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Corruption
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In effect, Marie Sardie was offering two arguments for the “extras”—the first being the expedient one that the situation might reverse itself of its own accord in the future, as with the Tibetan refugees, in which case hoarded “extras” might be needed; the second being that even with the “extras” malnutrition still existed, so the arbitrary curve could be drawn without being arbitrary at all, and the Young Man’s complicated doubts about omniscience and fairness became irrelevant: either people were malnourished or they were not.
“Whether you’re a one-month-old baby or a forty-year-old man you get the same ration, ” Marie Sardie explained, “so there’s more than enough for everybody, which, even without the corruption of bogus registered families, allows them to have excess food to sell on the market to get other food and things that they need.”
“So, ” said the Young Man, “you think that between the extra food and the fifty-rupee-a-month allowance most of the families do okay? ”
She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know about this fifty-rupee-a-month allowance, ” she said. “Most of them are lucky to see it once a year or twice a year. On paper the refugees receive it, but the experience is that they usually don’t get it.”
“Where does it go? ”
She laughed. “Like most other things here, through other people’s hands and pockets! ”
THINGS THAT PEOPLE WOULDN’T SAY ON TAPE [2]
The refugees sold their medicines in the bazaars. (I was so shocked when I first heard this!)
STATEMENT OF THE AFGHAN WAITER (continued)
“Food and medicine, that is right, some people sell them. I don’t know if they are Afghans. Once I bought the medicine from one shop and there was written on the medicine: SPECIAL FOR AFGHAN REFUGEES. ”
HELPLESSNESS [7]
The issue of corruption had begun to occupy the Young Man increasingly. His mind turned to the notion of secret plots. If he could only show that the refugees (like the smiling boy whose skin was just a little redder than cocoa holding his little brother in his arms for the Young Man to see; the little one holding something in a bundle of white cotton cloth that he would not unwrap; he held the twist of it down tight with three brown fingers and his brown face looked at the Young Man so raptly as he almost smiled, his mouth curving in something shy and sweet), if he could only show that the refugees were being cheated, or the Mujahideen were being hindered systematically, he would feel much better. That would be a problem whose solutions were theoretically clear. He resisted the parable of the beer cans. He did not want to admit that the shoulder of every road is heaped with waste and wreckage. How much nicer it would be simply to post a sign that said: PENALTY FOR LITTERING Rs. 500. As I reread these interviews years later I feel equally helpless.
STATEMENT OF THE AFGHAN DOCTOR (continued)
“For example, maybe a medical commander distributes food rations. He makes about four or five rations for himself, and he needs just one; this is one corruption I can tell you about.”
STATEMENT OF MARY McMORROW (continued)
“You give cereal to a mother for one child, ” Mary said, “and you know the other seven children are going to eat it, as well as the husband.”
“So you give her a lot, ” said the Young Man.
“Well, the more you give her, the more it gets spread out. It’s the extended family, and everything gets extended. A malnourished child is getting, say, two kilos of this stuff a week and he’ll gain half a kilo. And you know that food went somewhere else; you expect that.”
STATEMENT OF THE OLD MAN (KACHAGARI CAMP)
The question seemed to be, then, how severe those pockets of malnutrition were. Knowing this, he could construct his if → then conclusions and be on his way to Afghanistan (I remember that long hot summer so well, when I kept thinking about the border). Before speaking with Marie Sardie, the Young Man had arranged with B., a minor guerrilla commander with the Jamiat-i-Islami, to visit Kachagari Camp on Khyber Road. — Kachagari, he was given to understand, was administered jointly by Red Crescent and the government of Pakistan. He would not be officially welcome there; Commissioner Abdullah in the Refugee Office was unlikely to give him permission to go. So, once he had secured a note from Dr. Najibula, who controlled the Jamiat’s political office, the Young Man passed the note to B. — which gave B. assurance that the Young Man was not believed to be a K.G.B. agent — and then they set off illegally in a taxi, which happened to be a big old Packard. The trip cost the Young Man two hundred and fifty rupees.
It was a holiday. They were unlikely to meet any of the camp administrators or staff, and the Young Man had already promised that he would be the only one in trouble if they were caught, and that he would bear his punishment gracefully. They rolled cheerfully down Khyber Road, raising a persistent narrow trail of dust behind them as far as they could see. Here was Jabbar Flats and University Town, and all the sad vending stands, and now, off to the right, the acres and acres of heat-faded tents and brownish-yellow walls and streets and houses of some adobe-like stuff. It was rather hot today; the Young Man promised himself that on his return to the hotel he would mix up many Mango Squashes for himself from the bottle of syrup that he had bought. — The camp seemed to go on and on as they entered it. In its vastness and seeming lack of people, in the way that it kept to itself, it reminded him of those old New England cemeteries that stretched along the side of the road. You held your breath when you drove by a cemetery. The car went slowly down the mud-baked road. — They stopped in a cul-de-sac between cracked walls, and at once the refugees came running out of their homes, the women staying a little back with their water vessels, peering from the rims of deep pits in the baked dirt (were those wells? he never found out), while everyone else rushed up and crowded around the car, children first, putting their heads right up against the windows but maintaining somehow a certain shy distance. They cleared a path when the Young Man and B. and the taxi driver got out and stretched themselves in the heat and looked around them at the dryness and the faded brown tent canvases and the shiny empty tins on the ground which had once held cooking oil (another gift from the European Economic Community); and all the people stood watching, hushing, at the sight of the Young Man. After a moment, the men stepped up closer around him, and the women disappeared again.
B. took him to a tent where an old man sat. —“Asalamu alaykum, ” said the Young Man as usual, awkwardly. —“Walaykum asalam, ” the old man answered. He took his guest’s hands in his. They all sat down, and the old man poured them water. The people went away.
As the old man and the Young Man could not understand each other’s speech, B. interpreted.
“Do you have enough food? ” the Young Man asked.
“Yes, enough.”
“What kind of food do you eat? ”
The old man shrugged. “Sometimes they give it and sometimes they don’t give it. We get chai and ghee * and sugar and milk. Sometimes for two, three months we don’t get nothing, you know. Then we supply for ourself. We didn’t get our refugee allowance for two months.”