The Bookseller of Kabul

Suicide and Song

In Afghanistan a woman’s longing for love is taboo. It is forbidden by the tribes’ notion of honour and by the mullahs. Young people have no right to meet, to love or to choose. Love has little to do with romance; on the contrary, love can be interpreted as committing a serious crime, punishable by death. The undisciplined are cruelly killed. Should only one guilty party be executed it is invariably the woman.

Young women are above all objects to be bartered or sold. Marriage is a contract between families or within families. Decisions are made according to the advantages the marriage brings to the tribe – feelings are rarely taken into consideration. Throughout the centuries Afghan women have had to put up with injustices committed in their name. But in song and poem women have testified about their lives. The songs are not meant for publication, but the echo lingers on in the mountains and the desert.

‘They protest with suicide and song’, writes the Afghan poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh in a book of poems by Pashtoon women.* He collected the poems with the aid of his sister-in-law. Majrouh was himself murdered by fundamentalists in Peshawar in 1988.

The poems or rhymes live on in popular sayings and are swapped by the well, on the way to the fields, by the baking oven. They talk of forbidden love, and without exception the beloved is someone other than the one the woman is married to; they talk of loathing the (often much older) husband. But they also express pride and courage. The poems are called landay, which means ‘short’. They are of few lines, short and rhythmical, ‘like a scream or a knife stab’, writes Majrouh.

Cruel people, you can see the old man

On his way to my bed

And you ask me why I cry and tear my hair.

Oh, my God, yet again you have bestowed on me a dark night

And yet again I tremble from head to foot

I have to step into the bed I hate.

But the women in the poems are also rebellious; they risk their lives for love – in a society where passion is prohibited and punishment merciless.

Le suicide et le chant. Poésie populaire des femmes pashtounes, by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, Gallimard 1994.

Give me your hand, my loved one, and we will hide in the

meadow

To love or fall down beneath the knife stabs.

I jump in the river, but the current does not carry me away.

My husband is fortunate; I am always thrown back on to the

bank.

Tomorrow morning I will be killed because of you.

Do not say that you did not love me.

Nearly all the ‘screams’ deal with disappointments and life unlived. One woman asks God to make her a stone in the next life, rather than a woman. None of the poems are about hope – on the contrary, hopelessness reigns. The women have not lived enough, never tasted the fruits of their beauty, their youth, or the pleasures of love.

I was beautiful like a rose.

Beneath you I have turned yellow like an orange.

I never knew suffering.

Therefore I grew straight, like a fir-tree.

The poems are also full of sweetness. The woman glorifies her body with brutal sincerity, sensuous love and forbidden fruit – as though she wants to shock, provoke men’s virility.

Lay thy mouth over mine,

But let my tongue be free so it can talk of love.

Take me first in your arms!

Afterwards you can bind yourself to my velvet thighs.

My mouth is yours, eat it up, do not be frightened!

It is not made of sugar, dissolvable.

My mouth, you can have it.

But why stir me up – I am already wet.

I will turn you into ash

If I only for one moment turn my gaze towards you.

The Business Trip

It is still cool. The sun’s first rays have touched the steep, stony mountain cliffs. The landscape is dust-coloured, brown turning to grey. The mountainsides are all stone; boulders threaten to trigger crushing avalanches, and gravel and bits of clay crunch below the horses’ hooves. Thistles growing between the stones scratch the legs of smugglers, refugees and fleeing warriors. A confusion of paths cross and disappear behind rocks and mounds.

This is the route used by smugglers of weapons and opium, cigarettes and Coca-Cola cans between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The paths have been trodden throughout the centuries. These are the paths the Taliban and the Arab al-Qaida warriors crept along when they realised the battle for Afghanistan was lost and they fled into the tribal areas of Pakistan. These are the paths they will use when they return to defeat American soldiers – the infidel who has occupied holy, Muslim soil. Neither Afghan nor Pakistani authorities control the area around the border. Pashtoon tribes command their particular districts on each side of the state boundaries. The lawlessness, preposterously, has found its way into Pakistani law. On the Pakistani side the authorities have the right to operate on tarmacked roads, and up to 20 metres beyond on both sides. Outside the 20 metres tribal law reigns.

On this morning the bookseller Sultan Khan makes his way past the Pakistani border guards. Less than 100 metres away are the Pakistani police. As long as humans, horses and laden donkeys keep their distance, there is nothing they can do.

But if the authorities cannot control the stream, nevertheless, many of the travellers are stopped and ‘taxed’ by armed men, sometimes just ordinary villagers. Sultan has made his provisions; Sonya has sewn the money into the sleeves of his shirt and he carries his possessions in a dirty sugar bag. He is wearing his oldest shalwar kameez.

