The Honey Thief (15 page)

Below them, the valley revealed its strange shape: a long, narrow neck, opening to a deep bowl, like the musical instrument known as the tambur, and indeed the valley was called the Tambur. It was green all along its length with terraces climbing the slopes of the bowl. Mohammad Hussein told Dobara that the Hazara were compelled by cruel circumstance to use every piece of land they could, and had become masters of living on rock. ‘Hazara went into the mountains many ages ago,’ he said. ‘They came here to find safety from their enemies. Now they make their farms in every valley where soil remains. Where there is no soil, they bring it from valleys where the sun doesn’t reach and make gardens in the sunny places. Hazara can find a way to live where a mouse could not survive.’

At dusk, Mohammad Hussein led the way to a cave that he knew well. The two men cleared the floor of fallen rocks and spread out their sleeping bags. The cave had a high roof and ran deep into the mountain. Mohammad Hussein said that bears had lived at the back of the cave in past times, but no longer. ‘The bears are gone from this mountain.’

‘Why is that?’ the Englishman asked.

‘I shot them,’ said Mohammad Hussein.

At the back of the cave, Mohammad Hussein had stored firewood many years earlier, when he was a hunter by profession, and the wood remained where he’d left it. The firewood had been chosen carefully, he explained; it burnt with great heat and it burnt slowly. He built a fire in from the entrance to the cave and made a meal of lamb and rice. He intended to use the fresh meat first before it spoilt.

The Englishman asked Mohammad Hussein, ‘Are you not surprised to find the wood here after all these years?’

‘No,’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘It is my wood, and my family’s. No one would touch it. Wood in the high mountains is like water in the desert. It always belongs to someone. I have two more caves on the mountain. In each, I will find firewood.’

They ate the rice and lamb sitting close to the fire. Night had fallen very quickly. Looking out from where he sat, Dobara could see the moon in the east, many times bigger than he’d ever known it and shining gold. He asked Mohammad Hussein, ‘Do snow leopards live in caves like this?’ and Mohammad Hussein shook his head and smiled.

‘Where the snow leopards sleep, no one knows, Mister Ibrahim.’

‘Really? No one knows?’

‘It is a secret of the animals themselves. I have tracked the leopards as carefully as a fox and seen them vanish into the ground. We know they sleep, we know they make a home for their cubs, but where they do this they are too clever to reveal. This mountain on which we find ourselves, Mister Ibrahim – I know this mountain as well as anyone in this world knows the land he has crossed and recrossed all his life. If you put a hood over my head, I could lead you safely to the summit, have no doubt of that. But I am like a man who has read the Holy Book a thousand times and knows it by heart, and yet can still learn much more from a great scholar. The leopards are like great scholars, and their Holy Book is the mountain.’

Mohammad Hussein answered question after question from the Englishman as the night deepened. Finally he said, ‘Now you can tell me stories of England.’ Before he climbed into his sleeping bag, the hunter built a small wall of rocks a short distance from the mouth of the cave. ‘This wall is to help you in the night if you wish to relieve your bowels or your bladder,’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘Take a torch, of course, but remember when you come to the wall that you can only go a little way more. Or you will fall down the mountain and the bears will eat you.’

‘But you said that the bears are gone!’ said the Englishman.

‘Then the ghosts of the bears will come and take you to a strange place. They will know you are my friend and they will keep you to punish me. Tell me a story of England.’

Dobara began a story about the tall buildings of London and of the great cathedral of St Paul’s, but this wasn’t what Mohammad Hussein wished to hear. So Dobara instead told a story of football and of his team called Millwall. Mohammad Hussein knew about football and it gave him pleasure to learn about Millwall, and also about Liverpool, of which he had heard.

In the night, the mountain made sounds like a living creature. At times the sounds seemed those of a musical instrument with a deep voice. As he listened, the Englishman began to believe that his mountain was talking to other mountains, because he heard more distant sounds responding. But he said to himself, ‘Such a thing isn’t possible!’

In the morning, Dobara left his sleeping bag to look for Mohammad Hussein, who had roused himself earlier. Outside the cave, beyond the wall that Mohammad Hussein had built, the Englishman gazed at the beauty around him. To the east, taller mountains stood against the blue sky as if in pride. On one peak, the morning sun picked out the glitter of snow, and as Dobara watched, a tall cloud passed under the sun and a shadow travelled swiftly down the mountain. Under the shadow, the snow changed colour from white to blue.

