“Yes!” Pritchard repeated. “If I stay here I’ll die.”
“We’ll take you to Kandahar,” Nazrullah said firmly, and when the decision was reached he became once more his efficient self. Looking at his watch, he said crisply, “We must get back to The City before darkness. We’ll sleep there. Start across the desert at dawn. You fellows up to it?” Nur and Stiglitz said they were. Then he addressed Pritchard directly: “This is the last chance. You’re sure you can cross the desert?”
“Right now,” the engineer replied.
“We go,” Nazrullah announced.
But I was appalled, both at the decision itself and at the hasty manner in which it had been reached. “Wait a minute!” I protested. “Dr. Stiglitz, is Professor Pritchard qualified to make a decision like this?”
“I am,” Pritchard interrupted. “I’ve waited here too damned long. If I stay here, I’m going to die.”
“Have you ever crossed the desert?” I asked, betraying my nervousness at intervening in such a matter, for I was the youngest present.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Pritchard asked contemptuously.
“You remember the heat?”
“Look, Miller, I refuse to stay here. Let’s get going.”
“The heat?” I shouted. “Have you ever crossed in daytime?”
“Yes!” the sick man shouted back. “I can take it.”
I appealed to Dr. Stiglitz. “You know very well, Doctor, that intense heat and movement will increase the danger from that leg.” The German was silent and I shouted, “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” Stiglitz grudgingly assented. “And every minute we don’t operate increases the risk.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said weakly. I felt as if I were going to burst into tears. Very quietly I said, “We’ll operate here—right now.”
Stiglitz spoke solemnly: “But the risk to his life is just as great here, Herr Miller.”
“For God’s sake!” I cried. “Give me an answer, yes or no.”
“There is no answer, yes or no,” the German replied stubbornly. “There is risk. There is risk here and risk there. I cannot decide.” He turned to Pritchard and asked gently, “You know you’re in grave danger, don’t you Herr Professor?”
“Three days ago I thought I was dead,” Pritchard said. “I’m not afraid any longer. In your opinion, Doctor, which way gives me the best mathematical chance?”
“That I cannot answer,” Stiglitz insisted. “You and your American adviser must decide.”
The sick man looked up at me, and I almost had to turn away, death seemed so close. “Young fellow,” he said quietly, “I calculate my own chances as being best if we go to Kandahar.”
I was so certain that once we got that leg on the desert it would insure his death, pumping poison constantly throughout his body, that I could not accept either his answer, or Nazrullah’s assent, or the doctor’s impartiality. I knew we must take the leg off at once. In my anguish I looked at Nazrullah and said, “Could we walk in the garden a moment?”
“You’re wasting time,” Nazrullah warned me.
“I need your advice,” I said.
“You have my advice … Kandahar.”
“Please,” I begged.
Against his will I led him out beneath the pomegranate trees, sweet in the spring, where I had a chance to confront the hard quality of his mind. “You’re the American in charge,” he said harshly. “You must decide … in fifteen minutes.”
“But, Nazrullah, you’re a scientist. You know that a leg like that is pumping poison right through that man’s blood. He can’t possibly get to Kandahar.”
“The doctor thinks he can. I think he can. We should leave.”
“But if we do decide to operate here, will you arrange things for us?”
“Absolutely, Miller. I’ll stay here a month if necessary. You make the decision and I’ll abide by it. But make the decision.”
“Help me do what’s best,” I pleaded. “There’s a man dying in there.”
“I can’t do your job for you,” he said coldly.
“Could I see the doctor again? For just a minute?”
“Stiglitz? He’s incapable of a moral decision. He said clearly: The facts are these. You decide.”
“What did he say the facts were?” I asked, sweating nervously. “I want to hear them from him again before we decide.”
“No!” Nazrullah cried. “You can’t evade your responsibility.”
“Please, review with me what he said. I don’t have it clear.”
