chapter thirteen

Afghanistan came on like a magic carpet ride into another century. We caught sight of our first camels in the distance, grazing near black tents stretched across the horizon like sails. Goats were tethered to their stakes. Bright moving specks of color became women, serious women with black luxurious hair flowing into the wind, women without chador: beautiful, strong-faced women in voluminous dresses of red and navy who strode boldly toward and past us. “Chartreuse,” I took hold of his arm, “who are those women not in chador? I thought all the women—”

“Ah! Those! They are Kuchi!”

“Kuchi?” I tasted the word.

“That is their tribe. Kuchi tribe. No man will harness them.” He slapped his thigh. “They walk the silk route. This is the silk route now, Claire. You are on it. Did you see the black tents on the desert? That is Kuchi.”

“They live there? On the desert?”

“They live nowhere and everywhere. They walk from Dunhuang in China all across Mongolia to Persia. They walk, some of them, to Rome.”

Rome? I thought of my gypsies in Milan and wondered if they sprang from the same source. Was it possible? I was fascinated with the very idea of the Kuchis. “Chartreuse, tell me more about—”

“Look,” he grabbed Harry excitedly, “Herat! My home! Herat!”

It was the first town we’d come to. It appeared in the distance, golden and oblivious. Herat. It looked like a fairy tale, soft and precious, built from the golden soil of the landscape.

I still could not believe the beauty, the out-and-out beauty of Afghanistan. It was not the way you are thinking, the dusty, colorless scenes of mayhem we now half regard on TV. Afghanistan was swollen with fruit, copper with earth, and green with clover. Apricot trees toppled with fruit from behind walled gardens.

But for a smattering of jeeps and decrepit Land Rovers, there were no cars. Men rode horses. Fierce men with strong noses and broad mouths. So beautiful they were, they carried rifles across their chests and wore turbans and had furs and tassels that hung down. They looked right at you, right in your eyes. There was the slap of leather and horse harness. Bells jingling, horse carts sped through the picturesque marketplace. There were women in chador but the Afghani chador, or burka, came in soft pastel colors. The women in them seemed to move differently than any I’d seen before. They were lithe and spring-footed. Children, bold and laughing and free, ran, shouting at the sight of us. Mud-baked houses with turquoise doors ran down intricate alleys. Blacksmith shops with the sounds and smells of iron and oil opened onto broad roads and there were trees, rows of them, clusters of them. There was lush shade over ancient, crumbling, rose-covered buildings.

We drove into town carefully. Children tugged at our doors and flew along beside the vans. We approached a broad lane of shops. They were on stilts and without fronts, wide open to the air. Men in pajamas were coiled on cushions, smoking water pipes, their turbans purple and green and paler green and navy and silver. Rolls of Oriental fabric, silks and tapestries, were lined in bolts behind them, fruits piled in fragrant pyramids: apricots, mulberries, melons enormous and small. Burlap sacks of walnuts, dangling braids of dates and figs. There was the warm smell of coal. And everywhere the fine golden dust kicked up by the languid, trotting horses. It wasn’t like the suffocating bone dust of the Valley of Araxes. It was soft as a vapor.

“An oasis!” Harry breathed.

Chartreuse bolted from the van the moment we reached the marketplace. For a moment I thought I would never see him again, never know exactly what had happened, and Harry said, “That’s all he bloody well wanted, was it, a lift home? I told you I never trusted that bloke!” but then out of the humming yellow light Chartreuse emerged, teeth bared, riding toward us on a small, fierce horse. He’d covered his head and shoulders in a yellow and green shawl with little dots along the rim. His hair was black and he came at us with his yellow eyes. Whatever the men had grumbled about at first, we were all thrilled and reassured to see him like that. Wolfgang turned the camera on him. No matter what else would happen, we would all keep that image, I think, of Chartreuse swashbuckling toward us with a leather strap between his teeth, smacking his gray, galloping horse, the men in their stalls in the marketplace watching, peacefully sucking on their water pipes.

We all climbed out of our vans and petted his horse. I was suddenly a little shy around this new Chartreuse. He seemed more important, more powerful, in his own world.

He led us outside the town to a walled garden. This, Chartreuse announced, was his mother’s home. A wild little figure in a plum burka came running from the kitchen house and threw herself on Chartreuse. He hugged her and I could see tears spring to his eyes. She, clinging to him ecstatically, addressed him as Mohammed, which should not have been a shock because every man has Mohammed for a first name in those parts.

There were several buildings inside a seven-foot wall. The four vans fit snugly in the yard. We climbed out, all of us excited. It was good just to get out and walk around.

