Three aspects of nomad life distressed me: the Kochis were dirty; they were unkempt; and they made no attempt to develop intellectual interests. The wild free life of the wanderer left much to be desired.
The baggy trousers and flapping white shirts of the Kochi men were rarely clean, while the felt skirts of the women were apt to be streaked with dirt and tangled with briars, which they ignored. They washed infrequently, but I must admit that the extreme dryness of the air prevented offensive odors from accumulating. In my own case, with the humidity at two or three I could wear a shirt for more than a week because nothing could happen to it except a downright accident: there was no soot to soil the cloth and it was anatomically impossible for perspiration to collect. The minute it appeared it evaporated. I suspected that many Kochi garments were worn for months at a time without washing; only thus could they have become as dirty as they did.
The slovenliness of the Kochis was principally shown in the way they managed their hair. Women rarely combed theirs and men wore shoulder-length bobs which flapped with any vigorous movement. Their heads, men’s and women’s alike, were actually matted and probably worse. I often thought how much fun it would be to run the whole clan through a barber shop some afternoon to see what surprises would turn up.
As for the life of the mind, the speculation about good and evil, the judgment of past and future, there was none. Since they could neither read nor write, and since there was no radio, conversation was limited to the chance events of the caravan: the birth of sheep, the straying of a camel, the long march, outwitting the border guards and who stole what at the last bazaar. Days sped into months and months into years without any extension of the group intellect. It may be that the Kochis were supremely happy in their rough adaptation to nature; I often found them boring, and I had the ungenerous suspicion that Ellen Jaspar found comfort in the caravan partly because against their illiteracy she could stand out as a person with desirable skills. In any event, I noticed how often she came to Stiglitz or me to escape the dullness of the Kochis and to talk philosophically with an educated person.
There were two exceptions to this tradition of dirtiness, slovenliness and apathy: Zulfiqar and his daughter Mira were alert mentally and far above average in cleanliness, largely due to Ellen, who cut Zulfiqar’s hair and tended his clothes. As to Mira, she kept herself well groomed partly because Ellen gave her instruction and partly because she mimicked whatever Ellen did in the way of cleanliness or personal adornment
She owned several changes of costume: red dress, blue dress, gray felt dress; blue, red, white, green blouses; filmy gray, brown and white turbans; and an extra pair of sandals that she wore only when heading for some village bazaar off the caravan trail. Best of all, she had acquired a stout comb with which she managed her black hair and a washrag which she applied to her clear and even skin. Her face was brown and she wore no makeup, but her eyes and brows were so black that in comparison her face looked more creamy white than brown.
On the trail I often walked with Mira, whose job it was to help mind the sheep, which represented a large proportion of the Kochi wealth, and to swing along beside her as she chattered in Pashto or broken English was delightful. I tried repeatedly to fathom her narrow world and soon discovered that she knew nothing of history or other school subjects and had no desire to learn. But she did not share the apathy of the other Kochis, for she knew much about Central Asia and in all matters affecting the Kochis was an expert. Skilled in trading, witty in, negotiation, and a master in the care of animals, she confessed a major sorrow: her clan had but one horse, and it was assigned to Zulfiqar.
“A man like you should not walk with the rest of us,” she told me. “In your own country you would be a chief.” I asked her not to feel sorry for me and reminded her that I did have a jeep, which in some ways was better than a horse. She considered this for a moment, then concluded, “Where we go a horse is better.”
“Don’t worry. I like to walk.”
“A chief ought to have his own horse. Look at my father! Would he be so powerful without a horse?”
But if there were disappointments in nomad life there were also congenial surprises and none was more appealing than Maftoon, the cockeyed cameleer. We had marched five days toward Musa Darul when I happened to see a camel halted for no reason that I could ascertain. I therefore started across the meadowland to retrieve the beast when I saw, crouched down between her hind legs, Maftoon, with turban awry, mouth open, and on his face an expression of almost heavenly bliss. With his right hand on the camel’s teat, he was squirting a flow of milk directly from the udder into his mouth, drinking at the rate of about a quart a minute.
