Caravans Read Online Free Page A

place and the girls were as mysterious, as silent as ever.
    “The mullahs?” they asked in real fear.
    “Yes! Hurry!”
    I started to lead them to what I thought was safety, but the two couples, having surmounted thelanguage barrier, had somehow planned their own escape routes, for in an instant, the girls vanished down a narrow pathway that led away from the approaching mullahs, while the two Marines vaulted the seemingly unscalable wall, and I was left alone in the cul-de-sac. I heard the angry mullahs behind me, whipping up a crowd, and on the spur of the moment I had the presence of mind to start urinating against the wall.
    This even the mullahs understood, and I heard them cry in frustration from the other end of the alley, “The evil girls must be here.” When I made my way through the crowd, I saw along the farther edge two shrouded figures, one in a fawn-colored chaderi, one in gray, drifting easily away from the bazaar. Their silken shrouds flowed in the wintry wind like the robes of Grecian goddesses, and along the snowy footpaths I watched the saddle shoes depart. I was aching with the mystery of sex, with the terrible allure that such undulating figures could evoke. I wanted to run after the girls and protest madly in Pashto that I needed them, that with the Marines gone I would like to make love with them, even in the hurried corner of a bazaar where men paused to urinate.
    For the Marines would have to leave Afghanistan. That was clear. Regretfully I watched the girls disappear, then realized with some shame that I was inwardly pleased that the Marines would be sent home. I dismissed the unworthy thought and looked for a ghoddy. To my surprise one appeared promptly, occupied by Nur Muhammad, who had come down to survey matters from a distance.
    “Trouble?” he asked blandly, pointing to themullahs, who were haranguing a crowd near the entrance to the bazaar.
    “Just escaped,” I reported. “A miracle.”
    I climbed onto the sloping seat of the ghoddy and we drove back toward the embassy. As the horse clip-clopped over the frozen mud that served as a road in Kabul, I noticed once more the little open ditches that lined most streets in the city. In them ran the public drinking water, since underground pipes were unknown in Afghanistan. But in the same ditches the citizens also urinated, pitched dead dogs, brushed teeth and washed all food that would be later eaten by the citizens, including ferangi stationed in the American and European embassies. I shuddered.
    Ahead of me a man from the mountains, carbine slung over his back, squatted over the ditch and defecated, while not ten yards away a cook’s helper, dressed like Nur Muhammad, unconcernedly washed the meat that would be served that night in the French embassy.
    “A thing like that is a national disgrace,” Nur said bitterly.
    “Does the government know who the girls are? The saddle shoes, I mean?”
    “Rumors whisper that one is Shah Khan’s granddaughter.”
    “Does the old man know?” I probed.
    “He’s the one who protested to the ambassador.”
    “Is his granddaughter pretty?”
    “They say she’s a beauty,” Nur replied. “I haven’t met anyone who’s seen her.”
    “Is it true that Shah Khan has openly stated he’sopposed to the chaderi?” I asked, trying to review our intelligence on the man I was shortly to see.
    “Of course. That’s why the mullahs tried to murder him last Ramadan.”
    “I have to be there at four,” I repeated. Nur said he’d have the jeep ready, and I hurried to report to Captain Verbruggen. We arranged for the two Marines to be shipped out of the country that afternoon. They would ride an open truck down the long, perilous mountain passes to Peshawar, at the Indian end of the Khyber Pass. And in the years ahead they would relate such memories of Afghanistan as would inspire other young men to serve in distant nations.

Kabul was superb at the end of winter, particularly when the late afternoon