Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

17 February 1920

Mon frère,

I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to get back on the boat. It’s clear to me that I don’t belong in England or even in France any more. I belong in the Hindu Kush, in Waziristan, in wild tribal places where the logic is so simple it doesn’t amount to any kind of logic at all, where there’s no morality, reason or decency, and there’s only custom, honour and religion. You know what it’s like, you’ve served there yourself. Didn’t we have a wild and wonderful time? Now I don’t suppose you’ll ever set foot there again.

I don’t honestly care very much about the Great Game. Of course, now that the Russians have gone Bolshevik, anything could happen. We’re in Afghanistan so the Russians can’t be, it’s as simple as that. It’s a game of dog in the bloody manger. That’s why we’re bogged down, dealing with people who aren’t like us and don’t want to be like us, and don’t know the difference between us and the Russians. We’re all just faranghi, and all they want is to settle back into their feuds and raids and poppy farming and stoning and tribal war. Killing and dying is all they live for, it seems to me, and we get in the way of their fun. But you know all this.

Well, it is just a great game, isn’t it? I’m not going back because I care about it. There’s something wrong with me, and I’m out there to get away from myself and the people I love. I don’t fit in at home. I’m unsuited. What would I do in Blighty or La Belle F in peacetime? Square-bashing? I’m not bright enough to start a business, and it wouldn’t interest me. Can’t understand why Hamilton McCosh finds it so fascinating. What else is there? A bloody schoolmaster, teaching French and history, and footling about with the CCF on Wednesday afternoons? I’d be thrashing the boys out of sheer bloody frustration.

No, brother, I’d rather die in Afghanistan for no good reason, and get buried on a hillside where the dogs can dig me up and leave my bones to bleach in the sun for the ants to work on.

I’ve often thought of writing my memoirs, but I lack the discipline. I have a great deal to pass on, a great many very wonderful stories about everything I’ve seen and done, but when I sit down with some foolscap and a fountain pen, all that happens is that I light a cigarette and go out for walk.

As you’re my brother, I can tell you all the things you already know, and you won’t hold it against me. Not very stiff upper lip, I agree, but to hell with it. I’ve got that Latin part in me that sometimes wants to let go.

I drink too much. Most of my brother officers do. We all do, don’t we? You told me about your heroic binges in the RFC. It must have been fun, and you must have drunk more in single evenings than I drink in a month, but the difference is, I need it and you don’t. One has to have a clear head to write memoirs. It’s no damned use being fuddled. You really ought to write yours one day. Everyone loves an air ace, and you’d be sure to make a few bob from it.

I envy you heading off into marriage and a cleaner life. No more finding comrades mutilated beyond recognition by Pathans, with their balls cut off and their mouth pissed in by the women. God help the faranghi who falls into the hands of the women. I know you used to keep a revolver in the cockpit in case of fire. Out there I never shoot the last round in my revolver before reloading. I count to five.

To think I’ve been out amongst those people for so long! But I do what soldiers do, I accept what can’t be helped. If I had my life again I’d probably do the same. I could have stayed in Blighty after the war. I had a good war, ended up in France just like you, got draped in medals, just like you, and now I’m a Commander of St Michael and St George, but I’m still going back to the North-West Frontier.

A man needs to get away from himself sometimes.

I want to speak to you frankly about Rosie, but it’s very difficult. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t blame you for loving and marrying her. I understand. I also know that she could not possibly have been happy with me, and I do believe most strongly that a man should not even consider marriage unless he can support a wife and children. Even so, one has dreams. It is very hard to endure the sight of them fluttering away like a flock of sparrows. It leaves a taste in the mouth like licking an old penny.

I have been thinking lately about our father. It’s such a pity that he was killed when we were still so young. I don’t think I will ever get over it. I thought I had, but I hadn’t, as I realised when I stood outside the house in Court Road and remembered my childhood.

He looked marvellously handsome in his uniform. I wish that maman had had a portrait made. He knew The Hunting of the Snark off by heart, and used to act it out for me. One doesn’t realise until rather too late how important one’s father is.

I remember Rosie when she was a baby. Lovely blue eyes, very innocent, and then she grew up sincere and sober, like a little Presbyterian. You can fall in love with a little girl when you’re an adolescent you know. You just wait til she grows up a bit, and there you are, equal at last except that she adored the American boy. A very fine fellow, probably deserved her a lot more than I did. Much nearer her own age too. I didn’t begrudge him, but I couldn’t switch, if you know what I mean. I never really looked at anyone else. So I joined the Indian Army and got seconded to the Frontier Scouts. I went as far away as I could, and then you came out there too, which made everything so much more fun. And now you’re married to her after all, and I’m coming back out on my own.

Well, it doesn’t do for Frontier Scouts to have wives, does it? Women drag you down if you’re the kind of man who wants to camp in the rocks and hunt antelope and hide in nullahs, and get into firefights with Johnny Mahsud. You can’t take women to the frontier, can you? Do you remember that woman who got carried off and went native and didn’t even want to be saved? A rum one, that. Then someone bought her for one rifle. That’s what a woman’s worth. But Rosie is worth a whole world, mon frère , so do take proper care of her.

Did I tell you that last year we had a Pashtun recruit who got buggered by every man in his piquet? I told the Colonel that the boy was too damn pretty, and it started a whole six months of fights, and then a blood feud. Do you remember how we used to go out with binoculars, and there’d be Pashtuns buggering sheep and donkeys on every hillside? And the animals not giving a damn. I wanted to tell you about a song I heard called ‘The Wounded Heart’. Zakmi Dil. The song says: ‘There’s a boy across the river with a backside like a peach, but alas I cannot swim.’ I wonder what Rosie would think if she knew the world the way we know it. It seems to me that men have to keep the world secret from women, just so that they can go on living in a state of innocence. Come to think of it, being at Westminster was pretty good training for being on the North-West Frontier, wasn’t it?

Do you remember poor old Captain Bowring, who got shot by a sentry at Sarwekai because his bare feet were pointed at Mecca? I don’t suppose you were there in 1904, though. No, you would have been fifteen, and still at Westminster. The mind gets hazy after Bombay Sapphires. I was just thinking that what happened to him pretty much encapsulates the whole madness of the region. There were tribesmen outside shooting at the tower where the sentry was holed up, and the only choice was to storm the tower or starve the bugger out.