Everyone’s story was a part of everyone else’s. Shalimar the clown at forward camp 22 befriended the luminous little man who had fought with Afghans and al-Qaeda against the Soviet Union, who had accepted U.S. arms and backing but loathed the United States because American soldiers had historically backed the settlement of Catholics in Mindanao against the wishes of the local Muslims. The majority Muslim population of seven million people had been pushed into increasingly cramped and crowded living conditions to make room. Basilan, the small island to the southwest of the main Mindanao island, was a place of grinding poverty where gun law had begun to rule. The Christians controlled the economy and the Muslims were kept poor. “In seventies big war. One hun’red thou, hun’red twenty thou die. Then peace deal, then MNLF split, MNLF-MILF, then fight again. Hate Filipino government. Hate also U.S.A. U.S. secret ambassador comes to the Base to give weapons and support. I hold my fire but in my heart I want to kill this man.” When Shalimar the clown heard the ambassador’s name he sat bolt upright at the refectory table. “Abdurajak, my friend,” he said, his voice trembling because of his discovery, “this man I also want to kill.”
“Let me know if I can help,” the Filipino revolutionary said.
Sometimes, now, she did not hear his voice for weeks, even months. In the night she reached out for him but found only a void. He had gone beyond her reach and she could only wait for him to return, not knowing if she wanted him to return so that she could preserve her dream of a happy ending, or if she wished him dead because his death would set her free. But he always returned in the end, and when he did it seemed that in his life only a single night had passed, or at the very most two or three. Years of her life were vanishing but in the place from which he called to her, time ran at a different speed, the space around him took a different shape. She did not know how to tell him everything that was happening in Pachigam. There was no time. Increasingly, however, he wanted only to send her the message of himself, of the fire that continued to burn in him, and the only question to which he needed an answer was the old, macabre one: Are they dead yet? But Abdullah Noman and Pyarelal Kaul were alive, though their years, too, were rushing by during his weeks. In his time, he wouldn’t have long to wait.
The Russians were in Afghanistan and consequently many Afghans had fled to Pakistan, and were even to be found at forward camp number 22 in the “free”-Azad-sector of Kashmir. In spite of the enormous numbers of refugees occupying huge, town-sized camps in the Pak northwest, the Afghans were not poor. There were extensive opium fields in the vicinity of the camps and the refugee chieftains bought their way into the poppy business, using the gold and jewelry they had brought across the border for capital and backing it up with menaces and guns. Once they had gained control of the poppy fields they instituted a system of double-cropping so that they could produce heroin as well as opium. The income from the heroin was large enough to pay off the Pak authorities and to pay for the costs of the refugee camps as well. The authorities turned a blind eye to what was going on in the poppy fields because it prevented the refugees from becoming a burden on the state and besides there were the payoffs, which were generous.
The Afghans had freedom fighters of their own, and the United States decided to support these fighters against its own great enemy, which had occupied their country. U.S. operatives in the field-CIA, Counter-Terrorism and Special Units personnel-took to referring to these fighters as the Muj, which sounded mysterious and exciting and concealed the fact that the word mujahid meant the same thing as the word jihadi, “holy warrior.” Weapons, blankets and cash poured into northern Pakistan, and some of this aid did reach the Muj. Much of it ended up in the arms bazaars of the wild frontier zone, and a percentage of it reached Azad Kashmir. After a while the fighters gathering in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir started calling themselves the Kashmiri Muj. The ISI provided them with powerful long-range missiles which had been intended for the Afghan front, but had unfortunately been diverted along the way. Other high-quality arms also began to appear at FC-22: automatic grenade launchers of Soviet and Chinese origin, rocket pods with solar-powered timing devices that made possible delayed-firing rocket barrages, 60-mm mortars. At a certain point Stinger missiles, SAMs, were also made available to the “Kashmiri Muj.” Weapons training took up much of every day. The chief instructor was an Afghan war buddy of Janjalani the Filipino’s, a black-turbaned warrior from Kandahar who called himself simply Talib, meaning “the student.” The word for knowledge was taleem. Those who acquired knowledge were scholars: taliban. Talib the student was a mullah of a sort, or, at least, had been trained at a religious school, a madrasa. Like the iron mullah Bulbul Fakh, however, he never mentioned the name of his seminary. Talib the Afghan had lost an eye in battle and wore a black patch. As a result he had been temporarily withdrawn from the front line, but he was determined to return to combat duties as soon as possible. “In the meanwhile,” he said, “God’s work can be done here also.”
Talib the Afghan’s one eye bored through Shalimar the clown and seemed to read his thoughts, to see the pretense there as Janjalani had, the untold, forbidden secret. Janjalani understood his reasons but Shalimar the clown feared Talib would not. He felt like a fraud and feared exposure constantly. He had not surrendered his self as he had been required to do, had hidden it deep beneath a performance of abnegation, the greatest performance he had ever given. He had his own goals in life and would not give them up. I am ready to kill but I am not ready to stop being myself, he repeated many times in his heart. I will kill readily but I will not give myself up. But his goals did not officially exist, not in this dangerous place. “You were an actor,” Talib the Afghan said scornfully in bad, heavily accented Urdu. “God spits on actors. God spits on dancing and singing. Maybe you are acting now. Maybe you are a traitor and a spy. You are fortunate I am not the one in charge of this camp. I would immediately order the execution of all entertainers. God spits on entertainment. I would also order the execution of dentists, professors, sportsmen and whores. God spits on intellectualism and licentiousness and games. If you hold the rocket launcher like that it will break your shoulder. This is the way to do it.”
Shalimar the clown thought at first that he understood one-eyed Talib’s rage, thought it was the anger of the wounded warrior deprived of war, of the doer forced to be a teacher. Later he revised his opinion. Talib’s rage was not a side effect. It was his reason for being. An age of fury was dawning and only the enraged could shape it. Talib the Afghan had become his wrath. He was a student, a scholar of rage. Of all other learning he was contemptuous but he was wise in the ways of anger. It had burned through him and now it was all that remained: the rage, and his attachment to Zahir, the boy he had brought with him from Kandahar, his protégé, disciple and lover. A warrior of Kandahar, like some ancient Greek, would take such a boy for a time, make a man of him and let him go. Zahir the Boy slept in Talib’s tent and looked after his weapons and attended to his normal, nocturnal needs. But this was not homosexuality. This was manliness. Talib the Afghan was in favor of executing homosexuals, those unnatural effeminates upon whom God expectorated most violently of all.