Kara Kush Read online

  ‘Hear and understand! The Russians will come, make no mistake about it. The “Nikolais” may pretend to be our allies, but they will really come to rule. They took Kazakhistan in 1855: and that was after signing a treaty of alliance with the Kazakhs. Then they seized Kirghizia; and they had Northern Turkestan by 1876, a hundred years ago. By 1900 they had taken both the countries of the Turkomans and of the Tajiks, just beyond our present border: see, here, on this map. They have been trying to get into Afghanistan ever since. Next they will cross the Oxus. Any questions on that?’

  ‘Sir!’ It was Hatim; the tall, fair, keen youngster from Kamdesh, who always asked questions when he had a chance. The ageing Zaman had turned a bleary eye on him. That cadet’s head looked as if it could do with a shave, but he was sitting at attention. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s a “Nikolai’, and why are they called that? Does it mean a Russian, and are they so called because of their Czar Nikolai?’

  ‘They are the Russians, and most people here know that already. You come from Nuristan, and so you don’t know very much, of course. I am not talking about old-time Russian emperors. Cadet Hatim: we are talking about here and now. Nikolai is a proper name with them, just as we call someone, say, Anwar. But, to us, Nikolai is like a made-up name. Just analyse it and you’ll soon see what I mean.’ The Major was addicted to illustrating his points with jocular mock-etymology.

  ‘“Niko”, in Dari means “good”. “La” means “no”; so Nikolai means “I’m no good”. In our interpretation, of course. It’s a well-known joke. Now to some practicalities, please.’

  When he was commissioned and posted to Kabul, Juma sat nightly in the capital’s cafés, meeting many of the modern youth, the students, some of whom had been to Russia. They would always speak of the friendliness of Russian people, how they took you into their homes, made you welcome, yearned for world peace and universal brotherhood. When he had spoken to the Kabul students of the threat of the Nikolais, how they had laughed. Better read than he, they had explained that the name Nicholas was from the Greek; translated, it stood for no less than the stirring and idealistic phrase, Victory of the People. Was Major Zaman wrong? Juma had wondered. Were the invaders civilizers in disguise?

  Forgive me for doubting, Major, I know now that you were right. And the students, too, perhaps, in their own way. But the sons of those happy, dancing, hugging Nikolais were here, in our country, today, killing women, maiming children. Victory: but for whom? And, no doubt, in their barracks and their messhalls, the Nikolais sang and danced as well. All empires spoke of peace and practised war.

  What was it that Major Zaman had told them then?

  ‘You notice that I do not talk of communism. The Army is not concerned with politics and never has been. Under whatever banner, Russia is, and always has been, expansionist. It so happens that Karl Marx, whom the Russians follow, had this to say about them, which I quote from the British scholar Walter Laqueur, who wrote in 1957, in Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East:

  ‘“The policy of Russia is changeless. Its methods, its tactics, its manoeuvres may change, but the polar star of its policy – world domination – is a fixed star.”’ The Major lifted his finger in emphasis. ‘In these circumstances, until the Russians do, perhaps, change, what can we, in Afghanistan, do?’

  The Major had looked, sternly, at the attentive faces. ‘There are, today, two hundred million people in the Soviet Union. There are twelve million of us. Their army is one of the best-equipped in the world, and we could not stand up to it in a conventional war. We cannot hope for outside help: we are a neutral country and always have been such. And nobody has ever helped us in any of our wars. But there is no record in history of a total-resistance army, helped by the people, ever having been beaten, however great the odds. Everyone must fight.

  ‘Some might say that we are outnumbered sixteen to one. Look at it again, like this: there are only sixteen of them to one of us. But I say, “Die with honour, but take at least sixteen of the enemy with you.” Long before they run short of men, they’ll lose their stomach for the fight. That’s the only language, gentlemen, that the Nikolais really understand. Above all, teach the people. As always, it is they who are our hope.’

  The latest count showed 270 million Soviet people: more than twenty-two to one. But the principle was the same.

  Juma’s thoughts came back to the helicopters. He could hear the rhythm of more motors now; they were not far off. I’m going to die all right: even if they don’t see me or pick me up, I’m going to die quite soon. God grant they pick me up. If they did not, the vultures would not be long. Vultures went for the eyes first …

  He had refused to accept the precious rifle and the three pathetic rounds, used cartridges refilled with homemade gunpowder, that gave the bullets no real range, which the villagers had offered him when he was sending them away to shelter. In any case, he had been shaking with fever, sweat streaming down his face. What could he shoot in that condition?