As for most Afghans, the border to Pakistan is closed to Sultan. It matters not that he has family, a house and business in the country, nor that his daughter goes to school there – he is not welcome. Following pressure from the international community, Pakistan has closed its borders to prevent terrorists and the Taliban from hiding away in the country. A fruitless gesture. After all terrorists and soldiers do not turn up at the borders passport in hand. They use the same paths as Sultan when he travels on business. Many thousands enter Pakistan daily in this way.

The horses struggle up the steep slope. Sultan, broad and solid, sits astride the saddleless horse. Even in his oldest clothes he looks well dressed. As always his beard is newly trimmed, his small fez fits perfectly on his head. He looks like a distinguished gentleman who has taken a trip to the mountains to admire the view – even when, terrified, he grabs the reins tightly. He feels shaky. One false step and they’ll be at the bottom of the abyss. But the horse trundles calmly up the well-trodden paths, effortlessly, unaffected by the man it is carrying. The valuable sugar bag is tightly wound round Sultan’s hand. It contains books he wants to print for his shop and the draft of what he hopes will become his life’s work.

He is surrounded by Afghans on foot, all wanting to cross to the forbidden country. Women wearing burkas ride sidesaddle en route to visit relatives. Amongst them are students returning to the university in Peshawar having celebrated eid, a religious festival, with their families. There might be some smugglers in the company, maybe some businessmen. Sultan does not ask. He is concentrating on his contract and the reins, and curses the Pakistani authorities. First one day by car from Kabul to the border, then an overnight stay in a hideous border station, followed by a whole day in the saddle, on foot and in a pick-up. The journey by main road from the border to Peshawar is barely an hour. Sultan finds it degrading being smuggled in to Pakistan; he feels he is being treated like a pariah dog. Pakistan supported the Taliban regime politically, with money and weapons, and he thinks they are now being two-faced, suddenly sucking up to the Americans and closing the border to Afghans.

Pakistan was the only country, besides Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to officially recognise the Taliban regime. The Pakistani authorities wanted the Pashtoon to control Afghanistan. The Pashtoon live on both sides of the border and are to a certain extent influenced by Pakistan. Virtually all the Taliban were Pashtoon. They are Afghanistan ’s largest ethnic group and make up approximately forty per cent of the population. The Tajiks are the largest ethnic group in the north. About one quarter of Afghans are Tajiks. The Northern Alliance, which after September 11 was supported by the Americans, was on the whole made up of Tajiks. Pakistanis look upon them with a certain amount of scepticism. Since the Taliban fell and the Tajiks became a force to be reckoned with in the Government, many Pakistanis now feel that they are surrounded by enemies: India to the east, Afghanistan to the west.

But on the whole there is little tribal hatred between the various Afghan groups. The conflicts are due rather to power struggles between various warlords who have encouraged their own ethnic groups to war against each other. The Tajiks are fearful that if the Pashtoon become too powerful they would be massacred in the event of another war. The Pashtoon fear the Tajiks for the same reason. The same can be said about the Uzbeks and Hazars in the northwest of the country. War has also been waged between tribal chiefs within the same ethnic group.

Sultan couldn’t care less what sort of blood flows in his veins, or in the veins of anyone else for that matter. Like many Afghans he is a mixture: his mother is Pashtoon, his father Tajiki. His first wife is a Pashtoon, his second a Tajik. Formally he is a Tajik, because ethnicity is inherited from the father’s side. He speaks both languages, Pashtoo and Dari – a Persian dialect spoken by the Tajiks. Sultan is of the opinion that it is high time for the Afghans to put war behind them and start rebuilding the country. The dream is that they one day might make up for what they have lost in relation to their neighbours. But it doesn’t look good. Sultan is disappointed by his compatriots. While he works away at a steady pace, trying to expand his business, he grieves over those who fritter away their earnings, and go to Mecca.

Immediately before travelling to Pakistan he had a discussion with his cousin Wahid, who just about manages to keep his head above water running a small spare-parts shop for cars. When Wahid popped into Sultan’s shop he told him that at last he had saved up enough money to fly to Mecca. ‘Do you think praying will help you?’ Sultan asked contemptuously. ‘The Koran tells us that we must work, solve our own problems, sweat and toil. But us Afghans, we’re too lazy. We ask for help instead, either from the West or from Allah.’

‘But the Koran also tells us to worship God,’ argued Wahid.

‘The Prophet Muhammad would cry if he heard all the shouts, screams and prayers in his name,’ continued Sultan. ‘It won’t help this country however much we bang our heads on the ground. All we know is how to scream, pray and fight. But the prayers are worth nothing if we don’t work. We can’t just sit and wait for God’s mercy.’ Sultan was shouting now, egged on by his own torrent of words. ‘We search blindly for a holy man, and find a lot of hot air.’

