A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (17 page)

‘Bloody thing,’ said Hugh gloomily. ‘I don’t think it was much use anyway.’ Above us choughs circled uttering melancholy croaking noises. ‘We’ve got to make a decision about going on,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got to be absolutely certain it’s the right one, because our lives are going to depend on it.’

Anywhere else such a remark would have sounded overdramatic. Here it seemed no more than an accurate statement of fact.

‘How long do you think it will take to get to the top?’

‘All of four hours and then only if we don’t go any slower.’

It was now one-thirty; we had been climbing for nine hours.

‘That means four-thirty at the summit. Going down, four hours at least to the Castle, and then twenty minutes to the
col
on the ridge. It’ll be nine o’clock. Then there’s the ice slope. Do you think we can manage the
col
to the camp in the dark?’

‘The only alternative is to sleep on the ridge. We haven’t got any sleeping-bags. I’m afraid we wouldn’t last out. We can try if you like.’

For a moment we were dotty enough to consider going on. It was a terrific temptation: we were only 700 feet below the summit.
Then we decided to give up. Both of us were nearly in tears. Sadly we ate our nougat and drank our cold coffee.

The descent was terrible. With the stimulus of the summit gone, we suddenly realized how tired we were. But, although our strength and morale were ebbing, we both agreed to take every possible precaution. There was no mountain rescue service on this mountain. If anything happened to one of us, a bad sprain would be enough, it would be the end for both. As we went down I found myself mumbling to myself again and again, ‘One man’s death diminishes mee, one man’s death diminishes mee.’

Yet, though we were exhausted, we felt an immense sense of companionship. At this difficult moment the sense of dependence on one another, engendered perhaps by the fact that we were roped together and had one another’s lives in our hands, produced in me a feeling of great affection for Hugh, this tiresome character who had led me to such a spot.

At six we were at the
col
below the Castle, exactly as he had prophesied. The conditions were very bad. All the way down from the Castle a tremendous wind had been blowing and the mountain-side was flooded in a ghastly yellow light as the sun went down. As the clouds came up the wind became a blizzard, a howling gale with hail and snow battering us. We had come down from the Castle without crampons. Now to cross the head of the
col
in this wind on the frozen snow, we had to put them on again. Still wearing them, we lowered ourselves one by one over the overhanging crest into a gully on the south face.

The south face was a grey desolation and the gully was the wrong one. It was too wide for an easy descent and was smooth ice the whole way for two hundred feet.

Twice we had to take off and put on our crampons, almost blubbering with fatigue and vexation, as the straps were frozen and adjusting them seemed to take an eternity. Worst of all the
wind on the ridge was blowing snow into the gully, half-blinding us and sending down big chunks of rock. One of these hit Hugh on the shoulder, hurting him badly, and I thought he was going to faint. The gully was succeeded by a minute chimney full of ice, down which I glissaded on my behind for twenty feet until Hugh pulled me up. Very stupidly I was wearing my crampons attached to a sling round my middle and I sat on them for the full distance, so that they went in to the full length of the spikes, scarring me for life in a most interesting manner.

By now it was quite dark. We had an hour on the rocks, now covered with a fresh sheet of ice, that I shall remember for the rest of my life. Then we were home. ‘Home’ was just the ledge with the two sleeping-bags, some food and the stoves, but we had thought of nothing else for hours.

As we stumbled on to it, a great dark shape rose up and struck a match, illuminating an ugly, well-known face with a wart on its forehead. It was Shir Muhammad, most feckless and brutal of drivers, come up to find us.

‘I was worried about you,’ he said simply, ‘so I came.’

It was nine o’clock; we had been climbing for seventeen hours.

By now we were beyond speech. After a long hour the contents of both cooking-pots boiled simultaneously, so we drank tea and ate tomato soup at the same time. It was a disagreeable mixture, which we followed with a pot of neat jam and two formidable-looking sleeping-pills that from their size seemed more suitable for horses than human beings.

‘I don’t approve of drugs,’ were Hugh’s last words before we both sank into a coma, ‘but I think that under the circumstances we’re justified.’

We woke at five. My first thought as I came to was that I had been operated on, an illusion heightened by the sight of Hugh’s bloody bandaged hands gripping the mouth of his sleeping-bag.
Mine were now in the same condition as Hugh’s had been two days previously; his were worse than ever.

It took us both a long time to dress and Shir Muhammad had to button our trousers, which was a difficult operation for someone who had never had fly buttons of his own. It was the only time I ever saw him laugh. Then he laced our boots.

As soon as I started to move I realized that my feet were beyond boots, so I decided to wear rubber shoes.

