But wars that ended in such ways did not bring a good peace; the professor knew that from his study of history. They brought dishonor, shame, a simmering desire for revenge. The Germans had gone from the humiliation of Versailles to the brazen assaults of the Nazis in less than two decades. The start of the second war was contained in the end of the first. That was what people in the professor’s part of the world understood better than more “civilized” people: The victor in war must find a way to salve the dignity of the vanquished; otherwise, there would just be another war.
An old grandfather sitting next to the professor in the waiting lounge had fallen asleep. He was snoring loudly, and some of the children nearby were pointing at him and laughing. It was undignified. The professor gently nudged the old man until he was awake and the loud nasal percussion ceased. He went back to his reverie about war and peace, which helped him to forget about the unpleasantness of the airport waiting room.
The tribal code for restoring harmony was called nanawatay in the Pashto language. That was how wars ended among honorable men. The vanquished party would go to the house of the victor, into the very heart of his enemy, and look that man in the eye and request forgiveness and peace. The defeated man was seeking asylum, and the victor could not but grant him this request. To refuse would be dishonorable and unmanly. When a man is asked to be generous, he can unburden himself of his rage toward his enemy. He can be patient in forgiveness and let go of the past. The defeated man will have brought a buffalo, or some lambs and goats for slaughter. In this gift is his dignity. A feast is held. The war is over.
There were shouts in the terminal suddenly, and a frantic rush. They were calling the flight now, and people were crowding toward the door, pushing and shoving. The professor sat where he was. He had his ticket in his hand, with the seat number printed on it clearly. The plane would not leave without him. It was a sign of the immaturity of people in the East to jostle like this every time there was a queue. A Pashtun man would never do this. Better to miss the flight than to act like a woman.
The professor thought again of his problem: In the old days, it was said, the defeated man would come to the house of the victor with grass in his mouth and a rope around his neck as a sign of his humbleness. He was as meek before the victor as an animal of the field. Other times, the supplicant would attend a funeral for someone in his enemy’s family. He would come to his rival’s village and somberly enter his house, to share the grief. And once inside the house, he could ask for asylum and forgiveness. It was unthinkable to refuse such a plea; only a coward would do so.
The professor thought of the Americans. This culture of asylum was what they had never understood: They had made war in the years after 2001 because the Pashtuns would not refuse the asylum request from the Arabs fleeing across the mountains. The Americans demanded something the people of these mountains could not grant without great shame. You could say that it was a war about hospitality.
Even smart people could be stupid in this way. It was true of the British. The professor had at home somewhere a history of a terrible war the British had fought in the 1870s with the Jowaki clan, which was part of the Afridi tribe. The Jowakis had given asylum to two fearsome outlaws. The British demanded their return, but that was impossible for the tribesmen; better that they all should die. So they fought a bloody war, and it was reported by a British historian of the time, George Batley Scott: “Every glen and valley of the clan was occupied, every tower destroyed, many cattle died, the families suffered in the wintry cold, only then did the chiefs come into camp and ask for terms.”
But the British hadn’t understood how wars end. They had proposed what they thought was a proper settlement-payment of a fine, giving over weapons and, of course, return of the outlaws. The Jowaki chief answered in the only way that was consistent with tribal honor: “We will pay the fine, we will surrender our arms, but those two men who have taken refuge with us, we will not give them up. You are in possession of our country. Keep it, we will seek a home elsewhere, but those men we will not give up. Why will you blacken our faces?”
History was a recording that played continuously, so that you did not realize it was the same song, over and over.
The waiting lounge was nearly empty now. It was possible to board the airplane in a dignified way. Professor Omar collected his computer bag and the book he had been reading and walked to the gate, where a frazzled attendant collected his ticket. When he thanked her for this service, the woman looked astonished.
On the plane, there were families with young children in front of the professor and behind him. He put the buds of his music player into his ears so that the world would disappear and he could listen to Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist who played in the classical way of the traveling musicians who had visited his town when he was a boy, who could make their instruments sound like human voices, but sweeter.
The professor was not flying to London with grass in his mouth or a yoke about his neck, it was true. And it could not be said that he had been defeated. But in traveling to Britain, he was entering the house of his enemy, certainly, or his enemy’s best friend. He was seeking the balance, as he had come finally to understand it. He was giving his counterpart the opportunity to forgive-and thereby regain a measure of honor. Surely that would be understood: Just as it was necessary to fight, to avenge the insult, so it was also necessary to forgive. Otherwise the wars continued until there was no one left.
The plane was taking off. The professor could hear the roar of the engines against the sinuous notes of the clarinet. He fell asleep thinking of his favorite word in the Pashto language, melmastia, which meant “hospitality.” That was the way wars ended.
Another plane was waiting to take off to the north, in Islamabad, heading for the same destination of London. This one was a military jet carrying Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik, the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence. It was an unlikely journey, in some respects. The general normally did not like to travel to foreign countries unless he had official business with their intelligence service chiefs. He was not a mere case officer or a brigadier; there were questions of protocol and status. But in this case he felt he had no choice.
General Malik had a private cabin on the military plane. It was a small compartment, with a portrait of the president on one wall and one of the chief of army staff on another, but it had a bed and a desk, and a door you could close, so that you did not have to make conversation when you had nothing to say.
The general was a fastidious man. His orderly had packed his uniforms in the hanging locker, protected in their zippered suit bags. His dress shoes were already polished to a high shine, but they would be buffed again before the plane landed. The orderly had laid out his pajamas, too, on the bed, along with his felt slippers and his dressing gown. The general would change after the plane had taken off. It would be undignified to be dressed in bedclothes if the steward knocked before takeoff to offer tea or a cold drink.
General Malik had been contacted by his old friend Cyril Hoffman the day before. Usually there was a roundabout indirection to Hoffman’s manner; he could be as Oriental in his ways as a pasha. But this time he was more direct. When the phone rang, the general had been in the garden adjoining his headquarters in Aabpara, sitting in his Adirondack chair, having his tea in the late afternoon and reading his cables, and trying to sort out the tangle of operations that was knotted too tightly now to be easily undone. The duty officer said that Langley was on the line, and that was a call he could never refuse.