The Bookseller of Kabul

The Call from Ali

He feels sick for days. Unforgivable, he thinks. Unforgivable. He tries to wash, but nothing helps. He tries to pray, but to no avail. He searches the Koran, he visits the mosque, but he feels dirty, dirty. The unclean thoughts he has been harbouring of late make him a bad Muslim. God will punish him. Everything you do comes back to you, he thinks. A child. I have sinned against a child. I let him abuse her. I did nothing.

The nausea turns to world-weariness when, after a time, the memory of the beggar girl recedes. He is tired of life, the routine, the hassle. He is bad-tempered and grumpy towards everyone. He is angry with his father who chains him to the shop while life goes on without him.

I am seventeen, he thinks. Life is over before it has even started.

He sits moping behind the counter, elbows on the tabletop, forehead in his hands. He lifts his head and looks around: at books about Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, famous interpretations of the Koran. He sees books on Afghan fairytales, biographies of Afghan kings and sovereigns, large tomes about the wars against the British, magnificent books about Afghan precious stones, textbooks on Afghan embroidery, and thin ‘pancakes’ from photocopied books about Afghan custom and traditions. He scowls at them and bangs his fist on the table.

Why was I born an Afghan? I hate being an Afghan. All these pig-headed customs and traditions are slowly killing me. Respect this and respect that; I have no freedom, I can’t decide anything. Sultan is only interested in counting money from sales, he thinks. ‘He can take his books and stuff them,’ he says under his breath. He hopes no one heard him. Next to Allah and the prophets, ‘father’ is the single most important person within the Afghan social order. To oppose him is impossible, even for an operator like Mansur. Mansur quarrels with and walks all over everyone else – his aunts, his sisters, his mother, his brothers – but never, never his father. I’m a slave, he thinks. I am worked to the bone for board and lodging and clean clothes. Most of all Mansur wants to study. He misses his friends and the life he led in Pakistan. Here he has no time for friends, and the one friend he had, Rahimullah, he does not want to see again.

It is just before the Afghan New Year – nauroz. Big feasts are planned all over the country. For the last five years the Taliban forbade feasting. They considered nauroz a heathen celebration, a worship of the sun, because its roots were in the Zoroastrian religion – the worship of fire – which originated in Persia in the sixth century BC. And so they also forbade the traditional New Year’s pilgrimage to Ali’s tomb in Mazar-i-Sharif. For centuries pilgrims had flocked to Ali’s grave, to purge themselves from sin, ask forgiveness, be healed and greet the new year, which according to the Afghan calendar starts on 21 March, the spring equinox, when night and day are of equal length.

Ali was the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law and he was the fourth caliph. He is the cause of the polemic between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims. To Shia Muslims Ali is second in the order of succession after Muhammad, to Sunni Muslims he is fourth. But even for Sunni Muslims, like Mansur and most Afghans, he is one of Islam’s great heroes. A brave warrior, sword in hand, says history. Ali was murdered in Kufa in 661, and, according to most historians, buried in Najaf in Iraq. But Afghans maintain that his followers, who feared that enemies would take revenge on his body and mutilate it, exhumed him. They lashed his body to the back of a white she-camel and made it run as far as it could. Where it collapsed they would bury him. That was, according to legend, the place that came to be known as Mazar-i-Sharif, ‘the tomb of the exalted’. For five hundred years only a small stone marked the grave, but in the twelfth century a small tomb was built after a local mullah was visited by Ali in a dream. Then Genghis Khan arrived on the scene and desecrated the tomb, and once again the grave lay unmarked for several hundred years. At the beginning of the fifteenth century a new mausoleum was built above what Afghans believe are the remains of Ali. It is this burial chamber – and the mosque that was later built beside it – that draws the pilgrims.

Mansur is determined to make the pilgrimage. He has been thinking about it for some time. He needs only to get Sultan’s permission, as the journey will entail being away from the shop for several days. If there is anything Sultan hates, it is Mansur being away.

He has even got hold of a travelling companion, in the shape of an Iranian journalist who often buys books from him. They got into a conversation about New Year’s Eve celebrations and the Iranian said he had room in his car. I am saved, Mansur thought. Ali calls me. He wants to forgive me.

But then Sultan says no. His father will not do without him for the short time the trip will take. He says Mansur must catalogue, supervise carpenters putting up new shelves, sell books. He won’t trust anyone else. He won’t even trust his future brother-in-law Rasul. Mansur seethes with anger. Because he dreaded asking his father he postponed it until the last night before departure. But not on your life. Mansur nagged, his father refused.

‘You are my son and you jolly well do what I say,’ says Sultan. ‘I need you in the shop.’

‘Books, books, money, money, all you think of is money,’ Mansur shouts. ‘I’m supposed to sell books about Afghanistan, without knowing the country. I’ve hardly ever been outside Kabul,’ he says crossly.

The Iranian leaves next morning. Mansur is in revolt. How could his father deny him this? He drives his father to the shop without a word, and gives monosyllabic answers when asked a question. The accumulated hatred against his father rages inside him. Mansur had only finished ten classes when his father took him out of school and put him into the bookshop. He never completed high school. He gets a no to all his demands. The only thing his father has given him is a car, to enable Mansur to drive him around, and the responsibility for a bookshop where he is turning to dust amongst the shelves.

‘As you like,’ he says suddenly. ‘I will do everything you ask me to, but please do not think I am doing it willingly. You never let me do what I want. You’re crushing me.’

