A Cup of Friendship (12 page)

P
etr disappeared on the morning Isabel was scheduled to leave for the poppy fields. She woke up groggy and hungover from the night before to find him gone. She vaguely recalled a quick conversation they’d had, somewhere between shagging and the second (or was it the third?) glass of vodka, in which Petr said something about needing to vacate Kabul, that it had been fun and maybe they’d hook up again sometime. But he’d left no note, didn’t call or say good-bye. She wasn’t surprised. She’d known men like this before: He gave her what she needed in exchange for what he needed. It would sound frightfully cold if she were to try to explain it or say it out loud, but as a female journalist in a man’s country she did what she had to do. Only once had her strategy backfired, but that was history and something she vowed not to replay or use for self-pity.

It had taken Petr several days to set up her trip—to get her into the poppy fields so she could talk to some people, and get her out. They’d spent those evenings at L’Atmo, getting pissed and partying, those late nights having sex, and the mornings sleeping it off. And last night was like any other, only, when she woke up, it was almost as if he’d never been there at all.

It was the eight
A.M
. call that woke her. The driver Petr had arranged to take her to the airport was checking in to confirm her pickup time. Her flight was at eleven and the entire trip would take several hours by plane and then car to get to the Badakshan province in the northeast, on the Tajikistan border. Mountainous and remote, Badakshan had become one of the largest areas of poppy production in Afghanistan because it contained the Wakhan Corridor, a viable trade route to Asia. Of course, the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar were even larger, but they were held by the Taliban and unsafe for travel even for Isabel, who had been to some of the world’s most dangerous places. Badakshan was not Talib, not yet. It was ruled by the Northern Alliance, a resistance group. Since 9/11 it had been supported by America and Britain and was now straining to keep out the Taliban.

Afghanistan supplied from 92 to 95 percent of the world’s illegal opium poppies for heroin production, depending on the year, the weather, and how active the United States was in its eradication. President Karzai had encouraged American projects designed to help find the farmers another way to make a living. Money poured in—to improve irrigation and roads, to build clinics, and to farm food products, like potatoes and tomatoes. But workers were tortured, others murdered, and in the end it just wasn’t worth the battle with the drug lords and the other countries vested in Afghanistan’s poppy exports.

And the corruption—the collusion between the government and the drug lords, the fact that politicians
were
the drug lords—was out of control. If you can think of it, they’re doing it, Petr had told her.

She packed her small duffel bag with a few days’ worth of clothes, extra trousers for the mud and sweaters for the cold, clothes that provided the necessary cover for her, as a woman, and necessities like toilet paper and hand sanitizer, plus a few customary gifts she’d bought in the market: scarves for the women and nice prayer beads for the men. And, of course, she carried her cross-body canvas bag containing a notebook and pens, tape recorder, mobile, her newspaper ID, passport, and camera. She picked up her bags and left the comfort of her hotel for her car, a small SUV driven by a man named Mohammad, and left Kabul.

The city was fantastic from a car, she thought. Since the driver couldn’t possibly go fast, she had the opportunity to see everything: what was directly in front of her eyes, and then what was behind that and what was behind that, as if the narrower the perspective, the more there was revealed. They passed two young boys playing ball in the street, barefoot in the sewage, right next to the car. Little boys were waving a tin can filled with
spandi
, a granule burned to ward off the evil eye or clean the bad spirits away, hoping for an afghani or two. Beyond them an old man crouched on his heels under a tent in his stall, his rear low to the ground, the way she’d seen her little nieces sit back home as she’d thought at the time only children could do. And he was cutting the hair of a man who was squatting in front of him. Two women bundled against the cold air were standing over them, heads together, chatting away. And behind them was a little store that sold mobiles, its sign falling down, its door off its hinges, two men walking out, arguing.

She opened her window ever so slightly, knowing the danger of opening it fully, to experience the mingling of smells—the sewer, the diesel fumes, the grilled nuts, the animal dung. She could hear, too, the shouts of children playing, the hushed voices of the women, the shuffles of ill-fitting shoes on gravel, horns honking, men arguing over a bet, goats braying, and the muezzin singing.

Sunny was right. Walking in Kabul provided too limited a vision. You missed the full depth of the city’s life.

From her vantage point, she could see past the city walls to the green valley at the foothills of the Hindu Kush, to their snow-covered peaks. Then it started to snow. The flakes were small and silvery against the deep blue of the sky, and Isabel imagined a million Tinkerbell fairies, reminding her of her mother, who had read her
Peter Pan
so long ago. Her mother, who was only a child when her family escaped Nazi Germany. Her mother, whose passion for life couldn’t stop the hideous cancer that ultimately killed her before Isabel would realize how much she needed her, after the incident in Sierra Leone. The car rattled and bumped, the driver talked in Dari nonstop and so quickly into his mobile that she could barely make out a word he was saying, just like the drivers back home. Soon they arrived at the airport, the snow still falling but not sticking on the tarmac.

On the flight, she fell into a fitful sleep. In those minutes of semiconsciousness, she saw what she always saw almost every sober sleep since then—the man with the knife at her throat, his face on hers, his pounding away on her body that left bruises much deeper than the physical kind. And she woke, as she always did, at the moment when he was done but before he got up and hit her with the butt of his rifle so hard it knocked her out, along with several teeth. Her breathing was fast and short, her heart racing, her anger raging, her shame for her weakness, her size, her inability to stop him. That’s why L’Atmo was good for her. Besides making the connection with Petr, all the drinking and partying gave her an escape from her own memory.