Mohammad Hussein appeared within a few minutes, carrying his prayer rug. He greeted Dobara in the language spoken in London. ‘Good morning, sir! Good morning to Millwall!’

Mohammad Hussein worked patiently to bring the embers of the fire to life. Once he had a flame, he added tiny fragments of dry grass, then splinters, then fragments of wood no bigger than a man’s finger, and at last lengths of wood as thick as a child’s wrist. In the centre of the fire sat a round stone, a bread-making stone. Mohammad Hussein mixed flour and water and salt and white pepper into dough. Before flattening the dough on the hot stone, he added a small amount of brown powder from a cloth bag.

‘Herbs?’ asked the Englishman.

Mohammad Hussein said, ‘Smell.’

Dobara put his nose to the opening of the cloth bag. Blood came rushing to his brain.

‘Bloody hell!’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘Something for climbing the mountain,’ said Mohammad Hussein.

*   *   *

The climbing on this second day was not straight up the mountain, but a slow circling well below the peak that made the Englishman think they were losing ground. Mohammad Hussein saw him looking puzzled and explained to him that if they made a direct climb at this point, the eagles in the sky would reveal to the leopards the presence of danger. ‘When the eagles see humans, they climb higher, out of range of a rifle. The leopards understand this. If a leopard is out hunting, he will find his den and stay inside for three days, four days. He cannot find our scent because the wind takes it away down to the valley. But he watches the birds and he listens to the rocks. If he becomes suspicious, we will never see him, even if he is no further away than your shadow.’

In the middle of the afternoon, Mohammad Hussein found a great boulder on the mountainside and climbed to its top. He sat with his eyes closed for a long time, perhaps as long as thirty minutes. The Englishman did not interrupt him, but he felt worried. After all, it was a big task to find a snow leopard on such a huge mountain. He gazed away to the east at the snow peaks, wishing that his wife in London was with him to see the beauty of the land. He was away from her too much.

When Mohammad Hussein came down from the boulder, he did so in a hurry. He said, ‘Be quick. Follow me.’ The Englishman, full of worry even more than before, pulled on his pack and followed the hunter who was climbing more swiftly than ever, too swiftly for him to keep pace.

‘Mohammad Hussein!’ he called. ‘I haven’t the strength!’

The hunter threw off his pack and climbed down to Dobara. He pulled off the Englishman’s pack, unstrapped it and began filling a smaller pack he’d brought with him. When the smaller pack was full, he said, ‘Hurry!’ Mohammad Hussein now carried two packs, one on his back and one hanging from his neck. Without any knowledge of the emergency, the Englishman’s thoughts tortured him, but with his lighter pack, he found the strength to keep up with Mohammad Hussein, his breath whistling from his mouth. The speed at which Mohammad Hussein moved was frightening. Even more than to rest, the Englishman was desperate to know the cause of such haste because he could see nothing that might make Mohammad Hussein race up the mountain in the way he did. When he found a scrap of breath to cry out, ‘What is it, for God’s sake?’ the hunter shouted, ‘Don’t talk!’

And then Dobara had no need to guess at the cause of Mohammad Hussein’s great haste, for the answer came down on him in the form of a shadow. Overhead, the blue sky was being devoured by a rolling black cloud that stretched across the horizon. The storm came unlike any storm the Englishman had ever seen, not even in the lands of South America where he had taken his cameras in years past. The first gust of wind pushed him forward onto his hands and knees, and in the few seconds it took him to find his feet again, a darkness as deep as evening had overtaken the mountain. The rain came down like the waters of a cataract. Before Dobara’s eyes, the path on which he was walking became a rapidly flowing stream. The wind seized hold of him and tumbled him first one way then another. With the burden of his pack, he no sooner won the struggle to be upright than he was thrown down again.

‘Mohammad Hussein!’ he cried out. ‘Mohammad Hussein!’

His voice was overwhelmed by the roar of the wind. As heavy as the rain had been, it became much heavier still. He heard rocks crashing around him, picked up by the force of the torrent and rolled down the mountain. He thought, ‘Dear God, I’ll be crushed!’ His fear almost became his fate, for he felt a rock strike his knee like the blow of a hammer. He fell and tumbled, reaching blindly with his hands. He screamed in his fear, ‘Mohammad Hussein! Please! Mohammad Hussein!’ He raised his hand to shield himself from a shape above him, and found his hand grasped, found himself lifted to his feet. Mohammad Hussein shouted into his ear, ‘Put your weight against me! Even if I fall, keep hold!’

