Shantaram полностью

For the next six weeks, that was the pattern of our recovery: a few days, perhaps as long as a week, in one location before an abrupt shift to a new tent or slum hut or hidden room. The Pakistan secret service, the ISI, had a malign interest in every foreigner who entered Afghanistan without their sanction during the war. The problem for Mahmoud Melbaaf, who was our guardian in those vulnerable weeks, was the fascination our story held for the refugees and exiles who harboured us. I’d darkened my blonde hair, and I wore sunglasses almost all the time. But, no matter how careful and secretive we were in the slums and camps where we stayed, there was always someone who knew who I was. The temptation to talk about the American gunrunner who was wounded in battle, fighting with the mujaheddin, was irresistible. Talk like that would’ve been enough to pique the curiosity of any intelligence agent from any agency. And had the secret police found me, they would’ve discovered that the American was in fact an escaped convict from Australia. That would’ve meant promotions for some, and a special thrill for the torturers who would get to work on me before they handed me over to the Australian authorities. So we moved often and we moved quickly, and we spoke to none but the few we trusted with our wounded lives.

Little by little, the details emerged: the more complete story of the battle we’d run into, and our rescue after it. The Russian and Afghan soldiers who’d surrounded our mountain comprised the best part of a company and, as such, were probably led by a captain. Their sole purpose in operating among the Shar-i-Safa Mountains was to catch and kill Habib Abdur Rahman. A huge reward had been posted for his arrest, but the terror and the horror that his atrocities had forced into their minds made the hunt for him a much more personal operation for the searchers. So mesmerised were they by his savage hatred, and so obsessed were they with his capture, that they failed to detect the stealthy advance of Ahmed Shah Massoud’s forces. When we made our break for freedom, acting on Habib’s information that most of the Russians and the Afghans were busy laying mines and other traps on the far side of the mountain, the startled sentries in the deserted enemy camp had opened fire. They’d thought, perhaps, that Habib himself was coming for them, because their fire was wild and undisciplined. That action had precipitated the attack that was being planned by Massoud’s mujaheddin, who must’ve seen the firing as a pre-emptive strike by the Russians. The explosions I’d seen and heard as I ran toward the enemy-they blew up their own mortar shells, the idiots-were actually direct hits on the Russian positions by Massoud’s mortars. The wider mortar strikes that tore into our line were mere accidents: friendly fire, as they say.

And that was the elated moment I’d called glorious, in my mind, as I ran into the guns: that stupid waste of lives, that friendly fire. There wasn’t any glory in it. There never is. There’s only courage and fear and love. And war kills them all, one by one. Glory belongs to God, of course; that’s what the word really means. And you can’t serve God with a gun.

When we fell, Massoud’s men pursued the fleeing enemy all the way around the mountain and into the returning company of minelayers. The battle that followed was a massacre. Not one man of the force sent to catch and kill Habib Abdur Rahman survived. He would’ve liked that, the madman, had he been alive to hear it. I know exactly how he would’ve grinned, with his wide mouth gaping soundless and his grief-crazed eyes bulging on swollen hatreds.

All that cold day, and into the sudden evening, Nazeer and I had remained on the battleground. As we shivered in the swiftly falling shadows of sunset, the mujaheddin and the survivors from our own unit returned from the fighting to find us. Mahmoud and Ala-ud-Din brought the dead-Suleiman and Jalalaad-from the barren mountain.

Massoud’s men had combined with independent Achakzai fighters to claim the Chaman highway from the Pass all the way to the Russian defensive perimeter of besieged Kandahar, less than fifty kilometres from the city. The evacuation to Chaman, and through the Pass to Pakistan, was rapid and without incident. We rode in a truck, carrying our dead friends with us, and reached the checkpoint in hours-the journey that had taken us a month of mountains on Khader’s horses.

Nazeer healed rapidly and began to regain weight. The wounds in his arm and the back of his shoulder closed over well, and gave him little trouble. But the larger and deeper wound to his right thigh seemed to have damaged the ligamentary relationship between muscle, bone, and tendons, from his hip to his knee. The upper leg was stiff, and he still walked with a limp as he swung his right step around the hip, instead of through it.