That sounded likely enough that I could not dispute it, but neither would I concede it, of course. He went on:
“That is why we Zardushi have for centuries been persecuted and derided and dispersed and driven into exile. By Muslims and Jews and Christians alike. A people who pride themselves on possessing the only true religion must pretend that it came to them through some exclusive revelation. They do not like to be reminded that it merely derives from some other people’s original.”
I went back to the karwansarai that day, thinking: the Church is perhaps wise to demand faith and forbid reason in Christians. The more questions I ask, and the more answers I get, the less I seem to know of anything for certain. As I walked along, I scooped up a handful of snow from a snowbank I was passing, and I wadded it to a snowball. It was round and solid, like a certainty. But if I looked at it closely enough, its roundness really was a dense multitude of points and corners. If I held it long enough, its solidness would melt to water. That is the hazard in curiosity, I thought: all the certainties fragment and dissolve. A man curious enough and persistent enough might find even the round and solid ball of earth to be not so. He might be less proud of his faculty of reasoning when it left him with nothing whereon to stand. But then again, was not the truth a more solid foundation than illusion?
I forget whether it was on that day or another that I got back to the karwansarai to find that my father and Nostril had returned from their journey. The Hakim Khosro was there, too, and they were gathered about the sickbed of Uncle Mafio, all talking at once.
“ … Not in the city called Kabul. The Sultan Kutb-ud-Din now has a capital far to the southeast of there, a city called Delhi … .”
“No wonder you were gone so long,” said my uncle.
“ … Had to cross the vasty mountains, through a pass called the Khaibar …”
“ … Then clear across the land called Panjab …”
“Or properly Panch Ab,” the hakim put in, “meaning Five Rivers.”
“ … But worth the effort. The Sultan, like the Shah of Persia, was eager to send gifts of tribute and fealty to the Khakhan … .”
“ … So we now have an extra horse, laden with objects of gold and Kashmir cloth and rubies and …”
“But more important,” said my father, “how fares our patient Mafìo?”
“Empty,” growled my uncle, scratching his elbow. “From one end I have coughed out all my sputum, from the other I have spewed out every last turd and fart, and in between I have sweated out every last bead of perspiration. I am also infernally tired of being stuck all over wih paper charms and powdered all over like a bignè bun.”
“Otherwise, his condition is unchanged,” the Hakim Khosro said soberly. “My efforts to assist nature in a cure have not availed much. I am happy you are all together again, for I now wish you all to go from this place, and take the patient even closer to nature. Up, into the high mountains to the east, where the air is more clear and pure.”
“But cold,” my father objected. “As cold as charity. Can that be good for him?”
“Cold air is the cleanest air,” said the hakim. “I have determined that, by close observation and professional study. Witness: people who live in always cold climates, like the Russniaks, are a clean white of skin color; in hot climates, like the Indian Hindus, dirty brown or black. We Pakhtuni, living midway, are a sort of tan color. I urge you to take the patient, and take him soon, to those cold, clean, white mountain heights.”
When the hakim and we helped Uncle Mafio get up and get out of the goatskin wrappings and get dressed for the first time in weeks, we were dismayed to see how thin he had become. He looked even taller in his suddenly oversized clothes than he had seemed before, when his burliness had strained his clothes at the seams. He was also pale instead of ruddy, and his limbs were tremulous from disuse, but he proclaimed himself tremendously glad to be up and about. And later, in the hall of the karwansarai, when we dined that night, he bellowed to the other diners, in a voice as stentorian as ever, asking for the latest word on the mountain trails to the eastward.
Men from several other karwan trains responded, and told us of current conditions, and gave us much advice relevant to mountain travel. Or we hoped the advice was relevant, but we could not be sure, since no two of our informants seemed to agree on even the name of those mountains east of here.
One man said, “Those are the Himalaya, the Abode of the Snows. Before you go up into them, buy a phial of poppy juice to carry. In case of snowblindness, a few drops in the eyes will relieve the pain.”
