The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu

Copyright © 2003 Tom Vater

First published as paperback edition in 2006 by

Dragon’s Mouth Press/Orchid Press

This e-book edition first published in 2012 by

Crime Wave Press

Flat D, 11^th Fl. Liberty Mansion

26E Jordan Road

Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong

http://www.crimewavepress.com

Protected by copyright under the terms of the International Copyright Union: All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978 988 16556 1 5

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and other elements of the story are either the product of the author’s imagination or else are used only fictitiously.

Any resemblance to real characters, alive or dead, or to real incidents is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: the NEW Studio ™

http://www.NEW-online.co.uk

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to Dr. Betti Marenko for background on the second skin and its application.

Thanks also to Claire Roberts, Don Messerschmidt, Cameron Cooper, Peter Myers and Chris Taylor for their input and praise.

The visual advice from the top floor by Austin Cowdell is appreciated.

For Harry and Yves

Part 1

Pakistan, North West Frontier Province, Sept. 1976

The gate at the end of the world

“This is it, guys. Bin your roaches, button your filthy shirts and wear your most respectable smiles. We’re only here for the views. We’re tourists, the first this year.”

With a hard turn, Dan drove the battered old Bedford bus off the main road and stopped beneath an austere, solitary gate in the desolate Hindu Kush foothills. He was exhausted. The drive from Peshawar had taken longer than expected. He knew the road; they had already passed here on the way from Kabul. But the Bedford hadn’t really pulled today. The engine had responded sluggishly to his demands, even though they carried no more weight than usual. He wanted a break from driving.

Not yet.

Beyond the gate, the landscape, shorn largely of vegetation, stony, dusty, with patches of tough grasses, spread beneath a monochromatic gunmetal sky.

Dan thought it absolutely hopeless, abandoned to the point of unearthly beauty.

It was hot as hell. He didn’t mind. They were used to it. Being alone was all these hills were capable of. Glancing into the rear view mirror, he caught his thin, wasted and sunburned face, crowned by black curly hair, black bags like small, crumpled bin-liners under his dark eyes, rough stubble, the razor several days overdue. Here and there, family homes, surrounded by high, solid mud and brick walls, sat in the dust like withered crumbling castles overlooking a worthless, tired realm. There wasn’t another soul in sight.

The Agency guard, a tall man with weathered olive skin, blondish unkempt hair and piercing blue eyes, was as stylishly handsome as darkness itself. Dressed in blue paramilitary fatigues, a Kalashnikov casually slung across his broad shoulders, he looked dangerous. He shot Dan a black stare and waved the bus through the checkpoint.

“Are they Pathan here, like?” Fred’s voice was a tad hoarse.

Tim slapped him on the back and answered for all of them, “Yeah. Pathan, Baluchi, Afghani, what the fuck does it matter? We’re in one of the truly free places in the world, mate. Don’t worry Fred, it‘ll all be okay, we’re outside government control now.”

Fred didn’t appear convinced. “God, I’m far too straight for this reality flash. Better grab a couple of pills.”

Tim laughed, “I reckon the heavy in blue waved us through because we’re welcome and look so non-threatening. Otherwise we would’ve been turned away. As long as we don’t piss them off, we can do what we want here, buy what we need and get the fuck out again by nightfall. So, chill. It’s all in the script, man.”

“Then why the fuck did you buy a gun in Kabul? If they see it, these guys will wipe us off this wasteland so fast no one will get here in time to count the bones, man.”

Dan hit the brakes hard as the bullet whizzed past the driver’s window, narrowly missing the already cracked mirror. Fred and Thierry dropped to the deck of the Bedford. Tim slid deep into the seat next to Dan, dropping the map and a half-rolled joint onto the floor, saying nothing more. In the rear view mirror, the guardsman slowly and deliberately re-shouldered his gun and stepped cautiously towards them through dust raised by the abrupt braking of the Bedford.

“Is this in the script?” Dan mumbled to his co-pilot.

He felt his hands slide off the steering wheel. Liquid fear, another word for sick sweat, flushed out of his pores and slicked his skin.

“You’ve sunglasses? Give me sunglasses”

Dan did his best to look composed as he leaned out the window, his eyes immediately filling with the miniature sandstorm their abrupt halt had generated.

“Salaam Aleikum!” he shouted brightly.

The guardsman answered, surprised, “Aleikum Salaam, you are Muslim?”

“No, English. But good friends of Muslims.”

The man spat onto the ground before addressing Dan and Tim.

”You have gun? No gun, no rifle allowed inside Agency. I look the bus.”

He motioned for Dan to open the driver’s window further.

“You have sunglasses?”

Thierry threw his battered, steel-frame shades onto Dan’s lap as the door swung open.