  ‘Sir, Battle-Lord: come with us. We’ll find you a hakim, a leech. They know the power of herbs, they know how to heal.’ The mayor spoke urgently.

  ‘No, Haidar. I’m staying here. And you have work to do.’

  ‘They’ll blow you to pieces when they destroy the fort. You know what the rockets can do.’

  ‘Do as I say, I am your chieftain, your Bashkan!’

  ‘What can we do for you, then, Bashkan?’

  ‘Carry me outside, up to the long flat rooftop now. The Nikolais, in halikuptars, are coming, coming soon.’ How can one argue when one is so weak? But he must insist, must get it done.

  The mayor, the Shahrdar Haidar, looked at him sideways. Ah, that was it. Captain Juma was very ill. The Russians had all kinds of Frankish medicines, and especially that powerful one, called ontiboiotik, which could cure even the most terrible wounds. They would, perhaps, take him to a military hospital, heal him there – or amputate the bad leg – and keep him prisoner, but alive. After all, he was of noble blood, and an officer. He might even join the Nikolais. People sometimes did such things, from gratitude …Or would the Russians make him talk – about the message to The Eagle? Things were so confusing. Obey orders, the Captain had said. Orders first, and we’ll teach you how to think as well. But orders without thinking? Yes, in emergencies.

  ‘Do it, take me up, Haidar? And keep watch from the foothills. Learn all you can from watching Nikolai. Always watch; see all you can, ask yourself what you have learned. It will help the homeland, I truly promise you. Get the message to Kara Kush, the leader called The Eagle: that is the most important thing of all. Now repeat the main points of the message.’

  His fever-bright eyes searched Haidar’s face.

  ‘By my head and eyes, my Khan! “From Juma Sherzada in Turkestan to Komondon Kara Kush. The Russians plan to move the gold treasure of King Ahmad Shah, worth four hundred billion dollars, on the gunboat Jihun from Qizil Qala on the Oxus River to the USSR. For God’s sake stop them. The most valuable consignment in history, while we bleed to death for lack of arms.”’

  ‘That’s right, Haidar, and don’t write it down.’

  ‘I can’t write anyway, master.’

  ‘Take me up now, Haidar, you must!’

  ‘Hearing is obedience, my Khan!’ The mayor turned to the group of men. ‘Let’s take him up now.’

  They carried Juma, gently enough, onto the roof, though now they avoided his eyes. Only the blind cobbler, feeling his way unhelped up the rickety ladder, brought an armful of straw and carefully pushed the bent dry stalks under Juma’s leg on the dusty parapet. ‘God sees all, my Khan,’ he whispered.

  I suppose he’s sorry for me because he’s blind; we’re both wrecks, Juma thought. Just wrecks.

  The throb of engines. Here they came. They were really near now. A scout, like a dragonfly, and two big gunships, Mi-24 attackers, over fifty feet long; the climbing sun glittered on their bulletproof gun-blisters. Juma could make out goggled faces now, p
eering through the front windows of armoured glass. He could sense the bomb-aimers ready, the fingers on the firing buttons and the Russian ‘candies’, explosive toys for the children to pick up, ready for release. Even after they had destroyed a village, the helicopters made a final pass and dropped, as if in derision, these brightly coloured packages, sometimes imitation playthings, dolls, or watches, women’s combs, all sorts of nicknacks, among the ruins.

  People came back to rebuild their homes and would find these presents which blew off a hand or foot, or blinded those who picked them up. The adults soon came to know the toys: but they could never teach all the children not to touch them. The maimed children outnumbered the grown-up victims by ten to one.

  Captain Juma pulled the fine muslin cloth, the customary ‘three metres of white’ which the villagers had left to be his shroud, foot by foot from the breast of his uniform jacket. Slowly, gasping with the pain, he rolled himself along the flat roof, laying it out as he went. It would do well enough as a signal, showing up better than his grey uniform against the red-brown clay. What a strange sensation. Was it possible to have so much pain that it could no longer hurt?

