Caravans (11 page)

Nur Muhammad, who missed little, which was why the Afghan government employed him to be employed by the American government, chuckled and asked, “Fascinating, isn’t she?”

“Why does she wear red?”

“Shows she’s not married …”

“Look!” I cried. From behind the tent nearest us the wayward goat burst free and ran directly at us. Hot after him came the determined girl, and some forty yards from where we stood she tackled the animal, rolling him in the dust. I saw her dark skin, her flashing eyes, and two long pigtails which swung in the sunlight as she wrestled with the goat. I could understand the fascination felt by the Afghan men for such a person, and as we watched she skillfully led the goat back to its tether.

“Makes me feel good to know that such people are also a part of Afghanistan,” I observed as we walked away.

“They’re not our people,” Nur corrected. “In the winter they go to India. In the summer they go north. They use us only as a corridor.”

“What country do they belong to?” I asked.

“I never considered the matter,” Nur replied. “Legally, I suppose they’re Indians.”

It was night when we approached the Ghazni gate, on whose ramparts flickering lights moved back and forth. It was a solemn moment, at the end of the day, when the ancient city was settling down for sleep, and we paused to watch the towers etched in the glow from some improvised fire where travelers outside the city were roasting a
sheep. In after years, whenever I have thought of an Afghan city it has been Ghazni, looming in the darkness.

When we passed the scene of the execution Nur Muhammad begged, “Don’t look again, Miller Sahib. This is our shame.” And we returned to the square, where shadowy lights illuminated the corner café. We took our seats at the table and good-natured men elbowed up to us to discuss the day’s events; and against my will I found myself entangled with these bewildered, half-savage men who were fighting the contemporary world, yet who were so hungry to know about America. They ate our nan and shared our pilau. They told us of the problems facing Ghazni—the food supply, the taxes and the cost of horses—and at the end of our meal they walked with us to our hotel, where they entered and sat for hours, crosslegged on the Persian rugs, talking… talking …

Shortly after dawn we left Ghazni, passing on the way the scene of execution, from which the stake had been removed, for wood in Afghanistan was precious. The stones, however, were left conveniently scattered in case another culprit should be apprehended.

We had been on the road for less than an hour when I discovered an important fact about Afghanistan which none of my reading had discussed; yet it was so fundamental that if one missed its significance he missed the meaning of this country. I refer to the bridges of Afghanistan.

When we came to the first one I did not appreciate its importance. It was a beautiful bridge, built in the early 1900’s, I judged, by some expert engineer. It was well designed, contained good stonework and was ornamented by four crenelated towers. Unfortunately, a recent flood had eaten away the approaches to the bridge, leaving it an isolated structure that now served no useful purpose. To cross the river we had to leave the road, descend by gullies to the river, ford it, and reverse the process until we climbed back onto the road. Obviously, in time of storm traffic on the road would halt, but I remember thinking, while fording the
river: That’s a handsome bridge … almost a work of art.

Thirty minutes later we came upon an even more beautiful bridge, with eight towers done in the most sturdy style, a kind of military Gothic common to old French and German towns. It was a splendid structure and I studied it with some care, for which I had ample time since its approaches had also been washed away. We were thus forced once more to ford the river, and I could see the bridge from below.

The stonework was exemplary; the joints were interesting because I could not detect how they were sealed. It looked as if the architect had depended upon the skill of his cutters to give him a joint which held of its own friction and weight. Moreover the structure was well designed, with the eight towers adding a striking note. It was a bridge to admire, and only the advent of some unexpected flood had rendered it useless.

But when we came to the third fine bridge and found its approaches gone too, I grew irritated and asked Nur Muhammad, “Are all the bridges like this?”

“They are,” he said sadly.

“Why?”

“We call them ‘Bridges Afghan Style.’ They can’t be used.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Afghanistan’s folly,” he said, and it was obvious that he wished to drop the matter.

At the seventh washed-out bridge we had to ford a river much deeper than we had anticipated and got stuck in the middle with our bottoms wet and
our engine useless, waiting till a truck came along to haul us out. We had nothing to do but study the bridge overhead, and it was perhaps the loveliest of all: its arch was graceful, its turrets solid, its brickwork neat, and its impression substantial.

“Beautiful bridge,” I admitted grudgingly. “Who built it?”

“A German. One of the worst tragedies that ever hit our nation.”