He knew he had provoked his cousin. For Sultan work is the most important thing in life. He tries to teach his sons as much and to live up to it himself. For that reason he has taken his sons out of school to work in the shop, in order that they might help him build his empire of books.

‘But to travel to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam,’ the cousin objected. ‘To be a good Muslim you must acknowledge God, fast, pray, give alms and go to Mecca.’

‘We might all go to Mecca,’ Sultan said at last. ‘But only when we deserve it, and then we go to give thanks, not to pray.’

I suppose Wahid is on his way to Mecca, in his white flowing pilgrim robes, Sultan thinks now. He snorts and wipes the sweat off his forehead. The sun is at its zenith. At last the pathway descends. On a cart track in a small valley several pick-ups are waiting. These are Khyber Pass taxis, and the owners make a killing transporting unwelcome visitors into the country.

This was once part of the Silk Road, the trade route between the great civilisations of antiquity – China and Rome. Silk was carried west, traded for gold, silver and wool.

The Khyber Pass has been traversed by the uninvited for more than two millennia. Persians, Greeks, Moguls, Mongols, Afghans and the British have tried to conquer India by approaching the country via this route. In the sixth century BC the Persian King Darius conquered large parts of Afghanistan and marched on through the Khyber Pass to India. Two hundred years later, the generals of Alexander the Great marched their troops through the pass. At its narrowest point only one fully-loaded camel or two horses side by side can pass at any one time. Genghis Khan laid waste parts of the Silk Road, while more peaceful travellers, like Marco Polo, merely followed the caravan tracks to the East.

Ever since the time of King Darius and right up to the British invasion of the Khyber Pass in the 1800s, the Pashtoon tribes from the surrounding mountains invariably fiercely resisted the invading armies. Ever since the British withdrew in 1947 the tribes have once more held sway over the pass and all the land to Peshawar. The mightiest of these is the Afridi tribe, feared for its fierce warriors.

Weapons are still the first thing to catch the eye after crossing the border. Along the Pakistani side of the highway, at regular intervals, dug into the mountainside or painted on dirty signs in the barren landscape, is the name Khyber Rifles. Khyber Rifles is a rifle company and also the name of the local militia who are in charge of security in the area. The militia protect a considerable fortune. The village immediately over the border is famous for its bazaar full of contraband; hashish and weapons go for a song. No one asks for licences, whereas anyone carrying weapons on Pakistani territory risks a long prison sentence. Amongst the clay huts are large, glitzy palaces, paid for with black money. Small stone fortresses and traditional Pashtoon houses, surrounded by tall walls, lie dotted over the mountainside. Now and again walls of concrete loom up in the landscape; they are the so-called dragon’s teeth, erected by the British who feared a German Panzer invasion during the Second World War. On several occasions foreigners have been kidnapped in these remote tribal regions, and the authorities have introduced strict measures. Not even on the main road to Peshawar, patrolled by Pakistani troops, are foreigners allowed to drive without guards. Nor can they leave Peshawar for the Afghan border without the correct papers and an armed guard.

After having ridden for two hours along narrow roads, the mountain on one side, the precipice on the other, some hours on horseback remain until Sultan at last descends to the plain and can look towards Peshawar. He takes a taxi into town, to street 103 in the district called Hayatabad.

It has started to get dark when Sharifa hears blows on the gate. He has come after all. She runs down the stairs to open the door. There he is, tired and dirty. He hands her the sugar bag, which she carries up the stairs before him.

‘Was the journey OK?’

‘Beautiful scenery,’ answers Sultan. ‘Wonderful sunset.’

While he washes she prepares supper and lays the tablecloth on the floor, between the soft cushions. Sultan emerges from the bathroom clean and wearing freshly ironed clothes. He gives a disgruntled look at the glass plates Sharifa has put out.

‘I don’t like glass plates, they look cheap,’ he says. ‘Like something you bought in a dirty bazaar.’

Sharifa exchanges them for porcelain plates.

‘That’s better. The food tastes better now,’ he says.

Sultan recounts the latest news from Kabul, Sharifa the news from Hayatabad. They have not seen each other for many months. They talk about the children, about relatives and plan the next few days. Every time Sultan visits Pakistan he has to endure courtesy visits to those relatives who have not yet returned to Afghanistan. First priority is those in whose families there has been a death. Next come the closest relatives, and so on, as much as he can manage, depending on how many days he has at his disposal.

Sultan dreads having to visit Sharifa’s sisters, brothers, in-laws, sisters’ in-laws and cousins. It is not possible to keep his visit a secret; everyone knows everything in this town. Besides, these courtesy visits are all that remain of Sharifa’s married life. All she can demand of him now is that he is friendly towards her relatives and treats her as his wife during the visits.

When the duty calls have been planned, all that remains is Sharifa’s rendering of the latest news from the bottom floor – Saliqa’s escapades.