And another man said, “Those are the Karakoram, the Black Mountains, the Cold Mountains. And the snow-fed waters up there are cold at all seasons of the year. Do not let your horses drink, except from a pail in which you have warmed the water a little, or they will be convulsed by cramps.”
And another said, “Those are the mountains called Hindu Kush, the Hindu Killers. In that hard terrain, a horse sometimes gets rebellious and unmanageable. Should that occur, simply tie the hair of the horse’s tail to its tongue, and it will quieten on the instant.”
And another said, “Those mountains are the Pai-Mir, meaning the Way to the Peaks. The only forage your horses will find yonder is the slate-colored, strong-smelling little shrub called burtsa. But your horses will always find it for you, and it is also good fuel for a fire, being naturally full of oil. Oddly enough, the greener it looks, the better the burtsa burns.”
And another said, “Those mountains are the Khwaja, the Masters. And up there the Masters make it impossible for you to lose your direction, even in the thickest storm. Just remember that every mountain is barren on its south face. If you see any trees or shrubs or growth at all, it is on the mountain’s north face.”
And another said, “Those mountains are the Muztagh, the Keepers. Try to get completely through and out of them before spring becomes summer, for then begins the Bad-i-sad-o-bist, the terrible Wind of One Hundred and Twenty Days.”
And yet another man said, “Those mountains are Solomon’s Throne, the Takht-i-Sulaiman. If you should encounter a whirlwind up there, you may be sure it issues from some cavern nearby, the den of one of the demons banished into that exile by the good King Solomon. Simply find that cavern and stop it with boulders, and the wind will die.”
So we packed and we paid for our keep and we said some goodbyes to those with whom we had got acquainted and again we moved on, my father and uncle and Nostril and I, riding our four mounts and leading a packhorse and two extra packhorses loaded with a princely amount of valuables. We went straight east from Balkh, through villages named Kholm and Qonduz and Taloqan, which seemed to exist only as marketplaces for the horse breeders who inhabit that grassy region. Everybody thereabout raises horses and is continually trading breed stallions and brood mares with his neighbors at the markets. The horses are fine ones, comparable to Arabians, though not so dainty in the shape of the head. Every breeder claims that his stock are descended from Alexander’s steed Bucephalas. Every breeder makes that claim for his stock only, which is ridiculous, with all the trading that goes on. Anyway, I never saw any horses there that had the peacock tail worn by Bucephalas in the illuminations to The Book of Alexander that I had pored over in my youth.
At this season, the grazing lands were covered by snow, so we could not see how the verdure thinned out as we went eastward. But we knew it did so, because the ground under the snow got pebbly, then rocky, and the villages ceased to be, and there was only an infrequent and inadequate karwansarai along the trail. After we had passed the last village, a cluster of piled-stone huts which called itself Keshem, in the foothills preceding the mountains, we had to make our own stopping places perhaps three nights out of four. That was not an idyllic way to live, sleeping under tents and under our chapons in snow and chill and wind, and generally having to dine on dried or salted travel rations.
We had worried that the outdoor life would be especially hard on Uncle Mafio. But he made
no complaint even when we healthier ones did. He maintained that he was feeling better in that sharp, cold air, as the Hakim Khosro had predicted, and his cough had lessened and did not lately bring up any blood. He allowed the rest of us to take over what heavy work had to be done, but he would not let us shorten the marches on his account, and each day he sat his saddle or, on the rougher stretches, walked beside his horse, as indefatigably as any of us. We were not hurrying, anyway, for we knew we would have to halt for the rest of the winter as soon as we came up against the mountain ramparts. Also, after a while on that hard trail, living on hard rations, the rest of us were nearly as gaunt as Uncle Mafio was, and not eager to exert ourselves. Only Nostril kept his paunch, but it looked now less integral to him, like a separate melon he was carrying under his clothes.
