Full Tilt (14 page)

This evening I also met a young Dutch couple who arrived in Kabul a fortnight ago, on their first assignment abroad, and who are still wondering what hit them. I must admit that I do see their point and am duly grateful that I approached Afghanistan gradually. Had I flown direct from Dublin and landed in Kabul as a wide-eyed,
sensitive-nostrilled
newcomer to the East, I too might well have been unable to appreciate the finer points of Afghan life and culture. As it is, during my two months’ travelling from Istanbul to Meshed, the roads became daily less road-like, the mountains higher, the atmosphere rarer, the clothes stranger, the chairs scarcer, the Moslems more Islamic, the sanitary arrangements more alarming, the weather hotter, the stenches stronger, and the food dirtier. By the time I arrived at the Afghan frontier it seemed quite natural, before a meal, to scrape the dried mud off the bread, pick the hairs out of the cheese and remove the bugs from the sugar. I had also stopped registering the presence of fleas, the absence of cutlery, and the fact that I hadn’t taken off my clothes or slept in a bed for ten days.

I had dinner this evening at the home of the Provincial Governor with whom I had stayed in Doab. His young nineteen-year-old brother came on a cycle to guide me to the house and I tried out my ribs by going the two or three miles on Roz – an experiment of which the ribs did
not
approve.

The party was by way of being an Id family reunion. However, since the ramifications of even the average Afghan family overtax my brain I didn’t so much as attempt to grasp who was related to whom, or how, in this re-united family; but they were all equally hospitable and gracious and sincerely welcoming.

The large two-storey house was built – of mud, as usual – round three sides of a courtyard whose fourth side, facing the road, was a high secretive wall behind which the women could move about the garden unveiled. One small ground-floor room had been furnished in Western style and when I arrived everyone was dressed in Western clothes and sitting Western-fashion on the chairs, half of them with bouncing, gurgling, cherubic offspring on their knees (Afghans make very doting Daddies). They all spoke English or German with varying degrees of fluency – including the Governor’s wife, who is a university graduate in economics – and conversation flowed easily. After about half an hour, by which time we had become the best of friends, first one and then another rose and disappeared for a few minutes, to return in Afghan dress and resettle themselves, comfortably
cross-legged
, on their chairs. They could have made no more eloquent gesture of acceptance than this tacit admission that it was unnecessary to impress me by affecting Western ways.

While the younger women were helping the servants to prepare dinner their elders and I sat listening to the family orchestra playing the sort of traditional music that gets into your blood. I loved every minute of it and one of the young men was a quite exceptionally talented musician who afterwards played several solos on an
eight-stringed
instrument.

Dinner was served at 9 p.m., the dishes being laid on an enormous cloth spread on the floor of a room completely bare of furniture. It was a banquet such as I have not had since leaving Turkey and I feel now that I won’t need to eat again in the foreseeable future.

During the meal we discussed the ‘progress’ now being made by Afghanistan. The Government has recently produced a very fine book called
Afghanistan: Ancient Land with Modern Ways
, which, as the title implies, gives a rosy picture of the present situation – but that is understandable. What alarms me is that the general tone of the book reveals the Afghan Government’s unquestioning acceptance of
progress
along Western lines as being something entirely good and desirable. This educated Afghan family held the same tragic belief in the superiority of our ways over their ways. It is frightening to belong
to, and be in a fractional way responsible for, a civilisation that has such a hypnotic fascination for simple people everywhere – people whose very simplicity leaves them totally at our mercy. And so far we have shown little mercy, if that means anything more than the distribution of vaccines and the building of roads. With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology. The present state of our own national psychologies is a good enough advertisement for the need of a far more gradual change. I tried to point out to my friends that once they have created this terrible idol of the Modern State it will enslave them for ever and then it will be too late for them to see that ‘the good old days’ were best; they will be forced to continue worshipping their idol whatever the cost to their humanity. However, they thought I was mad to find more happiness and peace in an Afghan village than in a European industrial city.