At last—we all felt it—at last we’d landed somewhere different, totally uninfluenced by the modern West. Blacky stood in the middle of the courtyard rubbing his hands. You could tell he was happy. When everything was different, there was no discontent coming from him. Not like Reiner, who suspiciously patrolled the peripheries with his club drawn, his bullet belt and no gun.

Inside one of the buildings was a tiny glass-blowing factory. A windmill turned on the roof. We peeked in. They were making liqueur bottles and bowls, all in a blue color particular to Herat. There was a dirt floor and a chicken pecked. The couple of women covered themselves self-consciously and we stepped courteously away, back into the golden evening light.

We were invited to sleep in the house and were glad to take advantage of a night outside the vans. We all dragged our sleeping bags into the two fragrant rooms provided for us. They smelled of spices and the mint tea that Chartreuse insisted on pouring endlessly. Hookahs of hashish and washing bowls of hand-painted porcelain awaited us. It was all so exotic and delicious. Wolfgang was in his glory, filming in every direction. “Look, why don’t we stay here for a while?” he kept suggesting. Tupelo and Isolde put on two of the pastel chador and ran through the rooms for him.

We ate that night in those blue-painted rooms, sitting cross-legged on the floor on top of our sleeping bags and cushions and carpets. Food was carried out from the kitchen house by doubtful-looking menservants, small, slender people with long black beards and ski jump–toed slippers. They were poor but they were eager to be with us, happy to bring us great flat bowls of yogurt, sallied goat and vegetables, and crusty bread you used as a fork, everyone dipping into the same vast flat bowls.

Chartreuse paraded one after the other of his male relatives—cousins, uncles—and childhood friends. There seemed to be no end to them. I have a vague memory of a lavender-veiled woman being slithered in and then just as swiftly out. Some entity kept hidden, a flash of toothless gums and beautiful green eyes. A feeling of happy privilege as she was sped through to greet the Europeans and one American. I don’t know if she was Chartreuse’s sister or his wife. I don’t think he’d have answered me directly so I didn’t ask him.

Through all this Vladimir had finally loosened up and was telling us about his catastrophic show in Zurich. He was far enough away from it now to see it in perspective. It seemed his idiotic publicist had booked the opening at the same time a Japanese artist from America was having his show in a rival gallery. Privately I wondered if this was the true reason for the show failing. I could imagine critics taking a nice bite out of him. I remembered he hadn’t brought all the papers with him. Just the one about us.

Delicious smoke-flavored beans and peas arrived, then more vegetables and goat simmered in exotic herbs.

Isolde stood up and rolled back her sleeves. “Do you know what I’m going to do?” she announced. “I’m going to go to the kitchen and get those women to give me their recipes.”

Determinedly she pushed her way into the kitchen but the women fled at the sight of her. Ruffled, she came back out.

I got up to try my luck and Blacky pulled me aside. He seemed to want to tell me something very important. “What?” I brought my face down close to his.

“But you are not like Isolde,” he whispered. “Please stop trying to be. You will wear yourself out. She is a Viking. You are—”

“What? What am I?”

“You are a sweet and innocent child,” he said and kissed my hand. I was so relieved. I thought he was going to say I was just a girl from Queens.

I turned in time to see Tupelo laughing derisively. She wasn’t afraid of me or what Blacky might feel for me. She held on like a fox to the glamour of wickedness. If there was a moment which changed me, that was it. That condescending look in her eyes. She thought I was beneath her contempt. She believed that her seductive spirit was so superior to mine, that there need be no concern for my power. I spread my hands out before me. I turned them over and looked into my palms. Then I looked into her crooked eyes.

“What are you looking at?” she said blandly, unworried.

“The cat can well look at the queen,” I said.

After dinner we were invited to partake of the terrifying, waist-high water pipes, which we did. It was horrifying and wonderful, the smells and tastes so different from anything I’d ever imagined, and we, lying around on filthy cushions, breathing the exotic incense of adventure, were sheltered from the road and any fears for at least one happy night. Harry had the runs, Tupelo a terrible cough, and Isolde an ear infection. But Blacky treated everyone with the latest German antibiotics and we all felt well taken care of. He made you feel safe, did Blacky. We lay there listening for the hundredth time to the comforting if by now distorted sounds of my Pink Floyd tape and to the hilarious snores of the disgruntled camels out the door. We fell asleep to Harry and Vladimir’s stoned-beyond-belief hysterical laughter.