“What the hell are you doing, Maftoon?” I shouted.
“Hungry,” he said, halting the flow of milk and looking at me with his good eye.
“Get up! That milk’s for the babies.” He made no effort to leave his lunch, so I added, “And by the way, Maftoon, I’ve found out why Aunt Becky tries to bite you so much. You abuse her.”
The little man stayed crouched between the camel’s legs and looked at me with an expression of sorrow and disgust. “I abuse that beast?” he stammered.
“Yes!” I insisted. “I’ve listened to you the last three mornings. It’s a wonder she didn’t gum your arm again.”
“You listened …to what?”
“To Aunt Becky, complaining of the way you overload her, mistreat her. Damn it all, Maftoon, get away from that camel and listen to me.”
Reluctantly the little Kochi left his meal, stood up with his turban reaching his knees, and to my surprise laughed at me. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you’ll load Aunt Becky.” With that he left.
Next morning I was routed out of bed by the little cameleer and taken to where his beasts were being loaded. Aunt Becky, one of the largest animals we had, still rested on the thick callus built up on her chest, her pedestal it was called, and she was loath to leave it, but when she saw that I was to load her, and not her enemy Maftoon, she seemed as happy as a mournful, droopy-eyed, coat-shedding camel could; but as soon as I placed the first blanket on her—it must have weighed about three-quarters of a pound—she let out a sob that would have broken the heart of Nero. It was almost human, a wail of protest against the harshness of the world. I slapped her muzzle, and placed on the blanket a few items that she could hardly have felt, and her groans increased to the point of despair. She really sounded like my own Aunt Becky back in Boston, complaining of the Irish politicians, the Italian grocers, the Jewish merchants, and the ingratitude of her family. “How can I possibly bear this awful burden?” Becky the camel sobbed. No matter what I put on her back, the groans increased, and when she was burdened much more lightly than she had been when running over the desert with my jeep, she struggled to her ungainly feet as if this were her last day on earth; for me she would make that extra little effort and then collapse in a heap before my eyes. I gave her a slap and felt more kindly toward Maftoon. At eleven that morning Aunt Becky was striding along the trail with as much joy as a camel ever exhibits and gave me a pleasant nuzzle as I went past.
The next morning Maftoon summoned me again, and this time as soon as I approached Aunt Becky she became apprehensive that I was about to torture her once more, so I placed on her broad, hairy back a handkerchief. It had barely touched her when she began to rage in protest: “Oh, this is more than a poor camel can bear!” she seemed to say. A stranger listening from a distance would have sworn that I was pushing hot swords into her great bulk, and this kept up all during the loading; so on the third morning I said to Maftoon, “Let’s see how much this ugly beast can carry.” And this day we loaded her down with well over eight hundred pounds. Her protests were exactly the same; her reluctance to rise identical; and her loping, carefree performance on the trail no different from before. In fact, once we got her started, it was hard to stop her. She loved the heft of the burden and again nuzzled me as I went by. After this indoctrination I decided to leave the ca
mels to Maftoon, and it was well that I did, for when it came time to unload Aunt Becky her dim brain remembered that today she had been mistreated, and she started mauling Maftoon. Lucidly he escaped, but soon I saw him naked before the camel while she attacked his clothes. When he was dressed he warned me, “Miller Sahib! You better undress!”
I laughed at the suggestion, but as I approached the huge camel she started for me. Maftoon interceded and, since he had made his peace, saved me. Prudently I undressed and stood by while Aunt Becky kicked the very devil out of my clothes. She bit them, spat on them, and even urinated a little. The next morning we were friends again.
