Farishta (19 page)

“Angela, please feel free to keep using the extra desk in my office,” he said as he sorted through his personal effects. “I’m certain Carrington and Colonel Jameson won’t mind.”

Harry stopped digging through his file cabinet and looked up. “Angela, it’s been a real pleasure working with you. Brief—but I hope as useful for you as it has been for me. I heard from one of the officers about Trumbull’s refusal to take you on his farewell calls with the local officials. I’m sure things will be better with the new lot now that you’re a bit of an ‘old-timer.’”

“Harry, I’ve been here less than three months.”

“Yes, but that’s longer than either of the two newcomers,” he replied. “None of us spends very long here. With more than two months under your belt, you may now officially be considered an expert.”

“Hardly.” I laughed. His words touched me. I was going to miss this man.

“One request before I go? ” he added as he removed the photo of his wife and children from the wall behind his desk and stuffed it carefully into his briefcase. “I agreed to represent the PRT at a provincial council meeting in Aybak the day after tomorrow. Since I won’t be here, I was wondering if you would be able to attend in my place.

“It’s a three-hour drive one way, but the canyon road through the mountains is spectacular and it will give you a chance to meet the governor of Samangan Province. You should take an extra hour after the meeting to visit the Buddhist caves outside town. They are remarkable. Our guards at the safe house will be able to tell you how to get there.”

 

 

Early Wednesday morning, our two-vehicle convoy quickly covered the first thirty miles to Aybak on the newest paved section of the ring road that cut a dark gash through the pale salt flats east of Mazār. The only time we had to slow down was for the ragged processions of children crossing the road near a sprawling displaced persons camp where the road forked north to the Amu Darya River.

This camp had sprung up after the fall of the Taliban. Hundreds of returning families lived here under flapping sheets of blue plastic that did little to protect them from the icy winds gusting off the Hindu Kush. Little girls and boys who could not have been more than five years old dodged trucks and buses as they sprinted across the highway to sort through piles of trash near a cluster of shipping containers that had been turned into roadside market stalls. The children were beginning their daily trek into the foothills in search of brush for their mothers’ cooking fires, but since garbage could also be burned, they collected that as well.

“Rahim, is there nothing else for these families to cook with?” I asked as Jenkins braked for another group of children dragging a recalcitrant donkey across the road.

“No, Angela
,
” he said. “Look around. There is nothing but desert brush and soon that will be gone, too. These refugees have very few animals, so there isn’t enough dung for them to burn and none of them can afford bottled gas,” Rahim added.

Rahim, Fuzzy, and I waved at two little boys who had stopped by the side of the road to watch us pass. Barefoot and dressed in rags, they smiled and lifted their tiny clenched fists in the universal thumbs-up gesture of greeting that thousands of Afghan children had learned from western soldiers.

As we left the children behind, I could see in the distance a line of abandoned electric transmission towers. These were the giant rusting sentinels Stefan had described—the skeletal remnants of Mother Russia’s failed attempt to pacify and electrify this unconquerable land.

Ahead of us, the morning sun lifted above a cloudbank sitting low on the horizon and temporarily blinded all eastbound drivers. Jenkins donned his sunglasses, but removed them five minutes later, when our convoy turned south into a shaded, marbled canyon that cut through the foothills of the Hindu Kush.

The contrast between the blazing desert landscape and the alpine scenery inside this canyon was stark. The sides of the road were dotted with thick clusters of rockroses and trumpet flowers, which grew in profusion among the boulders and even over the treads of abandoned Russian tanks. Long lines of camels, loaded with boxes and bags of cargo, padded with studied indifference through patches of melting snow.

An hour later, Jenkins dropped Rahim and me at the entrance to the governor’s faded gray headquarters on a litter-strewn plaza at the center of this small provincial capital. He and Fuzzy waited in the Beast just across the street, while the follow car went on to the safe house.

Rahim and I entered the dimly lit hall and took our seats just as the meeting began. The large room held the standard arrangement of wooden chairs tightly packed around the walls.

