As soon as he said this he realized that his boasting might cost him his life, for he did not know who we were, and travelers were frequently murdered when it was known they had money. No doubt it had sometimes happened near Badakshar, and he looked at us fearfully.
“Shut your mouth, you fool,” Nur snapped. “This time you’re lucky. We’re from the government.”
The young man sighed and fell silent, but I asked him, “Where’d you get your coat?”
He was a congenial fellow who enjoyed talk, so he said quickly, “It’s been in my family for many years. My father wore it to Kabul once. I haven’t been to Kabul, but my brother wore it to Herat, which is a large city, he says.”
“Where’d your father get the coat?”
The young man refused to answer and Nur Muhammad asked, “He killed a man for it, didn’t he?” The traveler said nothing and Nur continued. “A stranger came through the mountains wearing this coat and your father got hungry for it. So he shot him, eh?”
I turned around to look at the young man, across whose face had come a beatific smile. He said, “You government men know everything, don’t you? How to raise sheep. How to pay taxes. What roads to build. But you don’t know about this coat, do you?” He chuckled and in sheer pleasure wrapped his arms a little tighter about himself.
“Who killed who?” Nur pressed.
The young man laughed openly and wagged his finger at Nur. “No, no, Mr. Government! That’s one thing you’re not going to know. And before you ask any more questions stop the car and I’ll walk.”
“Take it easy,” Nur said.
“All right,” the young man said gravely. “But forget about the coat.”
We rode in silence for some miles, then heard a gasp from the rear of the jeep, for our rider had spotted some of the minarets of Kandahar. “It’s the city!” he cried.
At first I saw nothing, but gradually the outlines of Kandahar, much older than Kabul, stood out against the horizon, and as we approached the walls I could not say who was the more excited, the young man with the European coat or the man from the American embassy about to engage in his first diplomatic mission.
We dropped our passenger in the middle of the city, a sprawling, dirty, camel-train metropolis whose mud walls looked as they had in the time of Darius the Persian. Nur found us a place to stay, much better than the hole in Ghazni but without the Persian rugs, and when the jeep was under armed guard I said, “Since you already know I’m here to see Dr. Stiglitz, could you find where he lives?”
“Now?” Nur asked.
“Now,” I repeated, and he soon returned to lead me down a mean, narrow street where from one dirty mud wall projected the sign.
DOKTOR
UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
“Want me to stay with you?” Nur asked.
“No thanks.”
“Kandahar is rougher than Kabul,” Nur warned.
“I can handle myself,” I assured him and entered the doctor’s quarters.
The waiting room startled me. It was a small, dirt-floored, misshapen room with one bench and two very old chairs, on which sat men in turbans. One rose to offer me his seat, but I said in Pashto, “I’ll stand,” and the bronzed faces stared at me. Finally one asked, “Ferangi?” and I replied “American.” The staring continued.
After some minutes the door leading to the doctor’s office opened and a turbaned man departed. The next patient in line moved in to see the doctor and he must have said that there was a ferangi outside, for the door quickly burst open and a man of middle years and middle height rushed out, not to see me but to inspect me.
“Who are you?” he demanded in crisp, accented English. I gave my name and he drew back suspiciously. “What do you want?”
I tried to say that I’d wait until he was through, but he interrupted, shouting in Pashto, “These damned Americans come here demanding special privilege. They always do. Well, he must wait in line till all of you are finished … all of you.”
In Pashto I said, “When you’re through, Doctor.”
My use of the language did not impress him. He stepped back, eyed me coldly and asked cautiously, “What is it you want?”
“Did you ever treat the American wife of Nazrullah?”
He glared at me, drew a protective shell of some kind about himself, and returned to his office, slamming the crude wooden door. In a flash he was back in the waiting room shouting in Pashto, “He must wait in line like all of you … to the very end.” Once more he slammed the door.
By the time the last Afghan had seen the doctor, darkness had fallen and I was left alone in the shadowy waiting room. The wooden door creaked open and Dr. Stiglitz said graciously, “Now perhaps we can talk.”
