The Places in Between

by Rory Stewart

  "You will take the escort," said Yuzufi, interrupting for the first time. "That is nonnegotiable."

  "But I have introductions to the local commanders. I will be much safer with them than with Heratis."

  "You will go with our men," he repeated.

  "I cannot afford to pay for an escort. I have no money."

  "We were not expecting any money," said the man in the stiff jacket.

  "This is nonnegotiable," repeated Yuzufi. His broad knee was now jigging up and down. "If you refuse this you will be expelled from the country. They want to know how many of their gunmen you are taking."

  "If it is compulsory, one."

  "Two ... with weapons," said the man in the dark suit, "and you will leave tomorrow."

  The two men stood up and left the room. They said good-bye to Yuzufi but not to me.

  TANKS INTO STICKS

  Outside Yuzufi's office, I bought some jam rings from a glass box in a pastry shop. The men who had just interviewed me were not new to their jobs. The reactions of the hotel staff implied that they were well known in Herat. They had probably worked for the KGB-trained KHAD. But I was disturbed that they were already functioning so effectively within the two-week-old administration and I wondered how they had found me. I ate all thirty biscuits quickly, dropping crumbs on my shawl, walking in the dust below the curb. My boots kicked over the tracks of donkeys, tires, and other men's shoes. I was worried that these men would not allow me to walk. I felt trapped. I wanted to be moving again and to see the places between Herat and Kabul.

  Herat that morning looked like an Iranian shantytown. Everything had been constructed hurriedly and recently. On the flat roofs of half-finished shopping arcades, bare girders clustered like dead insect legs, and the walls were the same color as the sand drifts by the curb. This was the architecture of political Islam, representing its combination of Marxism and puritan theology with drab Soviet brick. Most of the men were dressed like provincial Iranians, in dirt-speckled black or faded brown. I did not like the city. To fill time I went to the bazaar to get a walking stick.

  I had carried the ideal walking stick through Pakistan. It was five feet long and made of polished bamboo with an iron top and bottom; I had walked with it for nine months but had not brought it into Afghanistan. It was called a dang, and Jats, a farming caste from the Punjab, used to carry them, partly for self-protection, until the middle of the twentieth century. Many people in both the Pakistani and Indian Punjab still had their grandfathers' sticks in their houses. Young men liked to play with my stick, spinning it around their bodies, bringing the base down in an accelerating arc on the heads of imaginary opponents. One man told me that his great-grandfather had killed the last lion in the Punjab with his dang. I liked walking with my dang; striking the ground on every fourth step gave a rhythm to my movement. It was useful when I was climbing and it took the weight off my left knee. But no one else carried them now except the riot police. The word dang had an archaic flavor and people laughed when I used it.

  Afghan students were sitting near a giant medieval bronze cauldron in the Herat Friday Mosque, staring at the jagged Ghorid script on the colonnade.

  I asked one of the students where I could buy a heavy walking stick.

  He giggled. "Like an old man?"

  "Like an old man."

  "But you are young. Why do you need a stick?"

  "Because I am walking to Kabul."

  "Take a bus." They all laughed.

  "Or a plane," said another. They laughed more.

  "So you've no idea where I could buy a walking stick."

  "Nowhere here. We have cars in Afghanistan."

  "Where do your old men get their walking sticks?"

  "They make them."

  I continued beneath the remaining vaulted sections of the old covered bazaar, which Robert Byron watched being mostly demolished in 1933. I wasn't sure what to call the stick. It certainly seemed a waste of time to use the Punjabi word dang in a place where people spoke Persian. But whatever word I used, people denied having heard of anything like it, so I asked where I could find a broom handle and was directed to a wheelwright's store. Against his shop wall, surrounded by baskets of henna and dried apricots, were dozens of pine poles. They were much heavier than the bamboo I had carried in the Punjab, but there was no bamboo to be found in the bazaar. I chose one that was five feet long, reasonably straight, and well balanced in the center.

