^^z M W ! ^ ■ * »m'l ■ ■ ~ 1988 with at least a kind of neutral attentiveness, and in one case went out of their way. One of the elders in this place was also of the family of the prophet and made a great deal of our arrival. Wahidi responded with his natural amiability, and the hospitality poured forth. There was lamb for dinner with “white meat” (pieces of pure fat), a spot to bathe and a tarpaulin and pads laid in the orchard when we suggested sleeping outside. On the fourth day we reached the Argandab. It was 40 yards wide, brown and very fast. Two trucks sat nearby, windowless and prematurely dilapidated from a foolish attempt to ford the river. We had learned that there was no transport on the other side, after all. Forty or fifty miles would have to be covered on foot with a squad of eight mujahideen. So we weren’t too impressed when these famous warriors dithered on the bank for 45 minutes—until one of them simply waded in and started across. As he was swept along, he somehow managed to jump, jumps which the current extended out into long leaps. Balancing himself with his arms spread out, he danced across the Argandab. When three more men had crossed, I was ready. The shallows were easy, but the current took hold quickly and my heavy army jacket became water-logged and the baggy Afghan pants unrolled. The rib-high water pushed me mercilessly, my feet slammed into the rocks on the bottom. I was losing to the river’s tug, stumbling, going unde r .. .when I felt the current relenting slightly and then the riverbed rising toward the bank. With Wahidi’s help, I staggered ashore exhausted. In the small village where we stayed that night, we heard that the Geneva Accords had been signed. Despite the beginning of Ramazan, the month of fasting, Mullah Naqeeb was in a good mood when I met him in one of his camps. He had just distributed two million Afghan rupees (about $12,000) to the needy among the few civilians remaining in the area. On top of that, four sarboz or government irregulars had deserted specifically to him the day before, reinforcing his reputation as a generous commander. Perhaps that was the provocation that caused an enemy tank to lob five shells into our camp at the very moment I was interviewing one of the deserters. Two were direct hits on the house under whose porch we were sitting. One shell blew off the corner of the building and left my ears ringing as we scrambled for shelter. The second collapsed the porch roof and sprayed the place with shrapnel, including cute1-inch arrowlets stamped from nails. Mullah Naqeeb laughed and showed us four scars just on his feet. But he moved us to a safer spot, an orchard on his own land. There he would join us in the shade of one of the small fruit trees to conduct his business. He took off his Persian slippers that curled up at the toes, laid his Kalashnikov rifle in front of him and received the supplicants with good- humored patience. Dependents and mujahideen climbed through a notch in the mud wall around the orchard and came through the tall grass, stooping under the trees. They kissed his hand, sat down on the ground cloth and told him their problems. This was an excellent opportunity for Naqeeb to talk, which he did with all the refinements of Afghan rhetoric. His voice climbed into surprising high registers to show bewilderment, one of his favorite attitudes, and his dramatic stops—followed by a pause—were as precise as a ballet dancer’s. Sometimes, he removed his expensive turban and rubbed a big hand over his shaved head. He was going bald. The second clinic lay across the highway to the south, in Mahalijat, one of the more dangerous places in Kandahar. In a five-hour march, every building on the way had been damaged. The irrigation canals suddenly widened into what looked like swimming holes. . . bomb craters. Some of the large ruins must have been mosques or villas. They reminded me of the photographs of Ypres. We crossed the highway (built with American aid in the ‘60s, now sadly wallowed- out at each seam) separately, walking fast. There was a Russian post within sight on one side, and Wahidi pointed quickly to a tank on the other. In Mahalijat I encountered Akbar Khan, a Black Muslim from Southern California who stubbornly followed a personal decision to fight for Islam into the mud bunker where he is now accepted as a brother. He gave the old saw an odd new twist: “ If you want something, you have to go out and get it.” He carefully showed me the amenities of the camp, but avoided hanging out with me. He had For ninety seconds the curtains opened on another, hellish world. A gallery of flashing lights, red tracers, evil staccato, heavy whine of bullets. I was stunned. This was death’s place. Qajir was not moving. The motorcycle engine was racing out of control, kicking up a small cloud of dust and smoke. his duties. Akbar Khan chose Mahalijat because that’s where the action is. Every 20 minutes or so there was an “ event” — an explosion, small arms fire, the glint of a jet. Strange sounds came to us like big steel being dropped in some distant mill, or the hollow whispering of rockets leaving their tubes. The last few days we marked time, waiting for a ride out. Finally we were told that two motorcycles had been hired and we would start that afternoon. Along the road in Argandab Bazaar trucks sat idle in the midday heat. The Afghans shroud the wheels with rags. While the drivers prayed, we waited in a pomegranate orchard where the blood-red flowers were just bearing fruit. At 4:30 we started, Wahidi on one bike, Hakenberg and I on the other. Behind me, the doctor was catching his breath in short, barely audible gasps every time we hit a bump. I groaned like a TV wrestler. Painfully we crawled across a desiccated landscape that opened ever wider into sweeping, John Ford valleys headed by sharp - buttes straight out of Utah. As the sun was setting, we stopped at a small mosque to eat. In the courtyard the village men were finishing a meal of greasy fried potatoes, flatbread and watery sour milk. In ten minutes we were on the bikes again, but now I was alone with Qajir [our escorting mujahideen] on the stronger bike while the two medical corpsmen and their driver fit themselves somehow on the other. Qajir and I immediately moved out ahead. We crossed a graded road, then I dismounted and ran across a kind of dream river that was only three inches deep. We had just climbed a gentle hill and were coming around a curve when there was a sharp crack from the right. The motorcycle slowed, then a volley of automatic weapons fire erupted. Ambush. The bike went down, Qajir with it, but I jumped or fell off and ended up three or four yards from the enemy’s main target, which probably saved my life because I was facing a firing squad naked. For ninety seconds the curtains opened on another, hellish world. A gallery of flashing lights, red tracers, evil staccato, heavy whine of bullets. I was stunned. This was death’s place. I could barely think. Qajir was not moving. The motorcycle engine was racing out of control, kicking up a small cloud of dust and smoke. Using that advantage I stayed low and ran back toward a small rise. It was the bank of a gully, an old irrigation ditch. I jumped into it and ran away, away. The firing died out, then there was a whamwhump as the motorcycle blew up. I ran. Later, sitting in the bone-white desert in the bright moonlight I realized I was lost. I had to find someone to help me. No answers, no choices, I thought. Then, the simple solution: a dog barked. They took me from the small village I had found to a larger one, where in a courtyard the other motorcycle driver was asleep on a pad. We rested for a day, then started for Pakistan again, eventually crossing the border in the back of an ancient truck with a collection of returning mujahideen, refugees and smugglers. Wahidi and Hakenberg were alive after another miraculous escape from a second ambush. The enemy had come close enough for Wahidi to hear, and they weren’t speaking an Afghan language. So it had been a Russian patrol, probably from Kandahar Airbase, staking out a trail in hopes of making a kill. Wahidi looked at me and stroked his mustache. This proves, he said, that the Russians are finished. Out of five people, they only got one. They were merely following a program, but old men fought them and little boys with slingshots. The Russians had lost heart. They are in a hard land without friends. Paul Overby is a writer who lives in Portland. He is returning just as this goes to print from a 9-month sojourn in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is his first story for CSQ. Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall/Winter 1988 21
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