“Ah,” was all the man said, grabbing the sunglasses and stepping back from the vehicle to scan the travellers for signs of imminent resistance.

“You go. Market is five kilometer. Stay on main road. Go, go. Ask Mr. Khan. Welcome, welcome.”

He waved them away, turning back towards his post beside the gate.

Dan shouted “Salaam,” as he pulled away briskly towards the featureless hills.

“What do you think he’ll do when he finds out that they’re Thierry’s prescription specs, like? He’ll go completely off his fucking head if he wears them for more than two minutes.”

Fred’s anxious comment elicited no response.

Thierry pulled himself up on one of the seats behind Dan and smiled sardonically. “That was in your script, mon ami?”

Once upon a time

The Bedford drew up at the 5 kilometer-stone, in front of a sprawling single-storey fortress. The building looked forbidding, more daunting close-up than from a distance. Like, serious business.

Dark mud walls were crumbling in places, a few bullet holes tattooed a wide circle across the front door, the only door, heavy and faded, reinforced by wide and thick strips of rusted steel nailed across the rough wood.

No one spoke. No one made an effort to leave the bus.

There were no windows or openings of any kind along the wall, which seemed to absorb and consume the grey daylight. Easy on the eyes. A small squat watchtower leaned drunkenly out into the street. The structure was almost too decayed to be in use.

Dan had the distinct feeling they were being watched. Round here, the hills had eyes.

“Well, we’ve come this far…,” his voice trailed off as he tied his long curly hair into a bundle and wiped dark smears of old sweat from his narrow face.

The wind quietly bled around the building’s worn corners. With a hard tug, metal grinding on stone, invisible hands threw the door open to the inside.

“Let’s go. Just remember we’re all pros. We know what we’re doing, right?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

The four companions marched across the road, tucking shirts into trousers and pulling back straggly, wayward hair from their faces. Tim and Thierry were suited up, clean, tatty but smooth. Fred was just Fred. He wouldn’t do any negotiating. The downers he’d popped dulled his eyes but he appeared happy enough. He’d be able to spot quality in any state.

Dan looked himself up and down and felt reassured that style ruled over shabbiness regarding his appearance. He’d managed pants, long sleeves and even shoes.

The light was just right. They even had a gun between them. The wind blew dust around, not in any direction, just around. Dan felt like whistling. The road; the building, and the quartet, trying to stay cool in the heat, ambling across the street. A Morricone moment. The hot tarmac on both sides was deserted and didn’t appear to be leading anywhere good. Nowhere to go, but ahead, into darkness.

Mr. Khan

“Salaam Aleikum.”

A deep voice echoed from the door.

Dan, in front, squinted into the dim room beyond, just able to make out a colossal white shape moving towards them, hovering, not quite emerging into daylight.

“Welcome, welcome to Landi Katal. My name is Mr. Khan, welcome.”

Mr. Khan was a huge Pathan, dressed in a spotless white shalwar kameez and perfectly polished sandals. His deeply lined, hard face was softened by a full white beard and the huge belly that stretched his spotless shirt afforded him a weird uncle vibe. To his side, two pale-faced boys stood with Kalashnikovs, barrels pointing towards the ground.

Dan could hear Fred swallow hard behind him, as they nodded greetings all around.

Mr. Khan beckoned. Breaking into a wide smile, his face was open and welcoming. His eyes were something different – entirely removed, as if made of stone, all-seeing yet blind, somewhere ahead of and behind their meeting. In short, Mr. Khan was tremendously scary, a proper gangster, entrepreneur, whatever.

“My sons, Ahmed and Yusuf. Good boys. You will do business with Yusuf to organise Peshawar side.”

One of the boys was so cross-eyed, Dan couldn’t be sure whom he was looking at. Perhaps, he speculated, all of them simultaneously, his vision resembling a wide-angle lens focusing on the entire room. But Dan liked the face of the young man; it was kinder than his father’s, not yet subjugated by the certain cruelty of the surrounding hills. What would he be like during an ambush of any kind? Probably unpredictable. This was Yusuf.

They followed their hosts down a long bare passageway into a spacious guestroom.

The walls of the chamber they entered were draped with rich swirling patterns of cloth, lit by two naked bulbs on the rough ceiling.

“Wow, it’s like Christmas in here.”

Fred was immensely impressed by the colours. Tim cased the room, the idea of escape clearly written across his too serious face.

The rich cloth, printed with squares, hexagons, octagons and other geometric shapes, lightened by interlacing plant motifs, drew the guests deeper into the windowless space. Two long rows of deep cushions faced each other across low tables. A ceiling fan rotated slowly above their heads like a weary, trapped bird.