By the time we left the platform it was like a hot plate. Shir Muhammad went first, skipping downhill like a goat bearing a great load. Soon he became impatient with our funereal progress and left us far behind.

At the head of the glacier Hugh stopped and took off his pack.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Rope,’ he croaked. ‘Left a rope. Got to go back.’

‘Don’t be an ass.’

‘Might need it … another try.’

‘Not this year.’

It was useless to argue with him. He was already crawling uphill. My return to fetch the karabiner on the other glacier had created an impossible precedent.

The glare of the small snowfield was appalling. My goggles were somewhere in my rucksack, but I had not the will power to stop and look for them. Soon I developed a splitting headache. With my rubber shoes on I fell continuously. I found myself becoming very grumpy.

At the top of the
moraine
Abdul Ghiyas was waiting for us. He had passed Shir Muhammad without seeing him, somewhere in the labyrinth on the lower slopes of this provoking mountain, and was clucking to himself anxiously.

‘Where is Carless
Seb
?’

‘Up.’

‘He is dead?’

‘No, he is coming.’

‘You have climbed the mountain?’

‘No.’

‘Why is Carless
Seb
not with you?’

It was only after much pantomime that I was able to convince him that Hugh was not dead, sacrificed to my own ambition, and he consented to follow me down, carrying my load.

But at the camp we waited an hour, two hours for Hugh; there was no sign of him. I began to be worried and reproached myself for not having waited. The three drivers, huddled over the fire preparing a great secret mess in honour of our arrival, were mumbling, ‘Carless
Seb
, Carless
Seb
, where is Carless
Seb?
’ droning on and on.

Finally Hugh appeared. With his beard full of glacial cream and his cracked lips, he looked like what he in fact was, the survivor of a spectacular disaster.

‘Where have you been? We’ve been worried stiff.’

‘I got the rope,’ he said, ‘then I went to sleep under a rock.’

Back at the camping place in the Chamar after our failure on the mountain both Hugh and myself would have welcomed the attentions of the administrative officer, who to me had seemed such a figure of fun when Hugh had proposed his inclusion in the expedition. We would also have welcomed a cook and supplies of invalid food, meat essences, biscuits and thin soups, instead of the robust fare which was all we had to look forward to. I was glad to notice that even Hugh was becoming tired of Irish stew; but I still wondered what we should have lived on if I hadn’t insisted on bringing the compo. rations.

The need for the administrative officer made itself particularly apparent when it came to discussing the next part of our journey with the drivers: instead of having a well-earned rest, Hugh was forced to spend half the night persuading them to accompany us into Nuristan.

Against the journey Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan had advanced every possible objection: that the way was impossible for the horses; that the inhabitants were idolatrous unbelievers who would murder us all; that we had no written permission to
enter the country; and that if we did manage to reach it there would be no food for man or beast. Only Shir Muhammad, that unpredictable man, said nothing. In some ways he was much more Citizen of the World than the others; perhaps, too, he thought himself the equal of any Nuristani he was likely to encounter.

Finally, after the argument had gone on for some hours and still showed no sign of coming to a satisfactory conclusion, Hugh lost his temper.

‘Go back then!’ he said. ‘Go back to Jangalak and tell your people that Newby
Seb
and I have gone to Nuristan alone – and that you let us go alone! They will call you women.’

As soon as he had said this it was abundantly clear that both Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan were prepared to let us do just this very thing. Hugh was forced to try a more subtle approach.

‘… that you would not come with us to Nuristan because the way is hard and because you are faint-hearted I can perhaps forgive, but that you should call the Nuristanis who are your brothers “idolatrous unbelievers”, they who have only recently been converted to Islam and need your prayers – Sunnites like yourselves, and probably better ones –
that is another matter
.’

Here Hugh paused, glaring frightfully. After allowing his words to sink in he resumed: ‘When I return
from Nuristan
(masterly stroke) I shall demand audience of General Ubaidullah Khan and tell him what you said about “idolatrous unbelievers”. General Ubaidullah Khan is a man of importance and,’ Hugh added with the final touch of genius, ‘he is also a Nuristani.’

The effect of this was remarkable. At once all opposition ceased. Before we finally fell asleep long after midnight I asked Hugh who General Ubaidullah Khan was.

‘So far as I know,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t exist. I just invented him; but I think he’s going to be a very useful man to know.’

At five o’clock the following morning the valley was full of white cloud. Whereas waking on the ibex ledge had been like coming-to from an operation, waking to find oneself wrapped in cloud was like being dead and in heaven.