The issues raised by the aging governor to the assembled NGO representatives were seemingly hopeless and of almost Biblical proportions—too few wells to provide water for the thousands of refugees who were returning from Pakistan and Iran, a tuberculosis outbreak in one village, a plague of locusts in a nearby valley, no medical care available for the injured from last week’s earthquake.

The meeting had dragged on for two and a half hours when I saw the door crack open. Fuzzy, a worried look on his face, poked his head in and scanned the room to make sure Rahim and I were still alive. Once we had made silent eye contact, he pulled the door shut.

After the meeting, we headed up to see the Buddhist caves carved out of a hillside just above town. Rahim knew the way, but he had no idea who had fashioned the caves out of solid limestone many centuries ago. As our two vehicles bumped up a winding dirt road to the site, I could see an unmarked Range Rover idling next to an enormous rock dome. An Afghan driver sat in the vehicle smoking a cigarette.

“Looks like some tourists beat us up here,” observed Jenkins. “Probably some of the expats who were at your meeting with the governor.”

We parked and headed toward the massive six-meter sphere that had been hewn from a solid block of yellow limestone. A small hut was carved in stone at the top of the polished dome. As three European men emerged from the shaded entrance of the structure, one began waving in my direction.

“Angela, what a delightful coincidence,” he shouted in a thick French accent, cupping his hands around his mouth. It was Jean-François Mongibeaux, the archaeologist I’d met at Plawner’s dinner in Kabul.

“We meet again, Jeef,” I shouted back while stepping gingerly onto the wooden walkway that led over a deep chasm to the top of the dome where Jeef stood with his companions.

“We came to Aybak this morning for a provincial council meeting. The PRT commander said we shouldn’t leave without a visit to the Buddhist caves,” I said after he introduced me to his colleagues.

“I have passed by here many times over the past thirty years, but my colleagues visiting from Paris wanted to have a look since we were so close,” Jeef explained, nodding at the other men.

“We drove over the Salang Pass yesterday and spent last night at a guest-house in Pul-i-Kumri. We’re on our way to see how my dig in Balkh has survived the winter. I had actually planned to stop by the PRT to see if you were in. But here you are!” He laughed, clapping his hands together.

Rahim was watching this reunion with great interest. Here was the archaeologist I had been telling him about. He was clearly bursting with questions, but too shy to be the first to speak.

“So, young man,” said Jeef, stepping forward to shake Rahim’s hand, “you probably know far more about this remarkable site than I do.”

Rahim shook his head and smiled at the gregarious white-haired Frenchman. “Sadly, sir, like many of my countrymen I know very little about Takht-i-Rustam or any of the historic locations in northern Afghanistan. Angela has told me about you and your work in Balkh. I was hoping you would be able to teach me something about my country’s ancient history.”

“Then let me be your tour guide today,” said Jeef, setting off at a brisk clip toward the caves. In a rapid-fire mix of English—and French for the benefit of his colleagues from Paris—he explained that Buddhist monks had carved the earliest of these caves into the hills of Samangan Province almost two thousand years ago.

“Much of the story behind these caves is still pure conjecture,” added Jeef as we followed him through a small nondescript opening in the side of the barren hill and entered a vast hand-sculpted complex of cool, naturally lit corridors, market stalls, and domed temples.

“You know, of course, Rahim, that your country was a major crossroads of ancient eastern and western cultures for centuries. Are you also aware of the fact that your ancestors prayed to Buddha for more than a thousand years under the Kushan Empire and then under the Persians? ”

“I have heard that tale before, and everyone knows about the great Buddha statues of Bamiyan that the Taliban destroyed, but they didn’t teach us about this in school,” he replied.

“Why do you think that in the Dari language, ‘God be with you’ translates as
Khuda hafiz
instead of
Allah hafiz
?” asked Jeef with a twinkle in his eye.

“Perhaps you are right, Professor.” Rahim laughed. “Even after thirteen hundred years as an Islamic people, we may still be hoping for the blessings of the great Buddha.”

