CHAPTER 4 -- On the road to Maimana

The road north was really no road at all; just a pair of huge ruts left from the trucks -- dusty and deep.  I started our first day of driving by promptly bottoming out on the rough road.  As the bottom of the steering column came down hard, the entire van shook.  Although trucks could negotiate the road by driving in the existing ruts, they were too deep for the van.  I saw right away that what I would have to do was straddle the ruts, with one wheel on the shoulder and one in the middle, and to go slow. 

We expected to reach the first settlement, Qal'eh-ye Now, by nightfall since it was only a little over 120 klicks -- 75 miles -- north of Herat.  We barely made it a quarter of the way due to the rough road and mechanical problems, the carburetor wasn't working right, but it could have simply been the extra load of three people and their stuff combined with the rough road and steep grades that necessitated a slow crawl.  At the steeper grades all would get out and I would drive because I was the lightest, the van would struggle up over the hills and I would wait at the top as the others would walk up, going down hill was no problem. 

The first day took the longest, as it was mostly uphill, until we crossed the first range of mountains that separate the north and the south of Afghanistan.  When riding Frank rode shotgun mostly and we talked a lot, Eduardo rode in the back with Andy and Karen.  We stopped late that day in an open field and set up a tent for the night, and made dinner from our hasty provisions of cookies and watermelon after that first exhausting day.  After smoking way too much of our newly acquired Afghan hash, Andy and Karen went off to spend the night together, as they were definitely becoming a couple at this point. 

The van had enough space to stow everyone's gear.  Andy and I already had a stove, dishes, pots and pans for cooking.  Instead of sleeping bags we had bedrolls made of blankets that our mother had collected in Rome.  Andy had a guitar, and we had a miscellaneous collection of books and clothing.  Frank contributed an eight-track tape recorder and a handful of rock and roll tapes that we played over and over to pass the time.  Most nights we just spread a large ground cloth outside and slept in the open air.  Andy and Karen were inseparable, although Eduardo was never far from Karen either.  Frank and I had struck up an easy friendship. 

Everyone was slow to get started the next morning, as we were still recovering from the exertions of the day before not to mention the hash.  We drew quite a crowd in the morning from the curiosity in the surrounding homesteads as we grab a quick bite of what was left of our provisions and broke camp.  We managed to reached the top of the Sabzak pass between the Band-E Baba range and the Safid ranges that day where we had a full view to the north.  We passed many settlements, walled-in compounds and small villages along the way, marked by the trees growing tall and green in the compounds in the midst of the barren surroundings. 

We passed many trucks plying the routes between the towns to the north.  Some were military-type trucks that carried as many people as they could cram into the back; men mostly-- packed in to standing room only in the truck bed, and all wearing their turbans the tails of which were flying in the wind.  Those trucks had open sides and were smaller than the big trucks.  The bigger trucks had closed sides on the bed, creating an open wooden box that could be filled with goods, although men still sat on top of the cargo, again with turbans tails flying.  The wooden sides of these trucks were usually painted with gaudy colors.  

As the van rolled downhill toward Qal'eh-ye Now there were several nomad caravans.  The animals were frightened by the engine noise from the van, and especially from the music from the tape player.  The sights and sounds were so impressive that we just stopped to watch.  Soon, animals carrying heavy packs made from animal hides surrounded us.  The packs were enormous, carrying everything that would be needed to set up camp.  Perched on top were the women, dressed in red or blue velvet, with silver adornments and head covering.  Dogs ran along between the pack animals, and in front were herds of goats and sheep.

 The men rode horses, carrying guns and wearing pajama-style shalwar pants, long tunics, vest and turbans.  Their clothing was usually in muted shades of light green, or light to medium brown.  Much later I inspected some shalwar pants -- the waists were typically huge, with no drawstring.  I never learned the intricacies to fold and pleat the waist and then tie it with a long sash. 

We reached Qal'eh-ye Now by late afternoon the next day as it was mostly down hill.  We got a quick meal at the samovar and a room for the night, Andy and Karen spent the night in the van in front of the samovar.  The next day we were warned that two German tourists who had spent the night in a tent in the garden in the compound there had their throats slit.  We were not sure if they were just trying to drum up more business by scaring us; we did know we were going to do a lot of camping.

