CHAPTER NINETEEN
BASHIR’S TRUCKS ROLLED into Jaji around noon. It was an outpost of barefoot children and bony dogs, a few dozen mud homes shoved against each other at the edge of the dry valley as if swept aside by a broom.
A rusting signpost on the edge of town said “Drug Free Happy Life” in English, the remnant of some long-gone aid organization. On the wall of a small store a faded mural depicted a variety of land mines above a red warning in Pashto. Someone had recently sprayed it with gunfire.
Within minutes after they stopped, a crowd of curious children zeroed in on Skelly, who waved them away distractedly, too weary to say no. They complied meekly, not nearly as aggressive as the ones at the Khyber, and he almost regretted his brusqueness. But he had nothing to offer except food and cash, both of which he would need in the days ahead.
Bashir conferred with a village elder who had emerged from a doorway down the street. The man pointed up the valley, gesturing as Bashir nodded.
“We will unload here,” Najeeb said. “We are going to rest awhile.”
“We should try and get some sleep. Maybe I’ll do a few interviews later.”
The sun had crept above the ridge, and it was warming up, so Skelly found a spot beneath a tree by the browned lawn of a small mosque. He dropped his bags and sprawled against them with the carrying straps looped around his arms in case the local boys got any ideas. He quickly fell asleep, this time dreaming—jumbled images of long drives through the dust with people he didn’t recognize, a sense that he could barely keep his eyes open, and no one saying a word he could understand. A few hours later he again came awake to the sound of gunfire, wondering if this would always be the case here.
There was another sound, too—the throb of a helicopter. He stood stiffly, nearly tripping in the tangle of straps. Some of Bashir’s men were pointing and jabbering. The boys he’d seen earlier ducked in and out of doorways, reminding him of prairie dogs at the zoo. A long-ago field trip with his children flashed to mind, taking Carol by the hand as she squealed with delight at the darting, bobbing prairie dogs, poking heads from their dusty caves, her tiny hand sticky from cotton candy, the smell of manure and of popcorn. None of that here. Just a herd of scrawny goats milling in the roadway ahead, oblivious to the fuss and oblivious to Skelly and his memories.
Then he saw the chopper, a small blob of dark green against the sky but moving fast. It was at least a mile away, corkscrewing upward as if trying to get clear of the valley. He heard what he thought was the
whoosh
of a shell, but there was no flash or contrail. Perhaps it had been an echo, some merging of other noises. Then there was a distant explosion, and the chopper reared up and banked away, roaring over the ridgeline and disappearing across the mountains. Skelly hadn’t seen any markings, so he couldn’t say whether it had been American. He knew colleagues who could have identified the make and model even from this distance, but he had never been good at that. To him every small helicopter was a Cobra and every big one was a Huey.
“We will be leaving soon.”
It was Najeeb, approaching from behind. He saw now that the trucks were gone.
“Where’s the rest of our stuff ?”
“They loaded the generator and sat phone onto horses. We will carry the rest. Bashir has radioed ahead for more horses to meet us on the other side of a gorge.”
“We’re crossing a gorge on foot? This could take a while.”
“Apparently there is a bridge. But we have to hike there first.”
And so they did, walking a mile across the valley, then three more miles steadily uphill, the trail narrowing as the switchbacks steepened. Skelly gasped for breath. The air was so dry that the sweat evaporated almost the moment it surfaced, and his back was soon itchy with salt. He was relieved to finally reach the rim of the gorge until he saw the bridge—a small wooden platform dangling from a steel cable that stretched fifty yards across a barren, yawning ravine, forming a sagging parabola above a thin, muddy river three hundred feet below. The river was so shrunken by drought that it looked more like a series of brown puddles among the chalk-white stones.
“I guess now we know why the horses have to meet us on the other side,” Skelly said. “We’ll have to cross one at a time on that thing.”
“That thing” was a platform attached to the cable by a pulley wheel. The idea was to pull yourself across by tugging on a long rope, attached at either end of the gorge. Gravity would presumably take you halfway, and even a bit beyond if you simply let go. The platform itself—a few splintery planks that had seen better days—was only about four feet by four feet, and there were no rails or restraints except the support posts at each corner. They arched upward to a joint just below the pulley. Otherwise there was nothing to prevent you or your baggage from sliding into the gorge.