He did not invite me to his office but he did leave the door open so that some light from the single unshaded electric bulb entered our room. He was balding, with a blond-gray German crew cut, and he had a pipe. He looked more frightened than bellicose, and his forehead was deeply wrinkled. “Yes, I treated Madame Nazrullah. Not quite a year ago. Sit down.” He invited me to take one of the rickety chairs while he sat wearily on the other. “Be careful of the chair,” he warned. “In Afghanistan wood is so scarce that any chair is a treasure. You can’t imagine the trouble I had finding that door. I shouldn’t have slammed it so, but visitors make me nervous.” He made a conscious effort to relax and asked with some show of generosity, “Now what do you wish to know?”
Before I could speak, the door to the street opened and a thin Afghan in his fifties entered, followed by a chaderi. The woman stood obediently near the door while the man bowed and pleaded with the doctor. “My wife is ill,” the man whispered.
“All right,” Stiglitz growled in what I thought was an offensive manner. “She’s late, but I’ll help her.” With no enthusiasm he returned to his office, and I moved my chair aside to let the woman follow, but she was left standing in the outer room and it was the nervous husband who joined the doctor. Stiglitz, seeing my surprise, said, “You’d better come in here. He wouldn’t like you alone with his wife, and what happens may interest you.”
So the American visitor, the German doctor and the Afghan husband consulted in the inner room while the sick woman remained standing by the door of the waiting room. “Tell her she can sit down,” the doctor began, and the husband went to his wife, who obediently sat on the floor.
While he was gone I had an opportunity to inspect the doctor’s office. It was a dirty little mud-floored room with practically no medical equipment and one cupboard containing flyspecked bottles of pills. There was a desk made of packing crates and the swinging, glaring electric light bulb.
The husband returned and Stiglitz asked, “Now what’s wrong?”
“Pains in the stomach, Doctor.”
“Fever?”
“Yes.”
“High?”
“No, medium.”
“Does she vomit?”
“No.”
“Pregnant?”
“The midwife says no.”
“Is her period regular?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out,” Stiglitz ordered, and the husband dutifully returned to the other room, where he sat on the floor to consult with his veiled wife.
While he was gone I asked, “Don’t you examine her?”
“A wife? In chaderi? I’d be shot.”
The husband returned and said his wife’s periods had been regular, so the examination proceeded. Six times the husband was ordered to ask his wife intimate questions regarding her health and six times he relayed his understanding of her answers to the doctor. Once, when the man was gone, Stiglitz confided, “The real evil of this system comes when the husband thinks his wife’s symptoms reflect discredit on him. He suppresses the information. And if the apothecary charges too much for the medicine I prescribe he simply doesn’t buy it.”
“What happens to the woman?” I asked.
“She dies,” he replied without emotion.
“That is, she dies a little sooner than otherwise.”
The husband now decided that he had told Dr. Stiglitz all that was relevant and he waited for the doctor’s decision. “It’s an amazing thing,” Stiglitz said in English, “but after a while you instinctively know what ails the woman and you probably do her as much good as if you’d taken her pulse and temperature.” In Pashto he instructed the husband what medication to buy for his wife and the man laid down a pitiful fee, which the doctor accepted. When the man went to inform his wife he left the door open and I could see him kneel beside her and console and reassure her, with obvious love etched on his face. His wife, who must have been seriously ill under the chaderi, breathed deeply two or three times, then rose and followed her husband out of the office.
“Now about Madame Nazrullah,” Dr. Stiglitz began. “Since you’re interested in her you must be from the American embassy.”
“I am.”
“And you’ve been sent down here to spy on me?”
“No,” I lied.
“You’re lying. Right this minute you’re thinking, What’s a man like Stiglitz doing in a hole like Kandahar? Go ahead and spy on me and I’ll spy on you.”
