Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

In a sense, I was one of them, a ravager like the rest of them, profiting from the war in Afghanistan like the rest of them, but I wasn't comfortable in their company. For three hours I drifted from a restaurant to a hotel to a chai shop, sitting near or with groups of foreigners who were searching for a quick buck. Their conversations were dispiritingly calculating. The war in Afghanistan, most of them conjectured cheerily, had a few good years left in it. The generals were, it had to be admitted, under considerable pressure. There were rumours that Benazir, daughter of the executed prime minister, was planning to return to Pakistan from exile in London to lead the democratic alliance opposed to the junta. But with a little luck and skilful connivance, the profiteers hoped, the army might remain in control of the country-and the well-established channels of corruption-for some years yet.

The talk was of cash crops, a euphemism for contraband and black market trade goods, which were in great demand along the entire border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Cigarettes, particularly American blends, were selling at Khyber Pass for sixteen times their already inflated Karachi price. Medicines of every kind were generating profits that increased in scale from month to month. Winter clothing, suitable for snow habitats, was exceptionally marketable. One enterprising German freebooter had driven a Mercedes truck loaded with surplus German army alpine issue uniforms, complete with thermal underwear, from Munich to Peshawar. He'd sold the lot, including the truck, for five times its purchase value. The buyer was an Afghan warlord who was favoured by western powers and agencies, including the American CIA. The heavy winter clothing, after a journey of thousands of kilometres through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, never reached the fighting men of the mujaheddin in the snow-draped mountains of Afghanistan. Instead, the winter uniforms and underwear were stored in one of the warlord's warehouses in Peshawar, awaiting the end of the war. The renegade and his small army were sitting out the war in the safety of their fortress compounds in Pakistan. His plan was to launch a strike for power with his own troops after the real fighting against the Russians was done, and the war was won.

News of that new market-a warlord, cashed up with CIA money and hungry for supplies at any price-sent thrilling, speculative ripples through the community of foreign opportunists in Karachi.

I encountered the story of the venturesome German and his truck full of alpine uniforms in three slightly different incarnations during the course of the afternoon. In a fever, something like gold fever, the foreigners passed the story among themselves as they pursued and closed down deals for shipments of canned foods, bales of brushed fleeces, shipping containers of engine parts, a warehouse full of second-hand spirit stoves, and stocks of every kind of weapon from bayonets to grenade launchers. And everywhere, in every conversation, I heard the dark, desperate incantation: If the war goes on for another year, we'll have it made...

Vexed and gloomy with squalling emotions I entered the Faloodah House in the Bohri bazaar, and ordered one of the sweet, technicoloured drinks. The faloodha was an indecently sweet concoction of white noodles, milk, rose flavours, and other melliferous syrups. The Firni House in Bombay's Dongri area, near Khaderbhai's house, was justly famous for its delicious faloodah drinks, but they were insipid when compared to the fabulous confections served at Karachi's Faloodah House. When the tall glass of pink, red, and white sugary milk appeared beside my right hand, I looked up to thank the waiter and saw that it was Khaled Ansari, carrying two drinks.

"You look like you need something stronger than this, man," he said with a smile-a small, sad smile-as he sat down beside me.

"What's up? Or what's down, for that matter?"

"It's nothing," I sighed, offering him a smile in return.

"Come on," he insisted. "Let's have it."

I looked into his honest, open, scarred face and it occurred to me that Khaled knew me better than I knew him. Would I have noticed and realised how troubled he was, I wondered, if our roles were reversed, and he'd entered the Faloodah House with such disturbing preoccupations? Probably not. Khaled was so often gloomy that I wouldn't have given it a second thought. "Well, it's just a bit of soul-searching, I guess. I've been doing some research, digging around in some of the chaikhannas and restaurants you told me about-some of the places where the black-market guys and the mercenaries hang out. It was pretty depressing. There's a lot of people here who want the war to go on forever, and they don't give a shit who's getting killed or who's doing the killing."

"They're making money," he shrugged. "It's not their war. I don't expect them to care. That's just how it is."

"I know, I know. It's not the money thing," I frowned, searching for the words, rather than the emotion that had prompted them.

"It's just-if you wanted a definition of sick, really sick minded, you could do worse than somebody who wants a war-any war - to go on longer."

"And... you feel... kind of tainted... kind of like them?"

Khaled asked gently, looking down into his glass.

"Maybe I do. I don't know. I wouldn't even think about it-you know, if I heard people talking like that somewhere else. It wouldn't bug me if I wasn't here, and if I wasn't doing exactly the same thing myself."

"It isn't exactly the same."

"It is. Pretty much. Khader's paying me-so I'm making money out of it, like them-and I'm smuggling new shit into a shit-fight, just like they are."

"And maybe you're starting to ask yourself what the fuck you're doing here?"

"That, too. Would you believe me if I told you I haven't got a clue? I really, honestly, don't know why the fuck I'm doing it.

Khader asked me to be his American, and I'm doing it. But I don't know why."

We were silent for a while, sipping at our drinks and listening to the clatter and buzz surrounding us in the busy Faloodah House. A large portable radio was playing romantic gazals in Urdu. I could hear conversations in three or four languages from customers close to us. I couldn't understand the words, nor could I even identify which languages they were: Baluchi, Uzbek, Tajik, Farsi...

"This is great!" Khaled said, using a long spoon to scoop noodles into his mouth from the glass.

"It's too sweet for my taste," I answered him, drinking the treat nonetheless.

"Some things should be too sweet," he replied, giving me a wink as he sucked on the straw. "If faloodahs weren't too sweet, we wouldn't drink them."

We finished our drinks and walked out into the late afternoon sunlight, pausing beyond the doorway to light our cigarettes.

"We'll take off in different directions," Khaled muttered as he held a match for my cigarette in his cupped hands. "Just keep walking that way, south, for a few minutes. I'll catch you up.

Don't say goodbye."

He turned on his heel and walked away, stepping out to the edge of the road and into the fast lane of foot traffic between the footpath and the cars.

I turned and walked off in the opposite direction. Some minutes later, at the perimeter of the bazaar, a taxi slid to a stop quickly beside me. The back door opened and I jumped in next to Khaled. Another man was in the front seat beside the driver. He was in his early thirties, with short, dark brown hair receding from a high, wide forehead. His deep-set eyes were of a brown so dark as to seem black until direct sunlight pierced the irises to reveal the auburn earth tones swirling within them. His eyes stared evenly, intelligently, from beneath black brows that all but met in the centre. His nose was straight, descending to a short upper lip, a firm determined mouth, and a blunt, rounded chin. It was obvious that the man had shaved that day, and probably not long ago, but a blue-black shadow darkened the lower half of his face along the neat, sharply defined lines that governed his beard. It was a strong, square, symmetrical face, handsome in its strength and even proportions if not in any one outstanding feature.