One of my most pleasant memories of Kabul will be the walk home after dinner tonight, with the moon spilling silver over the mountains into the streets and the perfume of the acacia, in full bloom now, rich on the damp air, and not a mouse stirring from one side of the city to the other. I wonder is there any other capital city which one could cross at 10.30 p.m. without seeing a solitary person or a car or any sign of life.

This afternoon I changed £30-worth of travellers’ cheques in the bazaar and got Rs 20 for each £1, which is one-third more than the official Bank Rate. Of course the whole thing is madly illegal and I’ll have to smuggle the currency into both Pakistan and India, but it does mean only spending 1
s
. instead of 1
s
. 6
d
. every time I part with a rupee. In Teheran the money-changers work openly but here it’s all frightfully hush-hush and melodramatic. You go down into a maze of smelly little alleys and walk along with your hands held in a certain position, indicating that you’ve been initiated by someone the changer already trusts. Then a little boy of about seven or eight
appears, wearing an appropriately significant expression, and he looks at you and you look at him, after which he saunters casually off and you follow and enter a bakery and go behind the scenes where you sit sipping tea and haggling in a leisurely way about the rate of exchange; it’s all wonderfully unlike the respectability of changing a cheque in the West.

When I set off for Jalalabad in the morning I’m leaving behind the two pannier-bags and knapsack and all kit that would be superfluous during the next few months; I’ll collect it on the return journey. My friends here are paralysed with horror at the thought of anyone going on a five-month trip with only a saddlebag of luggage, but the fact is that the further you travel the less you find you need and I see no sense in frolicking around the Himalayas with a load of inessentials. So I’m down to two pens, writing-paper, Blake’s poems, map, passport, camera, comb, toothbrush, one spare pair of nylon pants and nylon shirt – and there’s plenty of room left over for food as required from day to day. It’s a good life that teaches you how little you need to be healthy and happy, if not particularly clean!

I left Kabul at 6.30 a.m. and covered 115 miles today. The ribs are still uncomfortable but not actually painful and a strong east wind tempered the fierce sun while Roz and I were moving. The road was atrocious for forty miles, though excellent for the rest, and it was an odd sensation to be going gradually but steadily
down
over most of the way, just pedalling automatically – but think of the return journey! Kabul is at 7,000 feet and, though I don’t know what the altitude here is, the air feels positively thick with oxygen after so long on the heights. Roz got one puncture in her new tyre this afternoon and a truck-driver stopped when he saw me struggling with it and did the job in less than ten minutes. Of course he would
not
accept the gift of a packet of American cigarettes.

We passed through some tremendous scenery and saw a most
awe-inspiring
engineering feat – the road through the Tangi Sharo Gorge. Here the mountains are almost sheer walls of solid grey rock and the
road pirouettes its way down thousands of feet to river level. The surface has not been metalled yet so I walked, which was safer anyway with no back brake. From the top the Kabul river looks a mere thread of water, though in fact it’s a torrent in a mad, foaming rush to join the Indus.

During the afternoon I had a most exciting bathe (not swim) in the Kabul. I picked a spot where the current would wash me up about a quarter of a mile downstream on a bank of gravel, and just went with it, enjoying the thrilling sensation of being swept along at such speed by the flood; I went down four times and watching Pathans obviously thought me too mad to be quite true! That was near here, where harvesting is in full swing, wheat being cut by hand with the most primitive sickles and carried home on men’s backs. It is very lovely to see rows of trees in early dense fresh greenery standing amidst fields of pure gold corn, with low blue mountains behind and beyond them again the massive ranges of the southern Hindu Kush burning against the sky like a white fire. Orchards of (I think) pomegranate trees sometimes line the road and look like a new sort of Christmas tree with their profusion of scarlet, bell-shaped blossom. I can’t attempt to describe the various exotic shrubs of the region; they line the streets of this city and their scent defeats even the stagnant
jubes
– which are equally remarkable in their own way.

