Read Online An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World by William T. Vollmann - Free Book Online Page B

might be a little mad. —But
how am I to know?
he said to himself angrily.
    “It does seem as if he has a following,” the Young Man said.
    “We’re not sure if it’s his following or if it’s a consequence of the fact that he’s staying with General N.”
    “There are lots of people who claim he’s their boss,” said the Young Man.
    A shrug. “I really have to go to a meeting.”
    “Well, would you recommend that I go to Afghanistan with him?”
    “I’d advise against it.”
    The Brigadier had told the Young Man to inform the Ambassadorand his wife that he sent his
salaam
to them, and to ask when his work would be ready. The Young Man did neither. Returning, he met the Brigadier on the porch.
    “What they say?”
    “They had no time for me today,” the Young Man said.
    The Brigadier flew into a rage. —“They Amerikis, but—if they Afghans, I—KILL THEM! They servants—not masters! You—NO help me! Democracy—NO good!”
    The Young Man lied, saying that he had done his best, d but the Brigadier would not believe him. At last the Young Man replied curtly. The Brigadier smiled, the way people there smiled to express deep offense.
    “They treat me like—DOG!” he said.
    Wearily, the Young Man agreed and went in to the toilet. The walk to the consulate and the heat had stirred up his dysentery.
    Sitting on the toilet seat, he imagined a dialogue with the General, who had just been lecturing him on the Jewish lobby:
    “General,” he’d say, “I think the Brigadier’s on the brink.”
    “Because you won’t help him,” the General would reply sternly. “He’s a friend of America, but you’re making him an enemy. You won’t give my daughter-in-law a visa. If I can’t get a visa, no one in Pakistan can get a visa. Zia was my subordinate. If I wanted to, I could go to him, and he would make them give me the visa.
    “But that’s against my principles. I ask no one for favors. I expect nothing from anyone. But now you are supporting Israel, and
lakhs
e of people are homeless.”
    And the Young Man, slightly light-headed with fever, suddenly understood his role as an American: to accept responsibility for everything.

The ants
     
    A few nights later, the Brigadier, the Young Man and the General were sitting on the patio. The cement was writhing with winged ants trapped by the house lights, crawling along, hunting in the seamless concrete for a crack in which to lay their eggs and die. Presently came the accustomed stealthy noises from the lawn, and the fat toads appeared. For a moment they stopped short, as if astonished by the profusion of prey. Then they fanned out and began to gobble up the stragglers, avoiding giving alarm to the larger mass. When the stragglers were safely eaten, however, the toads hopped in among the main body of the ants and commenced liquidation in earnest. How the toads flicked their tongues! And how blindly the ants streamed, with the very breath of their predators on them, like philosophers who had forgotten a cause.
    The Brigadier was talking about the fundamentalist factions again. —“They—
no
good!” he said. “They very bad. They—
no
true Afghans!”
    The reports from Panjsher Valley were bad that day. The Russians were really breaking through. —
“Roos,”
the Young Man said, pointing to the toads. “Mujahideen”—pointing to the confused, decimated ants.
    At once the Brigadier got up and shooed and hissed the toads away. He stamped his foot an inch from their heads. They hunched themselves back into the darkness. (But a few minutes later they were back, cautious at first but just as greedy as before. This time the Brigadier ignored them. Soon there were no more ants.)
    “The Brigadier is a bit of a brute,” said the General in his lawn chair. “He’s killed over a thousand people.”
THE CONSUMMATION
     
    A day before he was due to cross the border, the leader of the N.L.F. band that was going to take him came to the General’s house.