Dobara, poor man, could not make sense of what he was told, but he held with all his strength to Mohammad Hussein’s arm. Pebbles and grit carried by the wind struck his face whenever he looked up. He was certain that both he and Mohammad Hussein would die on the mountain and he wished to surrender, but the hunter wrenched him forward into the face of the storm.

Mohammad Hussein was not striving in this way without purpose. He found the opening to the cave he was seeking and pushed the Englishman through it. Dobara knew only that he was drenched and bruised, but safe at last. In the darkness, the two men drew their breath and listened to the tumult outside. Mohammad Hussein lit four candles from his pack and the flames shone in the curtain of water that covered the entrance.

For some minutes, neither man said a word but watched in wonder the patterns of light dancing over the roof and walls of the cave. Then Mohammad Hussein, sitting with his legs crossed, began to sing, and not softly but with the full force of his voice.

‘Sing!’ he roared. ‘Sing to thank God!’

Only one song came to Dobara. It was the song of his team, the Lions of Millwall, called ‘Let ’Em Come’. He sang it as loudly as Mohammad Hussein, or even louder. The words of the song were all to do with the victories of his football team, but in his mind he was praising all the gods of the world.

*   *   *

The storm lasted for two hours. In this time, Mohammad Hussein and Dobara removed their wet clothes and wrapped their sleeping bags around themselves. They ate food from tins since it was only the afternoon and Mohammad Hussein hadn’t yet lit a fire. Dobara asked Mohammad Hussein, ‘Do you have such storms every year?’

‘No,’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘Only twice before have I seen a storm like this. The last time was in the years of Shah Zahir.’

‘Last night when we slept in the cave, I thought one mountain was talking to another, as if they were angry. Is that possible?’

Mohammad Hussein laughed and clapped his hands together. ‘You heard the mountains talking, Mister Ibrahim?’

Now Dobara felt embarrassed. ‘It was like they were talking.’

Mohammad Hussein laughed again. ‘Mister Ibrahim, the mountain is made of rock. It cannot talk.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Dobara. ‘It was my imagination.’ He was blushing.

Mohammad Hussein must have thought the talking mountain a very great joke, because he laughed again and again and shook his head and said, ‘A talking mountain! No, no, Mister Ibrahim!’

Late in the afternoon when the storm had moved far away and the water had stopped showering over the mouth of the cave, Mohammad Hussein and the Englishman put on dry clothes and stepped outside. The sky was blue once more and the sun blazed on its journey to the west. Water still ran over the ground beneath the feet of the two men, but not in torrents. High above, two eagles flew in circles.

‘Will the storm frighten the snow leopards?’ asked the Englishman. ‘Will they stay in their dens for a long time?’

‘No,’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘The sun has returned. They will hunt.’

Enough wood was stored at the back of the cave for a big fire. Mohammad Hussein held his wet clothes and those of the Englishman above the flames to dry them. The Englishman offered to help but Mohammad Hussein refused, saying, ‘Take some pictures outside. Take a picture of the talking mountain.’ Dobara stepped outside the cave with his camera into the cool air of late afternoon. No sooner had he lifted the camera to his eye than a great roar sounded overhead – the sound of jet engines. Mohammad Hussein came out of the cave and looked up at the sky to the east. Trouble was written on his face. He aimed his rifle at the jet planes, now almost overhead.

‘Are you going to shoot at the planes?’ asked Dobara. He could see that the aircraft were fighter-bombers. ‘Is that sensible?’

‘Russians!’ cried Mohammad Hussein, shouting above the roar.

‘Yes, but why shoot at them?’

When the jet planes had disappeared from the sky and the roar had died away, Mohammad Hussein said, ‘Did you think I would shoot the aeroplanes? No, I was looking through my sight. These aeroplanes drop bombs.’

‘Here? Why? The Russians don’t fight in the Hazarajat.’

‘No, not here,’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘They are going to Herat. My friend, a catastrophe has overtaken our search for the leopards. I must go home to Herat.’