Caravan life provided moments of pride and arrogance: as dawn was breaking we would reach some rise in the trail from which we could look down upon a sleeping village, where dogs would spot us and begin to bark. A few men would appear to see what had agitated the dogs and, seeing the Kochis coming to town, would signal their neighbors, whereupon the villagers would rush about in a frenzy, moving indoors anything that might be stolen. Women in their chaderies would dash out to grab their children lest they be kidnaped, and families would remain cautiously by doorways as women stared through veils waiting for the approaching nomads. An excited hush would fall over the village, at whose outskirts the first Kochi camels were already sniffing.
At such entries Zulfiqar rode at the head of the column, a handsome figure with his rifle slung insolently across his pommel He affected not to see the frightened families and ignored the pestilent dogs. Behind him came the lumbering camels, with Aunt Becky thrusting her big, inquisitive face from side to side, followed by a large group of Kochi men; then the sheep and most of the women; finally the donkeys, the children, and the rear guard of armed men. It was an impressive caravan when seen in the close confines of a village street, but what outraged the villagers, men and women alike, was the brazen manner in which our nomad women marched handsomely forward with no chaderi.
When Zulfiqar’s clan moved through a village we had with us three additional elements for arousing suspicion and disgust: there was Ellen Jaspar, obviously not a Kochi; there was Dr. Stiglitz, and what was he doing in such a motley group; and there was the young American who marched with the beautiful nomad girl in the red dress.
Several times infuriated mountain mullahs dashed among us to spit at Ellen as they had done at Kandahar, but she had since learned to ward them off indulgently. She understood the moral and mental pressures these fanatics were experiencing in a changing world and she wished to do nothing that would exasperate them, but if Zulfiqar saw them coming, he patiently cut them off with his horse, whereupon the long-robed mullahs would back against some mud-walled house and curse our passing.
When the villagers tried to abuse Stiglitz or me they got a sharp surprise: we swore at them in Pashto, claimed to be light-skinned Kochis, and warned them to mind their own business. Sometimes they stopped dead and stared at us, whereupon we laughed and they laughed. Braver men among them would run beside us, asking if we were ferangi, and at such times we would confess that we were German and American, and the animosity would vanish. Occasionally some young man in the village who wanted to comprehend his world would march with us for miles, even to our camp, asking a hundred questions. Such men became our friends, and even if I had not mailed my report to Kabul, these inquisitive men would have got the message to our ambassador, by word of mouth from one village to the next until it crossed Afghanistan. It was such a rumor that had reached Shah Khan in Kabul: “Traveling with the Kochis is a blond ferangi.”
We had reached the halfway spot on our march to Kabul when we came upon an especially pathetic village, where I had a chance to see for myself the gentler side of Ellen Jaspar’s honest concern with human problems. It was not yet dawn as we moved down the main street, glaring back at frightened faces which peered at us through darkness, and Ellen whispered, “It does my heart good to compare these suspicious villagers with our free nomads.”
“I agree. I get a positive bang out of marching through a village like this.”
“Just think!” she cried with real intellectual excitement. “In a few years Afghanistan will destroy prisons like this”—she indicated the tight-barred houses—“and the country will go back to the ancient freedom of the caravan.”
I should have allowed the subject to drop, but I was struck by a fundamental contradiction in her thinking: the idea that freedom could be preserved only by turning back the clock. I could hear her arguing with Nazrullah at the site of the future dam: It’s a shame that the river must lose its freedom, refusing to realize that only when the river was harnessed and used could Afghanistan know the real freedom of release from poverty. Therefore I said, “I’m afraid you have it backwards, Ellen. Afghanistan will never gain a single freedom by reverting to the caravan. It will save itself by generating true freedom in the villages.”
“How?” she asked with some contempt.
“Roads, books, Nazrullah’s electricity.”
“Oh, Miller!” she cried passionately. “You misunderstand history and the nature of man. We are born free, like the nomads. But step by step we insist upon crawling into little prisons on little streets in mean little villages. We must destroy these prisons and restore the nomad spirit.”
“I’m sorry, Ellen. What you want is impossible. What we must do is go into the villages and rebuild them on a basis of freedom. We must go forward. We can’t go back.”
