"You work for me," he answered, smiling. "And now, I have a job of work for you to do."
"Well, I'm afraid I'm not up to it, just at the minute."
The cramps were creeping into my stomach. I groaned, and looked away.
"Oh, yes," he agreed. "You must be well first. But then, in three or four months, you will be the right man to do this job for me."
"What... what kind of a job?"
"It is a mission. A kind of holy mission, you might call it. Do you know how to ride a horse?"
"A horse? I don't know anything about horses. If I can do the job on a motorcycle-when I get well, _if I get well-I'm your man."
"Nazeer will teach you to ride. He is, or he was, the best horseman in a village of men who are the best horsemen in Nangarhar province. There are horses stabled near here, and you can learn to ride on the beach."
"Learn to ride..." I muttered, wondering how I was going to survive the next hour, and the hour after that, and the worse that would come.
"Oh, yes, Linbaba," he said, reaching out with the smile and touching my shoulder with his palm. I flinched at the touch, and shivered, but the warmth of his hand seemed to enter me, and I was still. "You cannot reach Kandahar in any other way but by horse, at this time, because the roads are all mined and bombed.
So you see, when you go with my men to the war in Afghanistan, you must know how to ride a horse."
"Afghanistan?"
"Yes."
"What... what the hell makes you think I'm going to Afghanistan?"
"I don't know if you will do it or not," he replied with what seemed to be genuine sadness. "I am going on this mission myself.
To Afghanistan-my home, that I have not seen for more than fifty years. And I am inviting you-I am asking you-to go with me. The choice, of course, is yours to make. It is a dangerous job. That much is certain. I will not think less about you, if you decide not to go with me."
"Why me?"
"I need a gora, a foreigner, who is not afraid to break a large number of international laws, and who can pass for an American.
Where we will go there are many rival clans, and they have fought with one another for hundreds of years. They have long traditions of raiding one another and taking whatever they can as plunder on their raids. Only two things unite them, just at this time-love for Allah, and hatred for the Russian invaders. At the moment, their chief allies against the Russians are the Americans. They are fighting with American money and American weapons. If I have an American with me, they will leave us alone, and let us pass, without molesting us or stealing more than a reasonable amount from us."
"Why don't you get an American-a real one, I mean?"
"I tried. I could not find one crazy enough to take the risk.
That is why I need you."
"What are we smuggling on this mission to Afghanistan?"
"The usual things that one smuggles into a war-guns, explosives, passports, money, gold, machine parts, and medicines. It will be an interesting journey. If we pass through the heavily armed clans who would like to take what we have, we will deliver our goods to a unit of mujahed-din fighters who are putting siege to Kandahar city. They have been fighting the Russians in the same place for two years, and they need the supplies."
Questions writhed in my shivering mind, hundreds of them, but the cold turkey was crippling me. Cold, greasy sweat from the struggle smothered my skin. The words, when they came at last, were rushed and faltering. "Why are you doing this? Why Kandahar? Why there?"
"The mujaheddin-the men at the siege of Kandahar-they are my people, from my village. They are from Nazeer's village also.
They are fighting a jihad, a holy war, to drive the Russian invaders out of the homeland. We have helped them in many ways, up to this time. Now it is time to help them with guns, and with my blood, if it is necessary."
He looked at the sickness trembling across my face, and cutting facets from my eyes. He smiled again, pressing his fingers into my shoulder until that pain, that touch, his touch, was all I felt for a moment.
"First you must be well," he said, releasing the pressure of his fingers and touching his palm to my face. "Allah be with you, my son. Allah ya fazak!"
When he left me, I went to the bathroom. Stomach cramp stabbed me with eagle's claws, and then twisted my insides with talons of agony. Diarrhoea shook me with convulsive spasms. I washed myself, shivering so violently that my teeth clattered together.
I looked in the mirror and saw my eyes, the pupils so large that the whole iris was black. When the light comes back, when the heroin stops and the turkey starts and the light returns, it rushes in through the black funnels of the eyes.