The four companions left their shoes at the door, carefully stepping across gleaming, painted tiles covering the floor. Mr. Khan and Yusuf sat first, motioning their guests to follow. Ahmed remained by the door, his gun propped against the wall. They would have to pass him to regain their freedom.

Mr. Khan nodded to Ahmed, who disappeared back down the corridor, the only exit.

“You come from Kabul?”

“Yeah, but right now we’re coming from Peshawar.”

Tim took the lead, smiled at their host, more confident now, his pale face gleaming with sweat.

Mr. Khan extracted a pouch of tobacco from his shirt folds as Ahmed returned with a hookah and a basket of smoldering charcoal.

“You smoke?” He grinned.

The travellers nodded in unison.

A girl could be heard laughing elsewhere in the building.

Tim asked, “Your whole family lives here, Mr. Khan?”

The old man nodded into his beard, filling the pipe bowl with sweet-smelling tobacco before placing a piece of charcoal on top. The hookah had several mouthpieces lying like the limp tendrils of an alien, potentially fuming creature across the polished tabletop.

“Yes, Ahmed here is married already. I have two daughters also, unmarried. And two wives,” he added with a proud smile.

“But Yusuf has not married yet. He is in love,” the old man laughed.

Yusuf, sitting cross-legged next to his father, seemed to stare straight past the visitors, his expression melancholic, elsewhere.

“Very sad story,” Mr. Khan continued, “She is nice girl. I have no objection. She is a distant cousin. But she is already promised to another relative. Her father is a… a competitor,” his voice trailed off, then resumed its thread. “And Yusuf is my youngest son, very sad. We will find a solution, Inshallah.”

The visitors nodded silently.

Mr. Khan filled the room with his brooding, imposing presence. Mr. Khan was making conversation. He wasn’t a man to make small talk. Not here in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of unwashed, road-ripped Europeans. Everything was proceeding according to the script.

Ahmed had left and returned a second time, bearing a large tray, set with tiny, garishly painted metal teapots and small cups, which he now placed in front of the guests. Pouring the hot, sweet-smelling liquid into the cups, he deftly raised the pot high above the table, the tea cascading neatly into each receptacle.

“You want to take something in your bus? Hashish, opium, some heroin maybe?”

Tim shook his head, “Only hashish, Mr. Khan, only hashish. And maybe a little opium, but really not very much. We’re not interested in taking anything else.”

The old man took another hit on the pipe. “Come, smoke, my friends, is only tobacco.”

The room fell silent but for the steady bubbling of the hookah and the clinking of cups.

Everyone smoked and drank. Everyone was trying to gauge the situation, edging slowly, inevitably towards the serious business for which they’d come together.

“You are all from England?”

Tim made the introductions, “No, Fred, Dan and myself come from England. We drive the bus. In Isfahan we met Thierry. He’s from France, Paris in fact.”

“Oh, Paris, very nice city.”

“You have been to Paris?” Thierry asked.

“No, but very nice place, I am sure. Good people, French people, I like.”

“I agree.” Thierry said.

The room fell silent again. No one wanted to push the old man.

Dan felt the less information they volunteered about themselves, the better.

“You go back Iran or continue to India?”

Tim looked at Dan, searching his friend’s face for a clue to the best answer.

“You must tell me, because we have different arrangements for each route. India is very easy. Iran is little dangerous now.”

Dan said,” Yes, Mr. Khan, we’re planning to carry on eastwards to Lahore, then across to India.”

“You have some spare tires, no?”

Tim answered, ‘Yeah, we’ve got four.”

“Ah,” the old man smiled broadly, confidently. “You can take fifteen kilograms of Grade One hashish, very very strong hashish, in one tire. And maybe one kilo of opium in each tire. We can pack very well. No need to pick up in Peshawar, you will meet Yusuf in Swat Valley. I have one cousin living there who will supply and pack.”

“What price, Mr. Khan?” Dan asked.

“Not very expensive, number one quality, Peshawar Police quality. Yes, yes, police in Peshawar only smoke the best hashish and opium. You try.”

He waved again at his oldest son, who produced a small plastic bag from his shalwar and dropped it on the table.

Thierry lent forward and opened the bag, “Mon dieu, ca bouge.”

Yusuf grinned across at Dan and Tim. He nodded imperceptibly. His father stared straight ahead at his guests.

Fred pulled some loose papers from his pants and crumbled a Marlboro onto the table. With an almost steady hand he extracted a sizeable lump of hashish from the bag. The dope was soft, brown and oily. Very pungent. The others passed the bag around while he rolled up, bits of tobacco and hashish getting caught in his long unkempt beard. He was bestowing an initial seal of approval on the merchandise.

“Looks good, smells great, let’s see how it flares up and winds down.”

