I turned to Ellen and asked in English, “Is he married?”
In Pashto she replied, so that all the nomads could hear, “It seems I can love only married men.” Then she pointed to one of the handsome older women and said, “That’s Racha, Mira’s mother.” It was thus made obvious to all what my English question had been, and thus I began my acquaintance with Ellen Jaspar in irritation and embarrassment.
The older woman, with a golden bangle in her nose, bowed gracefully, and I felt like a reproved child. I thought: I’m two years older than Ellen Jaspar, but she makes me feel like an infant. I remember that as I finished this thought, I happened to look across the rug and saw that Mira was smiling at my confusion.
When we finished eating, Zulfiqar asked Ellen in Pashto, “Is the fat one a doctor?” Ellen replied that he was, and Zulfiqar said, “Ask him if he’d look at some of our people.” Ellen said, “Ask him yourself. He speaks Pashto.”
“I’d be happy to help,” Stiglitz volunteered, eager to reestablish himself after the fight at the pillar.
Zulfiqar announced, “The doctor will look at your sores,” and the Kochis lined up to show him torn fingers, scarred legs and teeth that should have been yanked earlier. As I watched Stiglitz work, I was again impressed by his skill in handling sick people and I was torn between admiring him as a doctor and hating him for what he had once done as a doctor; while on his part he began to revive his hope that in spite of last night I might still recommend his employment by our embassy. Once he looked at me with a half-smile and asked in English, “For a people without doctors, the Kochis are quite healthy, aren’t they? They get along very well without doctors.”
I felt it unnecessary for me to put him completely at ease, so I ignored the question and had started toward the door when I was met by a travesty of a nomad, one of the funniest-looking men I ever saw. He was about five feet three, scrawny, unshaved, dirty, and clothed in the grimiest rags imaginable. He wore his filthy turban with one end almost to his knees and grinned through broken teeth and a left eye that had a scar dropping three inches from the corner to his jawbone. He shuffled along in sandals that almost fell from his feet and nodded obsequiously to all.
He had been bitten by something, and showed his left arm to Dr. Stiglitz, who asked, ‘’What happened?”
“That damned camel!” the man railed, spitting between his black teeth.
“Looks like you’ve been chewed,” Stiglitz mused, looking at the ugly, extended wound.
“This is Maftoon,” Ellen explained. “He tends the camels. What happened, Maftoon?”
“That damned camel!” the little man repeated.
“He has great trouble with the beasts,” Ellen laughed. She spoke rapidly with Maftoon and he nodded. “One of the camels gummed his arm,” she said.
“Don’t you mean bit?” I asked.
“No, I mean gummed. Camels have no upper teeth, you know. At least not in front. When they get mad at you, and Maftoon’s are always mad at him, they gum you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Come along,” she volunteered, and she took me out to the camels, where she threw bits of nan at them, so that they opened their mouths wide to catch the food and I could see that she was right. In front the beasts had strong lower teeth but no uppers, only a broad plate of hard gum against which they bit to chew off grass or other fodder. In back, of course, they had grinding teeth.
“I never heard of this,” I said, looking for a baby camel that I could inspect more closely.
“Try this one,” Ellen suggested, and she called an enormous brute some nine feet tall at the hump, the female with a bad disposition who had attacked Maftoon and sent him to the doctor. “This old devil hates Maftoon but gets along well with me. Hey, hey!” she called, and the huge beast came close, lowered her head, and nuzzled Ellen for a piece of nan. The split upper lip opened and Ellen pressed her thumb against the hard flat gum, then threw a chunk of nan, which the camel caught. “You try it,” she said, and I took the nan and got the old camel to open her mouth. The plate against which her lower teeth hit was hard as bone.
“Extraordinary,” I said as the big beast ambled away, but as she did so she caught sight of little Maftoon coming from the doctor, and she began to make noises, showing her irritation. I say “make noises” but I’m sure that isn’t the right phrase: the camel uttered a sound that was a combination groan, growl, gurgle and grunt. And it was clear that whereas Ellen and I could inspect her teeth, Maftoon had better stand clear.
