Wasim sat close to Alun, putting food on his plate, pouring him tea.
After all that distance we’d travelled, everything we’d been through, it was not the reunion I’d been expecting. Alun laughed too much. And Val hardly spoke. I could feel him next to me, uptight and unsmiling.
Val finally asked the question that had been eating a hole in his heart since Istanbul.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?” There was just the slightest catch in his voice. I took his hand.
“I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.” There was a flicker of guilt in Alun’s eyes. “I would never have been brave enough to do it otherwise. I just had this idea that I had to go on a quest. I had to prove myself, like a knight.”
“You didn’t even leave a note,” I said.
“Yes I did! I wrote a note on the cover of Twrch Trwyth.”
I dug into the pocket of my suitcase and pulled out his book. There was nothing written on the cover. I flipped through and found a note scrawled upside down in childish capital letters on the inside back cover.
Alun of Aberystwyth, son of Gawain, he of the unchained heart, is setting out on a quest to pluck the hair from the nostril of the giant boar.
I handed it to him. “Do you mean this?”
Alun chuckled as he read it.
“It made perfect sense at the time,” he said.
He thought it was hilarious that Val had imagined he’d been kidnapped.
“That was the acid thinking for you,” he said.
“What was I supposed to think? Normally you don’t take a piss without letting everyone know.”
The relationship between Val and Alun had shifted, the ease had disappeared. Alun changed the subject.
“So,” he said, looking from me to Val. “You two. That’s nice.”
I don’t know how he knew.
“It always seemed obvious to me,” he said, “but I didn’t think the two of you would ever get over your hang-ups.”
“We’ve been through a lot since we saw you last,” Val said, putting his arm around my shoulder.
“Really?”
“Haven’t you?” I asked
“Not especially. I had one or two little accidents in the Mercedes, nothing serious. I got the shits and there was a bit of drama when I left my passport on a bus, but it all worked out.” He smiled at Wasim. “It was good.”
Then I told them our story. It took a while to recount the details—the Citroën conking out in Istanbul, the argument in Tehran, the drug bust with Dieter, the accident in Iran, abandoning the broken shell of Gertrude in no-man’s-land.
“Good grief!” he said. “It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
It turned out we’d done everything wrong—driven the taxi when buses would have been easier, caught buses when the train would have been quicker, taken the wrong routes.
“Yeah, well it was easy for you,” I said. “We didn’t have someone with local knowledge to guide us.”
I wanted to know how Aziz had got around paying for a carnet for the Mercedes.
“We drove south past Lake Van, it was beautiful. We crossed the border on a small road. A deal was struck which involved Aziz giving the border guard a bottle of Johnny Walker.”
I recounted the disastrous business with the fraudulent carnet. Alun laughed.
“I’m glad you think it’s amusing.”
“Well, you do seem to have made a balls-up of everything.”
“What about all those mountains?” Val asked. “That’s why I thought you couldn’t have decided to do it.”
“I was terrified at first, but I was doing what I wanted to do for the first time in my life.”
I could see him blushing in the lamplight.
“I felt like I could do anything. Also I was taking Lomotil because of the diarrhoea. I was so spaced out I didn’t really care if I died.”
Alun had a sudden thought. “What happened to Dolf?”
I groaned. “He got sick.”
“He’s waiting for us in Herat,” Val said.
I felt a stab of guilt. We’d promised Dolf we’d be back in three days, four at the most, and it had taken us three days to get to Mazar.
“We have to get him home. He just wouldn’t give up looking for Ulla.”
“When did you see her last?” Val asked.
“In Tehran. She didn’t hang around. She caught the train the day we arrived. She was going to meet that guru of hers in Kabul. Ulla can look after herself.”
“That’s what we told Dolf.”
We should have had a lot to say, but instead we fell silent.
“You must be tired,” Wasim said. “I know a good hotel that is not expensive.”
Our hotel room had a double bed and no bedbugs. Val and I made love in a bed. It wasn’t until after he was asleep that I took out the photos the Danish guy had given me. I looked at the one of Alun and Wasim. I could read the look on Alun’s face as clearly as if it was written in capitals across his forehead. I don’t know how I could have missed it before. Alun was gazing at Wasim with love. The Danish guy had been right; it had been an eventful night—a life-changing night.
It was quicker (and more comfortable) to go back to Herat via Kabul. Alun was going there anyway, and Wasim booked us all on the bus, not the day after, but the one after that. For once Val and I didn’t have to rush off somewhere at the crack of dawn.
I was scratching my stomach.
“You’ve got bites,” Val said.
There were several red spots near my belly button. Courtesy of the goat flea, I suppose.
“Don’t scratch them,” he said, leaning down and gently kissing each bite.
He was still upset about Alun, I could tell. I wanted to comfort him, but of course he wasn’t going to talk about it.