I have left a dozen broken hearts behind me in Kabul, which is not as romantic as it sounds, since they are all in the Tourist Bureau! Obviously,
qua
tourist, I’m the answer to an Afghan’s prayer – they admitted I was one of the few to enter their offices without a list of complaints from here to Eternity. Anyway I implored them, almost with tears in my eyes, not to pander to outsiders and defile Afghanistan with cafés on every mountain pass and juke-boxes in hotels and souvenir shops in Bamian. Tourists who want these extras can get them in practically every accessible country of the world.

The poor chaps at the Tourist Bureau were in misery about my accident on the bus, yet, as I pointed out, it could as easily have happened in Ireland, only there it wouldn’t be a fight about fares but a drunken brawl going home from a hurling match and a hurley instead of a rifle-butt!

At midday I went asleep for about half an hour on a mountainside, having been up since 5.30 a.m., and woke to find myself in a
tent
. I had decided that I was still asleep and dreaming when a filthy old man of the Kochi (nomad) tribes appeared and explained by signs that they’d noticed me going to sleep with no shade, which they thought very bad, so he erected one of their goat-hair tents over me – without loosening a pebble, they move so very stealthily. The moral here is that the basis of a successful psychological approach to Afghans is
not
to be afraid of them. Yet it’s literally true that the same old man would think nothing of murdering his own daughter if she ran away and married into an enemy tribe. It does take a while to sort out the fact that such people don’t want to murder
you
!

This city is full of Sikhs, who are undoubtedly the most
forthcoming
people on my route since Bulgaria. They told me that I could stay as long as I like in their Golden Temple at Amritsar, where a bed and three meals a day are given free to all travellers of every colour, class and creed – one of these religious ‘things’. The complexity of Eastern religions is quite beyond me – when you think of how Sikhs and Muslims massacred each other in 1947–48! Yet it’s absolutely true that once you leave Europe you could, if you were stingy enough, live entirely free on the generosity of people with about a twentieth of the average European income. The other day in a tea-house I made a casual remark to a total stranger about the postal rates here and he immediately offered to pay all my stamp bills – a man with no shoes to his feet! This is typical. Again, on my return from Pul-i-Khumri I found an envelope with 500
afghanis
(£3 10
s
.) in my writing case, and no one could have put it there but the Afghan doctor. This anonymity is characteristic; they don’t want to impress with their wealth or kindness, they just want to please Allah and obey Mohammed by ‘helping strangers in the land’. I realised that this gift was made to me under false pretences as my destitution, judging by outward appearances, is now beyond all, with trousers, shirt and shoes in small shreds, just hanging together – I hope – till I get to Peshawar. (This is why I didn’t give the ribs more time to recover; they could have been a good excuse to stay longer in Afghanistan.) I sent the
money, equally anonymously, to the TB Centre, which is desperately short of funds.

One of the current scandals of the world – I’ve been hearing about it from the Americans and British ever since I got to Asia – is the number of so-called Christians who take advantage of this Muslim doctrine to ‘borrow’ from the locals in these countries. The classic case concerns an Englishman and his wife driving home from Australia. They stayed with a doctor who befriended them in Tabriz, went to town on Persian rugs, ‘borrowed’ all the poor man’s savings (over £300) to pay for their souvenirs – and that was that. Of course this sponging is usually on a smaller scale and is chiefly done by hitch-hikers. Personally, I haven’t the slightest objection to accepting hospitality from
Westerners
– they can usually well afford it and their religion doesn’t forbid them to accept farewell gifts – but it enrages me to think of ‘our side’ being let down by such scroungers.