“Watch!” Ellen whispered, as the little camel driver took off his turban and threw it on the ground. He took off his long shirt, his tattered pants, his sandals, everything until he stood quite naked. Then he moved back and waited while the embittered camel shuffled up, smelled the clothes and began kicking them violently. She bit them, stamped on them, spit at them and then pushed them about the sand with her head. When she had vented her spleen she stalked majestically away, gurgling and grunting.
When she was gone, Maftoon recovered his clothes, dressed and went in pursuit of the placated camel. When he reached her head he scratched her neck, she gurgled amiably, and the two walked off toward the meager pasture.
“What’s it all about?” I asked.
“The old camel drivers believe … and it seems to work … that a camel bears terrible grudges. Maftoon and the old lady had a fight, and even though she gummed his arm, she’d attack him again and again unless he allowed her to fight his clothes. She’s satisfied and tomorrow he’ll be able to load her again.”
We followed the little man and his camel for some distance, then sat on rocks to watch the animals graze over land where I could see nothing. Ellen said, “I never tire of watching camels. I suppose it goes back to my Sunday school in Dorset, Pennsylvania. At Christmas we traced camels on the wall. Goodness, that seems years ago.”
My interrogation of Nazrullah had been so constantly postponed that I was determined to learn as much as possible in my one day with the Kochis, so I launched right in: “Why won’t you write to your parents?”
She was expecting some opening attack like this and replied easily, “What could I tell them?” She looked at me pleasantly as the bright sun illuminated her well-scrubbed face. “If they couldn’t understand a simple problem like Nazrullah, how could they possibly understand this?” She pointed to Maftoon, the camels and the caravanserai.
“Perhaps I could understand.”
“Not likely.” She spoke with a contempt which erased the pleasantness I had observed before.
“Nazrullah is still very much in love with you. What happened?”
“He’s very kind. He’s very tedious,” she replied.
I was irritated by her assumed superiority and was about to comment on it when I saw at the caravanserai gate the tall figure of Zulfiqar, spying on us, but after a while I had to conclude that he was not spying, for he seemed neither jealous nor suspicious; he looked as if he were glad that Ellen had found a chance to talk with an American. I thought: Wonder what they talk about when they’re alone. Aloud I asked, “Can Zulfiqar read and write?”
“Books, no. Figures … better than either of us.”
She said this in a bored manner implying that no further comment from me would be welcomed, so I observed, “Nazrullah seemed one of the ablest men in the country.”
“He is,” she said with equal finality and equal boredom. Then with a show of real warmth she added, “His wife Karima’s even better.”
“I met her…inchaderi.”
“Karima! She never wears chaderi if she can help it.”
“I had a government official with me.”
“That’s how it works,” she observed, reverting to a monotone. “Karima observes the custom to protect Nazrullah, and he assures the government that he approves in order to protect Karma.”
It was a neatly phrased summary, but I remembered what Nazrullah had said on the desert: On the morning after the marriage Ell
en came to breakfast wearing a chaderi. Probably I should have kept my mouth shut, but she had gone out of her way to irritate and embarrass me, so I remarked, “Nazrullah told me that when you first came to Afghanistan you wore the chaderi.”
She blushed angrily, blood coursing across her beautiful face. “Nazrullah talks a lot,” she said.
“Karima talked a lot, too,” I continued. “She told me that while you were still in America you learned that Nazrullah already had a wife.”
She laughed uneasily. “Why are you American men so preoccupied with such trivialities? Of course I knew he was married. This proves, Mr. Miller, why you could never understand my reasons for leaving Dorset, Pennsylvania.”
“Any chance of my understanding why you left Nazrullah?”
She looked at me steadily, almost insultingly, with deep blue eyes, then laughed. “No one who works for the American embassy could possibly understand.”
That did it. “If you were a man,” I said coldly, “I’d bust you in the nose. Why don’t you have the decency to tell your parents where you are?”
My bluntness shocked her and she bit her knuckles, then toyed nervously with the embroidery on her blouse. “Your question is a sensible one, Mr. Miller, and it hurts. My parents are good, decent people and I’m sure they mean well. But what can I possibly write to them?” She looked at me with the first compassion I had seen since we started talking, but it quickly faded. “Would you suggest something like this?” she asked brightly, as she began reciting an imaginary letter.