‘You can go next year,’ Sultan says.

‘No, I’ll never go. And I’ll never ask you for anything again.’

It is alleged that only those whom Ali calls can go to Mazar. Why does Ali not want him? Were his thoughts so unforgivable? Or does his father not hear that Ali calls him?

Sultan is chilled by Mansur’s hostility. He glances over at the repressed, tall teenager and is frightened.

Having driven his father to his shop and the two brothers to theirs, Mansur opens up his own and sits down behind the dusty desk. He sits in his ‘think-dark-thoughts’ position with elbows on the counter and feels life imprisoning and overwhelming him with dust from the books.

A new consignment of books has arrived. For the sake of appearances he feels he must know what is in them. It is a collection of poems from the mystic Rumi, one of his father’s favourite poets and the best-known of the Afghan Sufists, Islamic mystics. Rumi was born in the 1200s in Balkh, near Mazar-i-Sharif. Yet another sign, Mansur thinks. He decides to look for signs that will underpin his decision and show his father up. The poems are about cleansing oneself in order to get closer to God – who is Perfection. They deal with forgetting oneself, one’s own ego. Rumi says: ‘The Ego is a veil between humans and God.’ Mansur reads how he can turn to God and how life should revolve around God and not around oneself. Mansur feels dirty again. The more he reads the more he is determined to go. He keeps returning to one of the simpler poems:

The water said to the dirty one, ‘Come here.’

The dirty one said, ‘I am too ashamed.’

The water replied: ‘How will your shame be washed away

without me?’

The water, God and Rumi all seem to be deserting Mansur. The Iranian is no doubt high up in the snow-clad Hindu Kush mountains by now. Mansur is angry all day. When night falls it is time to lock up, fetch his father and brothers and take them home, to yet another bowl of rice, to yet another evening in the company of his witless family.

As he fastens the shutters over the door with a heavy-duty padlock, Akbar, the Iranian journalist, suddenly appears. Mansur thinks he is seeing ghosts.

‘Haven’t you gone?’ he asks in an astonished voice.

‘We did, but the Salang tunnel was closed today, so we’ll try tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I met your father down the road, he asked me to take you with him. We’ll leave my place at five tomorrow morning, as soon as the curfew is lifted.’

‘Did he really say that?’ Mansur is speechless. ‘It must be Ali calling – imagine that, he really did call me,’ he mumbles.

Mansur spends the night with Akbar to make sure he wakes up and as a guarantee that his father won’t change his mind. The next morning, before dawn, they are off. Mansur’s only luggage consists of a plastic bag full of Coke and Fanta cans and biscuits with banana and kiwi filling. Akbar has a friend with him and everyone is in high spirits. They play Indian film music and sing at the top of their voices. Mansur has brought his treasure with him, a western cassette, Pop from the 80s. ‘Is this love? Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more’, resounds out into the cool morning. Before they have driven half an hour Mansur has eaten the first packet of biscuits and drunk two Cokes. He feels free. He wants to scream and shout, and sticks his head out of the window. ‘Ouhhhh! Aliiii! Ali! Here I come!’

They pass areas he has never before seen. Immediately north of Kabul is the Shomali Plain, one of the most war-torn areas of Afghanistan. Here bombs from American B52s shook the ground only a few months ago. ‘How beautiful, ’ Mansur shouts. And from a distance the plain is beautiful, against the backdrop of the mighty snow-clad Hindu Kush mountains that proudly rise up to the sky. Hindu Kush means the Hindu killer. Thousands of Indian soldiers have frozen to death in these mountain ranges, during military sorties on Kabul.

When one enters the plateau the landscape of war is apparent. In contrast to the Indian soldiers, the Hindu Kush did not stop the B52s. Many of the Taliban’s bombed-out camps have not yet been cleared. Their shelters have been turned into large craters or are strewn over the area, exploding when the bombs hit the ground. A twisted iron bed, where a Taliban might have been shot in his sleep, resembles a skeleton by the roadside. A bullet-ridden mattress lies near by.

But the camps have mostly been looted. Mere hours after the Taliban fled the local population was in there, pilfering soldiers’ washbasins, gas lamps, carpets and mattresses. Poverty made the plundering of corpses inevitable. No one cried over dead bodies by the roadside or in the sand. On the contrary, the locals desecrated many of them: eyes gouged out, skin torn off, body parts cut off or chopped into bits. That was revenge for the Taliban having terrorised the Shomali Plain people for years.

For five years the plain was the front line between the Taliban and Massoud’s men from the Northern Alliance, and sovereignty of the Plain changed six times. Because the front was continually moving, the local population had to flee, either up towards the Panshir valley or south towards Kabul. The locals were mostly Tajiks and anyone who dragged their feet might suffer the Taliban’s ethnic cleansing. Before the Taliban withdrew they poisoned wells and blew up water pipes and dams, vital to the dry plain, which before the war had been part of Kabul ’s bread basket.

Mansur stares in silence at the awful villages they pass. Most of them are in ruins and rear up in the landscape like skeletons. The Taliban systematically razed many of the villages to the ground when they tried to subdue the last part of the country, the missing tenth, the Panshir valley, the Hindu Kush mountains and the desert areas bordering Tajikistan. They might have made it had September 11 not happened and the world started to care about Afghanistan.