“He said,” Nazrullah repeated impatiently, “that Pritchard would probably die, whether we amputated his leg here or hauled him across the desert to do it.”
“He never said that!” I protested in real confusion.
“He implied it. He believes it. And if that’s true, which I’m sure it is, the problem becomes simple. What’s best for your country and mine?”
“That’s a hell of a way to talk about a man who may be dying.”
“Miller, he is dying. What’s best for you and me to do? Speak up or we’re leaving.”
“Wait a minute. Let me think,” I pleaded. “Nazrullah, we know he wants to get out of here. How much weight should I put on that fact?”
“The whole weight, Miller. If he stays here he knows he’ll die.”
I hesitated, then said firmly, “All right We take him to Kandahar.”
“That’s your decision?”
“Yes. Let’s get started. Right now.”
“Please put it in writing.”
“What are you trying to do?” I cried.
“Things like this often end badly,” Nazrullah said cautiously. “Americans like to blame Afghans … make us look stupid. If a stupid decision is being made, you’ll make it, and you’ll put it in writing.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said bravely, feeling much older than twenty-six. “But in that case I’ve got to talk with Stiglitz and Pritchard.”
“You have ten minutes,” Nazrullah said, “After that we stay here … for many weeks.”
We returned to the sick room and I asked Dr. Stiglitz to join me in the garden. He protested but Nazrullah said in German, “Go ahead.”
“Your honest judgment, Stiglitz, and you can’t evade now. What’s best for this man?”
“This is a decision I cannot make,” Stiglitz insisted stubbornly.
That’s a hell of a position for a doctor to take.”
“It’s the only one under the circumstances,” he said defensively.
“What are the circumstances?” I shouted, losing control of my patience under the hammering I was undergoing.
“Pritchard is going to die,” he replied bluntly.
“I say that if we take the leg off right now he’d have a chance.”
“You’re right.”
“And if you haul him through the desert death is almost inevitable.”
“You’re right.”
“Then for God’s sake, let’s go in there and operate.”
“I warned you, Herr Miller, that this is not a decision I can make. Pritchard is convinced that if he stays here any longer he will die. His spirit is worn out … can you understand that at your age? Worn out. It might be wiser for him to risk the journey to Kandahar if it restores his hope.”
“Who can decide this?”
“Pritchard.”
I returned to the room and told Nazrullah, “I’ll write out the order in five minutes.”
“You’d better,” he said.
I went to the sickbed and before I spoke to Pritchard I looked at the bleak walls of the Caravanserai and smelled the stale, baked air. I would not have wanted to live in that room, even in health. But to have lain in that stifling heat for three weeks while local practitioners ruined my leg, to have watched it swell and grow green, would have been intolerable, and now to face the prospect of six more weeks would kill my spirit.
I sat on the bed and told Pritchard, “I guess it’s up to you an
d me. Here or Kandahar?”
“I know I’m in bad shape. But if I stay here … what’d you say your name was?”
“Miller. I’m from the embassy.” Then I had an idea. “You know, Professor Pritchard, the ambassador himself sent me here. He’s deeply worried about you.”
“I didn’t know anybody gave a damn.” He turned his head, unable to control his tears. “Jesus, Miller, this is the end of the world.”
“I can see that,” I agreed.
“How the hell did I get here?” he mumbled. “Making a water study for a nation that just don’t give a damn.”
“Don’t say that. You wrote to us about Nazrullah. He’s a fine engineer.”
“The guy with the beard?”
“Trained in Germany,” I assured him.
“Some of the best come from Germany,” he said in the approving manner of practical men who recognize excellence wherever developed.
“You’re determined to make the run to Kandahar?”
“If I stay here I’ll die.”
“You appreciate the risk?”
His spirit cracked. Rising on one elbow he shouted, “If you’re afraid of your lousy job, I’ll put it in writing. I want to get the hell out of here.”