As far as I’m concerned the Khyber Pass hasn’t had a chance so far. It’s quite beautiful, though not comparable to the Shibar Pass, but I simply wasn’t in the mood to give it credit since for me it’s the route out of my beloved Afghanistan. From the top you can see Kabul, 156 miles away, with all the intervening mountains in a wild jumble of peaks below you. Then you say goodbye to Afghanistan – a sad moment – and turn a corner round the mountainside and it’s all Pakistan ahead, beautiful and friendly and primitive enough to satisfy anyone not newly parted from Afghanistan!

Now I’d better begin at the beginning. We left Jalalabad at 5.45 a.m. with fifty-six miles to go on a perfect road to reach the frontier. At first the level plain was wide and cultivated to the foot of distant,
snow-crested
mountains; then we came to rough brown hills overlooking the road and dotted with fortresses, in case we might forget that this is territory where trigger-happy tribesmen have been busy for centuries. By this stage, at about 10 a.m., the heat was so intense that I had to pack it up and retire to a nearby nomad camp where I slept till noon. I woke to find the sky full of lovely rain-clouds and Kochis grilling lamb for my lunch – a very classy menu in this camp. It was almost as though they knew how I felt about leaving their country, they were so kind to me.

There is little traffic on this road, because of the frontier being closed. I arrived at the Afghan Customs at 3 p.m. and at once I could feel the twentieth century ready to pounce on me. The Customs building here is positively contemporary compared with the one at the Persian
frontier and the officers wear European clothes, speak a little English and smoke cigarettes … They said they hoped I had enjoyed my stay in Afghanistan and didn’t I think Sarobi hydroelectric plant (which I passed yesterday and tried not to notice) was wonderful? I said I’d enjoyed myself more in Afghanistan than in any other country of the world but that the cycle run from Kabul to the frontier was the least enjoyable part, because here ‘progress’ is fastest. They stared at me as though I were a lunatic and then we parted.

On crossing the bridge which marks the Durand Line, the first thing I saw was a Pakistani bus, all spick and span and not in the least likely to break down or do anything unexpected within the next five years. Then there were
signposts
– a phenomenon unknown in Afghanistan – which gave distances in miles, and a ‘Drive on the Left’ sign, and a detachment of the Khyber Rifles, who looked quite the smartest soldiers I’ve ever seen anywhere; their uniform is distinctive and gay, and apparently newly issued from the Army stores every morning! Their drill is of course equally impeccable – shades of Sandhurst! Unmistakably I have entered a Commonwealth country. (Afghan privates literally have their behinds showing through their ragged pants – just like me now – and are paid 3
s
. 2
d
. per
month
.)

A great fuss was made of me in the Pakistani Customs’ Rest House (complete with bathroom, armchairs and electric fans) but though I appreciated being given such a welcome and having a pot of tea served as at home – for the first time since leaving England – I couldn’t adjust happily to the change, and haven’t yet. The five-mile walk up took me one and a half hours and I didn’t arrive till 5.30 p.m., an hour after curfew, but no one fussed. I saw my first railway since leaving Meshed (Afghanistan and Tibet are the only countries in the world without railways) and while going through the bazaar here met my first beggars since Persia and heard the old baksheesh whine. Landi Kotal’s is a notorious bazaar where you can buy almost anything from any country in the world, presumably all smuggled, and it’s rather startling to come on this exotic sort of supermarket in the middle of nowhere. By now it’s to some extent a tourist attraction, yet I bought a very nice new watch-strap for 2s. which would probably have cost 5s. at home.
But then it’s fairly obvious from my present attire that I’m not a tourist within the meaning of the act. I left my cigarette holder by mistake on the counter of the watch-stall and five minutes later a boy came rushing through the alleyway shouting for the Memsahib from Ireland and brandishing the holder; this makes one wonder if Landi Kotal’s nickname, ‘The Town of Ten Thousand Thieves’, is quite fair.

