A Rose in Every Cheek 4

                 “I am a messenger of the world invisible...For years I have travelled by
                  sea and land, over mountains and valleys...Do not imagine that the
                  journey is short; and one must have the heart of a lion to follow this
                  unusual road, for it is very long. One plods along in a state of
                  amazement, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping.”
                                                       Farid ud-Din Attar, Conference of the Birds


Quetta took its name from the Pashto word kuwatta, which means a fort. Fort. The morning after our chicken curry at the Oriental, you wouldn’t have dared spelled it with an ‘a.’
I was resting on my haunches in our private hole in the wall, when Lala arrived with a friend. I’d been there most of the morning, peeing out the wrong orifice. Lala’s friend with the dashing shalwar kameez and Gilgiti pakul cap was named Habibullah. He was the chief engineer for the Afghan mujahideen. Robyn and Julie opened the door. I heard them enter.
“Where is Wink?’ Asked Lala. The inadvertent noise I made gave away my position.
“HaHaHaHaHa.” He said, reverberating into and throughout the interior courtyard.
Habibullah brought us up to speed on the war. He was recruiting foreign photojournalists to go by motorcycle and camel to Kandahar, to shoot, or shoot at, Russian tanks. My small Olympus XA rangefinder was good enough. I was inducted. We would leave in a few days, if my dysentery didn’t kill me first. I needed more film, and an Afghan name for the mission.
“Abdullah.” He said. “Gift from God.” I could hardly wait to get home and tell my mother.
“What about us?” Asked Julie.
“Yeah, What about us?” Echoed Robyn. “We want Afghan names, too.”
“Jamila.” Said Habibullah, pointing to Julie. “Najiba.” He said, christening Robyn. Perhaps not the right word, but you understand.
Julie asked Lala if he was married. He made like he was blowing his nose in his hand, and throwing the contents on the ground. A bachelor never makes the same mistake once. She asked him if he had other family. He told us about his mother and baby sister, here in a refugee camp, and his brother in Alaska. Now that would be culture shock. We salaamed and agreed to meet again soon.
Robyn and Jules and I went out into what used to be ‘Little London,’ before all the water dried up. First, to the Habib Bank for the compulsory third world traveler’s cheque exchange experience in triplicate, and then to the Tourist Office. This one was a bit different, starting with the moustached brimless Sindi cap behind the counter.
“If you are wanting to sell your whiskey to buy hashish, I may be of service.” He said. We explained we were looking to visit some of the regional attractions.
“Perhaps you are seeking a favorable black market rate for rupees.” He added. Nope, we explained, just plain old tourists.
“Well, you certainly must be seeing and purchasing the excellent local carpets.” And he pointed us in that direction.
We didn’t get far before another sort of local expertise intercepted our trajectory. Behind his round coke-bottle lenses and long white beard, he was eighty-one years old, and a famous soccer star in his youth. He even had a signed photo of himself, although I thought the background a little more recent than his vintage would have suggested. He introduced himself as ‘Friday.’ Behind his single bottom tooth were twice as many tongues. He took us into a courtyard and, like magic, I had bought a carpet before I even realized it. When Friday left us, he forgot to use his cane.
We stopped in a small bookstore, and met Stan, an Aussie dressed as a genie, specializing in mind-altering substances. After a tentative meal of lamb and salad and apple soda at the Café Farah on Jinnah Road, Stan found my Duty Free Johnny Walker, and began an intense short-term relationship. I’m afraid my own participation pushed under the apple soda and up hard enough to cause the loss of the lamb and salad. Robyn asked me if I was sure I was a physician. We slept together as quiet as we could be, under the sheets and the Sulaiman Mountains. Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. The ceiling fan whirled above them both.
There were visitors to our courtyard quarters next morning. First came Friday, to read our palms. Apparently I had ‘fire hands.’ Not as fiery as Stan’s, who arrived next, to finish off my Duty Free Johnny Walker. When the genie was out of the bottle, he was out the door. At that point Robyn decided that I needed a haircut and produced a pair of small nail scissors from her pack. I pulled a chair out onto our interior courtyard balcony, and she began to cut. In a matter of minutes there were a hundred moustached males leaning over five stories of railings, glued to the action. Haircuts in Pakistan are, evidently, a spectator sport, passing for what, in other cultures, might have been a sexual encounter. We moved inside.
When we moved outside again, it was a circus. It actually was a circus we came across, although it was initially difficult to be sure, as it seemed at times that all Quetta was some farflung magnificent turbaned Far Pavillion sideshow, in the barren jagged mountains of Faroffistan. The lions and tigers painted on the powder blue panels above the entrance gave it away, portrayed in various poses, among the even larger handpainted portraits of the circus stars- tightrope walkers and trapeze artists, strong men and acrobats on stilts, and complete Asiatic pandemonium. Bright red banners with too much white Arabic script hung over the festivities. The food vendors were as surreal as their snacks. Disco music blared out over a stoned pair of dancers on the main stage. There were barbell weights I lifted, lighter than they looked. Admirers and applause arrived in an instant. One was a small monkey in a dress, clapping more enthusiastically that his tethered owner. I slipped away from my congregation quickly.
Later that evening, my hauteur, and the Rex Restaurant curried chicken I ate for dinner, took their revenge, and another night disappeared through our private hole in the floor.