I awoke the next morning and climbed over the sleeping bodies of my friends to get outside. There was Chartreuse, sitting cross-legged in the entryway. He didn’t see me. He’d returned to his origins, wrapped his head in a turban. I saw it in his eyes. He was himself, completely himself. Now was his time to remember and just be. I went around to the back of the house and across the yard to use the outhouse. A glamorous rooster strutted before me. There was a refreshing stream outside the wall. I left the compound and washed myself briskly in the early cold. It felt wonderful. Chartreuse’s eyes crinkled with delight when he saw me and he signaled me to follow him. He handed me a sweet shaplam. It was delicious, and still warm! We walked together through the orchard. He presented everything with his arms, showing me this tree, heavy with apricots, that vine, pulsing with melons. We walked past the grain windmills, their sails catching the wind in the sunshine.

I pointed to another group of heavily laden trees. “What sort is that?”

“Pistachio.”

“Pistachio?”

“Yes. Very good for the heart.”

“Oh, Chartreuse! I’ve never seen one before! They’re delightful!”

“Yes.”

I remembered the gypsy woman saying if I were a tree it would be pistachio. So this was my tree! I was thrilled. “Tell me about them.”

“Well, uh, what can I say, they are the family Anacardiaceae.”

“The who?”

“Sure. You know. The cashew family.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Also mango, poison oak, sumac, poison ivy.”

“Yikes. But why are they like that, like two trunks stuck together?”

“Both are needed for pollination. That’s why we graft them together.”

“Why is that?” I tripped happily along through the grass.

“One is male, the other female.”

I stopped. “What?”

“They bind together a male and female at the beginning. You know. So they produce fruit.”

“But, but …”

“Sometimes the farmer relies on wind to pollinate. For fruit to set, you understand? But mostly, to be sure, we bind the male and the female trunks together when they are young to make one. See?”

Oh, sure, I understood, all right. I wasn’t a woman. I was a man and a woman. My gypsy lady in Milan had seen me for who I truly was. As in most momentous moments in my life, I did not let it show. I kept walking, pretending to be interested for interest’s sake.

Here.” Chartreuse shook one of the trees lightly. “Try one!”

“No.”

“Yes, come. Try it.”

“All right.” I had to admit it was delicious, very different from what I’d known. More sumptuous. I looked back at the crumbling, opulent house where inside slept the objects of my passion. Blacky, the open truth, the impossible dream. Tupelo, the secret, the clandestine and available fulfillment of forbidden desire. I swallowed. Crisp, sweet. If this was me, then this was me. I was, I reminded myself obliquely, “protected.” By what, by whom, I did not—nor might I ever—know. And then, while Chartreuse stood there, high priest of the moment, while wild Afghani birdsong filled the clear morning air, I took hold of that melding of trees and wrapped my arms around both sides of it, holding it dearly in communion with myself. It was an end and a beginning. An acceptance. Yes, then, this was me, the both of me, the pistachio girl.

The next days were spent in enjoyment. We rode horses and ate and smoked the gurgling hookahs of hashish. On a bright afternoon one of Chartreuse’s cousins took the group to the marketplace and then to visit the tomb of Jami, a famous Persian poet. There wasn’t enough room for everyone. I volunteered to stay behind. So, at the last moment, did Blacky. He jumped off the Land Rover. I’ll never forget Tupelo’s face as they pulled away. She was fit to be tied.

“That was a fast one you pulled,” I said as we stood there waving. The Land Rover sped into the distance.

“Well, I wasn’t going to let you stay here with no one but Chartreuse. Lord knows what he would have done with you.”

“Chartreuse would never hurt me,” I said with confidence, disappointed that it was chivalry that kept him rather than yearning to be alone with me. “And anyway,” I stomped after him back to the enclave, “why do you say that? We hung out together in Munich. Did you know that he helped out Frau Zwekl when she needed it?”

He gave a disbelieving snort. “If he says so.”

That was the one thing I noticed about Blacky. He was convinced of his own good intentions but skeptical of everyone else’s.

Chartreuse was in the little courtyard. He was saddling a horse. I was a little mad at Blacky for not trusting Chartreuse and a little mad at Chartreuse for not being trustworthy. I ran up to him. “Where are you going?”

“Bamiyan.”

“Where’s that? May I come?”

“No. I’m riding.”

“I can ride,” I lied.

He looked to Blacky standing there smoking a cigarette. “He will be angry.”

“Blacky? He certainly doesn’t tell me what to do.” I looked to the ground. “He doesn’t care.”

Chartreuse spat in the dust. “Go and get him then. We’ll take the truck. You can both come.” I felt him watching me as I ran off to tell Blacky.

