import; possibly it was at Herat, where Genghis Khan is reliably reported to have slain a million people. One contemporary authority wrote that it was a million and a half.
My contacts with Islam have been consistent and varied: Indonesia, Borneo, Malaya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Near East, Turkey. I have written favorably of the religion, have known many of its leaders, and hold it in both respect and affection. My experiences, as the reader may guess, place me in opposition to the rural mullahs.
Practically every Afghan word, when transliterated into the Roman alphabet, can be spelled in alternate ways (Kabul, Caboul; Helmand, Helmund) and consistency in orthography seems at this point impossible. The editors of this book and I drew up lists of many variant spellings. We consulted numerous experts, some with rather exalted credentials, and in the end found ourselves repeating the lament of Omar, the poet from nearby Persia:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went.
It will be some years before the Roman spelling of essential Afghan words is standardized. Those which offered the most interesting variants include:
chaderi, choudhry, shaddry, chadhri, charderi
ferangi, farangi, faranji, ferengi, feringhee
Tajik, Tadjik, Tadzhik
Pashtun, Pushtun, Pushtoon, Pakhtoon, Pathan
Kandahar, Qandahar
Koran, Qur’an
Bamian, Bamyan, Bamiyan
Kochi, Kuchi
Pashto, Pushto, Pushtu, Pukhto
Povindah, Powindeh
I must make it clear that our decision to spell a given word in a given way was never taken without extensive study, but I must also confess that the final decision was usually arbitrary and that consistency from one decision to the next did not seem possible in view of the conflicts existing among the experts.
For two usages I am alone responsible. In 1946 in this part of the world Iran was known as Persia, the Amu Darya river as the Oxus. If I were writing about today, I would of course use the contemporary forms.
In recent years whenever I have been asked which of the countries I have seen I would most prefer to visit again, I have invariably said Afghanistan. I remember it as an exciting, violent, provocative place. Almost every American or European who worked there in the old days says the same. It was, in the years I knew it, what Mark Miller says: “One of the world’s great cauldrons.”
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1963 by James A. Michener
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
FAWCETT is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-51676-3
Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, August 1963
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James A. Michener, Caravans
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