Before I could reply, Stiglitz hopped up, ran to the door leading to the street, and barred it. When this was done he sat on one of the chairs, using it in reversed position so that its unsteady back formed a chin rest. “Young man,” he said. “Will you please bring me my pipe?” He was tired and he looked it.
I joined him in the waiting room and studied him as he lit his pipe. His hands were nervous, but I remembered that this was the end of a long day. His close-cropped head was a little larger than normal, and his hard blue eyes looked at all things with a blend of cynicism and challenge. He was inclined toward plumpness and was clearly no self-reliant German superman. I was disposed to like his quick honesty and felt intuitively that he ought to move to Kabul, where the various embassies could provide him with patients well able to pay. As he had foreseen, the major question in my mind as I studied him was, “What’s a man like this doing in a hole like Kandahar?”
“Nazrullah’s wife lived in this region for a little more than a year,” he reported grudgingly. “Why are you interested?”
“She’s disappeared.”
“What?” he asked with real surprise.
“Yes. Her parents haven’t heard from her in thirteen months.”
He began to laugh, not heartily but in disgust. “You Americans! My parents haven’t heard from me in four years but they don’t go running to the German embassy.”
“With an American woman married to an Afghan the problem is somewhat different,” I said sharply.
“Any ferangi who marries an Afghan does so with her eyes alert,” Stiglitz replied impatiently. “I treated Madame Nazrullah several times.”
“What for?” I asked.
Stiglitz looked at me coldly. “She was a well-adjusted, likable young woman. Quite happy with her husband and he with her. I’ve grown to respect Nazrullah as one of the finest Afghans. Say, Herr Miller, are you hungry?”
“I am.”
“You eat pilau and nan?”
“At every chance.”
“Good. I’m starved.” Then, for the first time, I saw him hesitate, as if he were unsure of himself. “Herr Miller, may I be very rude?”
“You may.”
“I wish that the invitation I just extended could mean what it would in Germany. That I was taking you to dinner. Frankly, Herr Miller … You saw the fee they pay here.”
“I’m taking you to dinner,” I assured him.
“No! My own dinner I can afford. But sometimes you ferangi eat like such pigs …”
He summoned a watchman, who appeared from a room in the back carrying a rifle and two daggers. Carefully Stiglitz locked the cupboard with its pitiful supply of drugs, then unbarred the door, which the watchman locked behind us as soon as we had left. Stiglitz led me to the public square, which contained an eating place of better than average appearance.
Cautiously he asked, “Do you like beer?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good,” he sighed with real relief. “I manage to find a few bottles each month and it makes life bearable. So if you don’t mind I’ll not offer you one. Why don’t you have an orange?”
“I usually drink tea.”
“Better for you,” he laughed uneasily.
When our meal was served, the waiter produced from some well-protected corner a bottle of lukewarm German beer, which Dr. Stiglitz attended to personally. With meticulous care he pried away the top, quickly pressing his mouth over the foaming bottle to catch each drop that would otherwise have been wasted. Next he took a long, slow, satisfying draught, closed his eyes, and placed the bottle reverently on the table close to his right hand.
“What would you have said,” I asked, “if I had liked beer?”
He opened his eyes slowly and winked. “I’d have said, ‘How unfortunate. In Kandahar the mullahs allow no alcohol,’ and right now we’d both be drinking tea. I won’t try to explain, Herr Miller, but this is my only contact with Europe. It’s so precious …”
“Would you have any guess as to why Nazrullah’s wife disappeared?”
“I’m not satisfied she has.”
“Any rumors?”
“I give no credence to rumors.”
“That means you’ve heard some.”
“Herr Miller, I hadn’t even heard she was missing.”
“You hadn’t?”
“Why should I?” he asked impatiently. “They left here last July to work at Qala Bist. Haven’t seen them since.”
“Was she all right … when you knew her?”
“All right?” he asked angrily, licking his fingers. “Who’s all right? Maybe she was planning to murder her husband and have a baby by a camel. Who can you point to in Afghanistan and say, ‘That one’s all right’? She was healthy, she laughed more than she cried, and she was well groomed.”
