The Network - Jason Elliot [134]
‘War was different then,’ I say, ‘and battles were fought man to man.’
‘Perhaps they will come back,’ he says with a smile, ‘and we can fight them again the same way.’
As darkness falls a fighter shows us to our room. We’ve been on the road only a couple of days but for some reason it feels like weeks. For a moment we wonder whether to position ourselves near the door or the window.
‘If they’re planning to kill you,’ I tell H, ‘the preferred method is to drop a rock on your head.’
‘With all those weapons they hardly need a rock.’
‘You forget how thrifty Afghans are. A rock will save them the expense of a bullet.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I hope it’s big enough. I’ve got quite a hard head.’
We leave the next morning, our heads intact. The commander has given us a handwritten letter of permission to travel as far as Yakawlang, but can’t guarantee much after that. I’m glad we’ve got the letter. There are several checkpoints as we head west, and at each we’re waved to a halt by a pair of fighters whose surly manner improves once our letter has been inspected and passed around. We’ve chosen the right combination of personalities for the lead vehicle. Sher Del is not only a Pashtun, but his white beard and confident manner give him an authority that no one will easily challenge. Aref plays the role of boffinish administrator to perfection, and between the two of them all suspicions are put to rest.
Beyond Bamiyan the high mountains draw apart, the cultivated plain broadens to a width of several miles, and the glittering braid of the river and its tall green poplars runs beside us. The lesser hills are bare and reddish, and against their starkness the valley and its carefully tended fields and borders once again seem all the more delicate.
We reach Yakawlang in the afternoon, refuel the vehicles and eat a meal of kebabs. The town has an unhappy air and looks as though it’s suffered from recent fighting, which a number of abandoned armoured vehicles confirm. We don’t want to linger, and drive south into the mountains towards Panjab. There’s almost no wheeled traffic, but we pass several families struggling on foot with their possessions piled onto donkeys, and a woman clutching a child begs us for money. The desperation in her expression is obvious and she claims the Taliban have forced her from her home. Her face and gestures haunt me like a presence as we drive further south along a deteriorating route, and our pace slows to a crawl. Several times we catch sight of trucks which have fallen from the road and tumbled into the ravines below.
As we near the Isharat Pass, the lead vehicle has its first puncture, and while Aref and Sher Del are changing the wheel, H and I get out to admire the spectacular scenery.
‘It’s not like anywhere I’ve ever seen,’ he says. ‘Every part of it’s different, like a different country. You could never win a war here.’
I ask him why not.
‘It’s the people. They belong too much. They’d never give it up.’
We’re looking over to the east where about thirty miles away the highest peaks of the Koh-e Baba range rear up from among the lesser summits in a magnificent glistening knot of ice. A purplish haze is settling over the landscape and after the relentless lurching of the route the silence is almost overwhelming. Quietly, H recites the lines of a poem.
‘We are the pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea
‘Regimental poem,’ he says as if emerging from a private trance. ‘Don’t know the rest.’ He looks back over the darkening mountains. ‘I’m glad I came. This is a special place.’
‘There’s some things I haven’t told you,’ I say.
‘That’s normal,’ he says. ‘There’s stuff I haven’t told you either.’
‘Like what?’
‘You killed a mate of mine, for one thing,’ he says after a pause.
The fact that this doesn’t make any sense to me does nothing to lessen the shock.
‘How? When?’
‘In Kuwait. The team that busted your Lebanese mate out. They were all Regiment blokes. You took