Khader slowly rode on alone for some two hundred metres. He stopped there, with his back straight in the saddle, and his standard fluttering in the strong, chill breeze.
The seconds of a long minute ticked away with the guns behind us, and the rocks poised above. Then a lone figure appeared, riding toward Khader on a tall camel. Although the two-humped Bactrian camel is native to Afghanistan, the rider's was a single-humped Arabian camel; the type bred by long distance cameleers of the northern Tajik region for use in extremes of cold. It had a mop of hair on its head, thick and shaggy neck-fur, and long, powerful legs. The man riding that impressive beast was tall and lean, and appeared to be at least ten years older than Khader's fit sixty-plus. He wore a long, white shirt over white Afghan pants, and a knee-length, sleeveless, black serge vest. A snowy white turban of sumptuous length was piled majestically on his head. His grey-white beard was trimmed away from the upper lip and the mouth, descending from his chin to nudge his thin chest.
Some of my friends in Bombay had called that kind of beard a Wahabi, after the sternly orthodox Saudi Arabian Muslims who trimmed their beards in that way to imitate the style preferred by the Prophet. It was a sign to us, in the canyon, that the stranger possessed at least as much moral authority as temporal power. The latter was emphasised with spectacular effect by the antique, long-barrelled jezail that he held upright, balanced on his hip. The muzzle-loaded rifle was decorated along all of its wooden surfaces with gleaming discs, scrolls, and diamond shapes fashioned from brass and silver coins and polished to a dazzling brilliance.
The man drew up beside Khaderbhai, facing us and within a hand's reach of our Khan. His bearing was commanding, and it was clear that he was accustomed to a comprehensive respect. He was, in fact, one of the very few men I ever came to know who equalled Abdel Khader Khan in the esteem-perhaps even the veneration- that he commanded from others with nothing more, or less, than his bearing and the sheer force of his fully realised life.
After a lengthy discussion, Khaderbhai wheeled his horse gently to face us.
"Mister John!" he called to me, using the first name in my false American passport, and speaking in English. "Come here to me, please!"
I kicked backward, uttering what I hoped was an encouraging sound. All eyes on the ground and above us were on me, I knew, and in the swollen, silent seconds I had a vision of the horse throwing me to the ground at Khader's feet. But the mare responded with a smart, prancing canter, and found her own way through the column to stop at Khader's side. "This is Hajji Mohammed," Khader announced. He swept around us with a broad movement of his open palm. "He is the Khan, the leader of all the people, in all the clans, and all the families here."
"Asalaam aleikum," I said in greeting, holding my hand over my heart as a gesture of respect.
Believing me to be an infidel, the leader didn't respond to my greeting. The Prophet Mohammed adjured his followers to return the peaceful greeting of a believer with an even more polite greeting. Thus the greeting Asalaam aleikum, Peace be with you, should've been answered, at the very least, with Wa aleikum salaam wa rahmatullah, And with you be peace and the compassion of Allah. Instead, the old man stared down from his perch on the camel and greeted me with a hard question.
"When will you give us Stingers to fight with?"
It was the same question every Afghan had asked me, the American, since we'd entered the country. And although Khaderbhai translated it for me again, I understood the words and I'd rehearsed the answer.
"It will be soon, if Allah wills it, and the sky will be as free as the mountains."
It was a good answer and Hajji Mohammed was pleased with it, but it was a much better question, and it deserved a better response than my hopeful lie. The Afghans, from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kandahar, knew that if the Americans had given them Stinger missiles at the outbreak of the war, the mujaheddin would've beaten the invaders back within months. Stingers meant that the hated and mortally effective Russian helicopters could be smashed from the skies. Even the formidable MiG fighters were vulnerable to a hand-launched Stinger missile. Without the insuperable advantage of the air, the Russians and their Afghan army proxies would be forced to fight a ground war against the mujaheddin resistance-a ground war they could never win.
Cynics among the Afghans believed that the Americans refused to supply Stingers, for the first seven years of the conflict, because they wanted Russia to win just enough of the Afghan War to over-reach and over-commit themselves. If and when the Stingers finally arrived, the Russians would suffer a defeat that cost them so much in men and resources that their entire Soviet Empire would collapse.
And whether the cynics were right or wrong, the deadly game did play itself out in exactly that way. The Stinger missiles did turn the tide of the conflict, when they were finally introduced, a few months after Khader led us into Afghanistan. The Russians were so weakened by the war of resistance fought by those very Afghan villagers, and millions like them, that their monstrous, Caligulan empire crumbled around them. It worked, it played out that way, and what it cost was a million Afghan lives. What it cost was one-third of the population forced from their homeland. What it cost was one of the largest forced migrations in human history-three-and-a half million refugees moving through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, and a million more exiled in Iran, India, and the Muslim republics of the Soviet Union. What it cost was fifty thousand men, women, and children with one or more limbs amputated through land-mine explosions. What it cost was the Afghan heart and soul.
And I, a wanted criminal, working for a mafia crime lord, impersonated an American and looked those people in the eye, and lied to them about the weapons I couldn't give them.
Hajji Mohammed liked my answer so much that he invited our group to attend the wedding celebrations of his youngest son. Concerned that a refusal might offend the elderly leader, and genuinely touched by the generous invitation, Khader accepted. When all the tributes were exacted-Hajji Mohammed drove a hard bargain, demanding and receiving Khader's own horse as an additional, personal gift-Khaderbhai, Nazeer, and I agreed to accompany the leader to his khel.
The rest of our column made camp in a pastured valley with plentiful fresh water. The break in our forced march allowed the men to groom and rest the horses. The pack animals were in constant need of attention and, with the cargo concealed in a protected cave, the unburdened beasts were free to gambol and roam. Our men prepared to feast on four roasting sheep, aromatic Indian rice, and fresh green-leaf tea provided by Hajji's village as their contribution to our part in the jihad. With the practical business of tributes negotiated and received, the senior men of Hajji Mohammed's village-like all the Afghan clan leaders we'd encountered on the journey-acknowledged us as fighters in the same cause, and offered every help they could provide. As Khader, Nazeer, and I rode away from the temporary camp toward the khel, the sounds of singing and laughter followed us, echo chasing playful echo. It was the first time we'd heard that lightness of heart from our men in the twenty-three days of the journey. Hajji Mohammed's village was in celebration when we arrived. His profitable, bloodless encounter with our column of armed men had added to the gathering thrill of anticipation for the wedding.
Khader explained how the elaborate rituals of Afghan matrimony had been unfolding for months before we'd arrived. There'd been ceremonial visits between the family of the groom, and the family of the bride. In every case, small gifts such as handkerchiefs or scented sweets had been exchanged, and precise courtesies were observed. The bride's dowry of extravagantly embroidered cloths, imported silks, perfumes, and jewellery had been publicly displayed for all to admire, and was then held in trust for her by the groom's family. The groom had even visited his bride-to-be in secret, and he'd presented her with personal gifts as he spoke to her. According to custom, it was strictly forbidden for him to be seen by the men in her family during that secret visit, but custom also required him to be helped by the girl's mother. The dutiful mother, Khader assured me, had remained with the couple while they spoke to one another for the first time, and had acted as their chaperone. With all that achieved, the couple was ready for the culmination of the marriage ceremony itself, to be held in three days' time.