Muslim hospitality is continuing unabated here and I have just had an excellently cooked, though simple, dinner in the home of a local official, where I’m invited to stay the night. It certainly makes travelling more interesting when one can converse freely with the average citizens of a country, but it also makes for embarrassments, as at dinner this evening when the conversation was all political – on the Kashmir and Pakhtoonistan problems. The former was easy for me as I’m with the Pakistanis on Kashmir, simply because I like things carried to logical conclusions, and if India had to be partitioned and the basis of partition was religious then Kashmir should be part of Pakistan. On the other issue, however, I was torn between loyalty to Afghanistan and politeness to my hosts, so I made a big effort and remained silent. Granted that the advisability of giving independence to Pakhtoonistan is debatable, in a world of tedious amalgamations I can’t help favouring the idea. Here again, as at every frontier I’ve crossed, I notice that enmity between neighbouring nations which is one of the most depressing features of travel. Even the closest racial and religious ties don’t tone it down – in fact they seem to heighten it in the present case. But I always blame the politicians for this. The man-in-the-bazaar is easily led and the virulent propaganda that emanates from all the National Radio Stations in this part of the world is proof of how grossly his leaders abuse their authority. To me this type of propaganda is so blatant as to appear childish but in an Asian context it’s criminally clever.

Landi Kotal, being at the top of the pass, is deliciously cool and this evening it’s raining steadily; my room is filled with the scent of huge mulberry trees on the lawn outside. Peshawar is thirty miles down the pass – I hope it’s fine by morning. I’m now covered in funny things acquired in the nomad tent today; they look exactly like lice but hop like fleas when you try to catch them.

I was awakened at 1 a.m. by thunder and was kept awake for two hours by its continuous crashing and by torrents of rain on the tin roof. It was still raining in an Irish sort of downpour when I rose at 6.30, and my host said that this would go on all day. Therefore (since sitting on top of the Khyber Pass unable to see your hand in front of your face is not my idea of fun) I decided temporarily to abandon Roz, come down here by bus for my mail to cheer myself up and return to collect Roz when the rain stops. Judging by the way the road drops to the Plain of Peshawar in a sort of convulsion of twists around mountains it must be a thrilling run, but I didn’t
see
anything except what looked like mist imported from Connemara. It’s still pouring here, which means there’s no great heat yet, and it’s just like a July day in Ireland. Everyone says it’s fantastic weather; normally they have no rain in May and the present torrent has nothing to do with the monsoon due next month.

Peshawar is like an English city with a few water-buffaloes and vultures and lizards thrown in. I’m installed in a dak bungalow, which is the cheapest accommodation for tourists in Pakistan and India. These bungalows were originally built by the British for the comfort of their officials on tour and I’m told one finds them in even the remotests spots. My bearer here supports nine children on £2 10
s
. a month. His two-year-old son has seven fingers on one hand and he’s so proud of this that he’s bringing the infant for me to admire tomorrow.

I’m getting over my mourning for Afghanistan today and settling down to make the best of this country. To be objective about the Indian subcontinent – discarding my inherited anti-colonialism, and a temperamental bias towards mediaeval Afghanistan – even two days in this one city make nonsense of the argument that Britain exploited the country without compensation. Of course she exploited her, but in what city between Constantinople and
Peshawar do you see good and plentiful schools, hospitals, homes for the blind, orphanages, clinics and Christian churches that are allowed to function? And where in the Middle East do you find efficient transport services, reliable communications, an army that
looks
like an army, well-trained civil servants, electricity plants that actually produce electricity and roads that
are
roads? Britain grew fat on Indian wealth, but enough was ploughed back to make the familiar picture of her as a heartless bandit look just plain silly.

Of course the social atmosphere of Afghanistan is much more
congenial
. There the poorest peasant looks you in the eyes, instead of cringing because you’re a white memsahib, as the Punjabis here do. (My bearer is different; he’s a Pathan and it wasn’t hard to train him to sit down and talk sociably instead of squatting eternally outside the door ready to dart in and turn on the fan if I tried to do it myself.) Yet you can’t blame the British for this servility either: if the Indians had had as much guts as the Afghans they’d never have been conquered – Afghanistan wasn’t!

