William Vollmann - An Afghanistan Picture Show - Or, How I Saved the World

Coming back from the Austrian Relief Committee one evening, he became lost. It was Ramazan, so the General’s family had been without food or water all the long, hot day. He did not want to keep them waiting to break their fast. — But where was Saddar? If he could find that, he could walk to the General’s house. — A cyclist came up the hill carrying a great load of fresh-cut tree boughs. The Young Man asked directions. The other beckoned to a passing rickshaw. But the Young Man had no rupees left; they had been stolen at a refugee camp. — “I pay for you!” smiled the Pakistani. — “No, no,” said the Young Man, embarrassed. It was not far to a crossroads that he knew; the Pakistani had explained it to him. He could easily walk there. — So then, making certain that the branches were lashed tightly to the rear wheel, the Pakistani set the Young Man sidesaddle just behind the handlebars and began to pedal. — “Allah, Allah!” he cried near the summit of the hill, sweat running down his face. The Young Man, ashamed, tried to dismount, but he shook his head. — “No, no! You friend! I take you there.” —In front of the General’s house, before the Young Man could thank him, he smiled and turned back the way he had come.

The Afghan refugees across the hall at the hotel were sweet to the point of obsequiousness. They loaned him their soap, rushed to get water when he was thirsty, and even washed his shirt. They made him elaborate Afghan meals. — Every day the “uncle” went to the consulates or the Mujahideen political offices. The boy stayed inside all day. (The Young Man thought of him as a boy even though he had a wife and child.) The Young Man let the boy’s brother sleep in his room, on the spare bed, so that he would not have to sleep on the floor with the baby anymore. — One hot night the boy and his brother invited him to go out for a walk. They strolled through Saddar, turned around, went for ice cream … All the males his own age seemed like boys to him, because (1) they didn’t drink alcohol; (2) they didn’t have much money; (3) they deferred to him.

“Why did you come to Pakistan?” he asked the boy.

The boy looked at him with nervous brown eyes. “It was — I was in the Kabul. I was a student of agriculture, and all of my family was investigated. They investigated my father, and they took him in the jail. Afghanistan, it is — it is all in the jail.”

“He is not my nephew,” explained the “uncle,” who spoke excellent English. “But I let him call me uncle to show respect. His father, his mother and all his brothers except that one were detained by the Russians and killed one by one. I am all he has now.”

The Young Man bought the boy a bunch of bananas, and a detective novel to help him with his English. — “Why do you never go out?” he asked him. But the boy would not answer.

The “uncle” had three beautiful daughters, who were very shy, but when the Young Man said that he was trying to help they let him take their picture. Standing on the flat roof of the hotel, they smiled sadly. One of them shaded her eyes with her hand. In the evenings they helped him with his Pushto. (It was unfortunate, he reflected, that the word for “sister” sounded like “whore” prefaced by an expectoration, but the moving of one’s tonsils among the Pathans would seem to be as much a necessity — here the worms turned over in his intestines — as the moving of one’s bowels.) — The girls also practiced their English on him. After he had essayed, with great effort, “I am your … friend,” or “It is very hot today,” they would reward him by smiling, and saying an English sentence that they had memorized: “Brezhnev — is— dog! ” Then they burst into giggles. — Once he said, consulting his English-Pushto dictionary at every other word, “I … like the Afghan … people. I … hope … I can help you.” —They smiled and giggled. —“Dera miraboni.” ‡They made him dinner. They stood and served him while he ate. He was made to sit. They prepared for him curry and meat and vegetables, with plums for dessert. Later he saw them eating old bread.

“There are two kinds of refugee,” the hotel proprietor explained to him over green tea. “Rich refugee and poor refugee. Rich refugee, he live in Peshawar, in hotel. Poor, he live in camp. Afghan refugees no good. They wear everything out, break everything. Too many of them.”

There were nine people in that family, counting the uncle’s old wife. They existed in two rooms. Each room had a table and two single beds. They had been there for two months. They were trying to go to the United States or West Germany, but so far they had found no sponsors. In another month, said the uncle, if they still had no luck they would go to India. They were the rich refugees.

“It is right that they speak sweetly to you,” an Iranian told him. “They want your help; you are American; you can do anything for them.” §

“What happens if they go to a camp?” the Young Man asked.

“You don’t understand camp,” the Iranian said. “In camp they live like animals. They have not enough food; they have not enough water; they are too hot; there is only sickness over there.”

The Young Man went to the American consulate and asked if he could do anything for the family.

“They need a U.S. sponsor,” the woman said.

“What do I have to do to become a sponsor?”

“Can you guarantee their financial security?” said the woman.

“No, I can’t.”

“Give it up,” the woman said. “There are so many cases like this. I see so many cases like this every day. Just give it up.”

Every day he walked up and down Saddar, interviewing the off-duty Mujahid commanders cleaning their guns in hotel rooms, talking to miscellaneous Afghans and Pakistanis, buying himself Cokes and Sprites, catching rickshaws to go to the political offices. Peshawar seemed to him a fishy place. Everybody he met wanted to get out or was waiting for something. He was almost the only Westerner. One day he saw a blond, blue-eyed man buying soap. The man started a conversation. He said he was Swiss and he was waiting for a letter from someone who was to meet him there. He asked the Young Man questions in a friendly way. The Young Man saw him again a few days later, in the American Center. This time he was from Rhodesia. — That night he told the uncle about it. — “Be careful,” the uncle said. “I have seen him. He is a bad man.”

The third time he saw him, the man said, “You want to cross the border, don’t you?”

The Young Man did not entirely trust either the Swiss-Rhodesian or the uncle. So he merely said, “Well, that’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Come on with you,” the man said. “Why else would you be in this bloody miserable place?”

“No,” the Young Man said. “I’m just a tourist.”

In the hotel was a fellow from Chitral who was very interested in the Young Man. His brother was the chief of police in Peshawar, he said, and the police were going to come arrest the Young Man as a spy.

“And what will happen then?” said the Young Man, feeling some alarm.

“They will beat you,” Yusuf Ali laughed.

“And then what?”

“They will make you sleep with them. ‖And they will beat you again. Then you will go to jail.”

“Oh,” said the Young Man noncommittally.

“They will beat you, you C.I.A.!” Yusuf Ali chuckled, slapping the Young Man’s shoulder. “Do you understand? They will beat you and beat you, you spy!”