Then I stopped moving with a jerk. Erica had thrown herself down to the ground and began to haul me in. I felt myself being hauled, but I could not help her. Slowly, slowly she dragged me out of the river. I could hear her grunting with the effort. At last I was lying in only three or four inches of icy water. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. My body was without feeling, and my pack was heavy with water. I undid one shoulder strap, pulled myself slowly out of the other, and dragged myself and my pack very slowly along through the wet stones, as if I were a snail.
“Come on!” Erica was calling. “Get up!”
I tried to keep moving.
“You can do it! You’ve got to do it! Get up!”
Erica called my name again, breathlessly.
…We were on another big sandbar. Erica Bright was pulling off my shoes and my torn, bloody blue jeans; she was unrolling my sleeping bag, which had stayed dry in its double stuff sack; she was holding me tight. My legs and face were bloody. — “Hurry up and get into your bag,” Erica Green-Eyes said. “You have hypothermia.”
“Erica …” I said. It took all my effort to say her name.
“My heart really went out to you, too,” she said. “Now get in.”
For a long time I shivered in the sun. Erica sat beside me all afternoon. — “You know,” she said finally, “I’m starting to get fond of you.”
I smiled up at her.
The next day we crossed the McKinley all the way. In the last channel, Erica fell. We were side by side in the water, holding on to each other by my belt. There was a heavy clank as Erica hit the rocks with her pack, and then a grinding. I was pulled down.
“Get up!” I shouted in my best Green-Eyes manner. I pulled her up; she slipped off her pack. We were in calm, shallow water. I helped her to her feet, and the two of us dragged her pack onto the final sandbank. She looked at me, wet and smiling, and threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek.
Of course, she hadn’t needed my help at all.
I will never forget that morning, which was so sunny and joyous, with the river behind us and ahead of us a rolling tundra ridge sparkling with wet blueberries,† beyond which (although we could not see that yet) was a valley of beautiful little lakes in which we could bathe, and then ankle-deep moss, some red, some green; and then more ecstatic days and terrible days until one morning we woke up in someone’s bedroom, she in the double bed, I in my sleeping bag on the floor (for we never slept together), and the shades were down so that the room was so dim that we could hardly see each other; we had woken up at the same time; she reached down from the bed, I reached up, and we gripped each other’s wrists in that solid way that gives support on river crossings, and I have not seen Erica again, but I went back and back to the Arctic and crossed rivers by myself because dear Erica showed me how; and as Erica and I came out of the river on that morning in late July I somehow knew all this and was so happy as we ate blueberries out of Erica’s enamel cup; and of course within hours came the edge of that mossy plateau, and below waited our next river and I could hear the heavy sound of the water, and the river was just as dreadful as ever; but while we were eating blueberries it was a long way away yet; and the place where we found ourselves was so beautiful, so beautiful, and I was stunned by the sunlight and the sound of the river behind me and the unknown vastness ahead of me; I was stunned by it all. — I think now that if my purpose in going to Afghanistan was at all good, then it must have been to learn if there was a way to help people get across rivers — as I said, I didn’t help them, but they helped me. When I went into Afghanistan, my friend Suleiman carried me across the rivers on his back.
* Hangu Camp, 1982.
† When I first read Purgatorio, Canto I, it made me feel this way again.
III. THE REBELS
10. A MATTER OF POLITICS: THE GAME (1982)
We are just concerned with the receiving end of the ammunition and the sorts of facilities to continue our jihad. We are not concerned theoretically with the source, and we are not concerned in this situation to recognize the intention of the donor.
As long as they grow in the wild, principles of life and meaningful action do quite well, but when they are plucked and brought into our dreary world of imperfect results, they begin to wilt. Happily, our noses are so accustomed to the stink of our enemies’ putrefying ideas that when our own give over wilting and commence to decay, we can use them nonetheless.*
The Young Man, however, did not yet know this. As yet he had established only the following:
1. The suffering that besieged him could not be justified. That put him very definitely on the Afghan side.
2. His belief that he might somehow be of use could not be justified.
3. Being victims did not make the Afghans any better or worse than anybody else.
There did not seem much left to do, then, in those days while he waited for the Brigadier’s party to finish its preparations to go inside, but to be analytical. That was all that he was really good at. Everything was melting in his hands. But at least the following must be true: I am on the side of the Afghans; therefore the Resistance has to be wonderful. (In his mind, the Mujahideen were all storybook de Gaulles; too much reading had relegated him far behind even the zero point of simple ignorance.)
“You really want to know about the parties?” laughed General N. “I can take you around, Young Man. It will be very educational for you.”
Since the man whom I call the Reliable Source was promised that he would not be identified in any way, I will abstain from any description of him or his surroundings. He was hospitable, as everyone was, and gave the Young Man a Sprite. — The difficulties across the border had begun, he said, in 1973. —Yes, it would have been in 1973 that the Soviet Union became especially interested; so the Young Man supposed. That was when Daoud overthrew the monarchy in Afghanistan.† And when the Soviet Union got interested, then Pakistan had better get interested, too. — The Young Man switched on the recorder. “So you started studying the problem in 1973?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the Reliable Source, “in ’73 our government began to see changes on the horizon — not only in Afghanistan itself but in the entire region. You know, the Chinese leadership was aging, and so they would be going out inside some period of time. One had to allow for that.” —He was ticking off the falling colossi on his fingers. — “Then the Russian leadership was aging. No one could figure out with certainty who would follow in their shoes.” —Another finger fell. — “Much closer at home, we saw the Shah of Iran. Now, we knew that he would possibly have to go under to a popular movement at some point in time. There was no organized and organic system which could take over and run the government after him, because there were only court ministers and such.” —Another finger. — “Then, closer at home, we saw Afghanistan. With Zaher Shah ousted, we began to have real nightmares — in this sense: that as long as Daoud remained, there was some stability in the country, but once Daoud went out, then unknown people would start emerging. And that is what set us upon a certain plan of action — because we had our own national compulsions, Young Man! — In addition to that, Afghan people had never been friendly to us since ’47.‡ They had also conducted certain activity in this province, and in Punjab, and these areas.”