  Now I needed the iron. I followed a cloud of dark smoke down the main street and found a blacksmith with scorch-marked cheeks working a bright red furnace. In south Asia, a blacksmith would have been a low-caste man, an untouchable. But this man, Haji Ramzun, had visited Mecca and was respected among his peers. I explained my walk and what I wanted done to the pole. He offered to fix a section of rusty pipe to the bottom and a large nut to the top, paint them both sky blue, and charge me for six days' work. I walked on.

  I turned off Piaz Furushi, which meant "Onion Street" but was filled with sellers of rugs and gold, and entered a courtyard. A donkey lay asleep in the center of the square. Five men were sitting on rugs sharing their lunch. I sketched the design of the stick, and one of the men, Wakil Ama, said he could help. He led me to the anvil fixed to the rough wooden planks of his shed. A crowd of young boys gathered to watch him. He took a sheet of green metal salvaged from a Russian armored personnel carrier, and cut off a triangular piece on a small guillotine. Then he bent this into a cone and welded the seam; plunged it in water; pierced a hole; forced the piece over the wood; hammered a nail through the hole; and cut off the nail head. He worked quickly and in silence. Then he paused. The point was sharp and it was more a spear than a stick.

  I explained that in Pakistan my stick had a round top, not a pointed one. He shrugged. I asked if he had any metal balls.

  "No."

  "Does anyone else?"

  "Hussein might," said one of the older spectators.

  There was much chattering and then everyone looked at me.

  "Well?" I asked.

  "We have no ball," said Wakil Ama.

  "How about Hussein?" I suggested.

  Wakil Ama shrugged again. "Hussein might."

  "Can someone lead me there? I'll go there now."

  Wakil Ama shouted at a young boy, telling him to guide me. The boy ran off, giggling, forcing me to run after him. We raced through a dark covered arch into a large courtyard, turned down another street, and stopped at a junk shop. On the pavement was a battered tin tray containing the face of a cheap alarm clock, a shell case from an antiaircraft round, and a lead ball.

  We returned to the forge. Wakil Ama took the ball, grunted, and welded it to the point of the stick. Then he plunged it into water and wound another strip of tank metal around the base. The metal was dull and sharp barnacles of welding slip hung on the seams, but I now had a strong, well-balanced stick, weighing about three pounds. Wakil Ama smiled at the result. He accepted payment only reluctantly, leaving me to choose the amount. Then he offered me some tea.

  As I walked out an old man with a bushy white beard looked at the stick.

  "You're carrying it for the wolves, I presume," he said.

  "And the humans."

  He nodded.

  "What do you call this type of stick?" I asked.

  "A dang," he said.

  An old man

  WHETHER ON THE SHORES OF ASIA

  I had told the Security Service I was crossing Afghanistan in the footsteps of Babur, the first Emperor of Mughal India, but this was misleading. Initially I had decided to walk the central route from Herat to Kabul because it was shorter and because the Taliban were still fighting on the main southern route. I was starting in January because I did not want to wait five months for the snow to clear. It was only after I had made my decision that I discovered Babur had also traveled the central route on foot in January and recorded the journey in his diary.

  I wasn't keen to read Babur's diary. I did not like medieval texts, with t
heir references to faded theologies and forgotten viziers. I wanted to focus on modern Afghanistan, not its history, and I couldn't see the relevance of a man who was a contemporary of the Aztecs.

  The beginning of Babur's diary was as bad as I had anticipated:

  Ush is situated to the South-East of Andejan, but more to the east and distant from Andejan four farsangs by the road ... The mother of Yunus Khan was either the daughter or the granddaughter of Sheikh Nur-ed-din Beg, who was one of the Amirs of Kipchak and had been brought forward by Taimur Beg.

  As I read, however, the geography and the genealogy receded and a narrative emerged. Babur was born in 1483 as the prince of a poor, remote kingdom in Uzbekistan. By the time he was twenty, he had lost all his land in Central Asia and was hiding in the mountains with a few followers, most of whom were on foot and armed only with clubs, but at twenty-two he had recovered and conquered Kabul. That year he visited Herat, then the most civilized city in the Islamic world. He returned from Herat to Kabul on the central route, almost dying in the snow on the way. Then he pressed east to conquer Delhi and found the Mughal dynasty. He died the ruler of one of the largest and wealthiest empires in the world.

