Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

I looked around me. We were in a large, sand-coloured tent with pallet floors and about fifteen folding cot-beds. Several men wearing Afghan clothing-loose pants, tunic shirts, and long, sleeveless vests in the same shades of pale green-moved among the beds. They were fanning the wounded men with straw fans, washing them with buckets of soapy water, or carrying away wastes through a narrow slit in the canvas door. Some of the wounded were moaning or speaking out their pain in languages I couldn't understand. The air in that Pakistani plain, after months in the snowy peaks of Afghanistan, was thick and hot and heavy. There were so many strong smells, one upon another, that my senses rejected them and concentrated on one particularly pungent aroma: the unmistakable smell of perfumed Indian basmati rice, cooking somewhere close to the tent.

"I'm fuckin' hungry, man, I gotta tell ya."

"We will eat good food soon," Mahmoud assured me, allowing himself a laugh.

"Are we...? This is Pakistan?"

"Yes," he laughed again. "What can you remember?"

"Not much. Running. They were shooting at us... from a long way off. Mortars everywhere. I remember... I was hit..."

I felt along the padded bandages that swathed my shins, from knees to ankles.

"And I hit the ground. Then... I remember... was it a jeep? Or a truck? Did that happen?"

"Yes. They took us. Massoud's men."

"Massoud?"

"Ahmed Shah. The Lion himself. His men made the attack on the dam and the two main roads-to Kabul and to Quetta. They put a siege on Kandahar. They are still there, outside the city, and they will not leave, I think so, until the war is over. We ran into the middle of it, my friend."

"They rescued us..."

"It was, how to say, the less they do for us."

"The least they could do for us?"

"Yes. Because it was them who killed us."

"What?"

"Yes. When we made our escaping out of the mountain, running down, the Afghan army shoot at us. Massoud's men see us, and think we are some of the enemy. They are a long way from us. They start to shoot at us with mortars."

"Our own people shot at us?"

"Everybody was shooting-I mean, everyone shooting in the same time. Afghan army, they were shooting at us also, but the mortars that did hit us, I think they were our own side. And that made Afghan army and Russian soldiers run away. I killed two of them myself when they run away. The men of Ahmed Shah Massoud, they had Stingers. The Americans give them the Stingers, in April, and since that time, the Russians having no helicopters. Now the mujaheddin fight back in every place. Now the war is over, in two years, or maybe three, Inshallah."

"April... what month is this?"

"Now is May."

"How long have I been here?"

"Four days, Lin," he answered softly.

"Four days..." I'd thought it was one night, one long sleep. I looked over my shoulder again at the sleeping form of Nazeer.

"Are you sure he's okay?"

"He is injured-here... and here-but he is strong, and he can move himself. He will be well, Inshallah. He is like a shotor!" he laughed, using the Farsi word for camel. "He makes his mind, and nobody can change him."

I laughed with him for the first time since I'd woken. The laugh sent my hands to my head in an effort to contain the throbbing pain it caused.

"I wouldn't like to be the one who tried to change Nazeer's mind about anything, once it was made up."

"Me too not." Mahmoud agreed. "The soldiers of Massoud, they carried you and Nazeer, with me, to a car, a good Russian car.

After the car, we moved you and Nazeer to a truck, for the road to Chaman. At Chaman, the Pakistanis, border guards, they want to take Nazeer's guns. He give them money-some of your money, from your money belt-and he keep his guns. We hide you in the blankets, with two dead men. We put them on top of you, and we show them to border guards, and tell that we want to give good Muslim burial for these men. Then we come into Quetta, to this hospital, and again they want to take Nazeer's guns. Again he give them money. They want to cut your fingers, because of the smell..."

I put my hands to my nose, and sniffed at them. There was a rotten, death-foetid smell to them still. It was faint, but clear enough to remind me of the rotting goat's feet we'd eaten as our last supper on the mountain. My stomach churned, arching like a fighting cat. Mahmoud quickly reached for a metal dish and thrust it under my face. I vomited, spitting black-green bile into the bowl, and fell forward helplessly onto my knees.

When the nausea attack passed, I sat back on the cot and snatched gratefully at the cigarette Mahmoud lit for me. "Go on." I stuttered.

"What?"

"You were saying... about Nazeer..."

"Oh yes, yes, he pull his Kalashnikov out from under his pattu and point it at them. He tell them he will kill them all, if they cut you. They want to call the guards, the camp police, but Nazeer, he is in the door of the tent, with his gun. They cannot go past him. And I am on his other side, looking for his back. So they fix you."

"That's a hell of a health plan-an Afghan with a Kalashnikov pointed at your doctor."

"Yes," he agreed without irony. "And after, they fix Nazeer. And then, after two days with no sleep, and many wounds, Nazeer sleep."

"They didn't call the guards, when he went to sleep?"

"No. They are all Afghans here. Doctors, wounded men, guards, everybody is Afghan. But not the camp police. They are Pakistani.

The Afghans, they don't like the Pakistan police. They have big trouble with Pakistan police. Everybody has trouble with Pakistan police. So they give a permission to me, and I take Nazeer's guns when he sleep. And I look after him. And I look after you. Wait- I think our friends are here!"

The long flaps of the tent's doorway opened all the way back, stunning us with the yellow light of a warm day. Four men entered. They were Afghans, veteran fighters; hard men, with eyes that stared at me as if they were looking along the decorated barrel of a jezail rifle. Mahmoud rose to greet them, and whispered a few words. Two of the men woke Nazeer. He'd been in a deep sleep, and spun round at the first touch, grasping at the men and ready to fight. Reassured by their gentle expressions, he then turned his head to check on me. Seeing me awake and sitting up, he grinned so broadly that it was a little alarming in a face so seldom struck with a smile.

The two men helped him to his feet. There was a wad of bandage strapped to his right thigh. Supporting himself on their shoulders, he limped out into the sunlight. The other men helped me to my feet. I tried to walk, but my wounded shins refused to obey me, and the best I could manage was a tottering shuffle.

After a few seconds of that embarrassingly feeble scuffling, the men formed a chair with their arms and swept me up effortlessly between them.

For the next six weeks, that was the pattern of our recovery: a few days, perhaps as long as a week, in one location before an abrupt shift to a new tent or slum hut or hidden room. The Pakistan secret service, the ISI, had a malign interest in every foreigner who entered Afghanistan without their sanction during the war.

The problem for Mahmoud Melbaaf, who was our guardian in those vulnerable weeks, was the fascination our story held for the refugees and exiles who harboured us. I'd darkened my blonde hair, and I wore sunglasses almost all the time. But, no matter how careful and secretive we were in the slums and camps where we stayed, there was always someone who knew who I was. The temptation to talk about the American gunrunner who was wounded in battle, fighting with the mujaheddin, was irresistible. Talk like that would've been enough to pique the curiosity of any intelligence agent from any agency. And had the secret police found me, they would've discovered that the American was in fact an escaped convict from Australia. That would've meant promotions for some, and a special thrill for the torturers who would get to work on me before they handed me over to the Australian authorities. So we moved often and we moved quickly, and we spoke to none but the few we trusted with our wounded lives.