After Shir Muhammad and Badar Khan had done up our buttons and laced our boots, just when the main body of the expedition was moving off, I went to try to photograph the
aylaq
and, if possible, the occupants. I would not have considered doing so for a moment, if the girls who lived in the bothy with the cardinal had not betrayed such a lively interest in our affairs. But all the previous afternoon, when neither Hugh nor I had been fit to take any active interest in anything, they had stood on the roof unveiled, laughing and shrieking, even waving at us; in fact behaving in a fashion that would have been unthinkable at a lower altitude and in a less remote place. But, as I expected, when I reached the
aylaq
there was no sign of anybody.

Taking a photograph with a complex modern camera when one’s hands are done up in bandages is like trying to eat asparagus with boxing gloves on. As I struggled with the apparatus Abdul Ghiyas intervened – in fact he emerged from the bothy to do so.

‘
Seb
, it is a bad thing,’ he said sombrely, ‘it is against the religion.’

In the face of such opposition, I abandoned the attempt to photograph even the pile of stones that was the
aylaq
and after saying good-bye to the cardinal, who had come to the door with Abdul Ghiyas, together we followed the others who had already set off in the direction of the Chamar Pass.

By now the clouds had rolled away and as we crossed the Chamar river the water danced and sparkled in the sunlight. Although the water was extremely shallow, the drivers made a great business of fording it. They were being forced to go to
Nuristan against their wills and they were not going to make it easy for us to get there.

Beyond the stream the trail was difficult to follow, only showing itself where the rock was scratched and by an occasional footprint in the patches of earth where a strange plant grew, with a furry cap on it like a mauve bearskin.

As we went on the signs became fainter and I began to be anxious. Finally they became so indistinct that it required an act of faith to recognize them at all; and we were left plodding over an expanse of black rock exactly the same as the rest of the hillside. In front of us the mountain that divided us from Nuristan rose up like a wall topped with spikes. It seemed impossible that we could find a way up it, let alone with the horses.

‘Do you think this is the right way?’ I asked Hugh, who was striding doggedly towards the foot of the cliff.

‘I hope so. If we make a bog of it the first time and don’t hit the track to the top, the men will give up.’

All of a sudden we came on a small pile of horse droppings. It was as if under different circumstances we had found a bag of gold.

‘That’s encouraging,’ Hugh said, as Shir Muhammad whisked them into a bag which he carried for the purpose. ‘If only there were more of them. If only they weren’t so old.’

We came to a muddy green lake. Around the edge of it there were footmarks showing the usual impressions of motor tyres. There were chips of wood lying about. Whoever owned the feet had been whittling a stick. We were back on the road.

We began to climb in earnest. The sun was high and the heat was awful; it beat down on the leaden rocks and reflected back at us in a dull glare.

The track went up the mountain-side in steps, a series of sharp diagonals marked here and there by cairns formed by two or three
stones piled on top of one another. The horses hated it; they shied, lurched forward a few steps, then slipped back with their hooves screeching. All the time Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan were talking to them in undertones. I wondered what they were saying; perhaps they were telling them to take it easy. Abdul Ghiyas was beginning to look triumphant. Shir Muhammad did nothing. The fate of the expedition hung in the balance.

‘If the horses can’t do it, there’s only one thing to do. Unload them and hump the stuff over ourselves.’

Fortunately at the very moment that Hugh made this inhuman proposal Badar Khan raised a cry of ibex, pointing high up the mountain that rose a thousand feet above us.

‘
Bozi kuhi
, there he goes!’

‘There he goes, the
bozi kuhi
!’ from Shir Muhammad.

‘Ah, the
bozi kuhi
!’ said Abdul Ghiyas.

All three of them were shielding their eyes against the glare and moving their fingers from right to left following the
bozi kuhi
.

All I could see was acres and acres of black rock.

‘There he is,’ said Hugh. He pointed a bandaged hand at the mountain; with his incipient beard he looked like a minor prophet.

‘Can you really see him?’

‘I think so. Yes. Now I can. There.’ He took my finger and guided it. I could still see nothing.

‘There!’

‘Where?’

‘There! No, not there! There! You must be blind!’

At last I lost patience.

‘There he goes,’ I said. ‘I can see him now.’

‘He’s not moving,’ said Hugh.

‘I can see two
bozi kuhi
,’ said Shir Muhammad.