  He tells this adventure story with impressive modesty. What he did was very dangerous, but he never draws attention to this. Instead, he focuses on the people he meets and uses portraits of individuals to suggest a whole society. He pays more attention to his contemporary world than to legends or ancient history and he is a careful observer. He mentions hangovers and agricultural techniques, poetry and economics, pederasty and garden design with the sense of humor and experience of a man who has fought, traveled, and governed. He does not embroider anecdotes to make them neater, funnier, more personal, or more symbolic. Unlike most travel writers, he is honest.

  At times it seems the only thing missing from his story is himself. He never explains what drives him to live this extraordinary life and take these kinds of risks. He does not describe his emotions, and as a result he can seem distant and the episodes of his life, repetitive. Confronted by dead bodies or people trying to kill him, he writes in increasingly dispassionate and impersonal prose. But this restraint only emphasizes the extraordinary nature of his experiences. This is his attempt to defend Akhsi at the age of twenty-one:

  My horse was wounded by an arrow. He bolted and sprung aside, throwing me on the ground in the middle of the enemy. I got to my feet and fired a single shot and my attendant Kahil, who was on a bad horse, dismounted and handed it to me.... I said to Ibrahim Beg, "What is to be done now?" Perhaps because he was slightly wounded or because he was frightened he didn't give me a very distinct answer.... A man shot an arrow at me, which struck me under the arm, piercing and breaking two plates of my Kalmuk armor. I shot an arrow back at him and then struck a passing horseman on his temples with the point of my sword.... I had about twenty arrows left. I wondered whether to dismount and keep my ground as long as my arrows lasted but I decided to head for the hill.

  Babur is tolerant and kind to his friends, but tough, ambitious, and hard on himself. His admiration for courage, religiosity, and intelligence is implicit in even the shortest passage of his diaries. This is his description of his older companion called Qasim, "the Divider," with whom he crossed Afghanistan:

  He had distinguished himself by his gallant use of his scimitar. He was a pious, religious, faithful Muslim and carefully abstained from all doubtful meats. His judgments and talents were uncommonly good. He was facetious. He could neither read nor write but he had an ingenious and elegant turn of wit.

  Babur does not conceal his own impoverished origins, his defeats, embarrassments, and unrequited love. He is aware of his absurdities, his self-delusion, and his weaknesses without entirely forgiving himself. He boasts of his poetry, but not of his courage or resourcefulness. He is skeptical of authority and religion, and takes little for granted about the world or himself.

  Nevertheless, although the diaries changed my view of fifteenth-century Asia, they had little relevance to modern Afghanistan. Babur was a medieval man. His worldview was formed by his being a direct royal descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine, by his contact with fifteenth-century Persian culture and Islam, and by his never having traveled west of Herat. The flamboyant culture he describes in Herat in 1504 has no equivalent in the modern city, with its shabby cement walls, illegal DVDs, and atmosphere of provincial convention:

  Herat was a refined city, in which every means of heightening pleasure and gaiety was possessed in perfection; in which all the incentives and apparatus of enjoyment were combined with an invitation to indulgence ... Hussein Mirza [the ruler] dressed in gay-colored red and green wool. On festival days he put on a small turban tied in three folds, broad and showy and having placed a plume nodding over it went in this style to prayers ... He had a turn for poetry ... He was fond as a child of keeping butting rams and of amusing himself with flying pigeons and cock-fighting ... He was addicted to wine and debauchery. He created a court, which abounded with eminent men of unrivaled accomplishments, each of whom made it his aim and ambition to carry to the highest perfection the art to which he devoted himself.

  There were kebabs of fowl, and of goose, and indeed dishes of every kind ... When the wine began to take effect, a man began to dance, and he danced excessively well ... then another sang but in a dreadfully loud, rough, disagreeable tone ... the cup-bearers in waiting began to supply all who were of the party with pure wine, which they quaffed as if it had been the water of life.1

  Almost every activity that Babur describes—gambling, dancing, colorful clothing, debauchery, singing, and alcohol—was illegal under the Taliban and remained illegal or discouraged under Ismail Khan's new government.