“How do you know about the crying?”
“I don’t. Every time I saw her she was laughing.”
It was obvious that he intended the interrogation to end, but I could not resist one final question. “Did you know her by her western name?”
Dr. Stiglitz threw down the piece of nan he had been using as a fork and sputtered, “No more! Eat!” He took a long swig of beer.
This relaxed him and he asked philosophically, “Herr Miller, have you ever speculated as to why it was such a terrible punishment in these lands to cut off the hand of a thief? No? The awful part about it was that they always cut off the right hand. Look around this restaurant and see if that gives you an idea.”
There were perhaps fifteen eating areas in the dusty room and at each men were eating pilau, but I didn’t see the connection. Stiglitz pointed out, “They’re all eating with their right hands. See!” He pointed to a rug on which five bearded Afghans were digging freely from a common bowl, and each used his right hand. The left never appeared in motion.
“I don’t understand.”
“Only the right hand is allowed in the food bowl,” Stiglitz said ponderously, like a German professor, “because when a man goes to the toilet he must always wipe himself with his left hand. In lands where there is little water, this is a prudent rule.” He took another drink of beer and reflected, “It was a terrifying punishment, to cut off a man’s right hand. Automatically it banished him from the food bowl.”
I was about to ask the point of this story when I saw two men rigging a string of lights across one corner of the square. “What goes on over there?” I asked.
“That’s for the dance,” he explained. “Spring festival brings out the dancing boys, the dirty little monsters.”
I described the team I’d seen on the truck and he banged his empty beer bottle. “That’s the kind. They’re all alike. Filthy animals.”
“The ones I saw looked fairly clean,” I protested.
“Clean? Yes. Even p
erfumed. But they’re cruel little pederasts … sodomites. When they come to town they create a great evil.”
“You astonish me,” I gulped.
“I shouldn’t. If you have a society where women are forbidden, men must volunteer for the female functions.”
“I was remarking on that the other day. But not in this context.”
“This is the context that counts,” Stiglitz snapped. “Our handsome dancing boys are all dirty little whores. How could they otherwise afford the clothes they wear?”
The lights were now in position and a stage was being marked off, about which began to cluster several hundred men in turbans and a few in karakul caps. From an alley which was to serve as dressing room a man in his fifties, whom I recognized from the truck, appeared to make a speech.
“Let’s go see the little monsters,” Stiglitz proposed, and we walked slowly across the square to join the crowd. We were in time to hear the speaker assure us that he had brought to Kandahar the finest troupe of dancers in Afghanistan, who had just finished a season in Kabul, where they had danced for die king. Five musicians came on stage, older men who played flutes, drums and a bucket-like fiddle containing at least twenty strings. The music had a standard Oriental, wailing quality, but also a fierce rhythm quite alien to countries like China and Japan. This was the throbbing music of the upland plateaus, a modification of Indian, Mongol and Greek strains. As sound it was attractive; as rhythm it was compelling.
“I’ve grown fond of the music,” Stiglitz said, “and these men are good.” They played for some minutes and induced in the crowd a subtle change. Men stopped talking. Bodies began swaying, and a sense of excitement became almost tangible. Then, with a shout, two young men in candy-striped costumes leaped out of the alley and began a whirling dance in which their long hair stood out straight from their heads. They were unlike western dancers, more controlled in their torsos, but more abandoned in the way they used their extremities and their heads.
I whispered to Stiglitz, “Do you deny they’re artists?”
“It’s their other skills I object to,” he snapped.
During the first half-hour the star of the troupe did not appear and the interval was filled with flying bodies and wild music. The audience seemed to grow impatient and it was clear they were waiting for the young man who had insulted me on the bridge, and I too was waiting for him. The master of ceremonies knew this and took advantage of our anticipation by sending his musicians among the crowd to collect donations in their karakul fezzes.