A Rose in Every Cheek 5

                    “Will hashish help me to do that?" asked Rose with an eager look, which
                      made the young man flush...”
                                                                        Louisa May Alcott, Perilous Play, 1869


On our sixth day in Quetta, we made contact. I was sending a telegram home at the GPO, when Robyn and Julie spotted the orange and cream Bristol Lodekka bus. The small print on the side of the double-storied FLF said ‘top deck travel.’ We all climbed aboard and found Debbie and J.B., who initially wondered why a thin Canadian was also hugging them hello. The bus pulled up at the Imdad Hotel, and the rest of the day disappeared into cheese sandwiches, cold Indian beer, and explanations.
But the next morning, while the Antipodeans were at the reunion, Abdullah was at a crossroads. I was torn between my increasing enamorment with Robyn, and my plodding along my very long unusual road, as a messenger of the world invisible. I had committed to leaving for Afghanistan with the mujahideen, in just two days time.
Lala knocked on our door at the Naveed just before noon. I had also promised to visit his family, and this was the time. We took a rickshaw, through the mud and dust streets, to a dung-colored dwelling on the poor side of the tracks. He ushered me inside a simple clay courtyard with clay walls. The guy ropes of the squat A-frame tent were held down with clay bricks.
Lala’s mother ascended out of the subterranean clay floor, dressed in a snow-white cotton kalaa Afghani with hand-embroidered tombaan pants, parahaan overdress, and chaadar head covering. I still wonder how it was so white, in the brown dust of the refugee camp. I still wonder how she produced the complexities of the spiced lamb and eggplant and peppers, and the simplicity of her calm cherubic smile. We sat on thin mats and thick cushions, under the dozens of posters, wallpapering the Jihad back home.
His little sister looked Greek. She brought us yoghurt lassi ‘Afghan drink,’ and melon, and then chai. She produced a tape recorder for Lala. He pressed the ‘play’ button. And charging into the basic small space inside a tent in a courtyard of an exile camp in the desert, came the sounds of explosions and machine gun fire, the screams of dying comrades, and a singular roar of recruitment.
“Allahu Akbar!” It screamed. And Lala pointed to his chest, and stuck it out just a bit further, in bashful pride.
I didn’t know what to say, but it wouldn’t have mattered, since I couldn’t communicate to anyone in the tent, with words. Amazing how brotherhood squeezes through the language barrier, anyway. We laughed, patted each other’s shoulders, and basked in the smiling approval of his mother and sister. I thanked them sincerely, as we left to visit other courtyards and other tents, and other sad stories of displacement and asylum.
After the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Red Army in 1979, approximately ten million Afghans migrated to Pakistan, almost four million who still reside in Quetta Kuchlak, Killa Abdullah, Chaman, Pishin, Noshki, Zhob, Loarali, Muslibagh and Ziarat camps in Baluchistan. I can still taste the spices.
He came with me to the Imdad, to meet up with Jamila and Najiba and the Top Deckers. The look on their faces, when the mujahideen mountain bear Lala the Magnificent, walked into the fan-cooled hotel restaurant, was worth the price of admission. We sat for a long time over cups of dud patti cardamon chai, until I summoned the courage to tell him that I wasn’t going to Afghanistan. You couldn’t measure the disappointment in his face, but you could see it. I told him that we all had our Destiny, and I felt I needed to go with mine.
There are still times when I wonder what would have been, if I had gone with him and Habibullah and my Olympus XA rangefinder, by camel and motorcycle, to Kandahar, to shoot, or shoot at, Russian tanks. But I never saw them again. I suspect that Lala was killed at the Battle of Arghandab in 1987, but it may have been someone else. I want to believe in the worst way, that it would have just been impossible to hurt a genuine man like Lala.
Robyn and Jules and I rickshawed down to the China Café, later that evening. We sat in the front garden with Debbie and J.B. and the overlanders. There was real grass and trees, and white wrought iron tables reflecting the luminescent miniturrets of the mosque next door. Allauh Akbar echoed down into our conversation. I was reminded of clay and Arabic script, and cherubic smiles. Inside, we sat at raucous long tables, and ate several courses of Chinese food, in between dysentery diversions, until the ice cream came to the table, and we went back to the Naveed.
Robyn and Jules and I left Quetta next day. We spent the morning in the District Commissioner’s office, getting tickets for our train journey to Mohenjo-daro.
The curious crowds on the platform were suffocating. I had made the mistake of pulling out my harmonica. We sought refuge in our first class compartment. Debbie and J.B. waited for us to leave, outside our horizontal window bars. Behind them was a sea of brown heads and eyes, all fixed on our every word and action. Youth in Asia. One of them was becoming far too impertinent, and I let him know. He shook his head back and forth, threw something, and disappeared into the mob. I thought he had thrown it at me, but it was to me, and I picked it off the seat. It was black and sticky, like Vegemite, but it wasn’t. I was holding a large lump of hashish. Debbie and J.B. smiled.
“Have a good trip, Wink.” Said J.B. And the train shuddered, and began to move. We waved goodbye, and threw kisses, and were pulled along into the mountain desert scenery. We passed camel herds and troglodyte dwellings, and oases punctuated with palms, along the sinusoidal sand serpents of dry gravel riverbeds. Shafts of sunset diffused cloud-filtered spots on the craggy horizon. A humid blanket of heat and midges tucked in the corners of our carriage. We played scrabble, until the words ran out.