When we came to the Ab-e-Panj River, we followed its broad valley upstream to the eastward, and from then on we were going uphill, ever higher above the level of the rest of the world. To speak of a valley ordinarily brings to mind a depression in the earth, but that one is many farsakhs wide and is lower only in relation to the mountains that rise far off on either side of it. If it were anywhere else in the world, that valley would not be on the world, but immeasurably far above it, high among the clouds, unseeable by mortal eyes, unattainable, like Heaven. Not that the valley resembles Heaven in any way, I hasten to say, it being cold and hard and inhospitable, not balmy and soft and welcoming.
The landscape was unvarying: the wide valley of tumbled rocks and scrub growth, all humped under quilts of snow; the white-water river running through; and far away on both sides the tooth-white, tooth-sharp mountains. Nothing ever changed there but the light, which ranged from sunrises colored like gilded peaches to sunsets colored like roses on fire, and, in between, skies so blue they were near to purple, except when the valley was roofed by clouds of wet gray wool wringing out snow or sleet.
The ground was nowhere level, being all a clutter of boulders and rocks and talus that we had to thread our way around or gingerly make our way across. But, apart from those ups and downs, our continuous climb was imperceptible to our sight, and we might almost have supposed that we were still on the plains. For, each night when we stopped to camp, the mountains on either horizon seemed identically high to those of the night before. But that was only because the mountains were getting higher, the farther we climbed that up-sloping valley. It was like going up a staircase where the banister always keeps pace with you and, if you do not look over, you do not realize that everything beyond is dropping down and away from you.
Nevertheless, we had various means of knowing that we were climbing all the time. One was the behavior of our horses. We two-legged creatures, when we occasionally dismounted to walk for a while, might not have been physically aware that each step forward was also a trifle higher, but the animals with legs fore and aft knew well that they always stood or moved at an incline. And, horses having good sense, they slyly exaggerated their trudging walk to make it seem a plodding labor, so that we would not press them to move faster.
Another indicator of the climb was the river running the length of the valley. The Ab-e-Panj, we had been told, is one of the headwater sources of the Oxus, that great river which Alexander crossed and recrossed, and in his Book it is described as immensely broad and slow-running and tranquil. However, that is far to the west and downhill of where we were now. The Ab-e-Panj alongside our trail was not wide nor deep, but it raced through that valley like an endless stampede of white horses, tossing white manes and tails. It even sounded sometimes more like a stampede than a river, the noise of its cascading water being often lost in the scrape and grate and rumble of the sizable boulders it rolled and jostled along its bed. A blind man could have told that the Abe-Panj was hurtling downhill and, for it to have such momentum, the river’s uphill end had to be somewhere far higher yet. In this winter season, certainly, the river could not for a moment have slowed its tumultuous pace, or it would have frozen solid, and there might not have existed any Oxus downstream. This was apparent, because every splash and spatter and lick of the water on the rock banks instantly turned to blue-white ice. Since that made the footing close to the river even more treacherous than the snow-covered ground—and also because every splash of the water that reached us froze on our horses’ legs and flanks, or on ours—we kept our trail well to one side of the river wherever we could.
Still another indicator of our continuous climb was the noticeable thinning of the very air. Now, I have been often disbelieved, and even jeered, when I have told of this to non-journeyers. I know as well as they do that air is weightless at all times, impalpable except when it moves as wind. When the disbelievers demanded to know how an element without the least weight can have less weight yet, I cannot tell them how, or why; I only know it does. It gets less and less substantial in those upland heights, and there are evidences to show it.
For one, a man has to breathe deeper to fill his lungs. This is not the panting occasioned by fast movement or brisk exercise; a man standing still has to do it. When I exerted myself—loading a horse’s packsaddle, say, or clambering over a boulder blocking the trail—I had to breathe so fast and hard and deep that it seemed I never would get enough air into me to sustain me. Some disbelievers have dismissed that as a delusion fostered by tedium and hardship, of which God knows we had enough to contend with, but I maintain that the insubstantial air was a very real thing. I will additionally adduce the fact that Uncle Mafio, though he like all of us had to breathe deep, was not so frequently or painfully afflicted by the need to cough. Clearly, the thin air of the heights lay not so heavily in his lungs and did not so often have to be forcibly expelled.