Bashir’s men didn’t seem bothered at all by this, and one by one the first eight of them scrambled aboard and pulled his way across with the ease of alpinists rappelling the face of a cliff. Then it was Skelly’s turn. Bashir insisted that he travel across not only with his bag and satchel but also with the generator, which left no room to spare.
He climbed aboard uncertainly while Najeeb held the platform steady, seating himself diagonally with his back pressed against a corner post. He slid his legs around the bags while nudging the generator against the post in the opposite corner.
“Ready?” Najeeb asked, looking concerned.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Najeeb handed him the rope, and Skelly began to let out length, foot by foot. Some of the men shouted, obviously wanting him to let go, to get moving, but he was having none of that, proceeding hand over hand at a deliberate pace to minimize the swaying. A third of the way across, however, he realized his mistake, and probably the reason for their shouting. If he didn’t soon gain more speed on the descent then he’d have a much tougher haul uphill to the finish. So, holding his breath, he let go, feeling the platform give way in a burst of speed while the wheel whined against the cable overhead.
When the platform lost momentum he would have to grab the rope to prevent backsliding, but he must have done the job awkwardly because the platform tipped violently, swaying with a harsh creak of wood and metal. The generator slid sideways, only worsening the sway, and Skelly had no choice but to lunge forward, grabbing a post with one hand while reaching for the generator with the other. The platform tipped ever more violently, and for one precarious moment the whole contraption seemed to dangle like a trapeze artist, the works creaking overhead.
Skelly held on for all he was worth. The brown pools stared up from below. There wasn’t even the hint of a breeze, and from behind he heard a gale of laughter from Bashir’s men. His fury overcame his panic, and he slowly pulled himself and the generator into balance while Najeeb offered a shout of encouragement from behind.
“Steady yourself with the towline. Pull it tight.”
Skelly complied, letting go of the generator as the platform came level. There was an alarming bit of rocking when he began to pull his way up the incline, but nothing fell into the gorge. From there it was simply a matter of pulling hard until he reached the far side, the rope burning in his palm. He was sweating profusely now, too much even for the dry air to absorb, and when he stepped onto solid ground his rubbery knees nearly gave way. He wanted to shout at the smiling men as they hauled off his gear, but figured he’d earned their derision. Before he could even collect himself Najeeb was at his side, looking none the worse for his own journey across.
“Well, that was entertaining,” Skelly said. The worst part was knowing they might have to do it again on the way back.
The horses were waiting as promised—one for each of them plus another half dozen for equipment, tended by an ill-looking pair of men who departed down a side trail after Bashir paid them in American twenties. Skelly had done little riding, but he could handle a trot and a canter, and neither seemed likely in this rough terrain.
“Lean forward going uphill, backward going downhill,” Najeeb said.
“That much I know,” Skelly replied testily. But he soon discovered just how steeply he’d have to lean. The trail canted wildly up the side of the slope, poorly graded across stones that slid and crumbled with every step. Every few minutes there was a minor slide, and the horses snorted and whinnied, some of them balking. After a nerve-racking half hour Skelly heard a tremendous hissing clatter from behind, like the noise of a giant wave retreating on a shingle beach. He turned crookedly in the saddle to see a horse on its side, thrashing and pawing in a bed of loose stones some twenty yards below. The rider, thrown clear, was standing shakily, picking up his Kalashnikov as he tried to keep his footing. He sidestepped carefully toward the horse, reaching it a moment later while the rest of the caravan watched in restive silence, saddles creaking. The rider shouted up to Bashir.
“Broken leg,” Najeeb translated.
The rider chambered a round in his weapon with a quick tug of his right hand and raised the gun to fire. Bashir halted him with an angry shout.
“ ‘No gunshots,’ he’s saying.” The rider laid down his gun, gently, as if worried that it, too, might slide away. Then he pulled a dagger from a sheath and drew it deftly across the horse’s neck. A red fountain of blood burst onto the pale stones, and the animal thrashed briefly, sliding further down the mountain as its whinny turned to a pathetic gurgle, huge eyes rolling back in its head. Skelly turned away, and finally the animal was silent. The rider clambered back to the trail and the column resumed its careful progress, no one saying a word.
A few minutes later Skelly turned back toward Najeeb, whose expression indicated that he wished he were anywhere but here.
“You think this is all part of a trap, don’t you?”