It took us most of the morning to reach Bamiyan. There was no road. We just headed north over the desert, guided by landmarks of which only Chartreuse had any inkling. My original excitement wore thin after three grueling hours in the open-air back of what must have been some sort of a manure truck from the smell of it. Blacky had the infuriating capacity—learned, no doubt, in medical school—of burrowing in and going to sleep under the worst of conditions. Because I was loathe to cuddle with the stinking tarp, every time I’d get comfortable we’d go over a bump and I’d be thrown into the air, sending Chartreuse into peals of laughter.

I saw in the distance a sea of red. Chartreuse was driving so fast I was afraid we’d fall into it.

“Red!” I cried out, remembering, for this was surely the red of my imagination, the dream I’d unknowingly been sure I’d find. Well, drive into it we did. We seemed to be sailing through the brilliant red.

“Poppies!” Chartreuse called over his shoulder.

I stood up in the back of the truck, holding on, the wind thrashing my hair. Miles and miles of poppies in full bloom surrounded us like a vast crinoline. Blossoms moved in waves, a scarlet sea. My heart, catapulted back to its innate first visions, ached with the beauty.

As suddenly as they had begun, the poppy fields disappeared and we were returned to the golden desert landscape. Rapid mountain streams cascaded through gnarled and ancient apple orchards. Fields of graceful young birches swayed toward one sunlit ravine. There were gorges of monumental rocks perched dramatically after landslides, and snow framed distant crests. Spectacular, unsuspecting butterflies tripped through the bright air and smashed against the windshield. As we neared Bamiyan there were cracked, mud-walled castles, fortresses where colorfully overclothed tribesmen crouched. Slant-eyed, round-faced boys swung slingshot rings in the air.

Then, at last, when I was too weary and saddle sore to care where we were, off in the distance, three towering statues of Buddha appeared standing upright and balanced, carved and elite, within the sides of a mustard-colored plateau. Even then I knew that I beheld something mystical and reverent. They were more impressive to me out there in the wild land, those still figures, than any ornate cathedral I’d ever beheld. Even at this distance, though, we could see that there were no faces. “But where are they?” I asked.

Chartreuse said, “The hands and faces were cut off long ago by different armies on their way to India—probably the Muslim armies that brought Islam to the area in the ninth century.”

“God. How old are they?”

“Fifth century,” he said, driving even faster. I clung to my tarp.

Blacky, wide awake now and avidly reading from his guidebook, added, “The thinking was that by carving out the head and hands, it would take away the soul of the image.”

As we neared the Buddhas it became evident that there was no town, just a crumble of ruins, some tents and caves. Men were gathered at the feet of the Buddhas, though. They’d been waiting for Chartreuse and were delighted with the unexpected gifts he had packed under the tarp. I thought they must be drugs, the way they secreted them away, but in their hurry they ripped open a scar of burlap, revealing the butt of a rifle. I looked away and smiled politely, pretending I hadn’t seen.

Stiffly we disembarked and shook hands all around. The men were shy and sweet, offering us figs. They took us to a kettle of dark water where we refreshed ourselves, then brought us into a huge tent that was so dark at first after the daylight that we had to stand for a moment to adjust our eyes. I remember the tent. There were chests of drawers and carpets everywhere, even pictures on the walls. A fire was in the middle with stones in a circle and an elegant kettle. We had some greasy, delicious tea and bowls of lentils while Chartreuse was brought up to date by one of his cousins. The children sat with us. They were so different from American or European children. More ignorant, but wiser. I gave them my bangles. It didn’t matter, they were cheap bangles I’d bought on the Leopoldstrasse. I wished I had more to give them. They were barefoot, with soles crusty and thick, used to the desert. Then we went back out into the daylight and, blinking and blinded by the sun, into the mysterious dark caves that led right to the feet of the Buddhas. There was certainly nothing else to do. But for the Buddhas, we were literally in the middle of nowhere. Carefully we negotiated the worn, centuries-old sedimentary earth steps, the dirt caking between our fingers as we pulled ourselves upward through the honeycomb of caves. Light streamed in at different intervals.

“Here we go,” Blacky called back to me, his eyes lit up with adventure and high spirits. “These used to be the cells where more than a thousand monks would contemplate.”

The height was dizzying when we reached the top and climbed out onto one of the heads, a space the size of a small balcony. I climbed to my feet but kept both arms to the wall. The drop was straight down and the wind blew fiercely. We were a good ten stories high.

“For centuries Bamiyan was the center, the heart of the Silk Route,” Chartreuse shouted. “Can you imagine? This very spot was pulsing with people! Look down! We’re standing where the face used to be.”

The crisp wind died suddenly and I was so relieved. “Was this really the face? What a shame,” I said. “Why would anyone want to destroy such mysterious treasures?”