I have other evidence. Fire and air, both being weightless, are the closest-related of the four elements; everybody will concede that. And in the high lands where the air is feebler, so is fire. It burns more blue and dim than yellow and bright. This was not just a result of our having to burn the local burtsa shrub for fuel; I experimented with burning other and more familiar things, like paper, and the resultant flame was equally debile and languid. Even when we had a well-fueled and well-laid camp fire, it took longer to char a piece of meat or to boil a pot of water than it had done in lower lands. Not only that, the boiling water also took longer than customary to cook something put into it.
In that winter season, there were no great karwan trains on the trail, but we did meet an occasional other traveling party. Most of these were hunters and trappers of furs, moving from place to place in the mountains. The winter was their working season, and in the clement springtime they would take their accumulated stores of hides and pelts down to market in one of the lowland towns. Their shaggy little packhorses were heaped with the baled pelts of fox, wolf, pard, the urial, which is a wild sheep, and the goral, which is something between a goat and a qazèl. The hunter-trappers told us that this valley which we were climbing was called the Wakhan—or sometimes the Wakhan Corridor, because many mountain passes open off it on all sides, like doors off a corridor, and the valley constitutes both the border between and the access to all the lands beyond. To the south, they said, were passes leading out of the Corridor to lands called Chitral and Hunza and Kashmir, in the east leading to a land called To-Bhot, and in the north to the land of Tazhikistan.
“Ah, Tazhikistan is yonder?” said my father, turning to gaze to the north. “Then we are not too far now, Mafio, from the route we took homeward.”
“True,” said my uncle, sounding tired and relieved. “We have only to go through Tazhikistan, then a short way east to the city of Kashgar, and we are again in Kubilai’s Kithai.”
On their packhorses, the hunter-trappers also carried many horns which they had taken from a kind of wild sheep called the artak, and I, having so far seen only the lesser horn-racks of such animals as the qazèl and cows and domestic sheep, was mightily impressed by those horns. At their root end they were as big around as my thigh, and from there they spiraled tightly to points. On
the animal’s head, the points would be easily a man’s length apart; but if the spirals could have been unwound and stretched out straight, each of the horns must have measured a man’s length. They were such magnificent things that I supposed the hunters took them and sold them for ornaments to be admired. No, they said, laughing; those great horns were to be cut and fashioned into all manner of useful articles: eating bowls and drinking cups and saddle stirrups and even horse shoes. They averred that a horse shod with such horn shoes would never slip on the most slippery road.
(Many months later, and higher in the mountains, when I saw some of those artak sheep alive and at liberty in the wild, I thought them so splendidly beautiful that I deplored the killing of them for merely utile purposes. My father and uncle, to whom utility meant commerce and commerce meant everything, laughed as the hunters had done, and chided my sentimentality, and from that time on referred sarcastically to the artak as “Marco’s sheep.”)
As we went on up the Wakhan, the mountains on either side remained as awesomely high as ever, but now, each time the snowfall let up enough for us to raise our eyes to the mountains’ immensity, they stood perceptibly closer to us. And the banks of ice on either side of the Ab-e-Panj River built up thicker and bluer, and constricted the racing water to an ever narrower stream between them, as if vividly to illustrate how the winter was closing its grip on the land.
The mountains kept shouldering in on us day by day, and finally others reared up in front of us as well, until we had those Titans standing close all around us except at our backs. We had come to the head end of that high valley, and the snowfall ceased briefly and the clouds cleared, for us to see the white mountain peaks and the cold blue sky magnificently reflected in a tremendous frozen lake, the Chaqmaqtin. From under the ice at its western end spilled the Ab-e-Panj we had been following, so we took the lake to be the river’s source, hence also the ultimate headwater of the fabled Oxus. My father and uncle marked it so, according to their practice, on the Kitab’s otherwise imprecise map of that region. I was not any help in locating our position, as the horizon was much too high and jagged for me to make use of the kamal. But, when the night sky was clear, I could at least tell, from the height of the North Star, that we were now a far way north of where we had begun our overland march at Suvediye on the Levant shore.
The Journeyer Page 42