The remains of twisted tanks, wrecked military vehicles and bits of metal whose purpose Mansur can only guess at, lie thrown around. A lonely man walks behind a plough. In the middle of his patch lies a large tank. He walks laboriously around it – it is too heavy to move.

The car drives fast over the pot-holed road. Mansur tries to spot his mother’s village. He has not been there since he was five or six. His finger constantly points to more ruins. There! There! But nothing distinguishes one village from another. The place where he visited his mother’s relatives as a little boy could be any one of these heaps of rubble. He remembers how he ran around on paths and fields. Now the plain is the most mined place in the world. Only the roads are safe. Children with bundles of firewood and women with buckets of water walk along the side of the road. They try to avoid the ditches where the mines might be. The car with the pilgrims passes a team of mine-clearers who systematically blow up or render the explosives harmless. A few metres are cleared each day.

Over the death traps the ditches are full of wild, dark-red, short-stemmed tulips. But the flowers must be admired at a distance. Picking them means risking blowing off an arm or a leg.

Akbar is having fun with a book published by the Afghan Tourist Organisation in 1967.

‘“Along the roads children sell chains of pink tulips”,’ he reads. ‘“In the spring cherries, apricots, almond and pear trees jostle for the attention of the traveller. A flowering spectacle follows the traveller all the way to Kabul ”.’ They laugh. This spring they spot a lone rebellious cherry tree or two that have survived bombs, rockets, a three-year drought and poisoned wells. But it’s doubtful whether anyone can find a mine-free path to the cherries. ‘“The local pottery is amongst the most beautiful in Afghanistan. We recommend you stop and take a look in the workshops along the road, where artisans make plates and vessels following centuries-old tradition”,’ Akbar reads.

‘Those traditions seem to have suffered,’ says Said, Akbar’s friend, who is driving the car. Not a single pottery workshop can be seen on the road up to the Salang Pass. They start to ascend. Mansur opens the third Coke, empties it and throws it elegantly out of the car. Better to litter a bomb crater than mess the car up. The road crawls up to the world’s highest mountain tunnel. It narrows; on one side the sheer mountain cliff, on the other running water, sometimes a waterfall, sometimes a stream. ‘“The Government has put trout out in the river. In a few years there will be a viable colony”,’ Akbar reads on. There are no trout in the river now. The Government has had other things on its mind than fish-farming in the years since the guide was written.

Burnt-out tanks lie in the most incredible places: down the valley side, in the river, tottering over a precipice, sideways, upside down or broken into many bits. Mansur quickly arrives at a hundred when he starts counting. The majority originate from the war against the Soviet Union, when the Red Army rolled in from the Central Soviet Republics in the north and thought they had the Afghans under control. The Russians soon fell victim to the Mujahedeen’s shrewd warfare. The Mujahedeen moved around the mountainside like goats. From afar, from the lookout posts in the mountains, they could spot the Russian tanks snailing along in the valley bottoms. Even with their homemade weapons the guerrillas were virtually invulnerable when laying an ambush. The soldiers were everywhere, disguised as goatherds, the Kalashnikov hidden under the goat’s belly. They could make surprise attacks whenever needed.

‘Under the bellies of long-haired goats you could even hide rocket launchers,’ Akbar relates, who has read everything available about the war against the Soviet Union.

Alexander the Great also struggled up these mountain roads. Having captured the area around Kabul he walked over the Hindu Kush on his way to central Asia on the other side of the Oxus river. ‘Alexander is supposed to have composed odes to the mountains, which “inspired mystic thoughts and eternal rest”.’ Akbar continues to recite from the Tourist Organisation guidebook.

‘The Government made plans for a ski centre here,’ he suddenly shouts and looks up at the steep mountainsides. ‘In 1967! As soon as the roads have been tarmacked it says!’

The roads were tarmacked, as promised by the Tourist Organisation. But not much is left of the tarmac. Plans for the ski centre remained on the drawing board.

‘That would have made for an explosive descent,’ Akbar laughs. ‘Or maybe the mines can be marked with slalom gates! Adventurous Travels! Or Afghan AdvenTours – for the world-weary.’

They all laugh. The tragic reality sometimes presents the appearance of a cartoon film, or rather a thriller. They visualise colourful snowboarders being blown to smithereens down the mountainside.

Tourism, once an important source of income for Afghanistan, belongs to a bygone era. They drive along what was once called ‘the hippie trail’. Here progressive and not so progressive youths came to enjoy beautiful scenery, a wild lifestyle and the cheapest hashish in the world. For the more experienced, opium. In the sixties and seventies several thousand hippies came to the mountain country every year, hired old Ladas and set off. Even women travelled alone around the mountain country. In those days bandits and highwaymen might attack them, but that only added to the thrill of the journey. Even the coup against Zahir Shah in 1973 failed to stem the flow. It was the Communist coup in 1978, and invasion the year after, which eventually put an end to the ‘hippie trailers’.

The three boys have been driving for a couple of hours when they catch up with the backlog of pilgrims. The queue is immovable. It has started to snow. Fog rolls in, the car starts to slide. Said is not carrying chains. ‘You don’t need chains with a four-wheel drive,’ he assures them.

An increasing number of cars start spinning in the deep, icy and snow-filled ruts. When one car stops they all stop. The road is too narrow to overtake. Today the traffic is all from south to north, from Kabul to Mazar. Next day it will be the opposite. The mountain road doesn’t have the capacity to take cars driving in both directions. The 450-kilometre road from Kabul to Mazar takes at least twelve hours to travel, sometimes twice or even four times as long.