We had been driving for a couple of days when we arrived at the edge of a small lake, several hundred yards across.  No other traffic was around, but truck tracks disappeared straight into the water from the edge of the lake.  Evidently that was the preferred truck route, although there were numerous footpaths going around the lake.  The paths that followed the shoreline were not level, but sloped along the bank.  The water was muddy brown, so we couldn't see the bottom.  I was driving once again, with Frank riding in the front seat.  Eduardo and Karen spilled out of the van with Andy to see if any of the paths were passable. 

Frank and I waited impatiently in the van.  We were supposed to wait for Andy to shout directions for us to follow.  I looked over at Frank who was sitting with his feet up on the dash.  We both had the same plan in mind.

"What the hell," I said, shifting into first gear.  "I don't want to wait.  Let's just go for it."

Frank nodded in agreement, and put his feet down on the floorboards.  That was all the encouragement that I needed.  I was a novice at water crossings, and accelerated a little too fast.  The flat front of the van smacked the water, sending a wall of water over the top of the van that washed the windshield clean for once.  Then the front rose up onto the water, and the rear, where the engine was, stayed on the bottom.  The front wheels acted like rudders, giving me some steering control.  I heard Andy yell as I started across, but by that time I was committed.  I had no intention of stopping, because it was too much fun.  Frank and I motored across to the other shore just as slick as we pleased. 

Andy, Eduardo and Karen were all shouting as they raced around the lake after us.  Frank and I ignored the shouts as we roared up the bank on the opposite side.  I was stoked to do it again but the others caught up before I could turn around for a second pass.

I felt more experienced a few days later when I came to my second water crossing, a stream running across the road, probably only four or five van lengths across.  It was at the end of very long day’s drive; in fact, night had fallen and I could barely see across the stream with our weak headlights.  The van rolled to a stop.  Dark as it was, no one wanted to get out to test the water, not even Andy this time.  We all peered out the windows, looking at the dark water.  I decided to ford it once again. 

No one raised any objections; they just held on to their seats and to each other.  I started slowly this time so as not to hit the water too fast.  As always, I was straddling one rut, in this case, the left one.  Looking across the water, the ruts disappeared first into the inky, dark water; next the raised area between the ruts disappeared.  Finally, both shoulders of the road sunk below the water level. 

As I drove out into the water the raised ridge between the two ruts gave way, but the left wheels were still on the high shoulder, which resulted in the van lurching and leaning suddenly and steeply to the right.  I fell out of the driver's seat, but by hanging on to the steering wheel, I managed to get my right foot back on the gas pedal and floor it just as the engine was starting to sputter and die.  I had a death grip on the steering wheel as I pulled myself back into the driver's seat.  At the same time, I steered down into the trench while I fought to get the van level, while never letting up on the gas pedal that I kept pressed to the floor. 

I was in such a deep trench that I could see the opposite bank coming at us, and it was level with the bottom of the windshield.  The van wheels struggled with the rough surface under the water, and I was afraid I might not make it out of the ford.  I think everyone was too frightened to scream or yell.  They were all hanging on to each other in the back as the van lurched and pitched and bounced from side to side each time the wheels began to spin or dig in. 

Finally, the van shot out the other side, as if leaving a catapult, even though it was fully loaded with five people.  Amazingly, none of our gear or supplies even had time to get wet.  The entire crossing probably only took seconds, but it definitely felt much longer.  This time I did not want to go back and do it again.  I was drained from the experience, as was everyone else.  My arms and legs were still trembling from the exertion and stress. 

Frank and I rolled a cigarette later after making camp.  The moon wasn't up and the sky was filled with twinkling lights.  Andy and Karen were curled up together in spoon fashion.  Eduardo was already beginning to snore.  Frank stretched out on his back, while we talked.  He had a pet theory about the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western cultures that he incessantly expounded upon. 

"It's the toilet!"

"toilet ?" I queried. 

"yea the toilet, it makes all the difference." 

"Deep thinking is enhanced by sitting on the toilet and leisurely pondering all the problems of the day.  Just like that statue of the thinker.  That's the contribution of the west." 

"I will have to think about that next time I find a toilet!'  I said laughing.  

I half-listened to him describe Rodin's statue of the thinker from the old Dobie Gillis series on TV, and then complain about not having enough time to think long thoughts while he squatted at the side of a field in the early morning.  Just hearing his voice drone on relaxed my nerves from the close call with the van.

