Caravans (34 page)

Women were not allowed to pray with men, so well to the rear Mira knelt and after a while Ellen joined her and I was left standing alone within the circle of rocks, wondering how there could be any connection between that spot and Mecca. I respected Islam, but I had never felt either a part of it or capable of ever becoming a part; but at this moment I remembered Nazrullah’s question:
If you lived in Afghanistan permanently, wouldn’t you pray as a Muslim?
Impulsively I knelt beside Dr. Stiglitz and felt his shoulder touching mine, and for some minutes the five of us prayed and I heard illiterate Maftoon chanting, “God is great God is great. I am witness that there is no God but the one God, and I am His servant. For God is great. God is great.” At that moment of fellowship I could believe that this strange religion, so difficult for a Jew like me to comprehend, had been specially ordained for deserts and high plateaus, and it had been sent by God Himself to make men in these lonely areas act as brothers. At that moment I experienced an intense sensation of Otto Stiglitz as my brother.

“God is great. God is good. We are the servants of God,” Maftoon chanted, and it occurred to me: In all the Muslim prayers I have actually heard recited as compared to those one reads in books, I’ve heard only of God, never of Muhammad. Maftoon, as if he had overheard my thoughts, ended his prayer, “God is great, and I am witness that Muhammad
is His Prophet.” When we rose I looked back at the girls, and there was dark little Mira in pigtails still kneeling beside blond Ellen, whose burnoose fell about her stately figure like the robes of some saint in prayer, and there was a sense of beauty hovering above the worshipers so harmonious with the setting that for a long time we stayed in the shadow of the mountains saying little.

On the next day we penetrated the last range of hills separating the Hindu Kush from the arid plains leading to Balkh, and as Aunt Becky stumbled out of the mountains and saw flat ground again, she gave a series of joyful gurgles and started loping across the dusty fields, as if here at last was the true Afghanistan.

The heat became considerable, for this was mid-July, and we had to exercise caution in our use of water. We also reverted to the desert practice of traveling at night, but since the moon was nearly full this added to the beauty of our trip. During the day we slept, Stiglitz and Ellen in the tent, Maftoon with the camel, and Mira and I wherever we could find shade.

“I thought Ellen was your dearest friend,” I chided Mira as we hiked through the heat looking for a place to sleep.

“She is,” the little nomad replied, “but it will be safer if you sleep away from her.”

“Why do you say a thing like that?” I demanded.

At first she refused to speak, then added simply, “It was while she was sleeping with my father that I discovered she was in love with Dr. Stiglitz.”

“How could anybody know a thing like that?” I
asked with some irritation, for we were finding no shade.

“I told you at the time, didn’t I?” she reminded me.

“How did you know?” I snapped.

“I knew, that’s all.”

Toward midnight of our fourth day on the plains I was riding the white horse at the head of the caravan when I spotted, in the silvery moonlight ahead, an extensive area denuded of trees but marked by solitary mounds on which grass seemed to be growing in scanty spots. In the semidarkness it looked like a burial ground for giants, but when Maftoon overtook me in the moonlight he said, “That is Balkh,” and I rode on to inspect the meaningless sweep of empty earth.

So this was Balkh, mother of cities, fair Balkh where Alexander had married Roxane, the learned city at the crossroads of the world, the leading metropolis of Central Asia! As a boy I had been fascinated by this city, ancient and famous even before the days of Darius. All the remembered travelers of Asia had recorded their impressions of this dazzling treasure house: Ibn Batuta, Hsuan Tsang, Genghis, Marco Polo, Tamerlane, Baber. Its history was resplendent. Its memory was obscured. And now even its outlines were destroyed.

Could this be Balkh, this empty field of arid mounds where herd boys tended goats and wandering Kochis came to camp? This expanse of buried rubble with no plaques, no banners, not even a line of brick indicating where the great libraries had once stood … could this be the end of the city?

I felt inconsolably lonely, as if I were lost in the paralyzing sweep of history, a shard left by time. I felt like crying out in protest, and when I saw our faltering caravan approaching—one camel, one donkey, for Balkh—I could not find solace even in the thought that Mira would soon be with me.