‘What a tart,’ says Sultan, reclining on a pillow like a Roman emperor. ‘That’s what she is, a tart.’

Sharifa protests. Saliqa wasn’t even alone with the boy.

‘Her attitude, her attitude,’ says Sultan. ‘If she’s not a prostitute now, she could easily become one. Having chosen this useless boy, who’ll never get a job, how will she ever have enough money for the things she wants, like jewellery and pretty clothes? When a kettle boils without a lid, anything can fall into it. Rubbish, soil, dust, insects, old leaves,’ he continues. ‘That’s how Saliqa’s family have lived. Without a lid. All sorts of muck has fallen on them. The father is absent, and even when he lived there he was never at home. Now he’s been living as a refugee in Belgium for three years and still hasn’t been able to organise the papers to get them over.’ Sultan snorts. ‘He’s a loser, he is. Ever since Saliqa could walk she’s been looking for someone to marry. By chance it was poverty-stricken, useless Nadim. First she tried Mansur, d’you remember?’ Sultan asks. The bookseller has succumbed to the power of gossip.

‘Her mother had a hand in it all,’ Sharifa recollects. ‘She kept on asking whether it wasn’t time to find him a wife. I always answered that it was too soon; the boy was going to study. Least of all I wanted a conceited and pathetic wife like Saliqa for Mansur. When your brother Yunus came to Peshawar, he was bombarded with the same questions, but he would never have entertained the idea of taking such a cheap girl as Saliqa.’

Saliqa’s crime is turned over and over until not a grain of dust remains. But the married couple have plenty more relatives they can pick holes in.

‘How is your cousin?’ laughs Sultan.

One of Sharifa’s cousins had spent her life looking after her parents. When they died her brothers married her off to an old man who needed a mother for his children. Sultan is never tired of hearing the story.

‘She completely changed after the wedding. At last she was a woman,’ he laughs. ‘But she never had any children so obviously she must have had her change of life before the wedding. No rest for the wicked, he’d be at it every night,’ he laughs again.

‘Maybe,’ ventures Sharifa. ‘Do you remember how thin and wizened she looked before the wedding? She’s completely changed now. I suppose she’s feeling randy all the time,’ she cackles. Sharifa holds her mouth and chuckles as she blurts out the reckless accusations. It is as if the intimacy between the couple has returned, as they lie about on the cushions round the leftovers on the floor.

One story follows another. Sultan and Sharifa lie on the floor, like two little children, roaring with laughter.

To all appearances there is no sex-life in Afghanistan. Women hide behind the burka, and under the burka they wear large, loose clothes. Under the skirts they wear long trousers and even within the four walls of the house low-necked garments are a rarity. Men and women who do not belong to the same family must not sit together in the same room. They must not talk to each other or eat together. In the countryside even the weddings are segregated; the women dance and make merry and so do the men, in different rooms. But under the surface all is seething. In spite of running the risk of the death penalty, in Afghanistan too people have lovers and mistresses. There are prostitutes in the towns to whom young boys and men can resort while they wait for a bride.

Sexuality has its place in Afghan myths and fables. Sultan loves the stories in the masterpiece Masnavi, written by the poet Rumi eight hundred years ago. He uses sexuality as a warning against blindly following in the footsteps of others.

A widow had a donkey which she loved dearly. It carried her where she wanted and always obeyed orders. The donkey was well fed and well looked after. But then the animal sickened and lost all its energy. It lost its appetite too. The widow wondered what was wrong and one night she went to the barn to see if it was sleeping. In the barn she found her maid lying in the hay with the donkey on top of her. This repeated itself every night and the widow got nosy and thought to herself she would like to have a go too. She dismissed her maid and lay down in the hay with the donkey on top of her. When the maid returned she found the widow dead. To her horror she saw that the widow had not done as she did – thread a pumpkin over the donkey’s organ to shorten it before she indulged herself. For her, the maid, the end bit had sufficed.

After having chortled away, Sultan rises from the cushions, smooths his tunic and goes to read his emails. American universities want periodicals from the seventies, researchers ask for old manuscripts and the printers in Lahore send an estimate of what the cost will be to print his postcards at the new paper prices. Sultan’s best source of income is the postcards. It costs him one dollar to print sixty cards and he sells three for a dollar. Everything is going his way, now that the Taliban have gone and he can do as he likes.

The next day he reads his post, visits bookshops, goes to the post office, sends and receives parcels and starts on the endless courtesy visits. First a condolence visit to a cousin whose husband has died of cancer, then a more enjoyable visit to another cousin who is back from pizza-delivering in Germany. Sultan’s cousin Said was at one time flight engineer for Ariana Air, Afghanistan ’s once-proud airline. Said is now thinking of returning to Kabul with the family and applying for his old job. But he needs to save a bit more money. Delivering pizzas in Germany is far more lucrative than working as a flight engineer. And he has not yet found a solution to the problem that awaits him at home. In Peshawar are wife and children. In Germany he is living with wife number two. If he returns to Kabul they will all have to live under one roof. He dreads the thought. The first wife doesn’t want to know about number two. They never meet and he sends money home like a dutiful husband. But if they all move in together? It doesn’t bear thinking of.