In the excitement of seeing the ibex, the air of torpor that hung like a cloud over our little party was dispelled. Thumping
and bellowing, the drivers urged the wretched horses round the hairpins and up the slabs. Subsequently there were many halts whilst we pushed and pulled, but at least there was no longer any question of unloading them and carrying the gear bit by bit a thousand feet to the top – a prospect that was almost impossible to contemplate in our present condition. In just over two and a half hours from the
aylaq
we reached the top and halted in the shade just below the
col
itself. It was an extremely high pass. Without the aneroid it was impossible to be sure but, by a comparison with heights we already knew on Mir Samir, it must have been between 16,000 and 16,500 feet. Mir Samir itself was about three miles distant as the crow flies and we could see the whole south side of the mountain right up to the head of the Chamar Valley. We could see the ibex ledge where our camp had been, the Castle buttress and the whole of the east ridge. For the first time we really understood how very close we had been to getting to the top.

The crest of the ridge now immediately above our heads was like a harbour breakwater built by convict labour, a wild confusion of loose blocks heaped one on top of the other. The way through it was narrow, like the neck of a bottle, so that it was only by pushing and shoving that the horses were popped through to the other side like corks.

‘
Kotal-i-Chamar
,’ said the drivers.

It was the
col
; we were beyond the great divide; we were in Nuristan.

One more step and we would have fallen straight into it. We were huddled together, men and animals, on the edge of a cliff at the head of a desolate valley that stretched away downhill, a wilderness of bleak, brown scree with here and there a drift of dirty, speckled snow, until it was lost in haze. The mountains that rose above it to the north and east now concealed the fields of
snow and ice we had seen from Mir Samir and were a uniform khaki brown. It was all a little disappointing.

The first part of the descent needed two men to each horse; one to lead, the other with a tight grip on the tail to brake hard at the bends; but once we were off the ridge Hugh and I pressed on alone.

For an hour and a half we followed the valley down and down. All the time it grew hotter; a little vegetation began to appear, pin-cushions of tough grass. Finally we came out into a deep valley that ran north and south, at right angles to our own. It was green and open with a river running through it and on the meadow grass cows, sheep and horses grazed placidly. Standing alone in the green sward was a solitary
aylaq
, a bothy and some stone cattle pens open to the sky. It seemed deserted; in the whole valley there was no sign of anyone.

After the miles of scree we had descended the grass was like a carpet into which our feet sank; after the still airlessness of the upper valley the breeze that blew was as refreshing as a cool drink. Apart from the sighing of the wind and the sound of the river, a huge silence hung over the place.

Men and horses were far behind. Feeling slightly nervous we began to cross towards the
aylaq
.

We were a hundred yards from it when there was a shout and we saw our first Nuristanis.

They came pouring out of the bothy and raced over the grass towards us at a tremendous pace, dozens of them. It seemed impossible that such a small building could have contained so many men. As they came bounding up they gave an extraordinary impression of being out of the past. They were all extraordinary because they were all different, no two alike. They were tall and short, light-skinned and dark-skinned, brown-eyed and grey-eyed; some, with long straight noses, might have passed for Serbs or
Croats; others, with flashing eyes, hooked noses and black hair, might have been Jews. There were men like gypsies with a lock of hair brought forward in ringlets on either side of the forehead. There were men with great bushy beards and moustaches that made them look like Arctic explorers. There were others like early Mormons with a fuzz of beard round their faces but without moustaches. Some of the tallest (well over six feet), broken-nosed, clean-shaven giants, were like guardsmen in a painting by Kennington. Those who were hatless had cropped hair and the younger ones, especially those with rudimentary beards, looked as strange and dated as the existentialists of St Germain des Prés; while those whose beards were still in embryo were as contemporary as the clients of a
Café Espresso
and would have been accepted as such without question almost anywhere in the Western World.

They were extraordinary and their clothes were extraordinary too. All but those who were bare-headed wore the same flat Chitrali cap that Hugh had worn ever since we had left Kabul, only theirs were larger and more floppy, and the colour of porridge. Worn on the back of the head the effect was Chaucerian.

They wore drab brown, collarless shirts, like the Army issue, and over them loose waistcoats or else a sort of surcoat – a waistcoat without buttons. Their trousers were brown homespun, like baggy unbuckled plus-fours. They reached to the middle of the calf and flapped loosely as their wearers pounded up the meadow. They seemed to wear some kind of loose puttee around the lower leg, and some of the younger men wore coloured scarves knotted loosely around their necks. All were barefooted.

‘It’s like being back in the Middle Ages.’

It was the only coherent remark Hugh had time for. The next moment they were on us, uttering strange cries. Before we knew what was happening we were being borne towards the
aylaq
with
our feet barely touching the ground, each the centre of a mob, like distinguished visitors to a university.

I had a blurred vision of a heap of ibex horns and a row of distended skins hanging on the wall of the bothy (inside out they looked like long-dead dogs), then I received a terrific crack on the head as we hurtled in through the low opening – we were inside.