“But in Pennsylvania, my father is the village. In Afghanistan these surly people are the village. Will books and electricity cure my father … or these clods?”
“Only books and electricity can do it.”
She stopped in the middle of the road, pressed her right hand to her mouth, and weighed my arguments. Light from one of the houses, reflecting on her bracelets, flashed across her lovely face. “Miller,” she whispered generously, “in part you’re right, but you forget that men like my father …”
I was not allowed to hear her rebuttal, for out of the shadows darted a pretty little girl of nine or ten, less fearful than her elders. Running through the darkness, she caught Ellen’s hand and cried in Pashto, “Your bracelets are beautiful.” With a gesture of instinctive warmth, Ellen caught the child, swung her in the air, kissed her, and held her in her left arm while she took off one of her bracelets to give the child.
It was a moment I cannot forget. There in an alien street, beset by enmity, Ellen cradled the child in timeless pose: a lovely young mother holding in the darkness a child who intuitively trusted her; and I was forced to recall Karima as she said: Ellen knew that I could have children and apparently she couldn’t. Dr. Stiglitz will confirm that. I wondered if this were true, and if so, did it account for her essential barrenness of spirit?
My reflections were shattered by the agonizing shriek of the child’s mother, who burst upon us screaming, “The Kochis have stolen my child!”
This was a signal for villagers, long trained to repulse such thefts, to rush at us from many sides, and there was fighting. But what stunned me was the arrival of six or eight determined women in chaderies, moving swiftly through the darkness like avenging furies. Their shadowy forms engulfed Ellen as they tore at her hair, her clothes, her face. One thin figure in a gray chaderi swept in like a ferret and grabbed the child. Seeing that the little girl held a contaminated bracelet, the thin figure tore it from the child’s hands and threw it back at Ellen.
“Don’t steal our children!” a voice of passion warned. The avengers withdrew, but from the shadows came a gaunt, bearded man rushing belatedly to the brawl and hissing hatred.
“Whores! Whores!” he shouted, maneuvering like a robed ghost in his efforts to spit at Ellen.
Zulfiqar had seen the mullah coming and had deftly swung his horse across the man’s trajectory to drive him away. The mullah followed at a distance, screaming impotently; and thus we left the frightened villagers, who remained in excited groups, congratulating each other on having once more thwarted the Koch
i kidnapers.
Zulfiqar, concerned over Ellen’s welfare, dismounted to assure himself that all was well, and she buried her head in his shoulder, sniffling, “All I wanted to do was give the little girl a bracelet.”
“How did it start?” the big Kochi asked indulgently.
“Miller and I were having a peaceful argument …”
“About what?”
“I claimed that originally Afghanistan knew the freedom of the caravan, but that willfully the people put themselves in these village prisons under the rule of mullahs.”
“You’re right about the past.”
“Miller claimed that we can never go back to the caravan. That we will know freedom only when the villages have books and roads and electricity.”
“He’s right about the future,” and before Ellen could protest the decision, he leaped upon his horse to lead our caravan from the niggardly village, but then he galloped back to us and cried, “Some day all of us will live in villages like this. But they will be better villages.” And he was gone.
The very next morning I had poetic confirmation that Zulfiqar’s vision of the future was more likely than Ellen’s, for in the early hours when light was just beginning to break across the peaks of the Koh-i-Baba, we sighted a village where dogs were silent, and we crept upon it unawares and were well inside the confines before we were discovered —great camels lumbering down the main road, peering into windows as the villagers were rising— and at one corner I saw a house lit with candles, and it seemed, there in the shadow of the mountains, like all the warm, homely refuges of the world. It was a small segment of space, walled in against the wandering nomads and the camels. It was one man’s home. Not even the soaring freedom of the Kochi tents, pitched beside torrents in the mountain passes, could equal the security of that chance home we saw in the half-darkness of dawn. The village people knew something the nomads would never know, a kind of spiritual freedom, and if they were forced to pay a terrible price for it, perhaps that was their choice.