  His head swam again; was he going to black out? Now he saw the picture of a tall young officer standing, smiling, in a brand new uniform, beside a graceful girl who was filling her water-jar from a cool stream. That would be the stream which brought the snow-water from the mountains beyond Paghman. It flowed, here, through a meadow, and they were standing in the shade of an immense mulberry tree.

  ‘What is your name, peghla?’ he asked.

  Beautiful as a houri of Paradise, she turned her head modestly away.

  ‘All right then, don’t tell me. I’ll run through some pretty girls’ names, and I’ll have guessed it when you blush! But don’t misunderstand: I intend no disrespect. I am Captain Juma Sherzada, son of a chief, Battle-Lord of Sher-Qala, in the north. We are fighting to liberate Afghanistan. The great Major Zaman was my teacher, you know, when I was a cadet in these parts …’

  A swirling, a stinging of his eyes, and he was back to consciousness. Two bulky ships were lurching down with their usual thumping clatter, sweeping in decreasing circles. The third one, a longer Mi-8, hovered warily, higher, almost like a hawk.

  He was sure now. One of the big ones was going to land, here on the roof, while the other veered away. They had not come to bomb the fort this time. A helmeted figure, the navigator-gunner, was looking straight at Juma, through huge field glasses. Juma could now see the four munition pods, each armed with thirty-two 57-millimetre rockets fixed on the stubby wings, left and right of the hull. Two large, finned bombs were ready in their racks.

  Now it was down: a beautiful landing, with no bump at all. The huge rotors, fifty feet in diameter and fourteen feet off the ground, were still stirring up the yellow sand and dust. The force of their wind, the downwash, almost blew Juma over the parapet. The stench from the burnt fuel of the twin turbos was overpowering. Although the big exhaust vented upwards, the rotors pushed a blanket of the abundant fumes back to ground-level.

  The baked clay, hard as rock from centuries of sun, was as firm as any landing pad.

  Juma struggled with his jacket buttons. There, that was all right now. The last task but one.

  A door opened forward, and the automatic steps came down. Juma could just see the open door and bright lights in the cabin. There were four large, rectangular porthole-windows near him, and beyond them, on the fuselage, a big red star. The insignia of the Soviets, not of the Afghan Army.

  A Russian officer, burly, self-assured, with bright gold lace and red parade shoulder-boards, surprisingly formal dress, jumped down and strode straight up to Juma, an automatic, a PM-Makarov, in his hand. He waved the weapon, speaking in good though accented Dari-Persian: ‘Stand up and hold still!’ He looked at Juma’s rank, the bars still on his jacket.

  ‘I am an Afghan officer, Comrade Kapitan, wounded and in need of medical attention, captured by the badmashes. I can’t stand. Probably blood-poisoning in my leg, it’s moving up …’

  ‘You are former Captain Juma Sherzada, a deserter and a criminal. We know all about you, eater of filth! This is your own home pigsty, isn’t it? Thought you’d get away from Islahgah, eh?’

  The Russian kicked Juma on his bad leg. The Makarov was inches from his face now; safety catch off. One shot was all it needed: execution.

  ‘Organising resistance to the lawful forces of the State and you want treatment for a sore leg? The Nizami-KHAD, Afghan State Security, can show you, swine, what pain really means!’

  He was going back to prison, Juma thought. The Russian beckoned towards the brown and yellow camouflaged helicopter, squatting just six yards away. Two soldiers, immaculate in pressed grey Afghan Army field tunics, ran up to carry Juma to the aircraft. The Russian was a captain, these were Afghan majors and of course outranked him: but they ran, like eager dogs, to do their master’s bidding. Juma was feeling very light-headed again. All those officers. Had the communists run out of ordinary aircrew? All this, for a miserable Turkestani village? Or to capture the great hero, Captain Juma, a miserable, dying traitor to the socialist cause, who had never fired a shot in anger?

  The other helicopters set their courses homewards as the two men lugged him, a ragged bundle, distastefully along.

  Juma was aware of being hauled up, into the very roomy cabin. It was, however, crammed with men. Three Soviet generals, map cases in their hands, binoculars slung round their necks, polished jackboots, gold wreathed hammer-and-sickle badges on red stars in their peaked caps, nodded with satisfaction to the men who held him.

