Preparations

One morning the air of laziness disappeared from the camp. All morning the men cleaned their weapons and loaded them, soberly, but in good spirits.^h There was no wasteful shooting off of cartridges.

Down by the Young Man’s charpoy, Poor Man and the Commander in Blue sat on a mat in a circle with some new arrivals who had brought cases of bombs. With them also was a commander with whom the Young Man had eaten dinner in the tree-house the previous night. He wore flashy rings and bird ornaments; his face was made up. He carried with him little balls of colored sugar, in a hashish box. He gave the Young Man a handful of them. When he posed for a picture, the Commander in Blue made him put his ornaments aside, which made him crestfallen. Later, when the Commander in Blue was gone, the Flashy Commander winked at the Young Man and posed for another picture.

Poor Man was talking slowly, fiddling with a rocket launcher. The Commander in Blue, who had just thumbprinted some new recruits, was studying a letter which one of them had given him. Poor Man seemed abstracted. His round face looked up smiling sometimes, but then his eyes flickered down again to the rifle he was cleaning, or to the message that he’d already read. He was a pudgy man, graying a little, who, unlike the grandly gesturing Mujahideen commanders whom the Young Man had met at the General’s, did not seem impressive. Poor Man had been sick to his stomach during the journey from Pakistan. Every hour or two he stopped to vomit, but that had never kept him from returning to the head of his line of men (who never waited for him), leading them at a steady, rapid walk, with his arms serenely folded across his chest. Within a few minutes he would be so far ahead as to be out of sight, and they caught up with him only when he paused impatiently for them, or when he was sick again. He said very little. His men honored him. They carried a bottle of rose-petal Sharbet syrup which only he could drink. In the high passes, he poured a little of the syrup into a snowball and ate it, smiling. Sometimes in the morning Poor Man looked very pale, and then the Mujahids massaged his back. But when it came time to go, he was never anywhere but in front. — The sunshine was white and brown as Poor Man and the Commander in Blue sat in state, and Poor Man flexed his toes, turning a cartridge slowly round and round in his hand, and the cursive on the green N.L.F. banner above his head was like swords, crowns, wriggling snakes, crossed ribbons, and the Commander in Blue sat dreamily in the half-darkness of the doorway, and the books shone snowy white in the sun.

Elias, the malik of the village nearby, came up the trail to the camp, leaning on his staff. He took his cap off, brushed away the flies from his baldness, put his cap on again, picked up his staff, and put it down … He sat on the mat with the others. He leaned forward and spoke. Now several men were speaking excitedly at once. Old Elias shook his head. — “ Qur’an, ” he said. — Poor Man’s eyes flicked back and forth slowly.

Poor Man signed a book slowly, carefully, as yesterday he had done with the new party membership cards. A young boy leaned on a gun sternly, then rose as Poor Man reached to take his hand, put his hand on the stamp pad, and entered his fingerprint in the register book. The boy looked proud. Every man smiled at him; every man was like the man in the white skullcap, whose cheeks were wrinkled into long laugh lines as he stood cleaning his rifle, the stock braced against his belly with one hand, oil can in the other, and the stained awning covered the others who sat talking quietly on their mats and Poor Man sat against the wall, watching with eyes that gave and took.

Poor Man seemed more relaxed now. The talk was slow — and then abruptly he ordered away the Mujahids sitting by the Young Man’s side on the charpoy.

The Flashy Commander stretched, got up, and put his sandals on. He winked at the Young Man and chewed a ball of sugar.

Poor Man said something about guns, and everyone laughed. He and Malik Elias gripped a Kalashnikov from opposite ends, inspecting it, and then he entered a note in his book. Someone handed him another gun. He looked it up and down very slowly, and then fingerprinted the next recruit.

It was half past seven in the morning now. The flies were coming out strongly. The battle was set for nine.

Poor Man took a cartridge and straightened it with a pair of pliers. — Was that safe? the Young Man wondered. He knew nothing about guns. It reminded him of the way the Mujahideen used hair tonic as lip balm, because it smelled like peaches and was thick and yellow. They wouldn’t believe him when he translated the label for them.

Poor Man checked over and rendered fit each of their weapons, attaching straps, loading bullets, with the same peaceful, unhurried spirit as when the Commander in Blue cooked kebabs and wetted down the mud floors every morning. — Sighing, Poor Man inserted a fuse in a grenade.

Elias borrowed the key from Poor Man. He went to the store-room and brought a sack of dried tutans. (So preserved, these fruits taste like very sweet raisins gone slightly bad. Fresh on the tree they resemble white, pink or black raspberries without seeds; then they taste like sweet grapes gone slightly bad.) Poor Man ran a few of them through his fingers and made a note in the book.