“The Muslims,” Blacky said. “They were image breakers.”

“There can be no image resembling Allah,” Chartreuse explained.

“It’s really interesting when you think of it.” Blacky wiped his glasses clean with the edge of his shirt. “The whole idea of Buddhism is nonattachment. That means to ideas, to things, to people, and even to existence itself. You really have to wonder if we are dishonoring the very intention of the creators of these statues by placing undue attachment to them. I mean, can the doctrine of nonattachment coexist with the need to preserve antiquities?”

We looked out over the seemingly endless valley, pondering this. And, I thought uneasily, that was no doubt why a man like Blacky would never be attached to someone as worldly as me. He thought great thoughts, did Blacky. Although I could not help remarking to myself how similar the doctrines of Buddhist thought seemed to be to my old grammar school nuns’ doctrines of basic Christianity. Wasn’t perfect contrition supposed to be selfless? Sorrow for one’s sins supposed to stem at best from the wish for the greater good? And how staunchly the nuns had taught us never to pray to a statue but through it.

Blacky stood taking the newly revived wind, enjoying letting it throttle him. I admired his slim hips and fierce beard. No matter how often he shaved there was always that underlying blue threatening to come forth. Chartreuse sat on his haunches to make a shield from the wind. He lit a joint and the two of them passed it back and forth. They stood untethered. I thought if I smoked I would fall off. I felt as far away from safety as possible. For who were these men? Did I really know either of them? I had the sudden feeling that my only weapon against them was that I was not alone with either of them. As cool as it was, my forehead suddenly beaded with sweat. I stepped back and clung to the—what?—sort of nasal passages of the great Buddha.

Blacky said, “It wasn’t always like this. This was an important city, one of the major Buddhist centers from the second century up to the ninth century, when Islam entered the area. Can you believe it? Look how desolate now, and how peaceful!” He pointed out across the valley. “Think of it! This is the very spot where Buddhism was transferred to China, Korea, Japan, along this very old Silk Route.”

I could tell he was moved. These were the sorts of things that he was passionate about, that really riled him up, and I berated myself for imagining—even for a moment—that he, of all people, could ever be violent.

Below us stretched the valley of Bamiyan. If you squinted you could imagine the past, busy and thriving. Now a family of white dogs, huge as polar bears, romped freely. You could just make out the persistent ting of some worker’s hammer.

Chartreuse, his pajamas snapping in the wind, his animal skin vest still smelling of animal, said in a dreamy voice, “In India, the great king Aoka’s edict was, ‘All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another. By thus acting, a man exults his own sect and at the same time does service to the sects of other people.”

“Yes,” Blacky said. They grabbed hold of each other, clasping arms and grinning. I got a lump in my throat. I thought, I’ll never forget this moment. This crux in my life. Never.

But below, some children had climbed onto the roof of the truck. They began to dance on it.

“Hey!” Chartreuse shouted. “Hey!” Frantically, he clattered down the steps threatening retribution and leaving us alone on the magical summit.

We stood listening to the wind-furled echoes from Chartreuse’s shouts.

“Do you know where we are?” Blacky asked.

“Where?”

“In the third eye of the Buddha.”

How poetic he was. And how crass my perceptions had been. I would change, I resolved. Then out of the blue a huge hawk appeared in the sky. Something flaccid was between its beak. It landed near us on one of the ledges, but just out of sight. We could hear how close by the flap of its wings. We could hear hungry squeaks, and something else, a trial of agony, and then resigned silence.

Fascinated, horrified, we stood together.

“Claire,” he said and he sort of laughed at himself. Then he came at me, his face pitted with grime, his eyes wet and intent with desire.

I am his moment of weakness, I thought. I was right. He fell upon my red hair like a thirsty man to water. His head was tipped and when I turned I saw his eyes, anguished and filled with heat.

“It’s Bamiyon,” I said, excusing his behavior. “It’s this place.” But then I remembered that demeaning look in Tupelo’s eyes and the last veneer of my defenses was garroted and kicked away. I opened my vest and let him taste me. He held on to me like a viper. I became feather light. We stood there and the wind came up again. He wrangled his hands into the waistband of my jeans and groaned at the touch of my flesh. I kissed the salty neck that had been to Vietnam, that had studied night and day and become a doctor, that had slept with women left and right and made them cry, that had a mind that soared and pierced and—what was this?—oh, my God, was it blue?—and now … he dragged me back into the darkened tunnel, strange as a lighthouse made of mud, the wind whistling around us in a back-and-forth as old as time itself, and no … Yes. Oh, yes. Now it was my turn. He was my captive. And I was his.