“Dear Mumsy and Dadsy,
I have run away from Mr. Nazrullah because, he’s one of the most boring men on earth, and I’m sure his other wife thinks so too. He could move right into Dorset without causing a ripple, because he believes like you, Mumsy-wumsy, that God wants men to have big cars, that electricity makes people happy, and that if you sell enough canned goods, tensions will cease. You were deadly afraid of him, Dadsy-wadsy, but you shouldn’t have been. He’s your twin brother and if you’d recognized a good thing when you saw it, you’d have fought to keep him, not me. Because he could sell insurance ten times better than you ever did.
Your loving daughter,
Ellen
Bryn Mawr 1945, busted out
P.S. I am now living with a man who has no home, no nation and no responsibility except ninety-one camels. His wife made me the most adorable gray blouse you ever saw in your life, and I’m wearing it as I hike over the Lower Himalayas. I’ll write to you next from Jhelum when we get there eleven months from now.
Your Ellie”
She looked at me bitterly and said, “If you think that would put them at ease, send it to them. Frankly, I haven’t the guts.”
I was disgusted with her. She sounded like a freshman I knew at Mount Holyoke, except for two things: the other girl’s father sold stocks and bonds in Omaha, and in her sophomore year she got some sense. This Jaspar girl was irritating, and I said something which must have made me sound foolish: “When the years pass, you’ll be old. What will you do in a Kochi caravan then?”
“What will Senator Vandenberg do? He’ll be old. And you … what’s your first name, Miller?”
“Mark. Groton and Yale.”
“That’s just dandy. If there’s anyone I like to meet in the middle of the Afghan desert it’s a Yale man. Tell me, do you honestly believe that in my home town of Dorset, Pennsylvania, there’s a basic good, while here in Afghanistan there’s a basic evil?”
“I believe that anyone does best when he clings to his own nation, his own people … and his own religion. I understand you gave yours up.”
“Presbyterianism is not difficult to give up,” she replied.
“A moment ago I said to myself, She sounds like a Mount Holyoke freshman. I put you about four years too high. You sound like a high-school freshman.”
“Damn you!” she snapped. “I’m sitting here among the camels thinking: That poor dear boy, Mark Miller. Groton and Yale. The years will pass and he’ll be stuck in some pothole like the embassy in Brussels. And hell be old. And he’ll have missed the whole meaning … the whole goddamned meaning.” She looked at me sadly and said, “You’re a young jerk and you’re already prematurely middle-aged and I’m terribly sorry for you.”
I stared at her. I said nothing for at least four minutes, just stared at her. Finally she shrugged her shoulders and said, “I surrender. Get me some paper. I’ll write the letter.”
I asked her if she would come inside, but she replied, “I never get enough of this free air,” and as I entered the caravanserai to get some paper from my brief case I met Zulfiqar and told him, “She’s going to write to her parents,” and he replied, “I asked her to, months ago.”
I handed her the paper and she sat scrunched up on the rocks, biting my pen. Then, as she started writing freely and easily, I had a second chance to study her. If I hadn’t just heard her bitter comments, I would have sworn that she was exactly what I had guessed when I first saw her in the caravanserai: a lovelier, more beautiful, more delightful person than we had seen in the embassy photographs. She simply did not look like a disgruntled post-adolescent. She was a mature, sensible-looking woman with a plenitude of charm, and if I could have erased her recent conversation I could easily have agreed with her enthusiastic roommate, whose report I now recalled so clearly: Ellen Jaspar was a dear, sweet kid. She was loyal, responsive, and trustworthy. It sounded like the Girl Scout oath, but now Ellen came to a difficult part of her letter and a scowl crossed her face—a harsh, belligerent scowl—and I could not possibly kid myself into thinking that I was dealing with any Girl Scout.
“Will that do?” she asked, thrusting the finished letter at me. I took it, turned away from the bright sunlight, and read:
Dear Folks,
I’m terribly sorry I haven’t written sooner, but some rather dramatic things have been happening and frankly, I found it almost impossible to explain them to you in a letter. Let me say quickly that they leave me happier than I have ever been, in better spirits, secure in all things. I love you very much.