***

We had left the region of steep hills and mountain passes before we got to Qali'eh-ye Now.  We were in an area of rolling hills before reaching Maimana.  The road wasn't as rutted or as steep but the van seemed to be getting worse as we continued the van was losing power, which may have been caused by a leaky air filter.  Air filters back then were often the oil bath type, which run the air through oil to take the dirt out.  Although, we had tried to change the oil whenever we had the opportunity, there was a leak in the filter where dust was getting in. 

We reach the town of Bala Morghab half way beyond Qal'eh-ye Now and Maimana an hour before dark and stopped for supplies and gas.  As we got chai and some food and wandered the bazaar shopping.  A crowd developed and started following us around growing as we went, we didn't have the sense of any danger but the local police intervened anyway.  In our rush to get gas and leave town I forgot to put the gas cap back on, which provided another route for sand to get into the engine.

As the van continued up and down the dusty hills of Afghanistan, the engine power correspondingly decreased to less and less.  Soon, it reached the point where we couldn't make it over any of the hills with the van fully loaded.  Everyone except the driver had to get out and push, so we developed a routine that had us poised to be ready to bail out of the van as soon as it slowed while going up a hill. 

As the van slowed the doors would burst open with four disheveled young people jumping out, running behind and pushing to get the van over the hill.  The road was so sparsely traveled no one else ever saw our antics.  Once everyone was out and pushing, the van would begin to steadily accelerate and climb to the top of the hill.  When I reached a level space at the top, I would come to a stop and wait for the others to trudge uphill.  Dusty and tired, they climbed back into their seats.  Then down the other side, to repeat the entire routine again as we started to climb the next hill. 

No one was ever hurt jumping out of the van but I must confess I did almost lose the van on a hilltop once.  The driver's side door had become increasingly sticky, yet another quirk of our van, which meant that it wouldn't always open from the outside on the first try, and sometimes it would take several tries to open.  The emergency brake was still not working, but I had gotten accustomed to that.  On this occasion, having arrived at the top of a hill and while waiting for the others to trudge up the dusty road, I got out thinking the van was on a level place.  As I stepped away for a moment to take a piss, the door slammed shut just as the van began to roll backwards.  I leaped for the door, but, of course, couldn't get it open since it had chosen this moment to stick again.  After a few anxious attempts to jerk the door open as the van began to slowly roll back, I raced around the front, leaped in the passenger door and slid across to the driver's side to hit the brakes just in the proverbial nick of time.

Clearly, we were not sure how much farther the van was going to take us, and our chances on horseback were looking better and better.  We were fully motivated to trade the van.  Fortunately, the next town was Maimana, the provincial capital of Faryab, and the largest town between Herat, and Mazar-E Sharif.  We were not yet a quarter of the way across Afghanistan.  As we drove into Maimana town, I saw the ubiquitous Afghan man with a rose in his nose.

CHAPTER 3

While waiting to go through customs in the Afghani border town, we milled about with other young westerners.  Andy spotted a girl from a van we had given a push to in the border town on the Iranian side.  She was a pretty blonde traveling with a van full of guys, and he was trying to find out if she was attached to any of them. 

"I just can't believe it," she was telling him.  "I can't believe I am in Afghanistan.  I am really here.  I mean, I can't believe this is Afghanistan.  I've thought so much about this place," she said.  "It's so unreal."

"I can't believe it," she repeated.  

"Yes, unbelievable," Andy agreed.  He sat just smiling at her and nodding while she went on and on in disbelief.  Her name was Karen, and she was from Denmark.  While she sounded a little too ditzy for my type, I hoped that some female company for my brother would help distract him from what was fast becoming his closest companion as we traveled east -- an escalating morphine habit. 

            Andy had started using morphine with some friends in Italy.  He knew that I hated it.  I didn't know what was behind his using morphine; he refused to talk about it.  We had already tangled over his habit more than once on this trip.  I was relieved in Belgrade when his only needle and syringe had broken, although I kept quiet.  Good, I thought, and good riddance to those friends of his that are behind in Rome.  This relative peace lasted only until Turkey when he spotted a pharmacy in a small town.           

            "You wouldn't have to . . . you don't have to . . . ," I tried to plead, but Andy was already out of the van and entering the pharmacy.