“I’ll do the writing,” I said, feeling miserable, for I knew I was condemning him to death. I called Nur Muhammad to bring my brief case, and on official paper I wrote:
Chahar, Afghanistan
April 12,1946
I have this day ordered the American irrigation engineer John Pritchard to be transported to the hospital in Kandahar, so that medical attention unavailable here may be given his badly infected left leg.
Mark Miller
United States Embassy
Kabul, Afghanistan
Feeling sick at what I had done, I handed Nazrullah the directive. He read it twice, showed it to Stiglitz and Nur Muhammad, and folded it carefully. “We’ll leave in ten minutes, sleep at the edge of the desert and start our crossing as soon as we can negotiate that bad approach.”
He had overlooked one fact. John Pritchard refused to leave his post until his water-level records were collected. “That’s why I came here,” he said. “If they want to build that dam, they’ll need these records.” To my surprise, Dr. Stiglitz supported him.
“A scientist should keep records,” the German said.
So I was led by a guide to a spot two miles down the Helmand, where John Pritchard had been collecting the data on which Nazrullah would build his dam. More significantly, perhaps, Pritchard’s word would form the basis for riparian treaties between Afghanistan and Persia, who had threatened war over the river. We found a small shed, boiling hot, some water gauges, a sheaf of irreplaceable records. The guide warned me in Pashto to watch the steps leading to the shed, for it was here that Pritchard had broken his leg; and as I stood in this lonely shack, this veritable end of the world where the temperature was daily above a hundred and thirty, I thought of all the careless speeches made in Congress about the cookie-pushers of the State Department, those striped-pants boys who haunt afternoon teas, and I wished that some of the arrogant speakers could have seen the work that John Pritchard had accomplished for our nation and for Afghanistan.
“Was Pritchard a good man?” I asked the guide. It was a kind of judgment he had not previously been asked to make, and he was confused. Finally he said brightly, “Yes, he could handle a gun with skill.”
I was to ride with Nazrullah in his jeep, while Nur and Stiglitz supervised loading Pritchard in the back of theirs. As they did so the German said heartily, “If I ever saw a man with a good chance to get across the desert, it’s this one.”
“We’ll make it!” the engineer called as we set forth, and it became my duty when we stopped to pour as much water as possible over the stricken man, thus keeping his temperature down, but before we had traveled far he became partially delirious and asked that I ride with him, as he wished to speak of America.
Thus we rode past the brooding, empty buildings of The City, and in the cooler evening his fever abated and we talked. He was from Fort Collins, Colorado, and had spent each autumn hunting in the Rockies. He was, he admitted, a fairly good rifle shot and had bagged elk, bear and mountain goats. He had a low opinion of the latter and felt they did more harm than good. He was optimistic about one thing: said he knew a one-legged man in Loveland who had no trouble hunting.
“I’m the kind of man,” he said, “who won’t give up till I learn how to walk with a wooden leg.” But at the next stop Dr. Stiglitz decided to give Pritchard a knock-out pill, and the engineer fell asleep.
As soon as morning light permitted, we negotiated the canyon, and when the sun was well ablaze we were on the desert, stopping frequently to pour water on our turbans. At first I rode with Nur and the sick man, keeping his body under wet compresses, but he grew constantly worse, and at one of the water stops Stiglitz insisted upon changing places with me so that he might supervise the invalid. The more drastic steps he took to keep Pritchard alive worked. At the start of our trip I had given the engineer no chance to live, but apparently I was going to be proved wrong.
I now rode with Nazrullah, and after we had discussed Pritchard’s leg, he asked me bluntly, “What else do you need to know about my wife?”
The question startled me, for I had been devising stratagems whereby I could trick him into comment, and for a moment I could not think clearly, so I repeated lamely, “She ran away?”
“Yes. Last September.”
“That’s eight months ago,” I stammered.
“Seems longer,” he reflected, rubbing his beard. In his soggy, formless turban he looked quite Asiatic.
