The rifle had its limitations, and the mujaheddin fighters were quick to explain them to me. The low muzzle-velocity of the heavy 7.62-millimetre round defined a looping trajectory that called for tricky adjustments to hit a target at three hundred metres or more. Muzzle flash on firing the AK was so bright, particularly with the new 74 series, that it blinded the firer at night, and often betrayed his position. The barrel overheated rapidly, becoming too hot to hold. Sometimes a round grew so hot in the chamber that it exploded in the user's face. That fact explained why so many guerrilla fighters held the gun away from their bodies, or over their heads, in battle operations.
Nevertheless, the rifle worked perfectly after total immersion in water, mud, or snow, and it remained one of the most efficient and reliable killing machines ever devised. In the first four decades after its development, fifty million of them were produced-more than any other firearm in history-and the Kalashnikov, in all its forms, was carried as a preferred strike weapon by revolutionaries, regular soldiers, mercenaries, and gangsters all over the fighting world.
The original AK-47 was made of forged and milled steel. The AK-74, produced in the 1970s, was made from stamped metal parts.
Some of the older Afghan fighters rejected the newer weapon, with its smaller 5.45-millimetre round and its orange plastic magazine, preferring the solidity of the heavier AK-47. Some younger fighters chose the 74 model, dismissing the heavier gun as an antique. The models they used were produced in Egypt, Syria, Russia, and China. Although they were essentially identical, the fighters often preferred one to another, and the trade in the weapons, even within the same unit, was energetic and intense.
Khader's workshops repaired and refitted the AKs of every series, and modified them as required. The workshops were popular places.
The Afghan men were insatiable in their desire to know about weapons and learn new skills with them. It wasn't a frenzied or brutal curiosity. It was simply necessary to know how to handle guns in a land that had been invaded by Alexander the Great, the Huns, the Sakas, the Scythians, the Mongols, the Moghuls, the Safavids, the British, and the Russians, among many others. Even when they weren't studying at the workshops or helping out with the work, the men gathered there to drink tea made on spirit stoves, smoke cigarettes, and talk about their loved ones.
And for two months I worked with them every day. I melted lead and other metals in the little forge. I helped to gather scraps of firewood, and carried water from a spring at the foot of a nearby ravine. Trudging through the light snow I dug out new latrines, and carefully covered them over and concealed them again when they were full. I turned new parts on the turret lathe, and melted the helical metal shavings to make more parts.
In the mornings I tended to the horses, which were billeted in another cave further down the mountain. When it was my turn to milk the goats, I churned the milk into butter and helped to cook naan bread. If any man needed attention for a cut or graze or sprained ankle, I set up the first-aid kit and did my best to heal him.
I learned the answering choruses of a few songs, and in the evenings when the fires were smothered and we huddled together for warmth, I sang with the men as softly as they did. I listened to the stories that they whispered into the dark, and that Khaled, Mahmoud, and Nazeer translated for me. Each day when the men prayed, I knelt with them in silence. And at night, enclosed within the breathing, snoring swathe of their soldier-scented sleep-smells of wood-smoke, gun oil, cheap sandalwood soap, piss, shit, sweat soaking into wet-serge, unwashed human and horse hair, liniment and saddle-softener, cumin and coriander, peppermint tooth powder, chai, tobacco, and a hundred others-I dreamed with them of homes and hearts we longed to see again.
Then, when the second month ended, and the last weapons were repaired and modified, and the supplies we'd brought with us were all but exhausted, Khaderbhai ordered us to prepare for the long walk home. He planned to make a detour west, toward Kandahar and away from the border with Pakistan, to deliver some horses to his family. After that, with marching packs and light weapons, we would march by night until we reached the safety of the Pakistan border.
"The horses are nearly loaded," I reported to Khader when I'd packed my own gear. "Khaled and Nazeer will be back up here when it's all done. They told me to let you know." We were on the flattened top of a tor that gave a commanding view of the valleys and then the desert plain that stretched from the foot of the mountains all the way to Kandahar at the horizon. For once, the cloudy mists and snow had cleared enough for us to take in the whole, panoramic sweep of the view. There were dark, thick clouds massed to the east of us, and the cold air was damp with the rain and snow they would bring, but for the moment we could see all the way to the end of the world, and our wintry eyes were drowning in the beauty of it.
"In November of 1878, the same month that we started this mission, the British forced their way through the Khyber Pass, and the second Afghan war with them began," Khader said, ignoring my report, or perhaps responding to it in his own way. He stared toward the ripple of haze on the horizon caused by the smoke and fire of distant Kandahar. I knew that some of the horizon's shimmer and drizzle might've been exploding rockets, fired into the city by men who'd lived there once as teachers and merchants.
In the war against the Russian invaders, they'd become devils in exile, raining fire upon their own homes and shops and schools.
"Through Khyber Pass, there came one of the most feared, brave, and brutal soldiers in the whole British Raj. His name was Roberts, Lord Frederick Roberts. He captured Kabul, and began a ruthless martial law there. On one day, eighty-seven Afghan soldiers were killed by hanging in the public square. Buildings and markets were destroyed, villages were burned, and hundreds of Afghan people were killed. In June, an Afghan Prince named Ayub Khan announced a jihad to drive out the British. He left Herat with ten thousand men. He was an ancestor of mine, a man of my family, and many of my kinsmen were in the army that he raised."
He stopped talking and flicked a glance at me, his golden eyes gleaming beneath the silver-grey brows. His eyes were smiling, but his jaw was set and his lips were compressed so tightly that they showed white at the rims. Reassured, perhaps, that I was listening to him, he looked back to the smouldering horizon, and spoke again.
"The British officer in charge of Kandahar city at that time, a man named Burrows, was sixty-three years old, the same age that I am today. He marched out of Kandahar with one thousand five hundred men-British and Indian soldiers-and he met Prince Ayub at a place called Maiwand. You can see the place from here, where we sit, when the weather is good enough. In the battle, both armies fired canons, killing hundreds of men in the most terrible ways that can be imagined.
When they met each other, as one man to another man, they fired their guns at such close range that the bullets went through one body to strike the next. The British lost half their number. The Afghans lost two thousand five hundred men. But they won the battle, and the British were forced to retreat to Kandahar.
Prince Ayub immediately surrounded the city, and the siege of Kandahar began."
It was cold, bitterly cold on the windy tor, despite the unusually bright, clear sunlight. I felt my legs and arms growing numb, and I longed to stand up and stamp my feet, but I didn't want to disturb him. Instead, I lit two beedies, and passed one to him. He accepted it, raising his eyebrow in thanks, and took two long puffs before continuing.