At Rome the imperial ruins had also depressed me, but only for a moment, because it required no great imagination to believe that something of that grandeur persisted. But in Afghanistan my depression not only affected me; it also permeated the land and the culture and the people. It was difficult to believe that civilization had ever graced this arid waste or that it could return. At miserable Ghazni, at silent Qala Bist, at The City, at faceless Barman and here at Balkh nothing remained. Were the generations indifferent to history, allowing their finest monuments to disappear while Rome retained hers? Or was it simply that Asia was different, its conquerors so terrible that western man could not visualize their cargoes of horror?

Many times I had crossed the path of Genghis Khan, merely one of the scourges and not necessarily the worst, and each time I had stood where he had erased a population. Perhaps a society cannot absorb such repeated punishments. Perhaps the scourging does something to the minds of men, converting citizens into frightened nomads who feel safe only when carrying their goods with them under their own surveillance. Perhaps it was Genghis Khan who explained why the Kochis and the Kizilbash and the Tajiks remained wanderers with no fixed civilization to sustain them.

Brooding in the moonlight at Balkh, I found increased
respect for men like Moheb Khan, Nazrullah, and my preceptor Zulfiqar, who were determined to build a new Afghanistan that would conserve the memories of Ghazni and Balkh yet build upon the newer ideas of Russia and America. Had I been an Afghan, I would have allied myself to these impatient men.

As I reached this conclusion Maftoon brought his little caravan to the ruins, where for the past centuries the Kochis had camped, and while he and Stiglitz unrolled the tent Ellen came to me in the moonlight and said generously, “I’m sorry, Miller, that we quarreled so much on this trip. I’ve been struggling to find understanding.”

“Found any?”

“Some. When it looked as if Otto might die in the duel, I did learn one important fact. That life of itself is good. I found myself praying that he would live.”

“It’s lucky he did,” I replied. “You and he are bound to accomplish some great thing in Afghanistan.”

“The non-people don’t accomplish,” she corrected gently. “They exist, and from them the world takes hope.”

“One thing makes me feel better, Ellen. At last I have a glimmer of what you’re talking about. But I’m like Nazrullah … committed to working for the civilization I’m caught in.”

She smiled warmly and grasped my hands, and the effect was as electrifying as before. “How adorable of you, Miller, how predictable! To say a thing like that at Balkh.”

“Why Balkh?” I asked.

“Don’t you know that at the apex of their history the people here talked just like you? The mullahs proclaimed, ‘Allah has this city in His special care. No harm can befall it.’ And the generals boasted, ‘Our forts are impregnable. No enemy can reach us.’ And the bankers were especially reassuring: ‘Last year our gross city product rose four percent We can all afford two slaves in every kitchen.’ And here is Balkh. And here is New York.”

“Do you honestly believe that the same thing will happen to New York?” I asked, and immediately I was irritated with myself, for I had to recall my own thoughts when traveling down the ruins of The City:
This is Route One between New York and Richmond.

“I believe that this is the future,” Ellen replied. “But you mustn’t. Because you’re young. You’re destined to go back to Boston and work there the way Nazrullah will work in Kandahar. I shall pray for you both, but I will never believe in what you’re doing. It’s really of no consequence … none whatever.”

I told her, “I’ll try to explain to your parents,” and she was on the verge of speaking about them contemptuously when she changed her mind and kissed me, not politely on the cheeks but full on the lips with that abundance of love which had marked her life, and for a moment I comprehended the passion which had carried her so chaotically to Balkh. The impact of her kiss was like the touch of her hand at the dancing: it conveyed the sense of a woman with tremendous vital power and against my better judgment I was driven to wonder: What might have happened had
I met her in the States? In reply I heard the Haverford College boy telling the F.B.I. agent:
I always felt that somebody else might have kept Ellen on the track. But 1 will admit this. I wasn’t the man to do it.

I was about to break away when, to my surprise, she gripped my shoulders and kissed me again, desperately. “I wish I’d met you in America. After you’d learned what you have in Afghanistan.” She brushed the hair from her forehead and looked at the ruins of Balkh. “No, I’d have been horrid for you. These ruins were in my bones.” Laughing nervously she added, “Besides, you’re so young and hopeful. And I’ve always been so very old.”

