“Sure,” the Young Man said, a bit uneasily. “That sounds very interesting.”
“But they must go to Islamabad to get ammunition. It will be another five days.”
On the fourth morning the General put down his paper. “Yesterday in Parachinar they fired at the Tribal Agent,” he said.
The Young Man was eating a boiled egg. Everyone else in the household had to be finished eating and drinking shortly after four a.m., when it was light enough to distinguish white thread from black. But the Young Man never got up until seven or even later, and then they prepared for him a breakfast which they could not touch, with their own prized honey for his tea.
“Who fired at him?” he said, not understanding.
The General’s good manners forbade him from showing the disgust that this bit of ignorance deserved. “The K.G.B., Young Man. I had best ring up and find out the situation. If there is too much unrest in the border areas it might not be possible for you to go.”
He made a phone call. — “Somebody has been killed,” he told the Young Man. “We had best put it off.”
They put it off for another three days.
The Young Man listened to the sound of the fan, which seemed pitched to remind the user that every second was costing money. The three days passed. So did the fourth. On the fifth day he picked a lime from the General’s tree, and squeezed it into a glass of cold water. It tasted so good to him that he did it again after breakfast. He had gotten the idea from the Brigadier, who the day before had walked ten miles in the heat, observing Ramazan the while, searching for the man who should have come back from Islamabad with the ammunition to take the Young Man to the border. But the Brigadier did not know exactly where the man lived, and never found him. He came back silent. As soon as darkness was ruled official that night, the family went in to break their fast, but the Brigadier seemed unable to quench his thirst. He was an old man. An hour later, he came to the guest room and mixed himself a glass of fresh lime water. — “Very thirsty,” he said to the Young Man, whom he had adopted as his son. “Ramazan very difficult.” —“Yes,” said the Young Man. “Very difficult.”
The man never came.
“Tomorrow,” said the Young Man to the Brigadier, “I will ask the other parties for help.”
When he got up in the morning, the Brigadier was wringing his hands. “I no sleep last night,” he cried. “He—no come. I am party leader, but now you write: ‘Brigadier—wrong, wrong man.’ My party BROKEN, my work here all broken then.”
The Young Man felt very sorry for him. On the other hand, what kind of party leader was he? — He promised to wait until ten-thirty, when the Brigadier would return from another search for the ammunition man. After that no-doubt-unsuccessful mission, the Young Man would have the pleasure of going out in the midday heat.
He had come to dread the sun in Pakistan.
The General was very angry with the Brigadier. — “Bloody bastard,” he said. “The Afghans don’t want to be helped! They just want money. This commander has broken a gentleman’s agreement. His father and grandfather come from respectable families, I assure you. And now this fool and the Brigadier have made me lose face with you.”f
A little after eleven, the Brigadier came with his man. The next morning, dressed in Afghan clothes, with his cameras and tape recorders in a gunnysack, the Young Man was headed for the border.
“How many people did you kill, Brigadier?” asked the Young Man ingenuously. This would be a good cross-check of what the General had said.
The Brigadier stood straight and tall in the guest room. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon light.
“I killed about a thousand and more of thousand people in the fight of the Afghanistan,” he said in his slow, dignified English.g “I killed the more people, from Russia. — Russian! In Holy Qur’an say, ‘Don’t kill the peoples,’ but who is peoples? Peoples, he is peoples when he going by the Holy Books. Holy Books is four: Qur’an, Bible, [indecipherable], Torah is the Books.h These people is people. Who is don’t like the Books, he—no people! The Roos is wild. Like horses, like donkeys, like cows, they are coming in the Afghanistan here — invasion to Afghan countries! We don’t like them. I kill more of the Russians in Russian forts. He living in the Afghanistan now. He came, the Roos, him, from Russian country to our countries. They are fighting with me, they KILLING our little boys — he drinking milk, he hitting, they taking on his shoulder and his small small hand and small feets, they take him away, they kill him; this is not good.” —(The Brigadier shook his fist; he cried; I can never forget the anguish with which he said this.) —“Our children they are killing,” he said. “Our children, and our girls, and our old mans and young mans … In the fight, he taking and putting in the tank, between the tank, the young man and the young girls that are fighting with him; he killing! They are doing the zillah with the dead mans.i They, they sexing the dead girls!j They are like donkeys, from another world. I kill them! They kill me! I kill them!”
Upon his return to San Francisco, the Young Man called the C.I.A. as he had been requested to do. — “When were you in Afghanistan?” the C.I.A. man said. — The Young Man told him. — “What was this Brigadier’s full name?” the C.I.A. man said. — The Young Man told him. — “What languages do you speak?” the C.I.A. man said. — The Young Man told him. — “What’s your social security number?” the C.I.A. man said. — The Young Man told him. — “Thank you for calling, Mr. Vollmann,” the C.I.A. man said. “You can reach me at this number anytime. If you call, please refer to me as ‘Nick.’ ”
Five years later, I still had news of the Brigadier. But if Nick ever rearmed him, I never heard of it.k
* Water.
† Which remains disputed territory.
‡ Here is one of many examples of the Pakistani and Afghan freedom with dates. In fact, Daoud became Prime Minister in 1953, not 1954. He retained this position until 1962, at which time a commoner succeeded him. In 1973 he ousted Zaher Shah in a coup, and remained in power until he was assassinated by the Taraki coup in 1978. Taraki was killed by Amin in 1979, and Amin was executed by the Soviets upon their invasion later that year. See the Chronology at the end of this book for more details.
§ The Parcham (Flag) and Khalq (Masses) parties were two rival leftist parties in Afghanistan which found themselves sharing power uneasily after the invasion. Daoud had both Parcham and Khalq backing in his coup. Amin and Taraki were Khalq. Babrak Karmal, their Soviet-installed successor, was Parcham. In 1982 Karmal was still in power.
‖ I have not hesitated to edit the interviews in this book in order to make their syntax more readily comprehensible.
a Each of the latter two parties called itself Hezb-i-Islami.
b “Your gift of help to Afghans is very appreciated,” wrote the General in 1984, “but this amount cannot be given to anyone. You could donate the amount to an education institute — if you so desire.” —“SORRY,” said the rather surprising signs put up by the Berkeley Spartacists in 1983, who vowed to defend bureaucratically deformed workers’ states by any means necessary. “AFGHAN SLIDE SHOW CANCELED — will be rescheduled.” —“Your show was well received, and, as I believe you would have wished, provoked a goodly amount of reflection afterward,” wrote Mr. Scott Swanson in 1985. “Unfortunately, a snowstorm kept all but the most hearty away.”