“Make sure you put enough in. No point in being tight here,” Tim said.

Fred lit up, thick smoke billowing from the small joint into the room, mixing with the heavy tobacco from the hookah, wafting along the wall-coverings like a delirious ghost moving through the old building.

The big Scouser took a second hit and passed the joint to Dan.

“Is good.”

“So you can get us sixty kilos of this, no problem, all the same quality?”

Tim scrutinised their host’s face.

Dan brushed some loose strands of hair from his forehead and offered the joint to Mr. Khan. The old man waved it away but Yusuf leant forward to take a drag.

“One kilo, one hundred kilo, no problem. Packed good, no one can find. Very safe to go India.”

“How much, Mr. Khan?”

The old man glanced at his sons, smiling all the while at the young westerners in front of him.

“You have US dollars, yes? Fifty dollars one kilogramme, four hundred extra for four kilos opium. You try in Swat valley. Madyan. My brother-in-law, Fateh Rashid, he will supply everything. He is a good man.”

Yusuf turned his head suddenly to his father, interjected sharply in Urdu.

“What does he say?” Thierry demanded.

Mr. Khan glanced briefly at his son, who looked irritated.

“It is only the son of Rashid. My son does not like. He is the man to marry the girl. The son is no good, I agree.”

He raised his hands and eyes to the ceiling.

“But what to do? Her father makes the contract with Fateh Rashid. I can do nothing.”

He laughed drily, “But don’t worry, this is business. We do all the time. You are foreigner, we are family. You pay in Swat, nothing now.”

The joint lay finished on a saucer. The room had suddenly gone stale.

“It is a deal?”

The travellers looked at each other.

“Bon, ca c’est la raison pour venir ici, non?”

Thierry glanced at his companions. Dan’s and Tim’s eyes met, it seemed okay. They’d leave here clean. No risk at all. Yet.

“Where’s this place where we pick everything up?” Fred asked.

He was trying to be professional now, but Dan was sure that Mr. Khan would know any answer could only penetrate so far into the Scouser’s drug-addled mind.

“Swat Valley is a very beautiful place. Many foreigner like you visit there. Is Switzerland of Pakistan. Very beautiful. East of Peshawar, not so long. And Madyan is only small village. My brother-in-law owns all the land there. No police. Easy to come, no one checking when you go. My personal guarantee. Free of charge.”

The travellers nodded, stoned, smiling.

Mr. Khan rose and shook hands.

“Inshallah, we will meet again. I will make all arrangements. Salaam.”

Ahmed had picked up his gun and followed his father into the dark corridor. Their audience was over.

Yusuf smiled at the young travellers uncertainly as they picked themselves up unsteadily.

“I take you to the bus. Tomorrow we meet in Peshawar and you drive to Madyan. Okay?”

Blasted and consequently inarticulate, the boys could do no more than nod and follow the young man to the front door.

Outside, the world had shrunk a little. The mid-day sun was blinding. A pair of large birds hovered high above them, scanning the bus, the road and the desert beyond for any sign of compromised life, no matter how insignificant or devious.

Bug transit

Peshawar lay behind them. The road led east, towards their rendezvous. There was no need for a map, in fact there were no maps. The route was clear and for Dan, at least, the morning had passed quickly behind the wheel. He could see Fred and Tim scratching in the rear-view mirror. Traffic was light but mad enough. Several times he’d had to dodge heavily laden camels floating out into the street, their drivers waving at the bus t rough clouds of choking dust. A flock of stubborn sheep brought the bus to an abrupt halt just as Damo Suzuki launched into Peking O.

“Told you that room looked really dodgy. Full of fucking bugs. You’re going to contaminate the entire bus.”

Fred moaned, “How are we going to get rid of the fucking things? My scalp and my balls are on fire, man.”

“Smoke some more dope, mon ami,” Thierry suggested from the back seat. Like Dan he’d been lucky and picked a bug-free bed.

“When we get to Madyan, we’ll boil all our clothes, wash ourselves in Dettol or something. That should do the trick.”

Tim was in a good mood despite the infestation that had left a small, neat strip of red dots running in two parallel rows across his narrow face, like a half-finished application of tribal war paint.

Turning to Fred, he said, “You might have to cut your beard and hair. Could be a good move before we cross into India, anyway. I don’t believe they’ve got such a beard fixation there. And it might mellow out that mad stare that you’ve had ever since you started dropping acid in Germany. Jesus, that seems like fucking ages ago.”

Fred sat sulking. He pulled up his shirt to reveal two diagonal lines of bites, crossing his chest like bandoleers.

“There’re whole civilisations starting up here, colonising us. These guys are organised, like.”