My marriage to Nazrullah didn’t work out too well, but it was not because of his unkindness. He was an even better man than I told you, and I am terribly sorry to have hurt him, but there was no escape. I am now with some wonderful people whom you would like, and I’ll tell you all about them later.
To show you how crazy this world can be, I am now sitting with a herd of camels on the edge of the desert talking to a perfectly delightful Yale man, Mark Miller, who will send you a fuller letter of his own explaining all that has happened. He will tell you that I am happy, healthy and alive.
Your loving daughter …
Thinking of my own close-knit family in Boston, I could have wept at her inability to communicate with her people. I returned the letter and said, “Sign it, and I’ll airmail it from Kandahar.”
But before writing her signature she let the pen hang idly and mused, “God knows, Miller, I told them the truth. I am happy, healthy and alive. And if I were to grow old as pleasantly as Racha has done, I’d be content.”
She signed the letter, addressed the envelope carefully, then bit the pen for some moments. Extending the sealed letter provocatively toward me, she waved it twice, then studiously tore it into minute bits, which she scattered among the camels. “I cannot send such evasions,” she said hoarsely.
We stared at each other for some time and I saw in her eyes hatred, bitterness and confusion. But as I continued to look at her, these ugly attributes vanished and I saw merely the appealing gaze of an attractive, perplexed young woman. I said, “I’ll write to them.”
“Please do,” she replied.
I returned to the caravanserai, where I faced one of the more difficult decisions of my misson: on the one hand I was dead tired from the long, tragic day on the desert followed by the sleepless night at the pillar, so that my whole autonomic system demanded that I fall asleep; but on the other I awaited the momentary arrival of a res
cue mission led by either Nazrullah or troops from Kandahar, so that before the rescue party took me away I wanted to see as much of Kochi life as possible. I forced myself to stay awake, watching the children and the older women working at their jobs. I thought constantly: I’m probably the only person from the American embassy who ever saw the Kochis close-up. I can sleep tomorrow.
But when I looked at Dr. Stiglitz, spread out on the floor by the pillar, it became impossible to fight sleep any longer. I dropped on the hard-packed earth and almost immediately lost consciousness. My last memory was of Racha throwing a shawl over me.
I awoke in darkness and my first thought was: Good! If the rescue party hasn’t made it by now, they won’t come till tomorrow. I can stay with the Kochis tonight. The big room was filled with the smell of cooking, for Zulfiqar had ordered a substantial fire, around which many were working. Then I became aware of someone sitting beside me, and it was Mira in her red skirt, and when I stirred she said in Pashto, “Zulfiqar told me to keep the children away.” Then in broken English she said, “Ellen tell me English few words.” She spoke in a lilting, pleasant voice that sounded as if it belonged to a younger girl, and she had a gamin smile. When I reached out to inspect her attractive pigtails, which no other Kochis wore, she smiled with pride and explained, “Ellen fix my hair American way.” She pronounced Ellen’s name as her father did, in two gentle syllables.
In Pashto I asked, “Does Ellen work in the camp?”
“All work,” she replied in English, followed by Pashto: “Have you come to take Ellen away?”
“I wanted to, but she won’t come.”
“I am so glad.”
“Who told you I was going to take her away?”
“We’ve always known she would leave some day,” Mira replied. “Look how she works.”
Ellen, not knowing that I was awake, was busy at the fire, the antagonisms of her letter lost in work. Zulfiqar had killed a sheep in honor of the ferangi and it was roasting, with Ellen in charge to see that it didn’t burn. From time to time she stuck a long fork into the flanks and tasted it, smacking her lips as she did so. Children stayed close to the fire, begging her for stray pieces of mutton, as if she were their mother, while against the wall lounged Kochi men, waiting silendy for the unscheduled feast. Other women were preparing pilau in stone vessels, while Dr. Stiglitz and Zulfiqar were opening K-rations, whose tops were promptly licked clean by other children. Except for the American cans, it was a scene that dated back to the beginning of man on the plains of Central Asia.