            "Be quiet," he muttered.  "Always walk into a pharmacy like you own it and there will be nothing wrong, especially when you are asking for a syringe and a needle."

***

By the time we finished our customs inspection at the border both Karen and the van were gone.  It was only a few hours driving to reach Herat, the main city in eastern Afghanistan.  Throughout the barren and desolate desert there was life, but life that had to be guarded jealously in order to survive.  Everywhere there were ruins and graves; in fact, much more was in ruin than was standing.  What was standing had to be protected.  Walls embraced every living space, it seemed, and few windows looked out onto the world.  Most of the windows and doors faced inward onto an enclosed garden oasis, inside a walled courtyard.  It was in these courtyards that most of the precious plants were grown including tall, straight trees and fragrant flowers.  Don't misunderstand -- there were well-tended fields and orchards out in that desert too, but only where there was water.  Water was the key, as in any arid land, and I spied canals that meandered endlessly to carry water down from the hills and out from the streams and rivers to small farming plots. 

These plots, in turn, provided life to scattered outposts in this desolate land, and had done so for many thousands of years.  I had the sense that long, long ago this had been a fruitful land with seemingly endless woods and wildlife.  Now this heritage was mostly lost except in well-tended small plots, behind closely guarded walls.  As we roamed farther into Afghanistan we did later discover remote valleys, with remnants of what seemed to be great forests.  However, the lack of timber became increasingly apparent as we traveled, and the tall, straight trees that we spotted in the courtyards were likely being grown not for shade, but for practical purposes ranging from roof poles to shovel handles.  I soon discovered that just to find a stout walking stick was rare and valuable.

We arrived in Herat by evening, which except for a few trucks, appeared to be unchanged since the seventeenth century.  Our day's drive had somehow spanned centuries, a journey through time hurtling us backwards.  The main concession to modern life was the truck.  If there was any electricity it was not readily apparent.  Kerosene lanterns lit the streets, and people, horses, donkeys and carts far outnumbered the few cars and trucks.  The metropolitan area appeared to be all mud construction, mostly low one- or two-story buildings.  These buildings had small windows without glass that were shuttered at night.  The shutters were a dark wood -- so dark as to be almost black, and so weathered and cracked that they seemed ancient.  The shutters and window frames were covered with geometric carvings, not in delicate filigree, but with sharp-edged, distinct symbols that must have been carved when the wood was freshly milled.

 We stopped at a chai hana near the bazaar to eat dinner.  The meal cost ten afghanis each -- or about twelve cents.  At the time the exchange rate was eighty afghanis to one U.S. dollar.  During dinner Andy negotiated with the waiter for a two-ounce chunk of hashish for seventy afghanis.  After eating we walked down the street to check out the hotel, and while there Andy bought a one-pound bag of pot for one-hundred afghanis from the hotel manager.  When we were in Iran, the rumor was that anyone caught with illegal drugs was immediately hauled to the nearest field and shot.  To find such easy availability of drugs in Afghanistan confirmed that the tales we had heard were true. 

As we were leaving the hotel, we ran into Karen, the Danish blonde from the border crossing.  Her six traveling companions all had places in their vehicle to sleep in their vehicle, but she was left out.

"Why not sleep in our van," Andy suggested.  "We're right here, parked under two pine trees."

"Sure," Karen agreed. "Let me get my stuff."          

                                               

***

We stayed only three days in Herat.  Andy used the time to get to know Karen, while I soaked up local culture in the main bazaar, located at the base of the ruined citadel.  I met people and tried out the local food, mainly unleavened bread or rice, and oily, overcooked greens that resembled spinach.  The meat was lamb or chicken, prepared on open grills as kebabs, or served in an oily curry sauce.  The local specialty throughout Iran and Afghanistan was pilau, a rice pilaf, greasy with flecks of mystery meat. 

Earlier, at one of these typical meals in Iran, Andy had remarked, "That was a good meal."  Good was not exactly how I would describe the food, but it did fill us up.  Sometimes eggs were available, and were usually the safest choice because they could be requested hard-boiled.  We were sick from time to time, however, never so sick as to give up eating at chai hanas. 