Dan laughed, “They look like they know where they’re going. I’m sure they read a map better than you.”

Once off the main road, they passed several more Agency gates, standing solitary amongst low hills. The landscape was dull, unsullied by trees, as if transient locust clouds had devoured all signs of growth. Yet its desolate beauty completely captivated the partially attentive travellers. Here and there family homes – more fortresses – dotted the hills, invariably in strategic spots, overlooking the void. It was hard to creep up on anyone or anything in North West Pakistan.

Roadside shops sold sweet tea and stringy goat meat swimming in fat and orange lentils. Soaked up in fresh oven-baked bread it tasted just fine. The road led gently upwards, following the broad Swat River into ever-more looming hills, overgrown with green brush. Apricot trees lined the riverbanks. Women, their heads wrapped in bright scarves, sat on flat stones above the churning water, washing clothes, while kids splashed around in the freezing shallows.

“This was all Buddhist once.”

Thierry had moved to the front, carefully avoiding physical contact with his contaminated companions. The wiry Frenchman winced out the window.

“What happened?” Fred asked.

“The Hindus came, and then the Muslims. And until a few years ago, this was a truly independent Islamic kingdom, nothing to do with Pakistan. A fine example of hundreds of years of concentrated carnage in a small place. Oh, and of course, you British were here too, and who knows who might snow through here in the future, thinking they can get a slice of the action…. Merde,” he gasped as Dan hit the brakes hard yet again.

Two brightly painted buses had stopped on a blind corner in the middle of the road. Male passengers stepped briskly from the vehicles, across the ditch onto a wooden platform. Men were rolling out their prayer mats and kneeling to face Mecca.

Thierry turned the music down as they passed slowly, admiring the spectacularly garish paint jobs on the buses, trying to catch a glimpse of the women who remained on the bus or had quickly taken to the shrub on the other side of the road for their morning toilet. The men prayed. A group of young boys stood staring proudly; only as the bus had passed, did they break into a run, waving and smiling after the vehicle.

“It’s magic. It’s all magic out here.”

Dan was shouting out of the window.

“You beautiful people in your beautiful land, we’re here to share your incredible experiences.”

The kids shouted back.

The Frenchman passed him a joint.

The others continued scratching, magic or not.

Highway butterflies

As the bus rolled along the only paved road through the valley into the small town, a young man peeled away from the crowd of afternoon shoppers and shouted for Dan to stop. “Salaam Aleikum. I am friend of Yusuf. He come and see me yesterday. You please stay at my house.”

Dan looked down at the young man, who stood in front of a butcher’s shop, his palms open, a friendly smile on a prematurely lined face.

“I am Harun Ali.”

The skin of whatever animal had been most recently slaughtered hung like a limp flag from a horizontal pole in front of the compact wooden shack, advertising its innards. A group of bearded men, wearing felt hats and shalwar kameez, the typical long shirt and baggy trousers worn by men and women all over Pakistan, were shouting at a young boy inside. Everyone seemed armed, antiquated double-barreled shotguns casually slung across broad shoulders. A boy sat stony faced, armed with a huge cleaver, over the remaining few pieces of meat and offal that hadn’t yet found a customer.

Dan, momentarily distracted, stared at the economic microcosm, returned the greetings and asked, ‘Where to park the bus? Actually, just get in, mate.”

Excited, Harun Ali slipped into the co-pilot’s seat.

“These are Kohistani people from Kalam. Very dangerous to go there. You no go there. Stay at my house, my wife is good cook. Many foreigners stay my house. And Yusuf is here in two days.”

Handshakes and Salaams, though Tim and Fred made a concerted effort to remain physically distant from their host. No need to infect the man they were to stay with.

“You like to smoke?” he smiled.

The bus still stank of the last piece they’d consumed. Life was a haze.

They drove the Bedford into the backyard of a bakery and climbed a steep hillside. The river, now mean and foaming, squeezed through a narrow bed a hundred meters below the main road, which they could follow meandering around several bends north.

The houses, first closely clustered together, but soon thinning out, were one-storey affairs with flat roofs. Everyone smiled and waved at the new arrivals. No doubt the unwashed foreigners would provide the week’s gossip in Madyan. Livestock and happy urchins moved between the buildings and the air was warm, golden and smelled of mountain and cow shit. As they left most of the houses behind, Dan realised that the valley was still several kilometers wide. The hills had just gotten a lot higher. Green-gray ridges, shaped like dragons’ spines, towered above their heads.

***

“Hallo-o-o, hallo, we haven’t seen any new arrivals here for a while.”