‘Many of the cars that have been taken by snowstorms and avalanches are only dug out in the summer. Most of them disappear in the spring,’ Akbar teases.

They pass the bus that has caused the queue; it has been pushed right on to the side, while its passengers on their way to Ali’s tomb thumb lifts with cars that snail past. Mansur smiles when he sees what is written on the side of the bus: ‘“Hmbork-Frankfork-Landan-Kabal”,’ he reads, and shrieks with laughter when he sees the lettering on the windscreen: ‘Wellcam! Kaing of Road’ is written in fresh red paint. ‘What a regal tour,’ he screams. They do not pick up any passengers from the Kabal-express. Said, Mansur and Akbar are wrapped up in their own little world.

They drive into the first gallery – solid concrete pillars covered by a roof to protect the road from avalanches. But the galleries too are difficult to negotiate. Because they are open to the elements they are full of snow, which has blown in and turned to ice. Deep frozen ruts are a challenge to a car without chains.

The Salang tunnel, 3,400 metres above sea level, and the galleries, some of them up to 5,000 metres above sea level, were a gift to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union tried to turn the country into a satellite state. Work was started by Soviet engineers in 1956, and completed in 1964. The Russians also started tarmacking the first roads in the country in the fifties. During Zahir Shah’s reign Afghanistan was considered a friendly country. The liberal King was forced to turn to the Soviet Union, because neither the US nor Europe were interested in investing in his mountainous country. The King needed money and expertise and chose to ignore the fact that ties with the Communist superpower were becoming increasingly tighter.

The tunnel was strategically important in the resistance against the Taliban. At the end of the nineties it was blown up by the Mujahedeen hero Massoud, in a desperate bid to stop the Taliban’s advance to the north. They got so far, but no further.

It is completely dark, or completely grey. The car slides, gets stuck in the snow, wedged in the deep ruts. The wind whistles, nothing can be distinguished in the blizzard and Said can follow only what he thinks are tracks. They are driving on snow and black ice. Without chains only Ali can guarantee a safe outcome. I can’t die before I get to his grave, Mansur thinks. Ali has called me.

It brightens slightly. They are at the entrance to the Salang tunnel. A sign outside warns: ‘Caution. Danger of poisoning. If you are blocked in, turn the engine off and make for the nearest exit’. Mansur looks questioningly at Akbar.

‘Only a month ago fifty people were holed up inside the tunnel because of an avalanche,’ the well-informed Akbar tells them. ‘It was minus twenty and the driver left the engine running to keep warm. After several hours, when they had managed to shovel all the snow away, ten or twenty people had fallen asleep from the carbon monoxide and died. That happens all the time,’ says Akbar as they drive slowly into the tunnel.

The car stops, the queue is at a standstill.

‘I’m sure I’m just imagining it,’ says Akbar, ‘but I feel a headache coming on.’

‘I agree,’ says Mansur. ‘Shall we head for the nearest exit?’

‘No, let’s hope the queue will move soon,’ says Said. ‘Imagine if the queue starts moving and we have left the car, then we’ll be the ones causing the queue.’

‘Is this what it feels like to die of carbon monoxide poisoning? ’ asks Mansur. They sit behind closed windows. Said lights a cigarette. Mansur screams. ‘Are you mad?’ shouts Akbar and snatches the cigarette from his mouth and stubs it out. ‘Do you want to poison us even more?’

An irritable feeling of panic spreads. They are still not moving. Then something happens. The cars in front crawl forward. The three boys pick their way out of the tunnel and emerge with splitting headaches. When the fresh air hits them the headaches evaporate. They still see nothing; the fog is like a greyish, white, whirling porridge. They follow the ruts and the dim lights ahead. It would be impossible to turn. They drive on in a fellowship of destiny. Every pilgrim is following the same worn, icy ruts. Even Mansur has stopped munching biscuits. It is like driving into oblivion, but oblivion where precipices, mines, avalanches and other dangers might suddenly strike.

At last the fog lifts, but they are still driving along a precipice. It is worse now that they can see. They have started the descent. The car lurches from side to side. Suddenly it slides sideways down the road. Said has lost control and swears. Akbar and Mansur hold on tight, as if that might help if they go over the side. Nervous silence descends once again on the car. The car slides sideways, rights itself, slides sideways again, and then swerves from side to side. They pass a sign which puts the fear of daylight into them: ‘Warning! Mines!’ Immediately outside – even inside their skid-zone – there are mines. All the snow in the world can’t protect them from anti-tank mines. This is madness, thinks Mansur, but he says nothing. He does not want to gain a reputation as a coward. And anyhow, he is the youngest. He looks down on tanks that lie scattered about, snow-covered, together with cars that have not made it either. He prays. Ali can’t have called him just to see him plunge over a cliff. Although at times his behaviour has been contrary to Islam, he has come to cleanse himself, put evil thoughts behind him and become a good Muslim. That last part down the mountain he experiences as if in a trance.

They enter the snow-free plains after what seems like an eternity. The last hours of the journey to Mazar-i-Sharif are child’s play in comparison.