Najeeb nodded.
“And not just for Razaq,” Najeeb said in a low voice. “Maybe for us, too.”
“Not for us. Bashir will still want the story out. The story of Razaq’s great failure. Of Bashir’s great triumph.”
“So he will wait for you to file your story. And then what? You think he will just take us back, safe and sound?”
“Isn’t that what you think?”
“Perhaps,
inshallah.
But I have been looking for escape routes, just in case. Everywhere we go, I keep looking for some way out.”
“Not a bad idea. Found one yet?”
Najeeb shook his head.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE MEN DISMOUNTED an hour later. Najeeb’s back and thighs were already stiff, an embarrassment after so little time in the saddle, the city boy gone soft. He tried not to think of Daliya, or of anything but the hours and days ahead, and whatever surprises might be in store.
It was dusk, and they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere—barren hills as far as the eye could see, the sky darkening except for a rim of bright pink in the west. Some of the men set up small kerosene burners to cook dinner. Others pulled rounds of bread and bunches of blackened bananas from sacks lashed to the horses. Najeeb was hungry, too, but before he had time to dig into their supplies, Bashir approached and said to Skelly, “Your time is here. Come with me.”
Skelly cast Najeeb a worried glance, and they followed Bashir to the crest of a small hill.
“Azro,” Bashir said, pointing below. The town looked about the same size as Jaji, with a few dim lights already twinkling. “Razaq is there. It is a one-mile walk, and once it is dark you will take it. The path is mined, so a guide will show you the way.”
Perfect, Najeeb thought. Stumbling past mines in the dark. He’d end up legless and begging in the Saddar Bazaar.
“What about our gear?” Skelly asked.
“I can spare one horse. Provided you do not blow him up.”
“We’ll try our best.”
Bashir grinned. “Wait here. You will eat now. I will send the guide when it is time. And when you reach Razaq, you will give him a message. You will tell him that Bashir is here, waiting on the hill.” Noting Skelly’s dubious expression, he added, “Do not be so worried. After dark, all of the highwaymen and thieves will be asleep. You will have the path to yourselves until you reach the town. As long as no one in Razaq’s rear guard panics and opens fire, you should reach him safely.”
“I thought
you
were his rear guard?” Skelly asked anxiously.
Bashir shrugged. “Plans change.”
“Under whose orders?”
“Those things change as well.”
Bashir said nothing more, merely turned and walked back toward his men.
So it was true, then. Razaq’s expedition was doomed unless the man could fight his way out, and they would now become the messengers of his betrayal—as long as they weren’t shot first. Najeeb looked at Skelly, who seemed dazed as he turned toward his bag of supplies.
“Well, I suppose it’s still a good story,” Skelly said weakly.
“If you ever get to file it.”
“Don’t you think Bashir will insist? That
is
why he brought us along.” Skelly’s tone was hopeful now, almost pleading. Why not give the man the answer he wanted? It came with the job, even if all Najeeb really wanted to do was disappear into the hills.
“Yes, I suppose.”
Skelly nodded forlornly but said nothing more.
Najeeb had lost his appetite, but he forced down a little bread and water while Skelly ate beans from a can. For the next several minutes they were silent, resting in a sprawl across stones and dust. Then a thin wailing crept up the hillside from the town. Skelly shifted in alarm until Najeeb reminded him it was only the evening call to prayer. Even in a lost little place like Azro there was an amplified speaker, probably powered by batteries.
“Why don’t you pray for us?” Skelly said.
The request took Najeeb by surprise. To date, all of his Western clients had been either Christian or Jew, yet they had been almost uniform in their lack of belief, as if the skepticism required by their profession had overridden even the greatest of life’s certainties.
“You could pray, too,” Najeeb said. “Do you ever pray?”
“Not often. And usually just for trivial things, or lost causes. ‘Please God, let him make this free throw.’ ‘Please God, don’t let me run out of gas.’ I doubt my prayers would do us much good. Your god’s probably stronger here.”
“There is no God but God.”
It was the closest Najeeb had ever come to expressing piousness to a foreigner, but he figured Skelly had probably written off his previous displays of devotion as the rote workings of tradition more than faith, an impression that needed correcting. Not that Najeeb was suddenly feeling like some sort of fanatic. But Skelly, like most Americans he’d met, seemed unable to fathom the concept that you could believe every last holy word yet still not be a raving fundamentalist.