On the wide veranda that extended past the four guestrooms facing the valley, two western girls in their twenties were lounging on deep pillows, a freshly split watermelon on a steel tray in front of them. The younger one rose. Dressed in tight orange pants, flared at the bottom, and an Indian-looking white pyjama top, that seemed to have most of its buttons missing, she offered a glimpse of her tanned breasts to Dan, the first arrival to stumble through the door. Her shortly cropped hair showed off a long row of finely crafted Afghani silverware arranged along her right earlobe. The heavy jewellery emphasised her strong cheekbones and beautiful red lips.

He noticed all this in less than three seconds.

“Hey, native English speakers. I didn’t expect that in Madyan. I’m Dan.”

The girl approached him and stretched out a tantalisingly smooth hand.

“Ciao, Dan, I am Paola. Not quite native, actually. I come from Italy. How are you? This is my friend Susanne, from Germany.”

Her eyes lingered and for the first time in weeks Dan wondered what he really looked like, covered in dust, hands oil-encrusted, black stubble that had been spreading across his sunburned face for too many days.

“We are on the way to India, Dan,” Paola continued, leading him towards the other girl.

He liked the way she rolled her R’s. She spoke almost perfect English, in an entirely affected manner. And what an accent. Cool. Magic.

“But we kind of got stuck here. It is a nice place to hang out.”

Tim and Fred pushed past him to step onto the terrace.

“Hallo, girls. Guess what, we’re the bug men.”

Dan turned to his friends.

“That’s Fred and that’s Tim. We’re driving a bus to Kathmandu. They’re infested with bed bugs and need to be isolated. Too bad, guys.”

Susanne, almost as tall as Paola, but not nearly as skinny, dressed in an elegant red-as-sandstone hand-stitched shalwar kameez, giggled and rolled her eyes, “Eeh, bug men. Get them out of here.”

Harun Ali and Thierry were the last to arrive.

“Enchanté.”

The Frenchman removed his shoes as he stepped through the door, made a slight bow towards the girls and followed the Pathan to the last room.

In broken French, Dan called after his friend, “Je veux une chambre pour moi ce soir, pas avec toi.”

Thierry smiled back at Dan, cast a brief, detached look at the small crowd on the terrace and disappeared after Harun Ali.

“How many rooms you need?” Dan heard their host asking the Frenchman.

“We take three rooms, one for the bug men together, one for me, one for Dan. He drives all day, he has a great need to sleep.”

The two girls looked at Dan questioningly.

“And that’s Thierry, our smooth and mysterious co-pilot from Paris. Actually we picked him up in a really fantastic club in Iran. You should have seen him there, the best dressed man in Isfahan.”

***

Dan sat with Thierry and the two girls on the guest house’s flat roof, drinking tea, exchanging scraps of gathered road lore, smoking and watching Fred and Tim, stark naked on the veranda below. Each armed with a bucket of hot water, their entire ragged wardrobe isolated in a corner, they were scrubbing themselves down with Dettol, and cursed at the stink in the fading light.

“I make sure my wife is inside the house.”

Harun Ali excused the departure of his charming wife and young daughter who’d been busy serving tea, staring with undisguised curiosity at the wild-looking foreigners. He put down a large clay bowl of red-hot charcoal and rolled a piece of paper into a long thin tube.

“You know Chita? Best way to smoke the hashish. You have hashish?”

Thierry passed him a couple of grams of the dark, oily hash they had scored for a few rupees in one of Peshawar countless bazaars.

The young man carefully tore off a few small pieces, lining them up on the warm rim of the clay bowl. He placed one piece, flattened like local bread, the size of a fingernail, onto a piece of coal. As the hashish began to emit a thin thread of grey, pungent smoke, Harun Ali tipped a glass of water into his mouth, and stuck the paper tube between his lips. Inhaling slowly, he caught the smoke with its tip. The piece quickly burnt out and he spat the water off the side of the roof.

“You can do?” he smiled at his guests.

Dan looked across at Paola who just stared back, her face imbued with golden contours by the last rays of sun that was quickly sinking behind the ridges on the opposite side of the valley. She looked altogether feline.

He shrugged coolly. She shrugged right back, pulling a face and burst out laughing.

“I only tried this one time. It’s not so easy. It requires soft touch, good breathing and the ability to control what is in your mouth.”

She pulled a face at him.

“But I’m sure you have got it, no?”

Dan liked her. A lot. Was this in the script?

He took the paper tube, filled his mouth with water and leant over the clay bowl. And choked on the smoke and water.

“You have to practice some more, before you can join the true oblivion seekers,” she commented.

The call to prayer rose from several mosques in town.

Harun Ali rose slowly against the fading sky and said, “I must go. Inshallah, we speak later.”

A quiet Salaam and he was gone.