She was met at the airport by a man Petr had hired to be her driver, guard, and translator. They arrived at the compound by late afternoon. To the right and to the left, in front and in back, were poppy fields, shrouded by the mountains behind them. It was off-season, so the seedpods lay fallow in the frozen earth. A tractor stood silent like a sentinel at the far side.

Inside the stone walls of the compound, a few low mud buildings appeared straight ahead, where the road ended. The car pulled up beside several other vehicles that were parked there. Isabel got out of the SUV, faced the craggy mountain ridge that rose malevolently against the sky, and stretched.

A voice behind her made her jump, and she turned to find a man in traditional clothes—white
shalwaar kameez
and sheepskin vest, wearing a
pakul
, the flat-topped hat, and sunglasses—with his hand on the automatic rifle that hung on his shoulder.

She swallowed her fear and said, “
Salaam alaikum,
” and continued in English, with her driver translating into Dari, “I am Isabel Hughes, here to see Abdul Khan.” Petr had given her the name of the drug lord of this farm, which was the name of every drug lord who ran every poppy farm. He said he’d arranged for her to get a quick look and an interview.

The man with the rifle motioned Isabel toward the door of the nearest building and told the driver to get back into his car where he was to wait for her. The driver argued in Dari, and Isabel suspected he was saying that he had to go with her to translate. But the man with the rifle was adamant. The driver looked at Isabel and shook his head in frustration. Isabel took a deep breath, swallowing her fear, and followed the man with the rifle, leaving the driver alone at his car.

Inside was a large room, its floor covered with maroon and red rugs, filled with furniture of dark wood, gilt, and velvet. A man in a
karakul
, the hat made famous by President Karzai, sat on a thronelike chair at a huge desk with intricately carved legs. There was a laptop in front of him. At his side stood another man, perhaps his deputy.

Abdul Khan stood, greeted Isabel warmly in Dari, and then the men escorted her to a table covered with small bowls of
kish mish
, the little goodies that Afghans served in their desire to be gracious even when they carried guns: sugared almonds, green raisins, dried chickpeas with pepper, and caramels wrapped in paper. The drug lord sat across from Isabel, smiling warmly, never taking his eyes off her. She was nervous, her heart beating hard in her ears, but she smiled back in an effort to pretend she was unafraid. The right-hand man left through a side doorway and immediately returned with a man who was to be their translator. Another man appeared with a teapot. And the drug lord welcomed Isabel to his farm.

“In the spring there will be poppies as far as the eye can see,” he said with a proud, broad gesture of his arm. “This is a very successful farm. But the spraying will destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to attain.”

Isabel took out her small handheld tape recorder and asked, “Is it all right if I tape our conversation?”

“For now,” he said. Then he smiled. “When it’s not, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” Isabel said. “And for your generosity, for seeing me and giving me your time.” But she knew that drug lords, like all celebrities, liked to talk, loved the limelight.

“Last year was an excellent year for us. Perfect weather and the market continued to be strong,” Abdul Khan said proudly. “Not like when we tried tomatoes. That was a tremendous mistake. Everyone growing tomatoes at the same time, no way to get them quickly enough to market, and even if we did, too many tomatoes! Very costly, no storage facilities. That was a stupid idea—some American bureaucrat’s idea of a better way to make a living. Poppies are the most viable crop. No storage issues and a guaranteed market. Everybody wins: the farmer in the field, the landowner, me”—his Cheshire-cat grin widened—“and Afghanistan, my country.” He stopped and exhaled. “And that is the problem, in a nutshell,” he said as he picked up an almond and popped it into his mouth. “It will all be gone come spring and the spraying, and we will have nothing. It is wrong. It is unjust punishment. The Americans say they will kill only the poppies. But it is a ploy. They will be killing everything. They will accomplish what they’re after: ridding Afghanistan of the Afghans.”

“But what about
Haram
, going against the rules of Islam? Isn’t the Koran specific about rules against smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs?”

“It is you Westerners who misinterpret the Koran. It is
Haram
to smoke, drink, or use drugs, yes. But it is clearly written: If a man must do something to ensure his survival, it is not
Haram
. If I don’t produce poppies, my family will starve. And hundreds of other families will as well.”

“Excuse me,” Isabel said, looking down as she spoke so as not to seem too provocative, “but why not build roads? Put in irrigation systems? Improve your country and your people’s lives? You’re a good businessman. You could get rich doing that. And not be responsible for creating a population of addicts.”

“I am rich, thank you very much. And you are excused for being shortsighted. It is Americans, you British, and all the other Westerners who think they know what’s right and what’s wrong, who make money from the sale of heroin and opium with one hand, and yet pay mullahs to preach that growing poppies is against the Koran with the other.” He laughed. “Hypocrites, all!”

She looked up at him then and nodded to show she understood. He had a point. The corruption when it came to any drugs in any part of the world—and she knew this from her experience reporting in Africa—was astounding. But she persevered. “I just don’t see how you can justify the addiction of workers in your fields,” she said, noticing the drug lord gesturing to his right-hand guy. “Of women who get the sap for you and then become addicted to it themselves. You’re causing …” She stopped herself, alarmed at how biased and unprofessional she sounded. Her job was to get the story, not show her hand.

“But what about the poisonous spray? Do you really think they can contain it? What about our fields of fruit and vegetables? What about the air our children breathe?” He was interrupted by the ring of his cellphone. It played the
William Tell Overture
, which would’ve made Isabel laugh had she not been angered by their conversation.

“
Bali, bali,
” yes, yes, he answered, then said to Isabel, “Excuse me, please,” and got up and left the room.