The village that was defensible and often defended when the grandfather of Barney Crispin was still a swaddled baby was equally defensible against the incursion of the bomber and the helicopter close to a century of years later.
The village of Atinam lay as a barrier across the floor of the valley, dominated by the cliff walls. It sprawled from the base of those walls inwards to the river bed bisecting the valley with a bridge of rope and planks linking the halves. The homes of Atinam were not built from the mud bricks found further south in the valley but were constructed from dry stone walls by craftsmen who had their skills handed down from generations past. Some of the houses were of a single storey, more were of two floors and built with the lack of shape and pattern found in an uncompleted game of dominoes. On the right side of the river bed, where the eye witness faced north, was the tower of Atinam's mosque. The mosque was the one building that had been made with concrete, and though the whitewash was now flaking and dirty, it remained the beacon point of the village.
Below the village and on lower ground to the south were fields. Small, mean fields, but sufficient in the past for two maize crops in the summer and for the growing of a few hardy species of vegetables. Some of the fields were now scorched by the flaming petrol jelly dropped from the bombers, some were dried out at this late time of summer because the irrigation water courses had been damaged by the high explosive dumped from the bombers. But a bare sustenance could be drawn from the land for the villagers and fighters. Below the fields, a few hundred yards south of the core of the village, were the mulberry trees with their white and sweet fruit clusters dangling between the rich green of leaf foliage, and these also gave sustenance. And scattered amongst the wild mulberries were walnut trees, the forbidden fruit that should not be picked by the boy passing with the goat herd, nor by the girl who took washing to the river pool, because to do so would offend the rigorous laws of husbandry that were the bedrock of the community's survival. And below the mulberry trees and the walnut trees were the thin grazing grounds for the livestock that provided the white cheese that was staple to the villagers' diet.
There were juniper flowers close to the village, and violets, and sometimes the dropping orbs of the sunflower, and wild roses that were pink and ragged. The village of Atinam might, in other years, have been a place of peace and beauty. In the fourth year of the war, Atinam was a fortress.
Whereas other Villages in the valley had proved open to the bomber and helicopter attacks, Atinam's position forced the Sukhois and Mi-24s to fly a low gauntlet up the valley, between the steep cliffs, drop their loads and at once soar upwards to escape impalement on the rock faces. This made for skilful, difficult flying, flying that was frequently ineffective. In the valley walls were caves, some shallow, some deep, providing safe fire positions for the fighters. To reach their target the aircraft must fly through cones of defensive fire, through machine gun fire, through automatic rifle fire. The task was relished neither by the pilots nor by their superiors who were accountable for losses of men and material. After a fashion the village survived.
The men of Atinam recognised a vague allegiance to the Hizbi-i-Islami group in Peshawar, but the man with direct and daily control over their military operations was the stranger schoolteacher from Kabul, Ahmad Khan. The word of Ahmad Khan was the law of the village. He organised the military defences of Atinam, and the training in tactics and weapons, and the teaching of propaganda to the young, and the supply of food. He had taken responsibility for the defence of Atinam. Atinam had become the jewel in Ahmad Khan's valley.
Maxie Schumack sat amongst the men who formed a horseshoe around the instructor.
In his pantaloon trousers, in his long-tailed shirt and with the blanket draped on his shoulders, he merged with the men about him. Only the features of his head were different. He had gone to the pool in the early morning and scraped savagely at his face with the old razor that he had carried since he had first come to Afghanistan. He had washed his short-cut hair and combed and quiffed what there was over his scalp. White and grey hair if he had bothered to look in a mirror, and he hadn't. No space for a mirror in Schumack's backpack. If he had looked in a mirror he might have wondered what an old bastard like himself was doing in Laghman province, messing in a village, listening to a lesson in the use of the Soviet-made RPG-7. If he had looked in a mirror he would have seen the wrinkle lines at his mouth, the crow's claws at his eyes, the skin high on his forehead where the hair had long gone.
He did not understand much of what was said, a few words had stuck with him in the months inside Afghanistan, but not enough to know whether he could have done better. It was clear that this was the stop line. Why should he care? One village was like another village. One place to fight was like another place to fight. He watched the instructor. The rocket anti-tank grenade was a great weapon for the valley, played bloody hell with the Soviets when they came lumbering up the track with their T-62 tanks and their armoured personnel. Made them think…scares them shitless, more like. Later, perhaps, he would be asked to contribute, but not before he had proved himself to these men. Nothing bothered him in that. There would be fighting here. All of the village knew there would be fighting, because all the villagers talked of was the story of two helicopters downed in the valley.
They were dealing with the sighting, Schumack tried to hold his mind on the instructor.
Goddam difficult, the sighting. First round usually missed, and that was smoke and a back blast flame, and it was 14 seconds for a good man to fire a second round. He tried to hold his mind on the instructor, and the stump ached. If his mind was not on the instructor, not on the sighting mechanism of the RPG-7, then his mind was on the woman. Shit, that was a disaster, the woman was a bastard disaster. Shouldn't have been like that, not a bastard disaster.
That afternoon Mia took her first clinic in the village.
She had no medicines, she had only the advice she could offer through translated French passed on by a girl who had drifted to the village the previous summer from Jalalabad. When she had come to this village, when she had seen the tailing away at the north end of the ravine, she had known that she had reached the end of her journey.
There had been talk of movement by a Soviet airborne regiment in the mountains between northern Laghman and Panjshir; there had been talk of a new offensive of Soviet armour and aircraft into Panjshir. She knew only that she could go no further than the village that was called Atinam. It was a small thing to her, it was something, that she could identify the ailments. She found some dysentery. She found the coughed-up blood of tuberculosis. She found the rash of measles. She found gangrene in a young girl's arm from a shrapnel wound. At first the men did not come. Their women came and their children. The men waited outside the door fearful that this woman would touch them. She found the psychiatric cases, the numbed young faces of those who turned inside themselves to eliminate the fear of the screaming bombers. She worked swiftly, dismissing her patients with sharp matter-of-fact advice that was handed on to them by the girl from Jalalabad. Of course when she wiped her hands after each examination she seemed to wash those hands of the case history.