With the total absence of electricity, nights were darker than I had ever seen. The city huddled against the night, and we gathered with everyone else in the only nighttime refuge for travelers -- tiny chai hanas dimly lit with only with kerosene lamps.  Life here went at a totally different pace -- about the speed of a walk; the wheel was still mostly attached to a cart and horse.  Mechanization had not yet arrived, and despite the few trucks and fewer cars, life still went about its business on foot.     

  We found rooms for the three days while we decompressed.  Typically these lodgings were termed a samovar, and consisted of a one- or two-story mud building, usually built around a courtyard in the center where guests could park if the gates were big enough to get through.  Inside the center of the samovar compound, two walls formed an L where the lodging rooms were situated, and the other two walls formed the L for the outer perimeter.  A single room with pit holes completed the unisex toilet facilities, positioned either against the inside of the perimeter wall in the remote corner, or just on the outside of the wall, near a back entrance to the courtyard.  Cooking usually took place in a room made perpetually smoky from the open fire because there was no venting.  Not only was there no electricity or running water, there was also no bedding other than the cushions and pillows lining the walls of each samovar. 

However, every courtyard did contain a well, although this water was suspect since the wells were shallow and none too far from the outhouses.  Herat, like most towns in Afghanistan, had either canals or wells to supply water for the community.  Sometimes the canals would be underground, culminating in a municipal well where people brought jugs and containers to fill.  The safest way to get water was to make use of the omnipresent brass samovars that held boiling water and could be found at the samovars or chai hanas.  The hot water was used to make either green tea or black tea, which were not only the standard beverages, they constituted the entire range of drink choices.  There was no Cola-Cola available, and no refrigeration or ice to be found anywhere. 

             Herat was the biggest city in western Afghanistan.  At the time, I would guess that 50,000 people lived in this densely packed, ancient walled city and surrounding neighborhoods.  Numerous empires and civilizations had swept across the deserts and mountains of the region, rewriting history so many times that it was all myth by now.  If  I had seen ruins on the way to Herat, this place was a living ruin.  Definitely the walled city had not changed much since the days of the Silk Road. 

More impressive was an ancient structure that must have once been a citadel or ruined palace.  It was also made of mud but with tall minaret-type towers in each corner. We had entered Asia and we had come by the back door, a door that spanned centuries.

The serpentine mazes that were the bazaars in the old walled city were overflowing with a bounty that seemed surprising and in contrast to the desolation surrounding the city this place was an oasis.  The stalls in the bazaar sold everything the land offered, and filled the needs that the way of life demanded.  The range of produce was surprising considering the desert setting; nuts and dried fruit of all kinds, grains, breads, and melons piled high in the different stalls that served as shops.  The locals were farmers who were close to the land and knew how to extract a veritable bounty out of the desolation.  In addition, there were traders -- cloth merchants, hardware dealers, woodworkers, smithies; the bazaar was teeming with activity, creating a giant oasis in the great desert. 

As enchanting as all this was, something was definitely missing -- most obviously the women.  Neither in the bazaar, or the chai hanas, were women visible.  I felt this was a real loss for Afghanistan.  Society is debilitated by such a division at its heart; both from the lack of the feminine in one’s day-to-day life, and the power that is exemplified by male over female.  This can't help but corrupt the society and creates a real paradox when the rules to uphold morality and thus prevent corruption are themselves the source of the corruption.  This is the same paradox found in many laws supposedly based on morality, and is one of the reasons that our founding fathers were so wise to demand a separation between church and state.  There was a strong feeling of exclusivity in Afghan society from its very roots; the men could and did exclude the women, and excluded many others.  I had some very good experiences in Afghanistan, it was by no means all negative, yet there always remained a wall that I couldn't cross.  I saw myself as a stone that was skipping over the surface of the culture that was Afghanistan. 

When I did see women in Afghanistan, especially in the cities or towns, they unceasingly wore a burka, a long, full garment covering the wearer completely from head to toe with only a small 2 inch by 4-inch grill of lace to peer through.  The burka color was often dark blue, or some other solid primary color.  All adult Afghan women over the age of fifteen wore this form of dress, which I considered to be demeaning, because my impression was that it was enforced on women from without.  Western women learned to modestly adjust their style of dress.  If a western woman expected to be respected and taken seriously in a village, especially by Afghani women, she conformed by wearing some type of scarf as a head covering, and a long skirt.  At the time, western women were not expected to wear burkas.