  As Juma was dumped on the floor, the nearest general, a podgy man with the wide face of an Uzbek, looked at him and wrinkled his nose: the suppurating wound stank. Then the Soviet officer assumed a twisted smile, and started to speak, his clipped pronunciation telling of his Turki origins.

  ‘Comrade former Captain Juma, isn’t it? What an interesting morning, and the day has hardly started! Here we are, studying counterinsurgency in the field and, chuff! – on our first time out we find a renegat, a traitor, sending his dupes to destroy our tanks in a particularly cowardly way. Yes, you filthy ape! We’ll get something really worthwhile out of you. Before you’re hanged!’ The general’s voice was now hoarse with fury, though he had, at first, tried to be smoothly sarcastic.

  He looks just like the Devil, Juma thought. Yes, that’s it, the Devil, come to carry me away. In a dark, vicious, clattering bird, with foetid breath, out of this fair world, heading for Hell, Iblis from Jahannum, the Devil from Hell.

  Juma’s throat ached, and a spasm from his leg made his vision swim. No, not devils, generals. Three generals? ‘Die for a general?’ He tried to clear his throat, shifted his arm to ease his leg. It only made the pain worse …No, I mustn’t say anything, do anything …No, I am NOT by that stream of sweet water, talking to a village maiden … I’m with the Nikolais … He was shivering with fever, as if someone was shaking him, and now felt icy cold.

  His head cleared a little as he counted three generals of the Soviet Army, several other officers – one at least was a major, that one over there. There was sure to be a colonel among them, too. Generals always liked to have their sycophants around when they were performing. The Mi-24s, he knew, could carry a crew of four as well as eight fully equipped troops.

  The Russian captain slammed the armoured door and clipped it shut.

  ‘All right, take off now. To Khanabad Headquarters.’ The senior general must be speaking to the pilot through that throat-microphone, wobbling on his double chin.

  The rotorcraft rose and wheeled in a wide arc, gaining height.

  When it had reached what he guessed must be at least two hundred metres high, Captain Juma jerked, with all his remaining strength, at the string knotted to the ring-pulls of the firing pins in the two tiny, two and a quarter inch diameter grenades, strapped to his stomach with his belt. In three seconds they would explode.

&n
bsp; ‘Juma Sherzada, twenty-fifth hereditary Noyon of Sher-Qala, reporting for duty,’ he breathed. ‘Come to battle, brave Nikolais …’

  In the foothills near the fort, the small group of farmers, men, women and children from Sher-Qala, crouched sheltering among the rocks, almost invisible in their threadbare, grey-brown blankets. Two helicopters had been and gone away. One had landed, and it would be taking Captain Juma to hospital soon. Ah, there it was now, high up in the sky …

  First it was there, rising steadily, slightly distorted in the shimmering heat, the very symbol of the invader’s power. Then they saw the orange-red ball of fire, bright even in the sunshine, as the thing exploded, blown into a million shards.

  ‘Halak Shudand! They’re destroyed!’

  ‘The tiyara is smashed, blown to pieces. They have gone to Hell!’ Shouting with delight, the mayor tried to describe what he had seen to the sightless cobbler sitting silently beside him.

  ‘To Hell, to Hell, they’ve all gone down to Hell, Haji!’ He was dancing up and down now. Then he sat mute, speechless with ecstasy, gazing into the sky.

  ‘It wasn’t an amulet I felt, after all,’ said the cobbler, ‘strapped to our captain’s stomach. And he was right: look and you will learn.’

  Remembering Juma, the women began to wail in mourning.

  ‘And the Battle-Lord is dead,’ said Haidar; ‘I must do as he commanded. He said “the task I give you could save our country, and perhaps the world”.’

  Shahrdar Haidar, hereditary weapon-bearer to the lords of Tiger’s Fort, shook hands with the remnants of his people. Hands on hearts, they watched him go.

  He took the dusty road which led southwards, through three hundred miles of occupied Afghanistan, across rivers and over mountains, to seek Kara Kush, The Eagle of Paghman, the man who had dared to raise the flag of rebellion against the most awesome political and military machine in the world. Kara Kush, who had taken up arms in the name of the people of a remote land in Central Asia, best known elsewhere for its dogs and carpets. But, as he reminded himself often enough on that long trek, a people who, alone in history, had resisted the all-conquering Arabs for a hundred years. Not to mention Alexander the Great – and the British Empire.