Heaven’s where you find it

“It is clear, this is my wife. This is not my wife. You are my guest. You are not my sister. Man has sense, he can make choice. A dog gives birth to many dogs and maybe dogs don’t know about choice and they do it with each other.”

Harun Ali lowered his head a little, as if embarrassed to explain.

“We have choice, so we must decide, not lie like the dog with the other dog.”

“So…?” Dan glanced at Paola who sat next to him, straight backed and serious now. Nevertheless she had definitely inched her way nearer to him.

“Dan, you are guest in my house, I only tell you what I find difficult with foreigners. I like foreigners to come to my house. Since 1969, foreigners have come to stay. Some stay long time. But here there is Islam and there must be some respect. And the way some girls dress in Madyan…is okay with me, but not with Madyan.”

Dan nodded seriously, too, thinking mostly about how he might be able to remove the Italian girl’s clothes, away from the watchful eyes of Allah. She attracted him like… like he didn’t know what. And he guessed it was mutual. He knew it was mutual. Good. As pure as anything he had experienced.

“In 1970, Swat became part of Pakistan. Before we have independence, our Wali build many schools, hospitals and road in the valley. Before I play music, Hindi music, Bollywood music in my shop in town and in the evenings all people used to come and listen and talk about the valley. Now everyone is scared. The Mullahs will not be happy. And they build no new schools. There was a French restaurant here, with real French cook. Last year. Also gone.”

“Domage,” Thierry muttered out of the darkness. “It would have been nice to try French food in Pakistan. I tried in Teheran already.”

“Good?” Susanne asked.

“No.”

Harun Ali continued, “The Frenchman become Muslim. He want Pakistan passport. He ask me one day to find wife. I find wife. She is very nice local girl. They make engagement. She like him, he like her. The father agrees. The Frenchman goes to the house some time after and the father tells him, no wedding, and throws him out. The council of local Pathan decide that this is no good. Because the Mullah sit in the council.”

“No good,” Thierry echoed.

“Yusuf, he has a problem a little like this. He loves the girl. The girl loves Yusuf. But the father of the girl he come from Swat and Yusuf is from Peshawar. Same Pathan, but different people. So he give her to a cousin, son of Rashid.”

Harun Ali spat on the floor.

“No good,” the Frenchman muttered again.

Dan looked at their host questioningly. Harun Ali was quick to reassure him. “Fateh Rashid is businessman. Inshallah, he will make a good business deal with you because the connection to brother-in-law, Yusuf’s father is strong. But Rashid son is no good.”

“So why do you go to the mosque all the time, if you disagree with the Mullahs. Is it dangerous not to be seen there or something?”

“Three things are important in Islam, Dan. First, there is God. Second, there is only one God. Third, God can do anything and man cannot. I read in the Koran. I can read Arabic. But the Mullah is not the Koran.”

“So you think it’s right that this girl’s forced into an arranged marriage?”

“No, is not right, but it is. We can do nothing, because Pathan law is more old than Islam. If Pathan family need to protect their life in Swat, they turn to Mullahs to make sure Islam help them. If Yusuf want to marry the girl, he must take her from the house and go away, never come back to here. Anyway, now is late already. I think the wedding already finished.”

Down by the river

“I always got to this sign in my dream, that pointed to ‘Job’ one way and ‘Cliff’ to the other.”

The clear water of the Swat River gurgled happily around the wide flat rock they sat on. Paola looked at Dan with a steady, slightly fixed and icy gaze. She was the most beautiful scarecrow he’d ever come across. Her smile was open and seductive, yet set in chrome. Hard.

They’d been watching a mule train slowly snake its way downriver, past them, heavily laden with firewood, a couple of young boys with sticks driving on the despondent animals.

Her nostrils were flaring. Her large brown eyes drew him in, out of Asia, into another world.

“So how is it, this Mondo Paola?” he grinned.

Her expression remained serious.

“Pretty good, I think. I have been travelling since I was eighteen. I lived in London for two years. But I didn’t like it. The English are too cold and too much evasive.”

She smiled, “You know the Italian temperament doesn’t really go with this Don’t-Care-Attitude that you have. I like it sometimes, because you don’t get worked up about things so much, but often it was so…”

She was searching for the right word.

“Apathetic?”

“Yes, like that.”

“You gotta boyfriend?”

Her eyes flashed aggressively.

”Hey lover, slow down. Aspeta. You are like a crossfire hurricane. We are eating each other up here on this rock, you know. I mean, it is nice but…,” she moved closer and dropped her head onto his shoulder, “is very fast, very dangerous. Especially here in Pakistan and in public,” Paola purred.

They sat together unmoving, silent for a few minutes. The sound of the water was all around them, changing, but always the same.

“But I’m tired of one-night stands anyway. Maybe we can do something together.”