The days in Peshawar are taxing. One relative has been thrown out of his rented accommodation, another wants help to start up a business, a third asks for a loan. Sultan rarely gives money to relatives. Because he himself has done so well he is always asked to help when he goes courtesy visiting. On the whole he declines. He thinks they are mostly lazy and should help themselves. In any case they need to prove themselves before he dishes out the dough and in his eyes few of them come up to scratch.

When the couple are out visiting, Sharifa is the one who keeps the conversation flowing. She tells stories, spreads laughter and smiles. Sultan prefers to sit and listen. Now and again he chips in with comments about work ethics or about his business. But when Sultan with a single word says it’s time to leave, the couple go home, daughter Shabnam in tow. They walk peacefully through the dark of Hayatabad’s dirty-black streets and step over rubbish as lungs fill with the rank smell from back alleyways.

One evening Sharifa dolls herself up to visit some distant relatives. Normally they would not qualify for courtesy visits even though they live only a few blocks away. Sharifa totters along in sky-high pumps, followed by Sultan and Shabnam sauntering behind, hand in hand.

They are welcomed with open arms. The host puts out dried fruit and nuts, sweets and tea. They start off with formalities and the latest news. The children listen to the parents’ prattle. Shabnam cracks pistachios and is bored.

One of the children is missing, thirteen-year-old Belqisa. She knows to stay away; the visit is about her.

Sharifa has been here before, on the same mission. This time Sultan has reluctantly agreed to accompany her, to add gravity to the situation. They are there on behalf of Yunus – Sultan’s younger brother. He fell for Belqisa when he lived as a refugee in Pakistan a few years ago, when she was only a child. He has asked Sharifa to propose for him. He has never himself spoken to the girl.

The answer has always been the same: she is too young. On the other hand, if they wanted the older daughter, Shirin, who was twenty, that would be another matter. But Yunus did not want her, she was not nearly as beautiful as Belqisa, and anyhow, she was a bit too eager, he thought. When he visited she was always around him. In addition she had let him hold her hand when the others were not looking, and that, Yunus thought, was a bad sign. She was obviously not a virtuous girl.

But the parents held out for the older daughter, because Yunus was a good proposition. When Shirin had other proposals they approached Sultan and offered her to Yunus for the last time. But Yunus did not want Shirin. His eyes were on Belqisa and there they stayed.

In spite of being rejected, Sharifa has returned continually to ask for Belqisa. It was not seen as rudeness; on the contrary, it indicated the seriousness of the proposal.

Tradition says the mother of a suitor must wear out the soles of her shoes until they are as thin as garlic skin. As Yunus’s mother, Bibi Gul, was in Kabul, Sharifa, his sister-in-law, had taken on the role of go-between. She enlarged on Yunus’s excellence, how he spoke fluent English, how he worked in the bookshop with Sultan and how their daughter would lack for nothing. But Yunus was nearly thirty. Too old for Belqisa, the parents thought.

Belqisa’s mother had her eye on one of the other young boys in the Khan family: Mansur, Sultan’s sixteen-year-old son. ‘If you offer us Mansur we’ll accept on the spot,’ she said.

But now it was Sultan’s turn to dig his heels in. Mansur was only a few years older than Belqisa, and he had never even cast a glance in her direction. Sharifa thought it was too early to think of marriage. He was going to study, see the world.

‘Anyhow, she’s not thirteen,’ Sharifa said to her girl-friends a bit later. ‘I’m sure she’s at least fifteen.’

Belqisa walks into the room for a few moments so Sultan can give her the once-over. She is tall and thin and looks older than thirteen. She is wearing a dark-blue velvet costume, and sits down beside her mother – awkward and shy. Belqisa knows exactly what this is all about and feels uncomfortable.

‘She’s crying, she doesn’t want to,’ her two older sisters tell Sultan and Sharifa in front of Belqisa. Belqisa looks down.

But Sharifa laughs. It’s a good sign when the bride is unwilling. That indicates a pure heart.

Belqisa gets up after a few minutes and disappears. Her mother excuses her and says she has a maths test the next day. But the chosen one is not supposed to be present during the bargaining. First the opposing sides test the water before they get down to actual sums. How much the parents will get, how much will be spent on the wedding, the dress and the flowers. The groom’s family pays all expenses. The fact that Sultan is present gives the discussion gravitas; he has the money.

When the visit is over and nothing has been decided, they walk out into the cool March evening. The streets are quiet. ‘I don’t like the family,’ Sultan says. ‘They are greedy.’

