The Ink Bridge (32 page)

‘The daughter, fancying her chances with the Mongol king, shot an arrow with a note into his tent. It told him of a spring that supplied the fortress with water.'

‘Nice girl.'

‘She was a charmer. Chingis dammed the spring with felt and the city fell to his sword. And that is why it's called the City of Screams.'

‘What about the daughter?'

‘She dressed up big time for the Khan, her finest Chinese silk, perfume behind each ear, gold and lapis jewellery. She expected something big. And she got it.' Arezu pauses. ‘Chingis had her stoned to death for betraying her father.'

‘He was a hard guy to please.'

‘He had some anger issues he was working through. I don't think he was cuddled enough as a child.'

The sun is busting some big moves on the horizon. The moon is behind us, all full and pouty-lipped. I want to kiss Arezu. This is the time.

Her face is towards the setting sun and a warm glow runs from her cheekbone to her jaw – a perfect range. I lean in towards her and she turns to me. She looks surprised, like this is something that I have been planning without her permission. Then her eyebrows lower and crease, her dark brown eyes accuse me.
Here in the open?
they say.

The blood of the king's daughter spills over the valley. The sun is flailing the rock we sit on. There is silence, but I can hear screaming. It is far away, but certain. It is leaching from the rocks.

The donkey brays as the guard leads him down the path for water. And we are shaken from this small moment that has come between us. And I can see she also feels ashamed. I want to say,
Nothing happened. No one saw.

‘We should head back before the sun gets too low,' says Arezu. ‘Crossing the river in the dark is a bitch.'

So we head down from the City of Screams back to Bamiyan. We cross the river on the two-plank bridge behind a woman in a burqa and her son with an armful of
naan
. Then we go to our separate beds while the desert moon ripens over Shahr-e Gholghola.

THE TOYOTA COROLLA IS THE new donkey. It is small and tough, almost indestructible. It is not a beautiful car, but a thoroughbred wouldn't take these roads. Its tyres are bald. The windscreen is cracked. Its seats are covered with carpets.

I collect my fortune before we leave. It is written on a single, lined sheet of paper. Arezu wants to read it, but I want to save it for Band-e Amir. Because some things need ceremony. It's not like the cookie I opened all those years ago with Dad. The slip of paper pushed inside a dough bubble by some nimble-fingered factory worker.
Every great journey
begins with one step
, it read. But even that came true.

Sameer, our driver, likes his music. He likes it loud. His stereo is not up to the job. The woofers and tweeters have rebelled. They are now growlers and squawkers, punk imitations of what they once were. But the beat goes on. And on. And on. It only stops when he ejects the tape to bang the dust out of it.

The roads of Bamiyan aren't kind to cars. There are old shells abandoned in villages, trucks with broken backs that have turned into playgrounds for kids with ‘snot' on their upper lips.
Qarghana
, a small round shrub, is carried down from the summer pasture above the Shahidan Pass to dry on roofs for winter fuel.

‘See the caves,' Arezu points to a cluster of holes in the cliff. Washing hangs on lines and trails of smoke rise from cooking fires. The doors are made from old oil tins, bashed flat and joined together.

‘They're beautiful. It is amazing to see people still living in caves in the twenty-first century.'

‘You are seeing it through your tourist's eyes. Shut them now. Go on.'

I close them, even though I feel ridiculous.

‘I want you to think about the winter when the snow creeps down from the mountains to lie until the spring.'

‘I love the snow.' My eyes are closed on a different dream. ‘We'd go to Mount Buffalo when I was a kid. Icicles hanging like swords from the chalet eaves. Cross-country skiing and my old man with a hot chocolate moustache.'

‘There's no time for skiing, Hec. It takes too much energy just to stay warm, to stay alive. A couple of months in, it gets so cold you bring the animals inside. They shit and piss on the floor, but you are glad of the heat. You burn
qarghana
and the cow pats you dried in the summer. But the heat is never enough. The rock swallows it.'

Arezu pauses to make sure I appreciate how cold it is.

‘You have five children,' she says.

‘I don't think so.'

‘How old are you?'

‘Twenty-two.'

‘Then you have four. One of them, your youngest daughter, has tuberculosis. The smoke from the fire makes her hack her lungs out, night after night. You hate yourself for wanting the noise to stop. She won't make the winter even if you had the money for medicine.'

‘It's a cheery little scene.'

‘These places are beautiful to you, Hec, because you don't see them as an Afghan sees them – as a home for the poorest.

‘It was a bad season for the crops. The rain came late and then at harvest. Much of the wheat was rotten. The potatoes are small. Your children moan at night, their bellies tight with hunger.'

‘Okay, Arezu, that's enough, I get the picture.'

‘Do you?'

‘Yes. I feel guilty for living in a house, for having decent food every day. For saying I didn't like peas when I was a kid even though my mum told me there were kids starving in Africa.'

‘That's the first time you've mentioned your mum.'

‘I didn't know you were keeping score,' I say. Then quickly add, ‘So what can I do about it? The mess this place is in.'

‘Just do what you are doing, Hec. Do what you are best at. Write. Tell the world how it is here. Tell them how it really is – that there are Afghans who are tired of war and they are cold and they are hungry and they are sick. But also there is joy and life here. That it is not as simple as the world thinks it is.'

We continue driving, the road forcing our elbows together. A lock of Arezu's hair has escaped from her veil and I feel the urge to tuck it back in.

‘Here's a story for your book, Hec,' she says, turning to me. ‘Once there was a cow eating some hay. A frog came along, and the cow, feeling in a playful mood, dropped some hay on its back. The frog was flattened to the ground. It looked up and said to the cow, “Why did you do that?” and the cow replied, “I was only playing a game.” The frog shook his head at the cow and said to him, “To you it may only be a game, but this is my life.”