Her smile reached beyond suggestion right into his pants.

“What I remember most about the studio flat in London was coming home to this empty dead place every night. The alternative was to take home some drunk guy from Soho. But they were usually a disappointment.”

He nodded and laughed to himself.

“Hey, I’ll tell you a story. Just before I left, I went to the Palais in Hammersmith to see Floyd.”

Paola pulled a face but said nothing.

“I met this girl and it was clear - we wanted only one thing. It felt good you know. Let’s go and have some fun. Anyway, we went to her place after the gig, somewhere in the suburbs, miles from Notting Hill, where I lived at the time. And it all got a bit weird. She said we‘d have to do it on the floor and with the lights off.”

Paola raised an eyebrow and rolled her Rs, “Hmm, that sounds interesting.”

“I was so drunk anyway, I didn’t care, certainly didn’t stop to think. We walked through her living room and into a completely dark bedroom and started to take our clothes off. On the floor. There were some rugs and pillows, but absolutely no light. Sort of groped around a bit because I couldn’t see anything. She had her kit off too and was pulling me down. So we were moving about quite a bit and I knocked into a shelf or table or something and a vase or bottle fell off and smashed on the floor. The lights snapped on and another girl sat up in the bed, screaming.”

“Did you move into bed?”

“No, it definitely wasn’t that sort of scene. She was the girl’s sister and we were in her bloody room, as it turned out. So the two girls leave, arguing, marching back into the next room, and shouting at each other. I just thought, fuck, what to do? I was still so drunk, but I felt I should leave. So I grabbed my jeans and shirt and pulled another vase off the shelf, full of flowers and water. It went all over my clothes. Everything was completely soaked, full of glass and smelled of mouldy plants. In the living room the girl just said, ‘You can’t stay here. It’s my sister’s house and there’ll be someone else sleeping in the living room.’ Outside, in fucking Croydon, it was November, three a.m., not enough money for a cab and soaking wet through. I decided then and there that I was leaving, going to India.”

“And here we are. Almost. Thank you Dan, you tell nice stories. I like it.”

Paola looked around, quickly shed her shirt and pants and slid into the cold water.

You can’t take too much with you

“How do you feel?” she asked out of the darkness.

“High and low and in between, just like you,” he whispered back, feeling her smile.

Every time they moved together again, a current ran through them like sheet lightning, getting stronger, ever stronger until it short-fused them both. Only to start up again. Electricity was a wonderful thing.

In the depths of their dusty, mouldy bed, they raced the night away, in near silence. Words were getting in the way of things they had to say to each other.

He was getting lost in a late joint, in the smoothest skin he’d ever felt, lost in time that he couldn’t catch, couldn’t slow down. And he knew the devil never slept, that there would be another day, soon, with another agenda. He’d never met a girl who kissed so hard. He’d never been so scared of time passing.

He breathed in deeply. Afghani hash mingled with her smell and her perfume and the damp sheet they lay beneath. He slipped back into the present then, getting hard again, leaving all contemplation of the future behind him. Fuck the devil, if she talked, walked, looked, and felt anything like this.

He heard a single sentence before he drifted off to sleep, the open road before him.

“Take me to India with you.”

Magic.

This deal turns more than one wheel

The morning sun had not yet touched the valley floor. Early, early morning, much too early for some, Tim and Fred were in the back, cleaned, disinfected and horizontal. The bug stripes across Tim’s narrow pale face had almost completely faded. Yusuf and Harun Ali sat in the middle of the vehicle, heads together in quiet conference.

The air was crisp before the sun rose, even during the summer. Dan pulled the window shut, despite the whiff of chemical hygiene hovering around his friends.

The main road through Madyan was deserted. Shops and stalls were shuttered, the faithful returned home from their morning prayer to their first pot of sweet green tea. A small pack of dogs, shivering in the cold, ran half-heartedly after the bus, yapping dejectedly.

The girls and Thierry sat quietly behind him, like the world around them, silent and half-asleep.

Paola leaned forward. Dan could feel her breathing down his neck. Close to his ear she asked, with the most serious tone he’d heard her use during the last two days, “So you are really going to do this? Buying dope in this crazy place and smuggling it to India?”

“We know a guy in Delhi who’ll take it all off us and disseminate it across the subcontinent. Afghani hash, Paola. We can get two hundred percent profit on this merchandise. And the Afghani opium in India is like gold. They simply don’t get that quality there. All the hipsters and tricksters, the entire freak population of Delhi will come knocking when they find out what’s rolled into town. And then we drive to Kathmandu to flog the bus. Do you think Yusuf is not to be trusted?”

“No. No, he is a nice man and so is Harun Ali, but I feel that they have another agenda on this. Just a feeling.”