It is especially Belqisa’s mother he is not keen on. She is her husband’s second wife. When his first wife never conceived he married again, and the new wife tormented the first one to such a degree that she could stand it no longer and moved in with her brother. Nasty stories circulate about Belqisa’s mother. She is grasping, jealous and avaricious. Her oldest daughter married one of Sultan’s relatives who said that she was a nightmare during the wedding ceremony, complaining constantly that there was too little food, too few decorations. ‘As mother so daughter. Belqisa’s a chip off the old block,’ states Sultan.

But he adds grudgingly that if she’s the one Yunus wants, he’ll do his best. ‘Unfortunately they’ll end up saying yes. Our family is too good to turn down.’

Having done his duty by the family, Sultan can at last start doing what he came to Pakistan for: print books. Early one morning he starts the next stage of the journey, to Lahore, the town of printing, bookbinding and publishing.

He packs a small suitcase with six books, a calendar and a change of clothes. As always when he travels, his money is sewn into his shirtsleeves. The day looks like being warm. The bus depot in Peshawar is seething with people and the bus companies struggle to make themselves heard over the din. ‘ Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore!’ By each bus a man stands and screams. There is no timetable; the buses depart when they are full. Before departure men selling nuts, small cornets full of sunflower seeds, biscuits and crisps, newspapers and magazines board the bus. Beggars content themselves with reaching hands through open windows.

Sultan ignores them. He follows the Prophet Muhammad’s advice with regard to alms which he interprets thus: First take care of yourself, then your closest family, then other relatives, then neighbours, and last the unknown poor. He might slip a few Afghani to a beggar in Kabul, but Pakistani beggars are at the bottom of the list. Pakistan will have to see to its own poor.

He sits in the back row of the bus, squashed between other travellers, his suitcase under his feet. In it is his life’s undertaking, written on a scrap of paper. He wants to print Afghanistan ’s new schoolbooks. When the schools open this spring there will hardly be any textbooks. Books printed by the Mujahedeen government and the Taliban are useless. This is how first-year schoolchildren learn the alphabet: ‘J is for Jihad, our aim in life, I is for Israel, our enemy, K is for Kalashnikov, we will overcome, M is for Mujahedeen, our heroes, T is for Taliban…’

War was the central theme in maths books too. Schoolboys – because the Taliban printed books solely for boys – did not calculate in apples and cakes, but in bullets and Kalashnikovs. Something like this: ‘Little Omar has a Kalashnikov with three magazines. There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He uses two thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels. How many infidels does he kill with each bullet?’

Books from the Communist period cannot be used either.

Their arithmetic problems deal with land distribution and egalitarian ideals. Red banners and happy collective farmers would guide children towards Communism.

Sultan wanted to return to the books from the time of Zahir Shah, the king who ruled for forty comparatively peaceful years before he was deposed in 1973. He has found old books he can reprint: stories and myths for Persian lessons, maths books where one plus one equals two, and history books cleansed of ideological content other than a bit of innocent nationalism.

UNESCO has promised to finance the country’s new schoolbooks. As one of the largest publishers in Kabul, Sultan has had meetings with them and will give them an offer once he has been to Lahore. On the scrap of paper in his waistcoat he has scribbled down page numbers and formats of 113 schoolbooks. The budget is calculated at two million dollars. In Lahore he will investigate which printers come up with the best deals. Thereafter he will return to Kabul and compete for the gilt-edged contract. Sultan contemplates contentedly how large a cut he can demand of the two million. He decides not to be too greedy. If he wins the contract he is assured work for many years to come – from reprints and new books. He reflects as fields and plains whizz past along the road, which is the main thoroughfare between Kabul and Calcutta. The closer they get to Lahore the warmer it gets. Sultan sweats in his homespun clothes from the Afghan highlands. He strokes his hair, where only a few strands remain, and wipes his face with a handkerchief.

In addition to the scrap of paper where the 113 schoolbooks are scribbled down, Sultan also has books he wants to print on his own account. Following the stream of journalists, aid workers and foreign diplomats into Afghanistan, came the demand for English-language books about the country. Sultan does not import books from foreign publishers, he prints them himself.

Pakistan is the piracy printers’ paradise. No control exists and few respect royalties and copyrights. Sultan pays one dollar to print a book he can resell for twenty or thirty. The bestseller Taliban, by Ahmed Rashid, Sultan has reprinted in several editions. The favourite amongst the foreign soldiers is My Hidden War, a book written by a Russian reporter about the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. It was a reality diametrically opposite to the one experienced by today’s international peace-keepers patrolling Kabul, who from time to time drop in and buy postcards and old war books in Sultan’s bookshop.

