village of Darg, with its doomed mosque. This Valley was the stronghold of the Resistance, he thought. By tomorrow it will be a memorial to a failed rebellion. And all because of me.
Suddenly the helicopter veered south and crossed the mountain, and within seconds the Valley was lost from view.
CHAPTER 11
WHEN FARA learned that Jane and Jean-Pierre would be leaving with the next convoy, she cried for a whole day. She had developed a strong attachment to Jane and a great fondness for Chantal. Jane was pleased, but embarrassed: sometimes it seemed as if Fara preferred Jane to her own mother. However, Fara seemed to get used to the idea that Jane was leaving, and the next day she was her usual self, devoted as ever but no longer heartbroken.
Jane herself became anxious about the journey home. From the Valley to the Khyber Pass was a 150-mile trek. Coming in, it had taken fourteen days. She had suffered from blisters and diarrhea as well as the inevitable aches and pains. Now she had to do the return journey carrying a two-month-old baby. There would be horses, but for much of the way it would not be safe to ride them, for the convoys traveled by the smallest and steepest of mountain paths, often at night.
She made a sort of hammock of cotton, to be slung around her neck, for carrying Chantal. Jean-Pierre would have to carry whatever supplies they needed during the day, for—as Jane had learned on the journey in—horses and men walked at different speeds, the horses going faster than the men uphill and slower downhill, so that people got separated from the baggage for long periods.
Deciding what supplies to take was the problem that occupied her this afternoon, while Jean-Pierre was at Skabun. There would be a basic medical kit—antibiotics, wound dressings, morphine—which Jean-Pierre would put together. They would have to take some food. Coming in, they had had a lot of high-energy Western rations, chocolate and packet soups and the explorers' perennial favorite, Kendal Mint Cake. Going out, they would have only what they could find in the Valley: rice, dried fruit, dried cheese, hard bread and anything they could buy on the road. It was a good thing they did not have to worry about food for Chantal.
However, there were other difficulties with the baby. Mothers here did not use diapers, but left the baby's lower half uncovered, and washed the towel on which it lay. Jane thought it was a much healthier arrangement than the Western system, but it was no good for traveling. Jane had made three diapers out of towels, and had improvised a pair of waterproof underpants for Chantal out of the polythene wrappings from Jean-Pierre's medical supplies. She would have to wash a diaper every evening—in cold water, of course—and try to dry it overnight. If it did not dry, there was a spare one; and if both were damp, Chantal would get sore. No baby ever died of diaper rash, she told herself. The convoy certainly would not stop for a baby to sleep or be fed and changed, so Chantal would have to feed and doze in motion and be changed whenever the opportunity arose.
In some ways Jane was tougher than she had been a year ago. The skin of her feet was hard and her stomach was resistant to the commoner local bacteria. Her legs, which had hurt so badly on the incoming journey, were now used to walking many miles. But the pregnancy seemed to have made her prone to backache, and she was worried about carrying a baby ail day. Her body seemed to have recovered from the trauma of childbirth. She felt she would be able to make love, although she had not told Jean-Pierre this—she was not sure why.
She had taken a lot of photographs, when she first arrived, with her Polaroid camera. She would leave the camera behind—it was a cheap one—but of course she wanted to take most of the photographs. She looked through them, wondering which to throw away. She had pictures of most of the villagers. Here were the guerrillas, Mohammed and Alishan and Kahmir and Matullah, striking ludicrously heroic poses and looking fierce. Here were the women, the voluptuous Zahara, wrinkled old Rabia, and dark-eyed Halima, all giggling like schoolgirls. Here were the children: Mohammed's three girls; his boy, Mousa; Zahara's toddlers, aged two, three, four and five; and the mullah's four children. She could not throw away any; she would have to take them all with her.
She was packing clothes into a bag while Fara swept the floor and Chantal slept in the next room. They had come down from the caves early to get the work done. However, there was not much to pack: apart from Chantal's diapers, just one clean pair of knickers for herself and one for Jean-Pierre and a spare pair of socks for each of them. None of them would have a change of outer clothing. Chantal had no clothes anyway—she lived in a shawl, or nothing at all. For Jane and Jean-Pierre, one pair of trousers, a shirt, a scarf and a pattu-type blanket would suffice for the whole trip, and would probably be burned in a hotel in Peshawar in celebration of their return to civilization.
That thought would give her strength for the journey. She vaguely remembered thinking that Dean's Hotel in Peshawar was primitive, but it was difficult to recall what had been wrong with it. Was it possible she had complained that the air-conditioner was noisy? The place had showers, for God's sake!
"Civilization," she said aloud, and Fara looked at her inquiringly. Jane smiled and said in Dari: "I'm happy because I'm going back to the big town."
"I like the big town," Fara said. "I went to Rokha once." She carried on sweeping. "My brother has gone to Jalalabad," she added in a tone of envy.
"When will he be back?" Jane asked, but Fara had become dumb and embarrassed, and after a moment Jane realized why: the sounds of whistling and a man's foot-
steps came from the courtyard, there was a tap on the door, and Ellis Thaler's voice said: "Anyone at home?"
"Come in," Jane called. He walked in, limping. Although she was no longer romantically interested in him, she had been concerned about his injury. He had remained in Astana to recover. He must have come back today. "How do you feel?" she asked him.
"Foolish," he said with a rueful grin. "It's an embarrassing place to get shot in."
"If embarrassed is all you feel, it must be getting better."
He nodded. "Is the doctor in?"
"He's gone to Skabun," Jane said. "There was a bad bombing raid and they sent for him. Anything I can do?"
"I just wanted to tell him that my convalescence is over.''
"He'll be back tonight or tomorrow morning." She was observing Ellis's appearance: with his mane of blond hair and curly golden beard he looked like a lion. "Why don't you cut your hair?"
"The guerrillas told me to grow it, and not to shave."
"They always say that. The object of the exercise is to make Westerners less conspicuous. In your case it has the opposite effect."
"I'm going to look conspicuous in this country regardless of my haircut."
"That's true." It occurred to Jane that this was the first time she and Ellis had been together without Jean- Pierre. They had slipped very easily into their old conversational style. It was hard to remember how terribly angry she had been with him.
He was looking curiously at her packing. "What's that for?"
"For the journey home."
"How will you travel?"
"With a convoy, as we came."
"The Russians have taken a lot of territory during the last few days," he said. "Didn't you know?"
Jane felt a chill of apprehension. "What are you telling me?"
"The Russians have launched their summer offensive. They've advanced over big stretches of country through which the convoys ordinarily pass/'
"Are you saying the route to Pakistan is closed?"
"The regular route is closed. You can't get from here to the Khyber Pass. There may be other routes—"
Jane saw her dream of returning home fade. "Nobody told me!" she said angrily.
"I guess Jean-Pierre didn't know. I've been with Masud a lot so I'm right up-to-date."
"Yes," Jane said, not looking at him. Perhaps Jean-Pierre really did not know this. Or perhaps he knew but had not told her about it because he did not want to go back to Europe anyway. Whichever it was, she was not