  Babur decided to leave Herat after only twenty days in the city, despite his cousins' pleas that he defend them against an Uzbek warlord. Babur claims that he left because his winter quarters were inadequate, but since he was staying in the palace of the wealthiest and most cultivated man in the city, this is unlikely. It is more likely that he and his illiterate chancellor Qasim, with their provincial origins, were intimidated by the sophisticated court society. Qasim had only narrowly prevented Babur from committing a dangerous faux pas in the audience chamber, and from drinking alcohol for the first time. Qasim may have wanted to take his protégé away before he was further corrupted or humiliated. Their new kingdom of Kabul was, moreover, also under threat, and Babur was often restless. Whatever the determining factor, Babur must have felt strongly about leaving the city. He left in the middle of winter, and that is a very bad time to travel along the central route.

  Part One

  Herat ... The policeman at the cross-roads with a whistling fit to scare the Chicago underworld

  —Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, 1933

  Herat ... The police directing a thin trickle of automobiles with whistles and ill-tempered gestures like referees

  —Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, 1952

  Herat ... A small lonely policeman in the center of a vast deserted square, directing two donkeys and a bicycle with a majesty and ferocity more appropriate to the Champs Elysées

  —Peter Levi, The Light Garden of the Angel King, 1970

  CHICAGO AND PARIS

  On my last morning in Herat, I was reluctant to get out of bed. It was cold despite my Nepali sleeping bag, and I knew it would be colder in the mountains ahead. I put on my walking clothes: a long shalwar kemis shirt, baggy trousers, and a Chitrali cap, with a brown patu blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I went into the dining room for breakfast. Foreigners were forbidden to stay in any hotel other than the Mowafaq—perhaps, I now thought, to make it easier for the Security Service to monitor us. War reporters had occupied most of the tables in the previous week, and I had spent a lot of time with them. I noticed that Matt McAllester and Moises Saman, whom I liked, had not yet appeared. They had been drinking Turkmen champagne the night before in the UN bar to celebrate Moises's birthday.


  Television France 2 had brought their own cafetière and a packet of Lavazza coffee and sent to the bazaar for fresh juice. The day before, I had heard them talking about Chinese motifs on a shrine, the similarity between the minarets and factory chimneys, and the soldiers that chased them from the Bala Hissar fort. Now they were discussing whether to visit the handblown-glass shop or the refugee camp. One of them was pointing out the window at the traffic policeman. These things had attracted the attention of foreigners in Herat for seventy years. I had read five different travel writers on the traffic policemen. Their peaked hats and whistles struck visitors as particularly incongruous among the tumult of the Afghan bazaar. I wanted to write about them myself.

  I sat beside Alex, the Telegraph correspondent, whom I had met in Jakarta, and Vaughan Smith, who had been a Grenadier Guards' officer before he became a freelance cameraman. He had been filming in Afghanistan for a decade.

  "Are you leaving this morning?" asked Vaughan.

  "I hope so."

  "And you are really going to walk to Kabul through Ghor?"

  "Yes."

  Vaughan smiled. "Good luck," he said, and gave me his fried eggs. I ate six eggs to stock up on protein. Then I took up my stick and pack, said good-bye, and walked into the street. A strong, cold wind was blowing the sand into the air and I had to squint.

  On the street corner, I watched men unloading tablecloths from China and Iranian flip-flops marked "Nike by Ralph Lauren." From Tabriz a truck had brought the goods through a fog of diesel fumes down the multilane highway that the Iranian government still called the Silk Road. This was the route that Alexander the Great took in pursuit of a Persian rival. The Persian had fled up the central route into the mountains, and Alexander, instead of following him, had taken the safer Kandahar route to Kabul. I watched a fruit wrapper from Isfahan flying in Alexander's footsteps. I followed the Persian, and came upon a man with a prosthetic leg, whom I had met before.