False impressions

Every day he walked up and down Saddar, interviewing the off-duty Mujahid commanders cleaning their guns in hotel rooms, talking to miscellaneous Afghans and Pakistanis, buying himself Cokes and Sprites, catching rickshaws to go to the political offices. Peshawar seemed to him a fishy place. Everybody he met wanted to get out or was waiting for something. He was almost the only Westerner. One day he saw a blond, blue-eyed man buying soap. The man started a conversation. He said he was Swiss and he was waiting for a letter from someone who was to meet him there. He asked the Young Man questions in a friendly way. The Young Man saw him again a few days later, in the American Center. This time he was from Rhodesia. — That night he told the uncle about it. — “Be careful, ” the uncle said. “I have seen him. He is a bad man.”

The third time he saw him, the man said, “You want to cross the border, don’t you? ”

The Young Man did not entirely trust either the Swiss-Rhodesian or the uncle. So he merely said, “Well, that’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it? ”

“Come on with you, ” the man said. “Why else would you be in this bloody miserable place? ”

“No, ” the Young Man said. “I’m just a tourist.”

In the hotel was a fellow from Chitral who was very interested in the Young Man. His brother was the chief of police in Peshawar, he said, and the police were going to come arrest the Young Man as a spy.

“And what will happen then? ” said the Young Man, feeling some alarm.

“They will beat you, ” Yusuf Ali laughed.

“And then what? ”

“They will make you sleep with them.^‖ And they will beat you again. Then you will go to jail.”

“Oh, ” said the Young Man noncommittally.

“They will beat you, you C.I.A.! ” Yusuf Ali chuckled, slapping the Young Man’s shoulder. “Do you understand? They will beat you and beat you, you spy! ”

“Oh, I understand, ” the Young Man said. He resolved to change his hotel.

“You are very dull, my friend, ” said Yusuf Ali. “I am just joking.”

“But your brother is chief of police? ”

“Yes.”

“And you really think I am a spy? ”

“You are C.I.A., yes. But I have no told my brother about you, my friend. But if they find you, they beat you, you C.I.A.”

His aims and plans seemed to be wandering through alien channels like those narrow, high-walled, white-walled streets of Peshawar, in which men in cotton-white passed white-veiled women. He went out that night to get a fruit drink (which later made him urinate blood). On the way back, a crowd of Pakistanis surrounded him. They had been watching him day after day. They asked where he was going, what he was doing, where he was from. And why didn’t he stay in a youth hostel? They could have arranged “a better reception for him there.” —The Young Man said that he was happy with his reception here. — Why wasn’t he going to India? — He didn’t have much money, he said, and anyhow he only wanted to see Pakistan. — Oh, was he applying to his government for assistance in returning home? — No. —Why not? (And, by the way, the youth hostel was cheaper.) —“Don’t you want me here? ” said the Young Man. — Oh no, it wasn’t that at all. But it might be very dangerous for him here, so near the border. — Now the conversation shifted to another topic with which he was already familiar: Could they get visas to the U.S.A.? — The Young Man said that that was very hard; so they had told him at the consulate. — Well, could he get them visas to the U.S.A.? — No, he said. — But he was satisfied with his reception here, he’d said? — Yes, thank you; everyone was very kind. — Well, then wasn’t he very selfish not to help them? They turned their backs on him. — When he lost his temper, they said that they had only been joking. — “Friend! Friend! ” they cried.

…Yusuf Ali touched the Young Man’s neck and asked him when he would be crossing the border. The Young Man wrote in his diary: “What’s so special about me, anyway? Well, if he just wants to scare me, or to try to paw me, I can handle that, but I don’t like the idea of arrest and confiscation.” —He decided that maybe he should show Yusuf Ali some friendliness, and try to find out what was going on. So he asked him out for a walk the next day. Yusuf Ali rubbed his hands together and agreed. But the next morning, when the Young Man went to knock on his door, there was no answer. The proprietor said that Yusuf Ali had left for good at four that morning. — The Young Man decided to change his hotel. But he never got around to it. The police never came, anyhow. He saw the same people on the street every day. The Swiss-Rhodesian had gone away.

(“So what makes you think that I am C.I.A.? ” he had once asked Yusuf Ali. “My tapes, my film? ” —“No, no, ” said Yusuf Ali. “My dear friend, it is in the lines of your hand; I can read hands, you see.”)