Just before sunrise they rounded a bend and stopped short: a landslide had filled the gorge with earth and loose rock, blocking it completely.
Jane felt like bursting into tears. They had walked two or three miles along the bank and that narrow ledge: to turn back meant an extra five miles, including the section that had frightened Maggie so.
The three of them stood for a moment looking at the blockage. “Could we climb it?” said Jane.
“The horse can’t,” said Ellis.
Jane was angry at him for stating the obvious. “One of us could go back with the horse,” she said impatiently. “The other two could rest while waiting for the horse to catch up.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to get separated.”
Jane resented his my-decision-is-final tone of voice. “Don’t assume we’ll all do what
He looked startled. “All right. But I also think that mound of earth and stones might shift if someone tried to climb it. In fact I might as well say that I’m not going to try it, regardless of what you two might decide.”
“So you won’t even discuss it. I see.” Furious, Jane turned around and started back along the track, leaving the two men to follow her. Why was it, she wondered, that men slipped into that bossy, know-it-all mode whenever there was a physical or mechanical problem?
Ellis was not without his faults, she reflected. He could be woolly-minded: for all his talk about being an antiterrorist expert, still he worked for the CIA, which was probably the largest group of terrorists in the world. There was undeniably a side of him that liked danger, violence and deceit. Don’t pick a macho romantic, she thought, if you want a man to respect you.
One thing that could be said for Jean-Pierre was that he never patronized women. He might neglect you, deceive you or ignore you, but he would never condescend to you. Perhaps it was because he was younger.
She passed the place where Maggie had reared. She did not wait for the men: they could cope with the damn horse themselves this time.
Chantal was complaining, but Jane made her wait. She strode on until she reached a point where there seemed to be a pathway up to the clifftop. There she sat down and unilaterally declared a rest. Ellis and Mohammed caught up with her a minute or two later. Mohammed got some mulberry-and-walnut cake out of the baggage and handed it around. Ellis did not speak to Jane.
After the break they climbed the hillside. When they reached the top they emerged into sunshine, and Jane began to feel a little less angry. After a while Ellis put his arm around her and said: “I apologize for assuming command.”
“Thank you,” Jane said stiffly.
“Do you think that maybe you might have overreacted a little bit?”
“No doubt I did. Sorry.”
“You bet. Let me take Chantal.”
Jane handed the baby over. As the weight was lifted, she realized that her back was aching. Chantal had never
The air became milder as the sun climbed the morning sky. Jane opened her coat and Ellis took his off. Mohammed retained his Russian uniform greatcoat, with characteristic Afghan indifference to all but the most severe changes in the weather.
Toward noon they emerged from the narrow gorge of the Linar into the broad Nuristan Valley. Here the way was once again quite clearly marked, the path being almost as good as the cart track which ran up the Five Lions Valley. They turned north, going upstream and uphill.
Jane felt terribly tired and discouraged. After getting up at two a.m. she had walked for ten hours—but they had only covered four or five miles. Ellis wanted to do another ten miles today. It was Jane’s third consecutive day on the march, and she knew she could not continue until nightfall. Even Ellis was wearing the bad-tempered expression which, Jane knew, was a sign he was weary. Only Mohammed seemed tireless.
In the Linar Valley they had seen no one outside the villages, but here there were a few travelers, most of them wearing white robes and white turbans. The Nuristanis looked with curiosity at the two pale, exhausted Westerners, but greeted Mohammed with wary respect, no doubt because of the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.
As they trudged uphill beside the Nuristan River, they were overtaken by a black-bearded, bright-eyed young man carrying ten fresh fish speared on a pole. He spoke to Mohammed in a mixture of languages—Jane recognized some Dari and the occasional Pashto word—and they understood one another well enough for Mohammed to buy three of the fish.
Ellis counted out the money, and said to Jane: “Five hundred afghanis per fish—how much is that?”
“Five hundred afghanis is fifty French francs—five pounds.”
“Ten bucks,” said Ellis. “Expensive fish.”
Jane wished he would stop jabbering: it was as much as she could do to put one foot in front of the other, and he was talking about the price of fish.
The young man, whose name was Halam, said he had caught the fish in Lake Mundol, farther down the valley, although he had probably bought them, for he did not look like a fisherman. He slowed his pace to walk with them, talking volubly, apparently not much concerned about whether they understood him or not.
Like the Five Lions Valley, the Nuristan was a rocky canyon which broadened, every few miles, into small cultivated plains with terraced fields. The most noticeable difference was the forest of holly oak which covered the mountainsides like the wool on a sheep’s back, and which Jane thought of as her hiding place should all else fail.
They were making better time now. There were no infuriating diversions up the mountain, for which Jane was deeply thankful. In one place the road was blocked by a landfall, but this time Ellis and Jane were able to climb over it, and Mohammed and the horse forded the river and came back across a few yards upstream. A little later, when an abutment jutted into the stream, the road continued around the cliff face on a shaky wooden trestle which the horse refused to tread on, and once again Mohammed solved the problem by crossing in the water.
By this time Jane was near to collapse. When Mohammed came back across the river, she said: “I need to stop and rest.”
Mohammed said: “We are almost at Gadwal.”
“How far is it?”
Mohammed conferred with Halam in Dari and French, then said: “One half hour.”
It seemed like forever to Jane. Of
But then, when they turned the next bend, they saw the village.
It was a startling sight as well as a welcome one: the wooden houses scrambled up the steep mountainside like children clambering on one another’s backs, giving the impression that if one house at the bottom were to collapse, the whole village would come tumbling down the hill and fall into the water.
As soon as they drew alongside the first house, Jane simply stopped and sat down on the riverbank. Every muscle in her body ached, and she hardly had the strength to take Chantal from Ellis, who sat beside her with a readiness that suggested he, too, was wiped out. A curious face looked out from the house, and Halam immediately began to talk to the woman, presumably telling her what he knew about Jane and Ellis. Mohammed tethered Maggie where she could graze the coarse grass on the riverbank, then squatted beside Ellis.
“We must buy bread and tea,” Mohammed said.
Jane thought they all needed something more substantial. “What about the fish?” she said.
Ellis said: “It would take too long to clean and cook it. We’ll have that for tonight. I don’t want to spend more than half an hour here.”
“All right,” said Jane, although she was not sure she would be able to carry on after only half an hour. Perhaps some food would revive her, she thought.
Halam called to them. Jane looked up and saw him beckoning. The woman did the same: she was inviting them into her house. Ellis and Mohammed got to their feet. Jane put Chantal down on the ground, stood up, then bent down to pick up the baby. Suddenly her vision blurred at the edges and she seemed to lose her balance. For a moment she fought it, seeing only Chantal’s tiny face surrounded by a haze; then her knees became weak and she
