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

Akbar and Muhammed Ibrahim were telephone operators. They had gone to school together. Akbar had to start his shift at 7:00 p.m., so Muhammed Ibrahim took the Young Man to his seat on the train. Then they sat looking at each other.

“In Peshawar, people very wicked,” said Muhammed Ibrahim. “They rob you, kill you, take everything.”

“I’ll be careful,” the Young Man said.

“On train, very dangerous. You stay in seat three days, until you reach Peshawar. Never leave the seat. You must promise me, never leave the seat. You leave the seat, come back; they take your pack, take your seat, rob you, take everything. You sleep never. You sit like this all the time, with your pack under your feet. You never stand up.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be careful. Thank you very much.”

“You remember us. You send to us picture. You come back to Karachi, you stay with me. I love you.”

“You’re my friend,” the Young Man replied, a little awkwardly.

“I love you. You come, be my wife. You make me full-fresh. I hate Akbar. You, you are AMERICA. You are my best friend.” And Muhammed Ibrahim began to weep.

The American felt bad. “You’re my friend,” he said again. He let Muhammed Ibrahim take his hand.

“You are so good to me,” Muhammed Ibrahim said. “You are my best friend. You make me full-fresh. Please come back to me. Every day I will wait for you. Every day I will keep a room in my house for you. If you call, I come for you. Even to Peshawar I will come for you. If you have trouble, I come to you. I pick you up, take you to my house.”

“Thank you very much,” he said.

“If you no come back, no write, no telephone, I will kill myself. You have made me full-fresh.”

“Thank you very much. You’re my friend. You’ve been very kind to me.”

“Do you like me?”

“Very much,” said the Young Man. Decency made him say it.

“Thank you. I so happy. I am so happy. I do anything for you. I am your friend.”

Muhammed Ibrahim spoke to the passenger whose seat faced the Young Man’s. “He take care of you to Lahore,” he said finally. “Then he find someone else to help you.”

The whistle of the train sounded. Muhammed Ibrahim had to get off the train now. He stood on the track and held the Young Man’s hand through the window even after the train began to move. Then he ran alongside, crying. To make him feel better the American stuck his head out the window and waved to him until he could no longer be seen.

So when he had to share a bed with the Afghan Brigadier, he soon got used to it. The Brigadier was a good man. He only felt the Young Man’s calves in broad daylight, in public, to see if he was strong enough to go into the war zone. Occasionally he held his hand.

“My dear son,” he said. “What is your name?”

The American told him.

“If the Amerikis say they no can help me, I very happy. I go back to Afghanistan to fight with the Roos .” ‡

The Young Man thought of Muhammed Ibrahim’s saying: “Thank you. I so happy. I am so happy.”

* Nan and dordai are the equivalents of pita bread. Nan is Pakistani; dordai is Afghan — very similar to nan, but thicker.

† Fans.

‡ Russians.

Just taking her easy here at the Blue Lagoon Snack Bar — a ritzy place for Pakistan, to be sure, for it had white lace tablecloths (full of holes, and so filthy that one touch blackened his fingers), a dependable fan behind him, and Indian music on the radio — he sat comfortably, though maintaining good posture. The waiter, who like his counterpart at King’s Restaurant could tell that this customer hailed from a developed country, brought him on a plate a real fork and knife with a paper napkin wrapped around them. At King’s he hadn’t had a napkin. This was pretty good. — In front of him stood a blue pitcher of cool obuh , *doubtless full of disease … and now he was whisked his dinner with dismaying speed considering that (a) he was the only customer, (b) they were staring at his every move, and (c) he somehow had to kill two hours waiting for Dr. Tariq. Well, anyhow, what was his dinner actually, let’s see, he’d first ordered an onion steak at fourteen rupees, on the principle that a protracted stay demanded an expensive purchase, but today was a meatless day, so he was stuck once again with a chicken roast: mm-hm, half-raw meat given the position it deserved in the middle of the plate, encircled by okay onions, putrid peppers, merely wilted peppers and some perfectly acceptable tomatoes … Time passed, the meal passed, and the sick hot evening improved until when Dr. Tariq came he was in the middle of a conversation with some Jordanians about how dull the nightlife had been here ever since the imposition of martial law. The Young Man paid his bill, shook hands all around, and proceeded into the swelter with Dr. Tariq, who had invited him to stay the night with his family.

The household was headed by Tariq’s father, Major General N., a fine old man who influenced the guest more than anyone else in Pakistan, for in the end he stayed not a night, but a month. The General’s family gave him food, lodging, clothes and presents. He came to feel love for them.

I no longer have the plastic scraps of a butterfly mine from Afghanistan, because I gave them to Dr. Tariq’s younger brother Zahid (since become a doctor in his own right). One of the yellow glass bangles that the family gave me for my fiancée broke on the trip home; the others left with her when she left me. I do still have a stack of photographs, through which I used to flip with some complacency, the vividness of the color dyes convincing me that I must not have failed in Afghanistan after all, and for a while I busied myself with them, blowing them up into fund-raising posters that cost more than the money they brought in — for I was and still am a most lamentably ludicrous Young Man — but within three or four years I had studied those pictures so many times that not a single image was real. I retain my illegal pen-pistol from Darra, but seldom roll its fat coldness between my fingers. My best aid to memory (for I doubt that I will ever go to Afghanistan again) is the set of clothes that General N.’s family gave me. — They hang in the back of the closet, whose white door is now shut, with its black knob like a sphere of darkness extruded from the darkness inside. — My shirt (which I think once belonged to Zahid) is a baggy affair that hangs down to my knees like an apron. The pants are wide enough around the waist for two people; they tighten with a drawstring. — On hot days, this loose cotton skin of mine feels cool, luxurious.

The other guest of the N. household was, of course, the Brigadier, with whom the Young Man shared the double bed. Thirty-six years ago the General and the Brigadier had been pals, back in British days, when the Pakistanis (or Indians, as they then were) had been involved in an insurrection in Kashmir. †—“I was his teacher,” said the General, “and I regarded him as an honest man.