c Or else — what seems more likely to me now — the General had a very kind heart.
d I know now that I could have done no better.
e Thousands.
f Imagine that! This fine old man, who was close to the center of power in his country, was worried about losing face with a twenty-two-year-old boy who got sick in the sun. Why? Because the boy was American.
g The Brigadier’s numbers, like much else about him, are enigmatical. Pakistanis and Afghans seem freer in their use of figures than we. By “a thousand” he might mean “a good number.” Then again, he might mean “a thousand.” The General’s corroboration was important, for I never knew him to make a deliberate misstatement of any kind.
h Indeed, in token of their kinship with us — which we Christians are too provincial to feel with them — Muslims call us “the People of the Book.”
i Sexually violating.
j I have heard many reports of Soviet soldiers raping Afghan women, but only one other account of sexual violation of corpses.
k The Brigadier “is fine and healthy,” wrote the General a few months after I left. “All those who matter now realize that we ought to help those who are involved in fighting inside. Masoud the hero of Panjsher has contacted him through his father, who is also a retired Brigadier General … Lord C— B— of U.K. had also contacted him. He will be all right, in spite of no help from his Arab friends …” —The General did not even mention the Americans anymore.
II. THE REFUGEES
5. “OR AT LEAST A LONG HALT”: REFUGEES IN THE CITY (1982)
And Peshawar is now, as always, very much a frontier town. The formalities of dress and manner give way here to a free and easy style, as men encounter men with a firm handclasp and a straight but friendly look. Hefty handsome men in baggy trousers and long loose shirts swing along with enormous confidence, wearing bullet-studded bandoliers across their chests or pistols at their sides, as if it were a normal part of their dress. There is just that little touch of excitement and drama in the air that makes for a frontier land. An occasional salvo of gunfire — no, not a tribal raid or a skirmish in the streets, but a lively part of wedding celebrations.
… Peshawar is the great Pathan city. And what a city! Hoary with age and the passage of twenty-five centuries; redolent with the smell of luscious fruit and roasted meat and tobacco smoke; placid and relaxed but pulsating with the rhythmic sound of craftsmen’s hammers and horse’s hooves; unhurried in its pedestrian pace and horse-carriage traffic; darkened with tall houses, narrow lanes and overhanging balconies; intimate, with its freely intermingling crowd of townsmen, tribals, traders and tourists — this is old Peshawar, the journey’s end or at least a long halt, for those traveling up north or coming down from the Middle East or Central Asia, now as centuries before when caravans unloaded in the many caravan-serais now lying deserted outside the dismantled city walls or used as garages by the modern caravans of far-ranging buses.
from a brochure by THE PAKISTAN TOURISM DEVELOPMENT CORP., LTD. (ca. 1979)
Trying so hard to generalize (why, I really don’t remember), the Young Man Who Knew Everything explained to his notebook: “The uncleanliness of American cities is composed of such items as shattered bottles and blowing newspapers, beer cans, chemical spills, Styrofoam incubators for hamburgers, and the like. In Pakistan production and distribution are not nearly as advanced; accordingly, the diet of its cities is hardly so rich, and their excretions and lymphatic disorders have an altogether different character. Much that would be thrown away in the U.S.A. is prized here — and of course there are no beer cans.” —Peshawar, then, was a city of tumbledown streets and filth; and the Young Man, with his preference for advanced trash, believed it even dirtier than it was. (I confess that I myself would rather die from an industrial cancer than through an amoeba’s agency; this is a question of upbringing.) — Then, too, there was the fact of being perpetually observed, accosted and remarked upon; this superfluity of attention was at times somewhat like dirt. Like other cheats, he wanted to study, not to be studied. As the attention was almost always kindly meant, responding to it eventually became a pleasure; but in the meantime the Young Man must also face the city itself: the stands selling rotten mangoes and meat so thick with flies that its own color was a mystery; the gasping men, cooling themselves off in the midst of their labor by sticking hoses down inside their shirts; the shops offering expired medicines, sugar syrup, cooking oil and brand-new fans. In the Saddar district, the sidewalks had buckled and upthrust, as if unsettled by the tunneling of giant moles. Here and there were three-foot pits without apparent purpose: little graves for fruit peels and the hooves of slaughtered cattle, with concrete shards mixed in like bones. When he bought bananas they were soft and black. The gutters stank; the water in them was gray, like the underbelly of a dead snake. Everyone moved slowly in the heat.
The Young Man wrote treatises on the effects of that heat: First you felt it in your wet forehead, as the sweat began running into your eyes in the first seconds. Next the sunlight penetrated your scalp. Your hair warmed uncomfortably. The base of your neck was sodden like your armpits, and you inhaled steam as though you were going through the motions of breathing; and soon you got dizzy and sick to your stomach. Some people (such as Afghan refugees) might bleed from the nose and ears.
“Yes, it is hot,” sighed the proprietor of the hotel. “In Baluchistan, they say, there is a town where in summer the water comes from the tap hot enough for tea. I have never been there; I hope I never will, in sh’Allah!”*
As the Young Man walked along, everyone looked up. They made the quick hissings used to attract rickshaw drivers, or called out to him: “Hey!” “What you want?” “Where you going?” or simply, “Mister!” —To all of these, Mister returned an imperturbable and inane “Asalamu alaykum”—the traditional Islamic greeting.† —“Walaykum asalam,” they said automatically, becoming more friendly. From there it was only a few steps to the free soft drink, the tea, the guided tour with the rickshaw to his hotel paid for at the end of it, the multitude of improbable favors. Everyone said, surprised that he would even comment: “But you are a guest of our country!” or, “It’s a question of national honor.”
Coming back from the Austrian Relief Committee one evening, he became lost. It was Ramazan, so the General’s family had been without food or water all the long, hot day. He did not want to keep them waiting to break their fast. — But where was Saddar? If he could find that, he could walk to the General’s house. — A cyclist came up the hill carrying a great load of fresh-cut tree boughs. The Young Man asked directions. The other beckoned to a passing rickshaw. But the Young Man had no rupees left; they had been stolen at a refugee camp. — “I pay for you!” smiled the Pakistani. — “No, no,” said the Young Man, embarrassed. It was not far to a crossroads that he knew; the Pakistani had explained it to him. He could easily walk there. — So then, making certain that the branches were lashed tightly to the rear wheel, the Pakistani set the Young Man sidesaddle just behind the handlebars and began to pedal. — “Allah, Allah!” he cried near the summit of the hill, sweat running down his face. The Young Man, ashamed, tried to dismount, but he shook his head. — “No, no! You friend! I take you there.” —In front of the General’s house, before the Young Man could thank him, he smiled and turned back the way he had come.