The bus trundles into Lahore bus depot. The heat hits him. The place is heaving with people. Lahore is Pakistan ’s cultural and artistic stronghold, a busy, polluted and confusing city. Lying in a plain, lacking all natural defences, the town has been conquered, destroyed, rebuilt, conquered, destroyed and rebuilt. But in between conquests and destruction many of the rulers entertained leading poets and writers and Lahore thus became the town of artists and books, in spite of the fact that the palaces the artists visited were constantly being levelled to the ground.

Sultan loves the Lahore book markets; he has pulled off several coups here. Few things warm the cockles of Sultan’s heart more than finding a valuable book in a dusty market place and buying it for next to nothing. Sultan is of the opinion that he owns the world’s largest book collection on Afghanistan, a collection of about eight or nine thousand volumes. Everything interests him: old myths and stories, old poetry, novels, biographies, recent political literature as well as dictionaries and encyclopaedias. His face lights up when he happens upon a book he hasn’t got or doesn’t know.

But now he has no time to trawl the book markets. He gets up at dawn, puts on his clean change of clothes, arranges his beard and places the fez on his head. He stands before a holy responsibility – to print new textbooks for Afghanistan ’s children. He goes straight to the printers he uses most. There he meets Talha. The young man is a third-generation printer and only mildly interested in Sultan’s project. It is, quite simply, too big.

Talha invites Sultan to a cup of tea with thick milk, strokes his mouth and looks worried.

‘I don’t mind taking a few, but a hundred and thirteen titles! That will take us a year.’

Sultan has a two-month deadline. While the sound of the printing presses reverberates through the thin walls in the little office, he tries to convince Talha to put all other jobs aside.

‘Impossible,’ says Talha. Sultan might well be an important client and printing schoolbooks for Afghan children might well be a holy undertaking, but he has other commissions to take care of. Nevertheless, he makes a quick calculation and reckons the books can be printed for as little as 3 pence per copy. The price will depend on paper quality, colour quality and binding. Talha calculates all combinations of quality and size and makes a long list. Sultan’s eyes narrow. He does mental calculations in rupees, dollars, days and weeks. He lied about the deadline to get Talha to speed up and put aside other assignments.

‘Don’t forget, two months,’ he says. ‘If you cannot make the time limit, you’ll ruin my business, do you understand?’

When they finish talking about the schoolbooks they negotiate the new books for Sultan’s bookshop. Once again they discuss prices, numbers and dates. The books Sultan has brought with him are reproduced straight from the original. The pages are taken apart and copied. The printers stamp them on large metal plates. When they print coloured front-covers a zinc solution is poured over the plates. They are then laid out in the sun, which brings out the right colour. If a page has several colours the plates must be exposed one at a time. Thereafter the plate is put on the press and run. Everything is done on old, semiautomatic machinery. One worker feeds the press with paper; another squats at the opposite end and sorts what emerges. The wireless drones in the background; a cricket match between Sri Lanka and Pakistan. On the wall hangs the mandatory picture of Mecca and a lamp swings from the ceiling, full of dead flies. Streams of yellow acid run on to the floor and down the drains.

After the inspection-round Talha and Sultan sit down on the floor and consider book covers. Sultan has chosen motifs from his postcards. He has some strips of border which he likes and he makes up the pages. After five minutes they have designed six book covers.

In a corner some men sit and drink tea. They are Pakistani publishers and printers who all operate in the same shadowy piracy market as Sultan. They greet each other and get talking about the latest news from Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzai walks a tightrope between the various warlords, while groups of al-Qaida soldiers have launched an attack in the east of the country. American Special Forces have come to the rescue and are bombing caves by the Pakistani border. One of the men sitting on the rug says what a pity the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan.

‘We need a few Taliban here in Pakistan too, to clean up a bit,’ he says.

‘That’s what you say. You have no experience of the Taliban. Pakistan would collapse if the Taliban came to power, don’t believe anything else,’ Sultan thunders. ‘Just imagine: all the advertising posters will come down, and there are at least one thousand in this street alone. All books containing pictures will be burnt, and the same will happen to the whole of Pakistan ’s film archive, music archive, all instruments will be destroyed. You’ll never again hear music, never dance again. All the Internet cafés will be closed, TV is prohibited and confiscated, and all you’ll get on the wireless will be religious programmes. Girls are taken out of school, all women are sent home from work. What will happen to Pakistan? The country will lose hundreds of thousands of workplaces and sink into deep depression. And what will happen to all the superfluous people who lose their jobs when Pakistan is no longer a modern country? Maybe they’ll become warriors? ’ Sultan was working himself into a frenzy.

The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, maybe not all the Taliban, just a few of them.’

Talha supported the Taliban by duplicating their pamphlets. For a few years he even printed some of their Islamic textbooks. Eventually he helped them set up their own printing works in Kabul. He got hold of a secondhand press from Italy, which he let them have cheaply. In addition he provided paper and other technical equipment. Like most Pakistanis he found it reassuring to have a Pashtoon regime next door.

