Watching him leave, I was struck with a sudden, clutching instinct to cry out and stop him. It was a foolish thing-an irrational stabbing dread that I was losing him, losing another friend. And it was so ridiculous, so petty in its jealousy, that I bit down on it and said nothing. Then I watched him sit down opposite Habib. I watched him reach out to lift the gaping, murderous face of the madman until their eyes met and held, and I knew, without understanding it, that Khaled was lost to us.
I dragged my eyes from the sight of them, as boatmen drag a lake with starry hooks. My mouth was dry. My heart was a prisoner pounding on the walls inside my head. My legs felt leaden, fixed to the earth with roots of shame and dread. And as I looked up at the sheer, impassable mountains, I felt the future shudder through me like thunder trembling through the limbs and wearied vines of a storming willow.
THE MAIN ROAD FROM CHAMAN, in those years, crossed a tributary of the Dhari River on the way to Spin Baldak, Dabrai, and Melkaarez on the highway route to Kandahar. The whole journey was less than two hundred kilometres. By car, it took a few hours. We didn’t take the highway route, of course, and we didn’t have cars. We rode on horseback over a hundred mountain passes, and the same journey took us more than a month.
We spent that first day camped beneath the trees. The baggage-the goods we were smuggling into Afghanistan, and our personal supplies-was scattered in a nearby pasture, covered by sheepskins and goatskins to give the appearance, if seen from the air, of a herd of livestock. There were even a few real goats tethered among the woolly bundles. When dusk finally smothered the sunset, a whisper of excitement went through the camp. We soon heard the muffled tread of hooves as our horses approached. There were twenty riding horses and fifteen pack animals. The horses were a little smaller than those I’d learned to ride on, and my heart lifted with hope that I might find them easier to control. Most of the men moved off at once to hoist and secure the baggage onto the pack animals. I started off to join them, but Nazeer and Ahmed Zadeh intercepted me, leading two horses.
‘This one is mine,’ Ahmed announced. ‘And that one is yours.’
Nazeer handed the reins to me, and checked the straps on the short, thin Afghan saddle. Satisfying himself that all was as it should be, he nodded his approval.
‘Horse good,’ he said, in his grunting, gravel-throated version of good humour.
‘All horse good,’ I replied, quoting him. ‘All man not good.’
‘The horse is superb,’ Ahmed concurred, casting an admiring eye over my horse. She was a chestnut mare, with a deep chest and strong, thick, relatively short legs. Her eyes were alert and unafraid. ‘Nazeer picked her for you from all that we have. He was the first to reach her, and there are some disappointed men back there. He is a good judge.’
‘We’ve got thirty men, by my count, but there’s less than thirty riding horses here, for sure,’ I remarked, patting at the neck of my horse, and trying to establish first contact with the beast.
‘Yes, some ride and some walk,’ Ahmed replied. He put his left foot in his stirrup and swung into the saddle with an effortless spring. ‘We take turns. There are goats, ten goats with us, and men will herd them. And we will lose some men on our way, also. The horses are really a gift for Khader’s people near Kandahar. We would be better on this trip with camels. Donkeys would be the best, in my opinion, in the narrow passes. But the horses are animals of great status. I think Khader insisted on using horses because it is important how we look when we make contact with the wild clans-the men who will want to kill us, and take our guns and our medicines. The horses will make us important in their eyes. And they will be a gift of much prestige for Khader Khan’s people. He plans to give them away on the way back from Kandahar. We will ride some of the way to Kandahar, but we will walk all the way home!’
‘Did you say we’re going to
‘Yes!’ he laughed. ‘Some men will leave us on the way, to return to their villages. But yes, also, it might be that some will die on this journey. But