On the road into town they are overtaken by pick-ups laden with heavily armed men. Bearded soldiers sit in open lorries carrying Kalashnikovs pointing in all directions. They bump along at sixty miles per hour over the rutty roads. The scenery is desert, steppe and stony hills. Now and again they pass little green oases and villages with mud huts. At the entrance to town a road-post stops them. Gruff men wave them through the barrier, which is a piece of rope stretched between two rocket-shells.

They drive into town, tired and stiff. Amazingly they have made the trip in twelve hours. ‘So this was an absolutely normal trip through the Salang tunnel,’ says Mansur. ‘What about those who take several days? Wow, we’ve made it. Ali, here I come.’

Soldiers with weapons at the ready stand on rooftops. Disturbances have been predicted for New Year’s Eve and there are no international peace-keepers here, just two or three opposing warlords. The soldiers on the rooftops belong to the governor, who is a Hazara. The soldiers in the pick-ups are the Tajik Atta Muhammad’s men. A particular uniform is the hallmark of the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum. All the weapons are aimed at the ground, where thousands of pilgrims are wandering around, or sit in groups and talk: by the mosque, in the park and on the pavements.

The blue mosque is a revelation, shining in the dark. It is the most beautiful building Mansur has ever seen. The floodlight is a gift from the American Embassy, on the occasion of the ambassador’s New Year visit to the town. Red lanterns light up the park around the mosque, which is teeming with pilgrims.

This is where Mansur will ask for forgiveness for his sins. Here he will be cleansed. It makes him faint just looking at the large mosque. And hungry. Coke, and banana-and-kiwi-filled biscuits are scant fare for a traveller.

The restaurants are packed with pilgrims. Mansur, Said and Akbar find the corner of a carpet to sit on in a dark restaurant in Kebab Street. Permeating everything are the fumes of grilled mutton, served with bread and whole onions.

Mansur bites into the onion and feels drunk. He wants to shout for joy. But he sits quietly and stuffs himself with the food, like the others. He is no child, and he tries to keep the same façade as Akbar and Said: cool, relaxed, worldly-wise.

The next morning Mansur is awakened by the prayer call of the mullah. ‘Allahu akhbar’ – ‘God is great’ booms out as if someone had fastened enormous loudspeakers to his ears. He looks out of the window, straight on to the blue mosque, which is sparkling in the morning sunshine. Hundreds of white doves fly over the holy place. They live in two dovecotes by the tomb and it is alleged that if a grey dove joins the flight its colour will change within forty days. Also, every seventh dove is a holy soul.

Together with Akbar and Said Mansur pushes through the enclosure. It is about half-past seven. Aided by Akbar’s press card they shove their way up to the podium. Many have spent the night here to get as close as possible when Ali’s banner is raised by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan ’s new leader. The women sit on one side, some wearing the burka, some only a white veil. The men sit opposite. While the women sit quietly on the ground, amongst the men there is a lot of pushing and shoving. The trees outside are black with people. The police walk around wielding whips, but more and more pass through into the enclosure; they jump over the fence and avoid the whips. Security is tight as all the Government ministers are expected.

The Government enter, Hamid Karzai leading the way, wearing his characteristic blue and green striped silk cloak. He dresses so as to represent all of Afghanistan: lambskin cap from Kandahar in the south, cloak from the north and shirt from the western provinces bordering Iran.

Mansur strains his neck and tries to get closer. He has never seen Karzai before. Karzai, the Pashtoon from Kandahar, had himself for a short period supported the Taliban but later used his position as chief of the Popolzai tribe to win over supporters for the fight against the Taliban. When the Americans started their bombing campaign, he left on a suicidal motorcycle tour of Taliban strongholds to try and convince the oligarchy that the Taliban was finished. It is alleged they were more convinced by his courage than his arguments. Later he was nearly killed by American friendly fire. At the UN conference in Bonn, drawn together to map out Afghanistan ’s future, he was chosen as the country’s new leader.

‘They tried to ruin our culture. They tried to crush our traditions. They tried to rob us of Islam,’ Karzai shouts to the crowd. ‘The Taliban tried to dirty Islam, pull us all down in the mud, fight the whole world. But we know what Islam stands for. Islam is peace. The New Year that starts today, the year 1381, is the year of renewal. That is the year in which it will be safe and secure to live in Afghanistan. We will safeguard peace and develop our society. Today we accept help from the whole world, one day, one day, we will be a country that helps the world,’ he cries and the multitude shout for joy.

‘Us?’ Mansur whispers. ‘Help the world?’

That is to him an absurd thought. Mansur has lived out his whole life in war. Afghanistan is a country that receives everything from the outside world, from food to weapons.

Following on from Karzai, ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani takes to the podium. A man of great weight but little authority. A theologian and professor at Cairo University who formed the Jamiat-i-Islami party, which united a fraction of the Mujahedeen. He persuaded the military strategist Ahmed Shah Massoud to join him. Massoud was to emerge as the great hero in the war against the Soviet Union, the civil war and the resistance against the Taliban. He was a charismatic leader, deeply religious, but also pro-western. He spoke French and wanted to modernise the country. He was assassinated by two Tunisian suicide bombers two days before September 11, and has achieved mythical status. The Tunisians were in possession of Belgian passports and presented themselves as journalists. ‘Commander, what will you do with Osama bin Laden once you have conquered all of Afghanistan?’ was the last question he was supposed to hear. He managed a laugh before the terrorists triggered the bomb hidden in the camera. Even some Pashtoon now display pictures of Massoud, the lion of Panshir.