There were other ways I could soothe him without using words. We made love in the daylight, which made me nervous, but I managed to get over that without any trouble. I was hungry for Val’s hands to be on me. He had a way of touching me that I loved, running his hands over my body and concentrating, as if he needed to know my body well enough to recognise me by touch, or would have to answer questions about it later.
“What will you do when you get back to England?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “What about you? Will you still have a job?”
“No, but I’ll be able to get another. Any of Konundrum’s rivals will be happy to employ me.”
He didn’t exactly say that we would be together, but I had the feeling that’s what he was thinking. The photograph of Alun and Wasim was on the floor by the bed.
“Look at this,” I said, picking it up and showing it to Val.
“What am I looking at?”
“It’s obvious.”
“What is?”
“Why Alun took off in Istanbul. He fell in love.”
“With Ulla?”
“No, not with Ulla! With Wasim. Can’t you see the way he’s gazing at him? He’s in love.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was tripping!”
Val got up and wrapped his towel around his waist.
“I’ve known him for ages,” he said. “I would have known if he was ... a queer.”
“Maybe he didn’t know himself.”
Val shook his head. “That’s just insane. The heat must have got to you.”
He went to have a shower.
Now he was angry with me.
We went to Wasim’s house for lunch. It was an ancient jumble of mud-brick rooms that was crumbling back into the earth, and crowded with sisters and aunts. A gleaming copper samovar steamed in one corner, but like the restaurants and hotels we’d stayed in, it had almost no furniture.
The women didn’t wear their tents in the house. It was the first time I’d seen an Afghan woman’s face. Wasim’s sisters were lovely, and his mother was a small woman with a big smile who seemed delighted with her son’s growing group of European friends. We sat on another amazing carpet
. This one was deep red, patterned with eight-sided geometric shapes containing flowers. Wasim told us his mother and sisters had made the carpet themselves and the design was known as “elephant foot” because it resembled an elephant’s footprint.
The meal was simple—meat and rice followed by a dessert made of milk and pistachios and some sweet berries that I didn’t recognise. Val said they were mulberries.
Wasim’s mother showed us their weaving loom and the carpet they were currently working on which was about the size of a hearthrug with a smaller version of the eight-sided design. Carpet weaving was a way that she and her daughters could earn money without leaving the house.
“Wasim’s father died five years ago,” Alun explained, after we’d left. “He needs to support his family. He’s responsible for them all. That’s why he was working for Aziz.”
“But he’s given up working for Aziz.”
“He didn’t make that much money,” Alun said. “I’ve got a better plan for him, so that he can earn more.”
He was looking at Wasim. If I had any doubts about their relationship, they disappeared.
He had it all worked out. Wasim needed an education if he was going to make any real difference to his family. Alun was going to try and get him enrolled in Aberystwyth University.
“I think I can swing it. The Dean was desperate for me to go there and really bummed when I decided to go to Nottingham. I’m going to write and tell him I’ll transfer if he can come up with a scholarship for Wasim. He can get a part-time job while he’s studying and earn money to send back here. In the meantime, I’m trying to work out a way of selling his mum’s rugs in England.”
“But first term starts in a few weeks,” Val said.
“Oh, it’s not going to happen this year,” Alun said. “There’s no rush. I’d like to stay for a while.”
“But you haven’t got any money. How will you survive here?”
“Well, you see, I’ve got a job!”
“Here?”
“In Kabul, teaching English.”
“You’ve only been here a few days!”
“I know, but there are lots of people who want to learn English so they can do business deals with Americans. Wasim knows people. I can make enough money to live on until we get everything sorted. Wasim’s uncle has a hotel in Kabul. He can work for him and we can stay there for free.”
“Great,” I said. “So Afghans will all be speaking English with a Welsh accent.”
Wasim wanted to show us around. He took us to where we could look at the mosque from a safe distance. The dome was turquoise and the rest of the building was decorated with blue-patterned tiles. The colours were dazzling after days in the colourless countryside.
“The mosque is very holy. It is the burial place of the cousin of the prophet Mohammed,” Wasim told us. “That is why the mullahs were so angry with you.”
“What about your family?” Val said. “Have you told your mum and dad where you are?”
“Not yet.”
Alun stopped smiling.
“I’m going to phone them. I’ve booked a call for next week.”
“You’re going to ring them?” I said. “My mother would have a heart attack if I phoned at any other time other than Christmas. She’d think someone had died!”
“You’re right,” Alun said, sounding relieved. “I’ll cancel the phone call and write to them instead. Mum’ll be thrilled that I’ll be going to the local university, though not so pleased I’m staying here for a while.”
I thought of my own parents who right about then would be expecting my monthly aerogramme.
Wasim had borrowed a car. It was Russian and its blue duco was faded. We drove fifteen miles back the way we’d come, stopping three times on the way to fill up the radiator. Wasim took us to the ruins of another, much older, mosque. The roof was long gone and some of the arches had collapsed, but there were several huge pillars half buried in sand, made of mud like most buildings, but carved with beautiful swirling arabesque patterns.
