We pause at the top of the Hajigak Pass to admire the spectacular view. The men pray beside the cars. The engines smell hot. The peaks to the east and west of us soar to 15,000 feet, and the road behind and beyond us swoops down to loop between the intersecting spurs of the valleys. Then, from just below our line of sight, a man wearing a giant brown turban appears as if from out of the ground, flanked by a pair of grinning friends. The fact that he’s lost his right leg to a mine and must have ascended the pass on his crutches gives the sight a surreal quality. He stares at us with a mute grin, which reveals a wide gap where a tooth has been knocked out, and I marvel at his physical hardiness before giving him a few afghanis for his troubles, wondering how far he’ll have to go before he reaches home.
A long and winding descent leads us towards the Bamiyan valley. The surrounding geology seems to pass through every colour of the spectrum as we creep down, deepening to a purplish shade of red as we near the valley floor and turn west towards the site of the famous Buddhas. I catch glimpses of stairways and walls and ruined galleries in the cliffs above us and am reminded that Bamiyan was once a Buddhist state that resisted its Muslim overlords until well after their arrival in the seventh century. Its natural setting has always enchanted visitors. I don’t know if it’s because of the time of day, but the light seems particularly magical, and now that we’ve been released from the grasp of the mountains the valley seems a place of delicacy and charm, where slender poplars line the riverbanks and their pale leaves shimmer in the soft flame of the afternoon sun.
‘This place is stunning,’ says H. ‘I thought Afghanistan was all rocks and desert, but this is something else.’
Closer to the town, in the folds of reddish stone above us, we can make out the crumbling towers and ramparts of another long-abandoned fortified settlement. It’s Shahr-e Gholghola, the City of Lamentation, laid to waste, so the story goes, by Chengiz Khan himself in 1222.
But the town itself brings a different feeling. It’s strange to look at, because the last time I was here there was a thriving bazaar where there are now ruins. A whole section of the town has simply been annihilated. Its obvious there’s been heavy fighting and the majority of the local Hazara families have fled. They are still the underdogs of Afghan society. Their virtually autonomous kingdom was smashed by the nineteenth-century king Abdur Rahman, and the Pashtun tribes have treated them like slaves ever since. Their recent battles with the Taliban have been particularly fierce.
The radio crackles into life, and I hear Aref’s voice.
‘Taliban checkpoint ahead,’ he says. Then Momen grabs the radio from him.
‘Make sure your beard is long enough.’ He chuckles.
‘So long as it’s only my beard they want to measure,’ I say, because there are lots of jokes like this about the Taliban. Cackles of laughter erupt from both men.
‘Drive up slowly and stop,’ I say.
It’s time to introduce ourselves to the local Taliban commander. A black flag flutters from a small command post on a bluff above us, towards which Aref and Sher Del walk. They are met by two armed Talibs. They are not unfriendly, but have the tense look of people who know they don’t belong. A few others descend from the post and circle the cars but don’t quite dare to search them.
H and I get out, distribute some cigarettes to break the ice and ask if we can walk up to the Buddhas. The fighter standing next to me shrugs as if to ask why we’d want to bother but walks up with us. He leads us through a warren of steps and tunnels until we emerge above the hollow niches from which the giant statues have gazed for 1,500 years. From the top we can see a fantastic range of snow-covered peaks to the south. Closer to we can make out a red jeep racing towards our position, trailing a plume of dust.
‘That’ll be their commander,’ says H.
We meet him as we emerge from the dusty doorway at the foot of the niche. He’s unexpectedly friendly, intrigued to meet foreigners, and suggests we be his guests for the night, even though it’s obvious we have no choice in the matter. We follow him in the vehicles to a fortified compound, where we park inside the gates and unpack our things.
Whether as a courtesy or precaution, an armed Talib follows us everywhere. I suspect it’s a bit of both. We are all shown into a long room strewn with carpets, and the first of many glasses of tea is poured. As dusk falls, the room fills gradually with about thirty armed men.
‘It’s like a dinner party in Notting Hill,’ says H, as the men lay their AKs by their sides like napkins. The magazines of their weapons are doubled and taped together to give them twice the amount of ammunition without having to grope around for a fresh magazine.
The commander is a man of about thirty. We sit next to him as the meal is served. His manners are peculiarly modern, and I wonder whether he grew up in Pakistan. He has none of the formality or reserve of most Afghans I’ve met, and asks me directly about the work we’ve come to carry out. I tell him that even in England we’re concerned about helping Afghanistan with its mine problem. And because everything in Afghanistan is about establishing allegiances and invoking the names of powerful strangers, I make up a speech about the Queen, whose authority they can’t quite assess from this distance, and how keen she is to see peace and prosperity in Afghanistan, and emphasise how grateful she’ll be for the assistance we’re receiving here in Bamiyan.
‘We beat the British,’ he says cheerfully, ‘last time they came to Afghanistan.’
‘War was different then,’ I say, ‘and battles were fought man to man.’
‘Perhaps they will come back,’ he says with a smile, ‘and we can fight them again the same way.’
As darkness falls a fighter shows us to our room. We’ve been on the road only a couple of days but for some reason it feels like weeks. For a moment we wonder whether to position ourselves near the door or the window.
‘If they’re planning to kill you,’ I tell H, ‘the preferred method is to drop a rock on your head.’
‘With all those weapons they hardly need a rock.’
‘You forget how thrifty Afghans are. A rock will save them the expense of a bullet.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I hope it’s big enough. I’ve got quite a hard head.’
We leave the next morning, our heads intact. The commander has given us a handwritten letter of permission to travel as far as Yakawlang, but can’t guarantee much after that. I’m glad we’ve got the letter. There are several checkpoints as we head west, and at each we’re waved to a halt by a pair of fighters whose surly manner improves once our letter has been inspected and passed around. We’ve chosen the right combination of personalities for the lead vehicle. Sher Del is not only a Pashtun, but his white beard and confident manner give him an authority that no one will easily challenge. Aref plays the role of boffinish administrator to perfection, and between the two of them all suspicions are put to rest.
Beyond Bamiyan the high mountains draw apart, the cultivated plain broadens to a width of several miles, and the glittering braid of the river and its tall green poplars runs beside us. The lesser hills are bare and reddish, and against their starkness the valley and its carefully tended fields and borders once again seem all the more delicate.