Rabbani dedicates his speech to Massoud, but Rabbani’s golden age was the holy war against the Soviet Union. ‘We forced the Communists out of our country, we can force all invaders out of our holy Afghanistan,’ he proclaims.

The Russian troops withdrew in 1989. A few months later the Berlin Wall fell, an event for which Rabbani takes the credit, in addition to the break-up of the Soviet Union.

‘Had it not been for jihad, the whole world would still be in the Communist grip. The Berlin Wall fell because of the wounds which we inflicted on the Soviet Union, and the inspiration we gave all oppressed people. We broke the Soviet Union up into fifteen parts. We liberated people from Communism. Jihad led to a freer world. We saved the world because Communism met its grave here in Afghanistan!’

Mansur is fumbling with his camera. He has pushed his way right up to the podium to get close-ups of those who are speaking. He is keen to get Karzai. He snaps and snaps pictures of the small, slim man. This will be something to show his father.

One after the other the men talk, pray, talk from the podium. A mullah thanks Allah, the Minister for Education portrays an Afghanistan where weapons give way to the Internet.

‘Exchange weapons for computers,’ he cries. He adds that Afghans must stop discriminating between ethnic groups. ‘Look at America, they live in one country, they are all Americans. They co-exist without problems.’

During the speeches the whips are continually in operation on the public. But nothing helps. An increasing number squeeze over the barriers and into the holy interior. The audience scream and shout and it is virtually impossible to hear the speeches. It all seems more like a ‘happening’ than a religious ceremony. Armed soldiers man the steps and rooftops surrounding the mosque. A dozen American Special Forces soldiers, carrying machine-guns and wearing sunglasses, have positioned themselves on the flat roof of the mosque to protect the pale-pink American ambassador. Others flank him. To many Afghans it is sacrilege that infidels should walk about on the mosque roof. No non-Muslims are allowed into the mosque. Guards make sure that non-believers are weeded out. But there are not many of them; western tourists do not exactly make a pilgrimage to Afghanistan the first spring following the fall of the Taliban. Only a relief worker or two has got lost in the New Year’s celebrations.

The town’s warring warlords, Atta Muhammad and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, both have a place on the podium. The Tajik Atta Muhammad rules the town; the Uzbek Dostum thinks he should. The two bitter enemies stand side by side and listen to the speeches, Atta Muhammad sporting a beard like a Taliban, Dostum with the authority of a has-been boxer. They co-operated grudgingly during the last offensive against the Taliban. Now the cold front between them has once again descended. Dostum is the most infamous member of the new Government, and was included for the simple reason that it might prevent him from sabotaging the others. The man who now squints into the sun, his arms peacefully folded over his large body, has more gruesome stories attached to his name than anyone else in Afghanistan. As punishment for a misdemeanour he would tie soldiers to one of his tanks – and drive until only bloody rags remained. On one occasion thousands of Taliban soldiers were driven out into the desert and put into containers. When the containers were opened several days later the prisoners were dead and their skin burnt to cinders by the heat. Dostum is also known as the master of deceit. He has served many masters and deceived them all in turn. He fought for the Russians when the Soviet Union attacked, was said to be an atheist and heavy vodka drinker. Now he presents a deferential air, praises Allah and preaches pacifism. ‘In 1381 no one has the right to distribute weapons that will lead to fighting and new conflicts. This is the year for gathering up weapons, not doling them out!’

Mansur laughs. Dostum is known as a virtual illiterate. He stutters his way through his script, reading it like a preschooler. Sometimes he comes to a complete halt, but makes up for it by roaring even louder.

The last mullah urges a campaign against terrorism. In today’s Afghanistan everything is a campaign against some pet hate, which varies according to who is speaking. ‘Only Islam’s holy book speaks out against terrorism. Terrorists have turned their faces towards Afghanistan – it is our duty to oppose them. No other holy book talks the same language. God said to Muhammad: “You must not pray in a mosque built by terrorists.” Real Muslims are not terrorists, because Islam is the most tolerant of religions. When Hitler killed Europe ’s Jews, the Jews were safe in Muslim countries. Terrorists are false Muslims!’

After hours of speeches the flag is to be raised at last, Ali’s green flag, janda, which has not been raised for five years. The flagpole lies on the ground, the top facing the mosque. To the beating of drums and the rejoicing of the crowds Karzai raises the pole, and the religious flag is run up. It will fly for forty days. Shots are fired and the barriers opened. The ten thousand who have been waiting outside pile in, to the mosque, the tomb and the flag.

Mansur has had enough of crowds and celebrations and wants to shop. Ali will have to wait. He has been thinking about it for a long time. Every family member will get a present. If everyone gets a bite of the journey his father will be better disposed towards him in the future.

He buys prayer rugs, kerchiefs and prayer beads. Then he buys sugar crystals – big crystals which one bites pieces off and crunches in tea. He knows that his grandmother, Bibi Gul, will forgive every sin he has ever committed or is ever likely to commit if he returns home with the heavy sugar crystals that are made only in Mazar. In addition he buys dresses and jewellery for his aunts, and sunglasses for his uncles and brothers. He has never seen sunglasses for sale in Kabul. Loaded down with all this, in large, pink plastic bags advertising ‘Pleasure – Special Light Cigarettes’, he returns to Kalif Ali’s grave. The New Year presents must be blessed.