“You’re right, of course,” Skelly answered, fumbling for words. “But maybe you should pray for both of us anyway, since you’re the one with actual faith. Pray for our safety and deliverance. Or are Muslims even allowed to ask for that sort of thing?”
“Of course. All of that and more.” Then, with a touch of irreverence, “We can even request the vanquishing of our tormentors.”
“Then by all means, go for it.” Skelly smiled. “Now if we only knew for sure who our tormentors were. Or what we were walking into.”
Najeeb surprised himself by returning the smile, dropping the Pashtun mask for a moment as he felt a stirring of kinship for this lonely man. He wondered if he would have allowed himself the luxury if the situation hadn’t seemed so hopeless. Whatever the case, he now felt more relaxed, and better prepared for whatever awaited them at the bottom of the hill. Perhaps other rules could work in this terrain as well as the ones he had grown up with, as long as one applied them sparingly.
He stepped away to a more level patch of ground, where he smoothed a spot for his knees. Then he knelt, for once not minding that Skelly was watching so carefully, as if searching for signs of falseness. He bowed his forehead nearly to the ground, then straightened, praying with his hands held upward, palms open to God. He recited a few words just as the loudspeaker from the town went silent with a staticky click, the last threads of the thin, nasal voice trailing off into haunting echoes.
A minute or so later Najeeb stood, brushing off his knees. By now there was quite a chill in the air, and Skelly pulled a fleece jacket from his bag, zipping it to the neck.
“So can you read all of the Koran?” Skelly asked. “A lot of Muslims I’ve met only knew a few prayers. They didn’t have enough Arabic for the rest.”
“You have just described my entire family. My entire village, for that matter.”
“But not you?”
“I learned Arabic later. In the States.”
Skelly chuckled. “Now there’s irony.”
“Yes. Taught by an infidel, no less. Probably with the wrong accent, too. But I learned to read it pretty well, and the Koran is good practice.”
“Is it as beautiful as everyone says? The English translation isn’t. I tried reading it once, only got about halfway. Too much smiting and damnation. Very Old Testament, pardon the expression. But I’ve always wondered how it reads in Arabic.”
“It
is
beautiful. Poetry.”
“I guess that makes it easier to be devout.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it would have if I had learned Arabic here, instead of in America. By then I was already a backslider. I had discovered your country’s holy trinity.”
Skelly looked astounded. “You converted?”
“Not
that
holy trinity. I meant supermarkets, libraries and women. Three heavens of such plenty that I gave up religion for a while just to worship them.”
“That’s my kind of backsliding. We’re more alike all the time.” He settled himself onto a large, flat stone with a nice view, although by now the town of Azro was barely visible in the deepening gloom. In the silence that followed Najeeb expected their easy mood to die away, overwhelmed by their worries. But somehow it lingered, as if Najeeb’s prayers—some of them, at least—were being answered.
Najeeb wondered how Skelly must view all of this—all these tribesmen with their Stone Age amenities and their warriors on horseback, living by firelight on bread cooked in clay pits, then cast upon the floor. The American would doubtless use the word “primitive,” which was how home had sometimes seemed to Najeeb on his return trips from Chapel Hill or, once, from a post-exam visit to New York, with the city’s noises still ringing in his ears, a thrilling symphony that had roared up out of steam grates and down from towering glass summits. Yet here they were now, ever deeper in the world that had produced him, in a valley where the power grid was smashed and water was still hauled from the ground by the bucketful.
“How did you fare with American women?” Skelly asked, breaking the silence. “I bet you were a big hit. The Omar Sharif look. You must have been fighting them off with a stick.”
“It was not like that at all. Or maybe I was just never greedy about it. They took some getting used to.”
“The way they flirted, you mean? All that Western assertiveness?”
“Not that.” Najeeb smiled again, recalling his college years. Two smiles in ten minutes—a new cross-border record for him. “It was the way they talked. All of the questions, like an interrogation. ‘What are you thinking, Najeeb?’ ‘A penny for your thoughts.’ I had to stop myself from saying, ‘None of your damn business,’ the way people from my village did whenever someone asked a nosy question. For a while I was certain I should have been offended, that they were only asking because I was a curiosity, their little brown pet.”