It was a pleasure to talk with Nur, for he spoke idiomatic English while I was fairly competent in Pashto; for practice we liked a system whereby I spoke in his language and he replied in mine, but when discussing complex subjects each used his own language. To an outsider our conversation would be confusing, for often we switched languages in midsentence. Now, with my bottom wet and cold, I was angry and spoke in harsh Pashto.

“What happened with these bridges, Nur?”

He replied in careful Pashto. “A disaster. We were taking our first step out of the Dark Ages and the Germans said, ‘It’s stupid to have your two major cities unconnected by a road.’ They arranged a big loan and gave us experts who surveyed the road and showed how it could be built. When the king saw the survey, very neatly drawn with little pictures, he approved and said, ‘We’re a modern country now. We must have a modern road.’ Then he asked who would build the bridges, and the Germans lent us a learned professor-architect who had built many bridges, and the work started.”

Nur pointed up at the bridge. “He was a brilliant man who demanded the best. Look at that brickwork. You don’t find much of that in Afghanistan.
It was his idea to mark each bridge with distinctive turrets and ornamentation, for he told us, ‘A bridge is more than a bridge. It’s a symbol connecting past and present.’ He said that towers and intricate brickwork were part of the Afghan soul. In a famous speech he gave in Kabul he said that he had taken the idea of towers from the family forts that mark Afghanistan.”

“I didn’t see the relationship,” I remarked, but Nur pointed down the river toward a private fort and then I knew what the professor-architect had been after.

“He built some twenty bridges,” Nur explained as we sat in the cold river—and I mean in the river, for the jeep kept settling—“and all the time he was working, a handful of Afghans like Shah Khan and my father kept warning him, ‘Doctor, that bridge is fine for a well-controlled European river, but has anyone told you about our Afghan rivers in the spring?’ He replied angrily that he had built bridges over some of the finest rivers in Europe … much greater rivers, he assured us, than these trivial desert streams.”

Nur looked sadly at the bridge and said in English, “You understand, of course, that this all happened before I was born.” Then he explained in Pashto, “But I remember my father telling us later, ‘We went to the government and warned them, “Those German bridges will not stand up against our rivers in the spring.”’ They were told, ‘You think you’re smart enough to tell a German how to do his job? A man who has built bridges all over Europe?’ My father replied that he had never seen a European river and it looked to him as if the
German had never seen an Afghan river, and there the matter was left.”

The jeep settled deeper and Nur said in English, “Shah Khan is a learned man and a brave one. In those days he was without the dignity of his present position, but he refused to drop the matter. He told the Germans”—and here Nur Muhammad reverted to Pashto—“‘These bridges are far more important to us than they are to you. They’re our first contact with the western world. If they succeed, we who want to modernize this nation will succeed. If they fail, dreadful consequences may follow. Now please, Professor-Architect, listen when I tell you that sometimes in the spring what you call our trivial desert streams roar out of the mountains two miles wide. They move boulders as big as houses. They destroy everything not perched on a hill. And the next day they’re little streams again. Professor, build us big broad bridges and leave off the pretty towers.’

“The German professor was furious that Shah Khan would dare speak to him directly. He insisted that a meeting of government be convened, at which he made an impassioned speech. ‘I want to tell you that I have sunk my pillars to bedrock. I have built as no bridges in Afghanistan have ever been built before. When the floods that Shah Khan speaks of meet my bridges not one bridge will fall down.’ I must say that Shah Khan was a fighter. He replied, ‘Professor-Architect, you’re entirely right. The bridges will not fall down. Of that I’m convinced. But the rivers of Afghanistan, like the people of Afghanistan, never attack the enemy head on. Your stout bridges are like the British
army. Their soldiers were ten times better than ours … better fed … better armed. But we didn’t march up to the British in double file so they could shoot us down. In a thousand tricky ways we surrounded them. They protested, “This is no decent way to fight,” and we destroyed them. Our rivers will destroy your bridges, Professor-Architect, because they’re European bridges and they’re not prepared to fight Afghan rivers. What we want, Professor-Architect, are tricky Afghan bridges.’

“The German replied, ‘A bridge is a bridge,’ and Shah Khan shouted, ‘Not in Afghanistan.’ The quarrel was taken to the king himself, and he ordered Shah Khan to shut up. The German ambassador explained everything by pointing out that Shah Khan had been educated in France and was thus emotionally unstable.