He carries them into the actual crypt, and goes over to the mullahs who are sitting by the gold-painted wall inside the tomb. He places the gifts in front of one of them, who reads from the Koran and breathes over the gifts. When the prayer has been said, Mansur packs the things back into the plastic bags and hastens on.

By the golden wall one can utter a wish. In keeping with the patriotic speeches he leans his forehead against the wall and prays: That he one day will be proud of being an Afghan. That he one day will be proud of himself and his country and that Afghanistan may become a country that will be respected in the world. Not even Hamid Karzai could have put it better.

Intoxicated by all the sights and sounds, Mansur has forgotten the prayer of purification and forgiveness, the reason for his coming to Mazar. He has forgotten the little beggar girl, her thin little body, the big pale-brown eyes, the matted hair.

He leaves the tomb and goes over to Ali’s flag. Here too are mullahs who accept Mansur’s plastic bags. But they do not have time to take the gifts out of the bags. The queue of people who want carpets, beads, food and kerchiefs blessed is enormous. The mullahs just grab Mansur’s plastic bags, brush them hastily up against the pole, mumble a prayer and give them back. Mansur tosses them some notes; the prayer carpets and sugar lumps have been blessed yet again.

He looks forward to giving them away, to his grandmother, to Sultan, to his aunts and uncles. Mansur walks around smiling. He is pure happiness. Away from the shop, away from his father’s grip. He walks down the pavement outside the mosque with Akbar and Said.

‘This is the best day of my life! The best day,’ he cries. Akbar and Said look at him in astonishment, rather embarrassed, but they are touched that he is so happy. ‘I love Mazar, I love Ali, I love freedom! I love you!’ he cries and jumps along the street. It is the first time he has travelled alone, the first day in his whole life that he has not seen a member of his family.

They decide to watch a buzkashi fight. The northern territories are famous for having the hardest, roughest, fastest buzkashis. From afar they see that the fight has already started. Clouds of dust lie over the plain, where two hundred mounted men fight over a headless calf’s carcass. The horses bite and kick, rear up and jump, while the horse-men, whip between their teeth, try to snatch the carcass on the ground. Possession of the calf changes so rapidly that it looks as if it is thrown from rider to rider. The aim is to move the calf from one end of the plain to the other and place it inside a circle on the ground. Some fights are so violent that the animal is torn to bits.

To an outsider new to the game it might look as though the horses are just racing after each other across the plain with the riders balancing in the saddle. The riders wear long embroidered coats, high-heeled, thigh-high, decorated leather boots and buzkashi hats, a small lambskin hat like a bowler edged in fur.

‘Karzai!’ cries Mansur when he spots the Afghan leader out on the plain, ‘and Dostum!’

The tribal chief and the warlord are fighting each other for possession of the calf. To emerge as a strong leader it is necessary to take part in buzkashi fights and not merely ride around in circles outside the chaos, but commit oneself to the heat of the battle. But everything has a price. Sometimes mighty men pay to win.

Karzai rides around on the outskirts of the battle and is not quite able to maintain the other riders’ lethal tempo. The tribal chief from the south never quite learnt the buzkashi’s brutal rules. This is a Plains battle. It is the great son of the Plains, General Dostum, who wins, or at least whom the buzkashi let win. That might be worth their while. Dostum sits like a commander on his horse and accepts the applause.

Sometimes two teams compete, at other times it is everyone for themselves. Buzkashi is one of the wildest games in the world, brought to Afghanistan by the Mongols, who devastated the country under Genghis Khan. It is also a game about money; powerful men amongst the public pay out millions of Afghani for each round. The more money the wilder the game. And it is a game with political significance. A local chief is either himself a good buzkashi fighter or keeps a stable with good horses and riders. Victory is synonymous with respect.

Ever since the fifties the Afghan authorities have tried to formalise the fights. The participants merely nod their heads; they know the rules would be impossible to uphold anyway. Even after the Soviet invasion the tournaments continued, in spite of chaos in the country; many participants could not turn up for fights, as they had to cross battlefields to get to the venue. The Communists, who tried to get rid of most of Afghanistan ’s deep-rooted traditions, never dared touch the buzkashi fights. On the contrary, they tried to ingratiate themselves with the locals by arranging tournaments; one Communist dictator after another appeared on the stands, as one relieved another following bloody coups. Nevertheless, Communism tore down much of the foundations of buzkashi fights. When collectivisation started few could afford to keep a stable of well-trained horses. The buzkashi horses were scattered to the four winds and used as farm-horses. When the landowners disappeared so did the fighting horses and the riders.

The Taliban forbade the fights and classified them as un-Islamic. This one now is the first big buzkashi fight since the fall of the Taliban.

Mansur has found a place right at the front; sometimes he has to retreat fast to avoid being trampled on by rearing horses. He takes lots of pictures, of the horses’ bellies, which appear towering over him; of the whirling dust; the battered calf; of a tiny Karzai at a great distance; and a victorious Dostum. After the fight he takes a picture of himself beside one of the buzkashis.

The sun is setting and sends red rays over the dusty plain. The pilgrims too are covered in dust. Outside the arena they find a café. They sit on thin mats opposite each other and eat in silence. Soup, rice, mutton and raw onion. Mansur gobbles the food and orders another round. They silently greet some men who sit in a circle near them, arm-wrestling. When the tea is served, the talk can begin.

‘From Kabul?’ ask the men.

Mansur nods.

‘Pilgrimage?’