“Oh, no. It’s what they want from all of us. And it never stops. If you’d stayed any longer you would have learned that. Unless you start telling them what you’re really thinking. Then they’re usually so appalled they never ask again.”
This actually drew a laugh, and Skelly joined in, although they kept it subdued, not wanting to draw attention from farther uphill. And with that unspoken realization threatening to topple the moment’s frail structure, Najeeb rushed to steady it.
“So you make up some of your answers, too?” he asked.
“Don’t we all, at one time or another? What was your approach?”
“I always thought they were expecting me to be soulful, the sage of the East. So I gave them soulful. Long, contemplative answers about home, about growing up in a rough land of bullies and tyrants. But sometimes I think that is what I really did have on my mind. So maybe they were right to pry.”
“Or maybe you were just homesick.”
“Maybe I was.”
Silence for a few seconds more, but Skelly wasn’t finished.
“What about the women here? What did you say your girlfriend’s name was?”
“Now
you
are being like a woman, wanting to know too much.”
Skelly conceded the point, as if realizing he’d crossed the line. But Najeeb decided to answer anyway, albeit in a quieter voice.
“Her name is Daliya. She seems a million miles from here. She asks questions, too, but always waits for the real answers. So I tell her the truth, maybe because she has earned it. She has had to give up even more than I have for us to be together.”
“Must be scary, having to go to all that trouble just to have a date.”
“Yes. Sometimes it is.”
“Must be nice, too, in a way. I’m not sure any woman would do that for me.”
“Not your wife?”
Skelly shrugged. “Maybe. But look at me now. Off on the far side of the world while my wife is stuck at home. Who’d take a risk for someone like that?”
“Your marriage sounds very Pashtun, you know. The man goes where he pleases, the women are stuck in purdah.”
“The American Midwest as a sort of purdah.” Skelly grunted with amusement. “Works for me. Not sure how they’d feel about it in Illinois, though.”
A voice from behind broke the spell. It was Bashir, carrying a lantern, and he wasn’t alone. Beside him was a small boy, maybe ten or eleven. Bashir held the reins of a packhorse loaded with the generator and satellite phone.
“It is time,” he said. “This one will lead you.”
“He’s our guide?” Skelly asked.
“He is from Azro. He knows the trails.”
“Even where the mines are?”
Bashir muttered something to the boy, who thrust out his right arm to reveal a skinny rounded stump where a hand should have been. He grinned, crooked teeth stained a deep brown. He wore a small white skullcap and a gray wool
kameez
drooping nearly to his ankles.
“As you can see, he has experience with mines. So he will take extra care to avoid them. Give him your flashlight, and you will be on your way.”
Skelly complied. Najeeb glanced around, as if some means of escape might suddenly reveal itself. But no further prayers would be answered tonight, it seemed, and when the boy flicked on the beam every route but the one toward Azro was plunged into blackness. The boy made his way forward. It was time to go.
“Remember to deliver my message,” Bashir said. “Take it to Razaq personally.”
“And will we see you again?” Skelly asked, his voice tightening in the darkness. Najeeb wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear.
“I cannot say. All is in God’s hands now. Tomorrow will tell.” That didn’t strike Najeeb as good news, either for them or for Razaq. Escape still sounded like the best option. But even if he had known which way to go from here, he wouldn’t do it now, not on a mined path. And not without Skelly, either, he realized. Another new rule for this landscape, he supposed—looking out for someone else. A foolhardy way to live, but he would have to try. Then he took the reins of the packhorse in hand and faced downhill toward the dim lights of the town. The boy was looking back over his shoulder, waiting for the signal to proceed.
“Okay,” Skelly said, in a husky voice. “Let’s get going.”
They began picking their way down the slope, moving with care, Najeeb straining his eyes in the darkness for anything that looked like a mine or a wire. The going was slow but certain, and the boy’s movements exuded a reassuring confidence. Halfway down the hill the boy stopped, directing the flashlight beam at a small green box, which Najeeb recognized right away.
“Mine,” the boy said, as matter-of-factly as if he’d just pointed out a flower.
“See it?” Najeeb asked Skelly. “There’s a wire coming out of the left side.”
Skelly nodded grimly, then stepped left, giving the mine a wide berth. Najeeb stayed close in his wake. Their progress brought an animated cry from the boy.
“No, no!” he squealed, the light dancing back and forth. They stopped dead.