‘The frog is the Afghan people and the cow is everyone above, all those in power – corrupt politicians, foreign armies, and even some of the NGOs.'

‘And what's the answer? More aid money? I've seen where it goes, all those greenbacks and euros and roubles. There are a lot of big white 4WDs here with big white NGO workers and their drivers and their security and their interpreters. It's a business isn't it?'

‘It's not a perfect system, but it is all we have at the moment.'

‘And what do you do, Arezu? How do you help?'

‘I do what I can to improve education. So that ignorance cannot get a hold on the people again. Knowledge is a weapon.'

‘And where does the cash for this knowledge come from?'

‘From people back home who have the money, but not the time.'

‘It must be nice to be you.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘To be perfect. To be right.'

‘Look, Hec, I don't know where this is coming from.'

‘You're talking to me like I am an invader. That I'm just taking stuff like everyone else. I paid for this story you know. I lost a friend.'

‘We all lost someone to this war.'

‘Then that means I get membership to your little club.'

‘Hec, stop being such an ass.'

‘Arezu, stop being so American.'

‘I resent that. You know, sometimes I hate this country. It has stolen some of the most important people from me: my aunt and uncle killed in the Battle of Kabul; my grandfather shot by the Russians; two cousins murdered by the Taliban. But I can't deny that I am part of it and it is part of me.'

‘But you can leave whenever you want.'

‘But I choose not to.'

‘Well good for you. How very noble.'

‘What do you think would happen if all the Afghans who were educated left this country? Believe me, when a teacher gets forty bucks a month, it is hard to argue when the good ones want to leave. If those who could just got up and left, what would happen, Hec?'

‘They'd send money home?'

‘Possibly. But you'd also lose the ability to educate. And without that, without knowledge, the people listen to those mullahs who use their sermons to prepare them for jihad. Suddenly you have eleven-year-old boys with plastic explosives strapped to them. Believe me, I've seen it.'

‘Why do you even bother? The problems are so huge.'

‘Remember the
kaftar
, Hec.'

‘Stuff the
kaftar
. The
kaftar
is nothing. It was just a bird with a brain the size of a walnut, who tasted freedom then flew right back to its cage.'

‘What are you saying, Hec?'

‘It's a metaphor, Arezu! Seeing as you like them so much. These people you are helping, how are you so sure they won't turn round and shoot you when the Taliban roll back into town?'

‘Because they're good people, Hec, caught in bad situation.'

‘For thirty bloody long years and a lot of it of their own making.'

‘Can it, Hec, you're talking out your ass.'

‘At least I'm talking.'

‘You have some anger issues.'

‘Yup, I'm like a modern day Genghis-bloody-Khan.'

‘And stop with the cussing.'

‘Cussing now, how very
Little House on the Prairie
of you.'

‘Oh, man, you are going too far—'

Sameer pulls the Corolla to a stop in a cloud of dust. He turns off the ignition and speaks quickly to Arezu in Dari.

‘What did he say?' I ask.

‘He wants us to get out.'

‘Why?'

‘He says we are being rude.'

‘Rude?'

‘Rude.'

I open the door and we both clamber onto the roadside. It is barren here. While we were arguing, the car was winding its way up the calf's intestine of the Shahidan Pass. I barely noticed. We sit ignoring each other while Sameer smokes a cigarette. He finishes and goes to the boot, takes out a huge yellow melon and cuts two wedges for Arezu and me. It is delicious and cool. Arezu's chin is glistening with juice. I wipe it with my scarf.

‘Sorry,' I say. ‘Sorry about the
Little House on the Prairie
and the stuff about your friends wanting to kill you.'

‘I'm sorry too. Sorry for being so
. . .
I dunno, uptight.'

‘You're not uptight. You just care.'

‘I do.'

‘Friends?' I offer her my sticky hand.

She takes it. Her fingers are like lotus petals. But stickier. ‘Friends,' she says.

‘I appreciate you showing me around.'

‘I like showing you around. And I'm sorry about the lessons all the time. I just want you to know
. . .
well, everything. If you're going to write about it, I want you to get it right.'

‘I will.'

‘I know you will. I trust you.'

‘Do you?'

‘Of course.'

And I don't understand why I do it, but I blurt it all out then. All about Mum and about her leaving and then I am crying like a child on the side of the road in Afghanistan, of all places. And I feel like I am dissolving into this place, that I am turning to dirt and pretty soon the people will mould me like clay and I will become a pot or a pipe or a Buddha.

I tell her that Mum was too big for her life; that she hurt too much. And I tell her about the West Gate and how once it was a special place, but now it is tainted. How, like Shahr-e Gholghola, it trapped the screams of those who fell.

The tears come and come and they bring that unique ache with them. My face feels wind-bruised. My cheeks and eye sockets burn. This is not a romantic sorrow. There is no Hollywood lighting. This is dark and troubling. It is claw and gut and blood and pain.

‘She jumped,' I say. And it is the first time I have ever said those terrible words out loud. It has been the biggest secret that I have ever kept. She jumped and when she fell towards that water, the vacuum she created sucked the words from me. It is the thing that kept Dad and me apart and, in a way, brought Omed and me together.

‘She jumped,' I whisper again because now it has been said it will always be said. Now it is the truth.

Arezu's hands slip into my lap and grab my fingers. She holds them to her so I know what life means, so I can feel her warmth and her heartbeat. She doesn't say anything, just waits while the tears keep rolling from me.