‘You are unscrupulous,’ Sultan teases him good-naturedly, now that he has vented his spleen on his loathing of the Taliban.

Talha squirms, but sticks to his guns. ‘Taliban is not in conflict with our culture. They respect the Koran, the Prophet and our traditions. I would never have printed anything that went against Islam.’

‘Like what?’ Sultan laughs.

After having thought about it Talha says, ‘Like The Satanic Verses, for instance, or anything else by Salman Rushdie. May Allah lead us to his hideout.

‘He should have been killed. But he always gets away. Anyone who prints his books or helps him should also be put down,’ says Talha. ‘I wouldn’t print his stuff if I was offered all the tea in China. He has trampled on Islam.’

‘He has hurt and humiliated us, stabbed us. They’ll get him one day,’ one of the men continues, although neither man has read the book.

Sultan agrees. ‘He is trying to destroy our soul and he must be stopped before he corrupts others too. Not even the Communists went as far as that; they behaved with a certain amount of respect and did not try to rubbish our religion. Then you have this smut from someone calling themselves a Muslim.’

They sit silently, as though unable to shrug off the darkness the traitor Rushdie has cast over them. ‘They’ll get him, you’ll see, Inshallah, God willing,’ says Talha.

In the following days Sultan stamps around Lahore to all sorts of printers, in backyards, cellars and alleyways. To manage the sheer numbers he must spread his order over a dozen or so print shops. He explains his errand, gets quotations, jots down notes and estimates. His eyes blink when a quote is especially good, and his lips quiver slightly. He runs his tongue over his lips, does a quick mental calculation and assesses the profit margin. After two weeks he has placed orders for all the textbooks and promises to report back to the print shops.

At last he can return to Kabul. This time he doesn’t have to struggle across the border on horseback. Afghans are not allowed into Pakistan, but there is no passport control on the return journey and the bookseller can leave the country openly.

Sultan jolts along in an old bus round the tortuous bends from Jalalabad to Kabul. On one side of the road massive boulders threaten to roll off the mountain. Once he sees two overturned buses and a trailer, which have driven off the road. Several dead people are being carried away, amongst them two young boys. He prays for their souls and for himself.

Not only avalanches threaten this road. It is known as the most lawless in Afghanistan. Here foreign journalists, aid workers and local Afghans paid with their lives when, by accident, they stumbled upon outlaws. Soon after the Taliban fell four journalists were murdered. Their driver survived because he recited the Islamic creed. Just after that a busload of Afghans was stopped. All those with shaven beards had their ears and noses cut off – a demonstration by the bandits of how they wished their country to be ruled.

Sultan prays by the spot where the journalists were killed. To be on the safe side he has kept his beard and wears traditional clothes. Only the turban has been exchanged for a small fez.

He is nearing Kabul. Sonya is no doubt angry, he thinks to himself and smiles. He had promised to return within a week. He had tried to explain that he could not possibly do Peshawar and Lahore in one week. But she did not want to understand. ‘Then I won’t drink my milk,’ she’d said. Sultan laughs. He is looking forward to seeing her. Sonya does not like milk, but because she is still breastfeeding Latifa, Sultan has forced her to drink a glass every morning. This glass of milk has become her bargaining chip.

She misses Sultan terribly when he is away. The other members of the family do not treat her so well when he is not there. Then she is no longer mistress of the house, just someone who has dropped in by chance. Suddenly others are in charge and they do what they like when Sultan is absent. ‘Peasant-girl’, they call her. ‘Stupid as an ass!’ But they dare not tease her too much because she will complain to Sultan and no one wants him for an enemy.

Sultan misses Sonya too, in a way he never missed Sharifa. Sometimes he feels she is too young for him, that she is like a child, that he must look after her, trick her into drinking milk, surprise her with little presents.

He ponders on the difference between the two wives. When he is with Sharifa she looks after everything, remembers appointments, organises, arranges. Sharifa puts Sultan first, his needs and wants. Sonya does what she is told, but never takes the initiative.

There is only one thing he cannot reconcile himself to, the different hours they keep. Sultan always gets up at five to pray fajr, the only hour of prayer he observes. Whereas Sharifa always got up with him, boiled water, made tea, put out his clean clothes, Sonya is like a child, impossible to wake.

Sometimes Sultan thinks he is too old for her; he is not the right one. But then he reminds himself that she could never find anyone better than him. Had she married someone her own age she would never have had the standard of living she now enjoys. It would have been a poverty-stricken boy, for all the boys in her village are poor. We’ve got ten to twenty happy years ahead, Sultan thinks and his face assumes a contented expression. He feels lucky and happy.

Sultan laughs. He twitches a bit. He is nearing Mikrorayon and the delicious child-woman.