“So the bridges were built, and the next year there were no spring floods. For eighteen months we enjoyed a wonderful road between Kabul and Kandahar, and Afghanistan was spurting to catch up with the world. In that second winter there was a great snowfall in the mountains followed by an unusually warm spring, which sent towering floods down the gullies, moving boulders as big as houses. When these floods struck the bridges, the German was proved right. His stone pillars stood fast, as he had predicted. The bridges were as strong as he said. But they were so narrow in span that our rivers simply went around them. All the approaches were gouged out and the bridges stood isolated.”

“Why not rebuild the approaches?” I asked.

“We did,” Nur replied. “Another flood took them out. So we rebuilt again. Another flood. My father calculated that to keep the bridges operating would require a hundred thousand men working around the year. So after the third flood the government said, ‘Let them go. Who needs bridges?’ And the dream road that was to have bound our nation together remained an aching monument to the folly of man.”

“What happened to the professor?” I asked.

“After the first flood he traveled from Kabul to Kandahar, refusing to believe what he saw. ‘I’ve built a hundred bridges over some of the greatest rivers in Europe,’ he shouted. He stood in the middle of one little stream two feet deep and wailed, ‘How could this little puddle wash out a bridge?’ He refused, even then, to see the boulders which that little puddle had moved down from the mountain.”

“Did he leave the country?”

“No, he went back to Kabul and boasted to everyone who would listen that not a single one of his pillars had been destroyed. He made himself what the English call ‘quite a bore.’ He insisted upon explaining about the bridges. The German embassy finally called him in, and what they said we never found out, but that night he went to his room and blew his brains out.”

Nur shook his head sadly, still waiting for a truck to appear. “You can’t imagine the tragedy those bridges became. Whenever the government wanted to do some new thing the mullahs and the mountain chiefs would laugh: ‘Remember the German bridges!’ You’re an American and you may not
like Germans since you fought them twice, but in Afghanistan they were wonderful people. Most of what we have that’s good came from the Germans, but after the bridges even they were held in suspicion. Their effectiveness was chopped in half. Those damned bridges!”

He shook his head, then asked, “By the way, you’re meeting a German doctor in Kandahar, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

As soon as I uttered the words I could have kicked myself. Perhaps it was the coldness of the river that had made me thoughtless, but the damage was done. Nur stammered, “Well, I just know.”

It was a rule in Afghan-American relations that neither side would embarrass the other regarding spies like Nur Muhammad on their side and Richardson on ours. It’s true that Nur had slipped when he let me know that somehow or other he had found out that one of my missions in Kandahar was to inspect Dr. Otto Stiglitz; he should have kept his mouth shut. But once he did betray himself, I should never have challenged him. I had humiliated a good friend and an able spy. I was sorry.

He recovered by saying, “In a few miles … if we ever get out of this river … you’ll see a bridge that my father and Shah Khan built. You’ll laugh at it, but it’s stood for more than thirty years.”

A truck finally arrived and shouting men plunged into the river with ropes, which they attached to our front axle. With relative ease they pulled us free, then refused pay. We offered them cigarettes, which gratified them, and with much laughter they assured us that the rivers to the south would give
no trouble. “But in two more weeks. Whooo, whooo! Floods everywhere. Road washed out for six or seven days.”

When we resumed our journey Nur Muhammad said, “So if I tell you, Miller Sahib, that we have an Afghan way of doing things, and it works, please don’t think I’m being obstinate. It’s just possible that it does work.”

“On the other hand,” I argued, “if your country operates on unique solutions which no outsider can possibly understand, and if you use that as an excuse for doing nothing, then Russia will surely move in and make the changes for you.”

“That’s the battle we’re engaged in, you and I,” Nur agreed. “May we complete the job before Russia takes over.”

“My government’s policy is to help you,” I said.

“But do be reasonable on one thing, Miller Sahib. We’ll soon be in Kandahar, and you’ll be forming opinions about Nazrullah. Let me assure you, he’s on our side. He understands these matters better than either of us. Don’t antagonize him at the beginning. If we destroy men like him, Afghanistan is lost.”

“I don’t want to destroy him,” I snapped. “I want to find out where his wife is.”

“So do I,” Nur promised. “But in the Afghan way.”

I was about to make an acid reply when Nur stopped our jeep at the bridge his father had built across one of the lesser streams, which the Germans had left for later. It was a silly affair that looked like a roller coaster at a run-down amusement park It was built of wood and showed no evidence
of European beauty, but it looked good for a hundred years. I thought: If a German professor-architect designed a bridge like this they’d hang him from the Brandenburger Tor.