The men hesitate. ‘We’re actually travelling with quail,’ an old, toothless man answers. ‘From Herat. We’ve made a big circle, Kandahar, Kabul and then up here. This is where the best quail fights are.’

He carefully takes a small bag out of his pocket. Out of it trips a bird, a dishevelled little quail. ‘It has won all the fights we have entered it for,’ he says. ‘We have won pots of money. Now it’s worth several thousand dollars,’ he boasts. The old man feeds the quail with worn, crooked fingers, like eagle’s claws. The quail shakes its feathers and wakes up. It is so tiny that it fits into the man’s large, rough fist. They are labourers who have taken time off. After five years of secret quail-fighting, hidden from the Taliban, they can now live their passion, to watch two birds pecking each other to death. Or rather, shout with joy, when their own little quail pecks another to death.

‘Come tomorrow morning, early, at seven. That’s when we’ll start,’ the old man says. As they are leaving he presses a large piece of hashish on them. ‘The best in the world,’ he says. ‘From Herat.’

In the hotel they try out the hashish and roll one joint after another. Then they sleep like stones for twelve hours.

Mansur wakes up with a start at the mullah’s call to prayer. It is half-past twelve. Prayer starts in the mosque outside. Friday prayer. He suddenly feels he cannot live on without Friday prayer. He must go and he must be on time. He has forgotten his shalwar kameez in Kabul, the tunic and wide-legged trousers. He cannot go to Friday prayer in his western clothes. He is desperate. Where can he buy proper prayer clothes? All shops are closed. He rages and swears.

‘Allah won’t mind what you are wearing,’ grumbles Akbar sleepily, hoping to get rid of him.

‘I must wash, and the water has been turned off in the hotel,’ Mansur whimpers. But there is no Leila to blame and Akbar sends him packing when he starts moaning. But water. A Muslim cannot pray without washing his face, hands and feet. Mansur moans again, ‘I won’t make it.’

‘There’s water by the mosque,’ says Akbar and closes his eyes once more.

Mansur runs out in his dirty travel clothes. How could he forget his tunic on a pilgrimage? Or the prayer cap? He curses his forgetfulness and runs out to the blue mosque to make it on time. By the entrance is a beggar with a club foot. The stiff leg is swollen and discoloured and lies across the path, infected. Mansur tears the prayer cap off him.

‘You’ll get it back,’ he calls and runs off with the grey-white cap. It has a thick yellow-brown sweatband round the edge.

He leaves his shoes by the entrance and walks barefoot over the marble flagstones. They have been polished smooth by thousands of naked feet. He washes hands and feet, pushes the cap down on his head and walks over to the row of men who lie facing Mecca. He made it. In many tens of rows with at least one hundred to a row, pilgrims sit, head bowed, in the huge space. Mansur sits down at the back and follows the prayers; after a while he is right in the midst of the crowd – several rows have been added as more people arrive. He is the only one wearing western clothes, but he pays attention, forehead to the ground, bottom in the air, fifteen times. He recites the prayers he knows and listens to Rabbani’s Friday prayer, a repetition from the day before.

Prayers take place by a barrier round the mosque behind which the helplessly sick sit and wait for healings. They have been confined behind high fences so as not to infect the healthy. Pale, consumptive old men with sunken cheeks pray that Ali will give them strength. Amongst them are also the mentally retarded. A teenage boy claps his hands frantically, while an older brother tries to calm him down. But the majority of them gaze dully out through the bars. Mansur has never seen so many terminally ill people. The group smells of sickness and death. Only the most ill have been allowed the honour to sit here and ask Ali for healing. Up against the tomb’s walls they sit cheek by jowl; the closer to the blue mosaic wall, the closer to healing.

In two weeks they will all be dead, thinks Mansur. He catches the eye of a man with piercing black eyes and deep, red scars. The long bony arms are full of rashes and sores, which have been scratched until they bleed, as are the legs that poke out of his tunic. But he has beautiful, thin, pale pink lips. Lips like petals from spring’s apricot flowers.

Mansur shivers and turns away. His gaze sweeps the next compound. There are the sick women and children. Faded blue burkas cradling children. A mother has fallen asleep, while her mongoloid child tries to say something. But it is like talking to a statue under a blue covering. Maybe the mother has been walking for days, barefoot, to get to the mosque and Ali’s grave in time for New Year’s Eve. Maybe she carried the child in her arms – to heal it. No doctor can help her, maybe Ali can.

Another child hits its head rhythmically with its hands. Some women sit apathetically, others sleep, some are lame or blind. But the majority of them have come with their children. They are waiting for Ali’s miracles.

It gives Mansur the creeps. Gripped by the powerful atmosphere he decides to become a new person. He will become a good person and a pious Muslim. He will respect the hour of prayer, give alms, he will fast, go to the mosque, not look at girls before he is married, he will grow a beard, and go to Mecca.

The moment prayers are over and Mansur has made his promises, it starts to rain. The sun is shining and it is raining. The holy building and the slippery flagstones sparkle. The raindrops shine. It pours down. Mansur runs, finds his shoes and the beggar who owns the prayer cap. He throws him some notes and runs over the square in the cooling rain. ‘I am blessed,’ he cries. ‘I have been forgiven! I have been cleansed!’

The water said to the dirty one, ‘come here.’

The dirty one said, ‘I am too ashamed.’

The water replied, ‘How will your shame be washed away

without me?’