Yesterday was Sunday, which
is
Sunday here – very confusing after ten weeks of Friday being Sunday. I set off after lunch to buy something to cover my nakedness but the bazaar was shut, so I went on to see the Irish priests, with hordes of children running after me pointing to the unsewable split in the back of my slacks and enjoying the fun like mad. The good priests, dressed in unclerical garb, were themselves almost as decrepit. Going on to the Peshawar Club I found that Mr Beck from the British Embassy in Kabul had come down for a few days and he took me to dinner with Indian friends of his, which was very enjoyable. Afterwards we saw the sixteen city gates being shut for the night to keep the tribesmen out – and it’s quite a ceremony.

Today is, if possible, even wetter than yesterday. I went off first thing to the bazaar and got a second-hand pair of men’s trousers for 7
s
., plus my old ones in exchange. They’re a bit long in the leg but I’m not planning to feature in any fashion show in the immediate future, so why worry! (I’ve had the most adorable lizard on my wall all day – he makes a very companionable sound as he scampers up and down
industriously catching flies – so hygienic of him!) I was given tea and Marie biscuits – made in Karachi – by the second-hand clothes merchant, while he sent his peon off with my boots to be resoled. Thick new soles cost only 2
s
. and I got a second-hand khaki shirt for 3
s
. On arriving back here I was absolutely soaked; the rain has been coming down persistently all day.

Before returning to Landi Kotal for Roz I must get a permit to reenter the Khyber area so I’ll go round to the office now and be ready to leave early in the morning if it’s fine. This Khyber set-up is a curious one; the region is politically in Pakistan but is legally independent and the road through is not
owned
by Pakistan but is leased from the tribes and maintained by Pakistan for the convenience of people going and coming via the pass. That’s why the area is rated as dangerous: Tribal Laws only are in force.

Today I heard the sad story of two motoring tourists who were driving to Quetta when, east of Khandahar, a Kochi child ran in front of their car and was killed. They naturally, although in those special circumstances unwisely, stopped and the men of the tribe attacked the husband and knifed him in the lungs – he’s now in Quetta hospital seriously ill and would have been killed if a bus-load of Afghans hadn’t intervened; two men on the bus were injured during the fight.

Later
. This really is a very pleasant city, with trees and flowering shrubs lining every street in the Cantonment area and acres of lush grass stretching in all directions. There was no trouble about getting my pass so I’m all set for the morning. One sees the funniest little taxis here – called rickshaws – with three tiny wheels and plastic awnings and motorbike handlebars and engines. These take three passengers and cost 6
d
. per mile. There’s very little traffic in Peshawar and the standard of driving is quite good.

At 6.30 a.m. it was not actually raining and looked as though the skies might clear, so I went to catch the 7.30 bus back to Landi Kotal, reaching the terminus at 7.28. The bus started at 7.29, which shook
me badly; I’m not yet sufficiently reconditioned to be able to take this sort of thing in my stride!

The Khyber Pass is very fine, but, after the Hindu Kush, something of an anticlimax. Its fame is based on history rather than on scenery, and one has both in Afghanistan, though British travellers find the Khyber uniquely significant, with all its sad little graveyards on the mountainsides and the regimental plaques on the cliff-faces. I spoke to several Pathans who said that the British were the soldiers most worth a Pathan’s ammunition!

I thought rifles common in Afghanistan but around the Khyber Pass every male over twelve years old carries one, and often a revolver as well, with as much ammunition slung across his chest as one human body can accommodate. Family blood feuds are still carried on, though not quite with the old fervour, and among the Afridis and Shinwalis wives are expected to be able to take over the defence of a compound in emergencies. I stopped at four villages on the way down and was told in three of them that I looked like a Pathan woman; this, naturally, is the highest compliment a Pathan man can think of! Today every one of these hardy warriors was solemnly holding an umbrella over his head – probably to keep his ammunition dry, for instead of improving, the day got damper hourly.