As she said this the moonlight played upon her lovely face. Her body swayed backward in the gray blouse that Racha had embroidered, and her bare legs showed beneath the black skirt of the Kochis. Her ankles were caught by thongs from her sandals and she was beyond comparison the most vital and attractive woman I had ever seen. This time it was I who kissed her, and with a violence of consent she pressed her beauty into my arms and against my face and through my being. I was astonished by the overwhelming power of her response and betrayed my fear that the others might see us, but with a practiced eye she calculated that the men would be occupied for some time with the tent while little Mira would remain engaged in unloading the camel.

“They won’t miss us,” she assured me as she sought a hiding place among the mounds. She found one and beckoned.

“What are you doing?” I asked in astonishment.

She had kicked off her sandals and was untying the cord that held her skirt. “Didn’t we just agree that life of itself was good? Let’s enjoy it.” When I hesitated she argued, “What difference would it make if they did find us?”

The idea stunned me and I remained where I was. “Mira would make the difference,” I stammered.

“Don’t you want to?” she asked provocatively, as the skirt fell about her ankles.

“You know I do.”

“Then come on,” and with ravishing grace she stepped from the fallen garment

I knew that any man who hesitated at such a moment was bound to look pathetic, both to the girl and to himself, and I longed to join those slim, inviting legs. Instead I heard myself making the most improbable reply: “You shouldn’t do this to Stiglitz.”

With a kind of disgust—whether at me or Stiglitz or Mira I did not know—she recovered her skirt and refastened the cord. “I’ve done everything for Stiglitz I could,” she said. Barefooted she came to me and whispered, “Besides, sooner or later the Russians are bound to get him.”

Her callousness seemed as bleak as the desert and now I was glad that I had not followed her deeper into the dunes. “What happened to your idealism about Stiglitz?” I asked. “A few minutes ago you said you had prayed for him to live.”

“He lived.”

I thought: I’ll bet she used the same kind of argument with Stiglitz when she was inviting him to move in on Zulfiqar.
But Otto, Zulfiqar’s busy with
other things. He won’t care.
And she had been right. “Your flowery ideas about the non-people?” I asked. “You give them up? For a couple of days back there you had me convinced.”

“Ideas come and go,” she replied. Recovering her sandals, she said, “You know very well what we ought to do. Get us a sleeping bag and leave that tent right now.”

“With Mira there?”

“I warned you on the trail that you were taking Mira too seriously. Besides, in a couple of days shell be back with her father.”

I drew away, appalled. “At Bamian you made fun of men who play what you called the point game. Right now I appreciate how important that game is. I honestly believe that if I treat Mira decently I get a point in my favor. And whether you like it or not, if you kick Stiglitz around, you lose points.”

“With whom?” she asked contemptuously. “The Divine Scorekeeper?”

“No, damn it all. With me.” She started to laugh and I got angry. “You reject religion. I don’t. Millions of Jews are dead because they took religion seriously. So do I.”

“Miller!” she cried, almost loud enough for the others to hear. “You don’t take being a Jew seriously, do you?”

“Skip it,” I said impatiently, sorry that I had raised the subject. “But the way you reject religion —what were you, Presbyterian?” She laughed and I added, “You know, Ellen, if you took Islam seriously…”

“I might be saved?” she asked mockingly.

“It wouldn’t take much to save you. The more I hear you bleat about Dorset, Pennsylvania, the more convinced I become that it must be a pretty fair place. You ought to try it some time.”

She laughed again and I became embarrassed with my prosaic philosophy and inept performance as a lover. I started back to camp but had moved only a few steps when she overtook me and grasped my arm. Again I could feel the lovely urgency of her body as she made an honest effort to conciliate our quarrel. Without rancor she asked, “Seriously, Miller, doesn’t it make you self-conscious? Sentimental speeches like this … at Balkh, of all places?”

Her words were forceful and they made me stop. I looked at the undulating graveyard of the great city and saw, in my imagination, the rise and fall of Balkh—Balkh of the Flying Pennants it had been called, as if the city were proud to advertise its accomplishments, temporary though they proved to be—and I sensed some of the meaning behind my mission. I said, “I don’t accept your view of Balkh. Cities crumble and civilizations vanish, but people go on. And damn it all, they eat and make love and go to war and die according to certain hopeful rules. I accept those rules.”