Jeef led us into the first of two enormous domed temples with natural skylights carved into the smooth curved walls. Dusty beams of sunlight illuminated the elaborate but fading lotus leaf murals at the apex of the thirty-foot ceiling.

The voices of our little group of soldiers and archaeologists echoed along the wide corridors as we scattered to explore the caves and niches that burrowed deep into the mountain. Rahim and I stayed close to Jeef, fascinated by his stories.

“The first modern explorers to find these long-abandoned caves were the British officers Maitland and Talbot, who wrote about their discovery in 1886. They claimed that these caves were grander than any they had found surrounding the colossal Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

“It’s shameful what the Taliban did to those irreplaceable statues,” Jeef said with bitterness in his voice.

“Yes,” agreed Rahim as he ran his fingers over the dusty stone niches where jeweled statues of Buddha had once stood.

“We have no idea why or when these caves were abandoned and we can only speculate about what they looked like in their heyday.” Jeef gazed up at the smoke damaged lotus frescoes. “We’re going to lose it all if it’s not restored, but,” he added, “that takes money . . .”

When we had finished our tour, Jeef led us out of the caves and into the blinding afternoon sunlight. “Did you know, Rahim, that the foothills of Samangan Province used to be covered with pistachio groves?” he asked as he pointed toward the barren hills to the south and east of Takht-i-Rustam.

“Yes, Professor,” Rahim replied. “My father told me that when he was a boy, northern Afghanistan was famous for these orchards. I know there is one pistachio tree left in Mazār-i-Sharīf. It is in the courtyard of the mosque across the street from our PRT.”

I had seen this tree from my bedroom window, although until now I hadn’t been aware of its significance. The first buds of spring had only this week begun to cover its gnarled branches.

Jeef lowered his head in thought and closed his eyes briefly, but his sparkle returned and he motioned to Rahim.

“Come, my boy, let’s show my friends the monks’ sleeping quarters and their waterworks at the foot of the dome,” he said, clapping his hand on Rahim’s shoulder and marching him back up the hill to the base of the polished limestone stupa. The rest of us trailed behind them, amused at the instant bond that had formed between the elderly Frenchman and his eager Afghan pupil.

 

 

Late that afternoon, when our convoy exited the shaded confines of the canyon, we were again blinded by the sun, which had made its daily transit across the sky and was now a circle of molten gold plunging into the western desert.

Jenkins and Fuzzy donned sunglasses and lowered their visors, while Rahim and I looked out our windows or dozed. The freshly poured asphalt on the Mazār–Kabul road allowed Jenkins to maintain a good clip until we reached the shipping-container shopping mall where the road forked north to the Amu Darya.

Jenkins slowed the Beast to allow another ragged parade of children, balancing bundles of brush and cardboard on their heads, to cross the road.

A slender whirlwind danced toward us across the desert, flinging everything in its path high into the air and raining bits of roadside trash onto the hood of the Beast.

“Roll up your windows ! ” shouted Jenkins as he pulled over, temporarily blinded by the blowing sand. Small cardboard boxes and juice containers with torn foil liners glinted in the sunlight and bounced across the windshield, landing in the dirt near the plodding children.

At that moment, for reasons I will never understand, the answer to a question I had not even asked popped into my head. I gasped in surprise at my sudden epiphany.

“Of course,” I shouted, staring out the window at the receding dust storm.

Rahim, Fuzzy, and Jenkins all turned and stared at me with worried looks on their faces.

“You all right, Angela?” asked Jenkins.

“I’m fine. I’m just thinking,” I replied. It had not occurred to me until now that there was plenty of fuel for cooking in Afghanistan, an endless, free supply. It was the sun—beating down on these poor kids and their families almost every day of the year!

Memories flooded back of a long ago summer in New Mexico when I had earned a Girl Scout cooking badge. Our troop leader suggested that I build a primitive solar oven with a cardboard box and aluminum foil. I had never thought about solar ovens again—until now.

“Rahim,” I said as he stared out the window at the children on his side of the road. “Does anyone in this country use solar ovens? ”

“What is that, Angela-
jan
?” he replied, looking puzzled at my question.