“Why did she run away?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he replied with a nervous laugh. He wanted to be helpful, but the facts were so preposterous that he was unable to evaluate them, so he kept silent, reminding me of the worried Afghan husband who had hustled back and forth between his sick wife and Dr. Stiglitz: he would report only what he himself understood.
I appreciated his efforts at good will, for the conditions under which we rode made conversation difficult. The desert was intolerably hot and we were both gasping for air. “This must be hell on Pritchard,” he observed.
“It’s what I was worried about yesterday,” I remindedhim.
“We’ve been through that!” he cautioned, “I have your order, in writing.”
“Did you warn Ellen Jaspar that…”
“That I was married? Yes.”
“The other day in Kandahar I met your wife, your Afghan wife, that is.”
“I know. Karima told me about it in her letter.”
“How could she send a letter?” I asked, like a movie detective trapping a suspect. “I saw her only a short time before I left.”
“The messenger who brought Dr. Stiglitz also brought her letter,” he explained, and I had to laugh at my own suspicions.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “This whole thing seems so shadowy.”
“To me it’s even more so,” he confessed.
“Then what Karima said was true? You did tell Ellen?”
“Whatever Karima says is apt to be true.”
“Is she a beautiful girl?” I asked for no obvious reason.
“Very. It was stupid of her to wear the chaderi. I don’t require it.”
“I suspect she was afraid of Nur Muhammad.”
Inappropriately, Nazrullah began to laugh and I must have looked at him with censure, for he said, “I’m sorry, but when you mentioned the chaderi I remembered something which explains Ellen rather better than anything else I could tell you. I sympathize with your suspicions. You’re sure that I mistreated her and that my family kept her prisoner and that she’s walled up somewhere pining for freedom. Miller, when she arrived in Kabul, all of us … everybody … tried to make her feel at ease. You know what she did? On the morning after the marriage she came down to breakfast wearing a chaderi.”
?
??What?”
“Yes, at breakfast. A very expensive silk chaderi which she had asked a dressmaker in London to make from a picture in a book. She was going to be more Afghan than the Afghans. My family tried not to laugh, and I had tears in my eyes to think that she was such a good sport. We explained that you don’t wear a chaderi at breakfast. But I had one hell of a time keeping her from wearing it on the street.”
He laughed in memory of that bizarre event as a father laughs during a business lunch when he recollects his child’s mistakes. “You may have heard that one day in Kandahar the mullahs spat at her. When it was all over, she started to cry, not at the mullahs but at me. ‘If you’d let me wear the chaderi,’ she whimpered, ‘this wouldn’t have happened.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“None of you Americans understand what an extraordinary woman Ellen is. Obviously her parents didn’t. Nor her professors. Don’t call her a girl any more. She is a woman. I doubt that she was ever a girl. She is a rare human being who sees through to the essence of God. I suppose you know that on one of our first dates she told me all about the atomic bomb.”
“You met her in 1944,” I checked. “At that time there wasn’t such a bomb.”
“She invented it,” he said cryptically.
I looked at him askance and he was about to elaborate when the rear jeep signaled us to stop, and in the moments we waited for them to overtake us he added, “Ellen foresaw that if the nations continued their madness, they would be forced to invent some super-terrible weapon. She even described it rather accurately. ‘It’s the age of air, so they’ll deliver it by air, and it’ll wipe out whole cities.’ She added that there was no way to prevent it and probably no way to escape. She said, ‘I hope I can get to Afghanistan before they destroy us all.’ At first I thought she was using us as a refuge … because we would be the last place bombed, but that wasn’t her idea. She told me, ‘There isn’t going to be any refuge, and if I’m to die, I want to die in Afghanistan, which is as far away from our pitiful civilization as any place I know. Let’s live and die close to primitive things.’ I suppose that’s what she had in mind when she protested my building the dam.”
Dr. Stiglitz walked gloomily to our jeep and said frankly, “He won’t make it, Nazrullah. He wants Millar to ride with him.”