We got back in the car and drove some more, this time to the remains of the ancient city of Balkh. It had once been a massive citadel which must have been more than half a mile across, ringed by a mud-brick wall. All that was left were rounded mounds of pale earth that marked where the walls and the buildings within them had been. After centuries of wind and weather, the citadel looked like a sand castle that had been kicked over and abandoned.
“The wife of Alexander the Great was from this city,” Wasim said.
Val sighed, like a kid in a boring history class, and kicked at some pieces of broken pottery in the earth. Alun turned to Val as if he’d been waiting for a chance to get angry at him.
“You could be more civil,” Alun said. “Wasim just wants to teach you about his country.”
“Look, I didn’t ask for a guided tour,” Val said as he turned around, looking at the desolate mounds surrounding us, disintegrating into the earth. “I don’t even know why I’m in this place.”
There was nowhere to hide from the blazing sun.
Alun was red-faced and sweating.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” he said.
“There’s nothing wrong with me. You’re the one that’s throwing away your education to stay in this God forsaken place.”
“You sound like my mother, Val! Education doesn’t always have to happen in a lecture theatre. Just being in this place is an education.” Alun waved his arm to indicate the bleak ruins. “I haven’t thrown away anything. I’ve just put it off and anyway, I’m going to change my thesis topic, make it about Afghani folklore.”
Val laughed.
I’d never seen Alun get angry before. He was furious.
“You have no right to sneer at me! When did you ever take university seriously? For you it was only ever somewhere that provided a social life and an endless parade of girls.”
They stood facing each other. He was trying to hide it with a scowl, but I could tell Val was stunned by this new obstinate, angry Alun. Wasim and I could only stand and watch. Sweat was running down my back and my knees felt weak. It wasn’t the heat that was making me wobbly, though, it was watching my new-found happiness crumbling like the walls of Balkh.
“For once in my life I’m doing what I want to,” Alun said. He’d stopped shouting, but his voice trembled with suppressed anger and passion. “Not what my mother wants, not what my father expects, not whatever you choose to do. This is what I want, and I’m sorry if it doesn’t suit you.”
He turned and walked back to the car.
No one spoke as we drove back through the parched countryside. When we reached the outskirts of Mazar, I broke the silence.
“So you’re going to stay here for a year?”
“Yes,” Alun said defiantly. “I like it here.”
Val stared out of the window.
It did make sense. Alun would enjoy living in 1351, it was his era. He might regret that there were no Maseratis or cabriolets, but he wouldn’t miss electricity at all.
Thirty-two
Southern Cross
It was about the same distance from Mazar to Kabul as it was from Herat, except it took ten hours not three days, in a comfortable bus on a well-made bitumen road. It was a hair-raising drive through towering mountains with hairpin bends. There was a tunnel a mile and a half long which had no lighting apart from the vehicles’ headlights and barely enough room for a bus and a truck to pass.
Val and Alun weren’t speaking to each other. Now that I knew Alun was safe, I just wanted to go back to London. Val and I hadn’t actually talked about what we were going to do next, but once we’d got Dolf on his way home, I hoped we could take our time.
Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan, but nothing like a European city. There was a bit of traffic but most of the streets were just dirt roads. The buildings were simple constructions, the shops single rooms with shutters that closed at night and opened early in the morning to allow whatever was for sale to spread ou
t onto the footpath—piles of melons, second-hand jackets, handmade horse shoes.
There were a lot of hippies in Kabul. It was one of the drug capitals of the world on Ulla’s pre-getting-religion list. Chicken Street was where all the westerners hung out. It had a bitumen surface but there was an open drain that carried away dirty water and, by the smell of it, the contents of toilets. It had two-storey shops, some of which had been recently whitewashed, selling the sort of clothes and trinkets that westerners liked. They also offered free samples of hashish to their customers. Hotels in Chicken Street catered exclusively for young westerners and the owners had worked out what it was they were craving after weeks away from home. Restaurants offered Afghani versions of hamburgers, cherry pies, lemon meringues and milkshakes. They played rock music—Pink Floyd; the Rolling Stones; Crosby, Stills and Nash. You who are on the road. It was like they were singing to me.
We stayed at Wasim’s uncle’s hotel, the Hotel Shangri-La. The uncle seemed pleased to have us stay and gave us a room at a discount price. The hotel was new, but off the beaten track (one street back from Chicken Street). He wanted us to spread the word to other westerners that it was a good hotel.
While drinking tea, we met a New Zealand couple who were also staying there, Dan and Brenda. Their accents sounded outrageous. It was a hot day, hot as the last day, hot as the next day would be. We should have really gone straight on to Herat, but we didn’t. Val and I spent most of the day in our room. In public we couldn’t even hold hands, though Alun and Wasim did all the time. It was what boys do in that part of the world and no one blinks an eyelid. Val was still hung up about Alun but I couldn’t get him to talk about it.
Alun tapped on the door some time in the afternoon. Val was sleeping.