‘I have found the girl I want you to marry,’ Feroza said one day.
‘Oh,’ said Tajmir. His throat tightened, but not a word of protest escaped him. He knew he would have to write a letter to his pie-in-the-sky sweetheart and tell her it was all over.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘She is your second cousin, Khadija. You haven’t seen her since you were small. She is clever and hard-working and from a good family.’
Tajmir merely nodded. Two months later he met Khadija for the first time, at the engagement party. They sat beside each other during the whole party without exchanging a word. I could love her, he thought.
Khadija looks like a Parisian jazz-singer from the twenties. She has black, wavy hair, parted on the side, cut straight across the shoulders, white powdered skin and always wears black eye make-up and red lipstick. Her cheeks are narrow and her lips wide, and she might have been posing for art photographers all her life. But according to Afghan standards she is not very pretty; she is too thin, too narrow. The ideal Afghan woman is round: round cheeks, round hips, round tummy.
‘Now I love her,’ Tajmir says. They are approaching Gardes, and Tajmir has given Bob, the American journalist, his entire life story.
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘What a story. So you really love your wife now? What about the other girl?’
Tajmir hasn’t a clue what has happened to the other girl. He never even thinks of her. Now he lives for his own little family. A year ago he and Khadija had a baby girl.
‘Khadija was terrified of having a daughter,’ he tells Bob. ‘Khadija is always frightened of something and this time it was about having a daughter. I told her and everyone else that I wanted a daughter. That above all I wanted a daughter. So that if we did have a daughter no one would say, how sad, because after all that is what I had wished for, and if we got a boy no one would say anything because then everyone would be pleased no matter what.’
‘Hm,’ says Bob and tries to understand the logic of it all.
‘Now Khadija is worried she won’t conceive again, because we are trying but nothing’s happening. So I keep on telling her that one child is enough, one child is fine. In the West many people have only one child. So if we never have any more, everyone will say we didn’t want any more, and if we have some more then everyone will be pleased no matter what.’
‘Hm.’
They stop in Gardes to buy something to eat. They buy a carton of ‘hi-lite’ cigarettes at ten pence a pack, a kilo of cucumbers, twenty eggs and some bread. They are peeling the cucumbers and cracking the eggs when Bob suddenly calls out: ‘Stop!’
By the roadside about thirty men sit in a circle. Kalashnikovs lie on the ground in front of them and ammunition belts are strapped over their chests.
‘That’s Padsha Khan’s men,’ Bob cries. ‘Stop the car.’
Bob grabs Tajmir and walks over to the men. Padsha Khan is sitting in the midst of them: the greatest warlord of the eastern provinces and one of Hamid Karzai’s most vociferous opponents.
When the Taliban fled, Padsha Khan was appointed Governor of Paktia Province, known as one of Afghanistan ’s most unruly regions. As Governor of an area where there is still support for the al-Qaida network, Padsha Khan became an important man to American intelligence. They were dependent on co-operation on the ground and one warlord was no better nor worse than any other. Padsha Khan’s task was to ferret out Taliban and al-Qaida soldiers. His remit was then to inform the Americans. To this end he was supplied with a satellite telephone, which he used frequently. He kept on phoning and telling the Americans about al-Qaida movements in the area. And the Americans used firepower – on a village here and a village there, on tribal chiefs en route to attend Karzai’s inaugural ceremony, on a few wedding parties, a bunch of men in a house, and on America’s own allies. None of them were connected to al-Qaida but they had one thing in common – they were enemies of Padsha Khan. The local protests against the headstrong Governor, who suddenly had B52s and F16 fighter planes at his disposal to settle local tribal scores, increased to such an extent that Karzai saw no other solution but to remove him.
Padsha Khan then started his own little war. He sent rockets to the villages where his enemies were holed up and warfare broke out between the various factions. Several innocent people were killed when he tried to regain his lost power. In the end he had to give up, for the time being. Bob had been looking for him for ages, and there he is, sitting in the sand, surrounded by a bunch of bearded men.
Padsha gets up when he sees them. He greets Bob rather coldly but embraces Tajmir warmly and pushes him down beside him. ‘How are you my friend? Are you well?’
They had often met during Operation Anaconda, America ’s major al-Qaida offensive. Tajmir had interpreted, that was all.
Padsha Khan is used to ruling the region as though it were his own backyard, together with his three brothers. Only six weeks ago he allowed rockets to rain down over the town of Gardes. Now it is Khost’s turn. A new Governor has been appointed, a sociologist who has lived for the last decade in Australia. He has gone to ground, for fear of Padsha Khan and his men.
‘My men are prepared,’ Padsha Khan tells Tajmir, who translates while Bob scribbles in his notebook. ‘We are just now discussing what to do,’ he continues and looks at his men. ‘Do we take him or do we wait?’ Padsha Khan goes on. ‘Are you headed for Khost? Then you must tell my brother to get rid of the new Governor quick as a flash. Tell him to pack up and bugger off to Karzai!’
Padsha Khan uses his hands to mime packing up and sending away. The men look at him, then at Tajmir and then at blond Bob who is frantically noting everything down.
‘Listen,’ says Padsha Khan. There is no doubt who he thinks is the legitimate lord of the three provinces, the provinces the Americans are watching like hawks. The warlord uses Tajmir’s leg to illustrate what he means, drawing maps, roads and frontiers on his thigh. Tajmir receives a slap on the thigh for every utterance; he translates automatically. The largest ant he has ever seen is crawling over his foot.
‘Karzai is threatening to send in the army next week. What will you do about that?’ asks Bob.
‘What army? Karzai doesn’t have an army. He has a few hundred bodyguards who are being trained by the British. No one can beat me on my territory,’ says Padsha Khan, looking at his men. They wear worn-out sandals and ragged clothes, and the only polished and shining bit about them is their weapons. Some of the handles are covered in colourful rows of pearls, others have painstakingly embroidered borders. Several of the young soldiers have decorated their Kalashnikovs with stickers. One pink sticker bears the words ‘kiss me’.
Many of these men fought on the side of the Taliban only a year ago. ‘No one can own us, they can only hire us,’ the Afghans say about themselves and their rapid change from side to side in war. Today they belong to Padsha Khan; tomorrow the Americans might hire them. The most important thing to them now is to fight whomever Padsha Khan considers to be his enemy. The Americans’ hunt for al-Qaida will have to wait.
‘He’s mad,’ says Tajmir when they are back in the car. ‘People like him are responsible for the fact that there is never peace in Afghanistan. To him power is more important than peace. He’s mad enough to jeopardise the lives of thousands just so he can be in charge. I can’t imagine why the Americans want to co-operate with a man like that,’ he says.
‘If they were to work only with people whose hands are clean they would not have found many in this province,’ says Bob. ‘They have no choice.’
‘But now they no longer care about hunting the Taliban for the Americans, now their weapons are aimed at each other,’ Tajmir protests.