The only exceptions that I saw among adult Afghan women were nomad women, or women in remote villages.  They still wore long skirts and modestly concealed their heads with shawls or scarves, but they had more freedom of movement.  These women needed to do physical work, which took place out in the open, so a burka wasn't practical since it severely limits physical movement.  Nomad women also wore more vivid colors such as red or blue velvet, with small mirrors and silver ornaments sewn into their clothes, reminding me somewhat of the traditional dress of Navajo women.  

I'm not sure it was a conscious recognition, but I sensed the closed attitude of the culture and this put me off from trying to delve into it more deeply.  I did enjoy the simplicity of the Afghan lifestyle, which I attributed to the remoteness of Afghanistan.  I never got to know any of the locals well enough to get a better understanding of their philosophy or religious practice. 

I found the complete opposite of these feelings later in my journeys when I first met Tibetan refugees in India.  Tibetans are of a culture that has been traditionally and geographically isolated as well, but now, as refugees, they are a study in encompassing others.  Tibetan philosophy embraces the equality not only in all people, but also in all sentient beings, and the fundamental precept is to do no harm.  

CHAPTER 2

Afghanistan

Now two years has passed; I was eighteen and crossing the border into Afghanistan.   Andy and I were at the end of a twelve-day, five country mad dash across Europe and Asia and on the doorstep of a whole new paradigm.  I could feel myself begin to relax as we completed customs.  Afghanistan hadn't yet gotten used to the influx of foreign travelers.  Westerners were still a novelty, but that was bound to change soon.  We breezed through the inspections and there seemed a genuine goodwill on the part of the people there.   This was confirmed by a palm-sized chunk of hashish that the white silk, pajama, clad custom officials gave us as a welcoming gift to their country -- no tourist brochures here.

We crossed only a few miles of desert between the two border outposts, but we were surely in a completely different world.  Gone was the bureaucratic military presence of border guards and police.  This is not to say that they were not there, just that their presence wasn't strong.  In its place was a very laid-back culture.  My enduring memory of Afghanistan is the ubiquitous image of a man resting at a street corner, dressed in very comfortable pajama like clothing calmly watching life go by, while smelling the fragrance of a rose held to his nose.  Not only was there little sense of a police or military presence, life in general seemed as if it were centuries earlier in terms of dress and buildings.  Here was a land that time had forgotten and the Western world had passed by.  

Southeast Asia was the Vietnam War, bringing daily arrivals of U.S. soldiers to Vietnam and Cambodia for conflict and war.  But the Near East and East starting with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, then followed by Nepal, Tibet, Sikim, Bhutan, shimmered in the distance as holy places of mysticism and serenity.   

ROMAN INTERLUDE                                                       

The passenger freighter from Veracruz, Mexico took us to Seville, Spain, via Colombia and Venezuela.  We lived for two years in Spain, during which Andy and I became experienced sailors, crewing for various yachts.  When the three of us arrived in Rome in fall 1969 we were licking our wounds full of Spanish salt, and in dire need of a respite.  Our experiences in Spain would provide the subject for another volume of stories.  Dorothy led the move to Rome when she found work as a librarian in the American school there.  Andy and I were at loose ends after the sailing and a few other exploits, and came to live with our mother.  Rome was one of many turning points in my life.  It was a beautiful city, and I considered Rome the ideal place for an eighteen and a nineteen-year-old to get serious. 

Dorothy had an apartment in Trastevere, an ancient neighborhood inside the old walls of Rome, but across the Tiber River.  The Tiber is the main river that flows through Rome, which is what Trastevere means in Italian -- across the Tiber.  Trastevere consisted of a warren of narrow roads in a random pattern of apartment buildings and plazas with churches and shops and public buildings thrown haphazardly into the mix.  The foreign community was focused around Trastevere, as was the counter-cultural center of Rome, so we felt right at home. 

The anti-Vietnam War effort was in full swing.  We attended large, exuberant rallies put on by the American community in the heart of Rome.  The rallies began as well-coordinated marches in various parts of Rome, often culminating at the Plaza Navarro in the old part of Rome, a huge beautiful open plaza filled with Roman statuary and fountains surrounded by outdoor cafes, that afforded an enormous space for people to congregate.  Often the anti-war rallies would reach tens of thousands.  Once the marchers reached Plaza Navarro, the rallies mixed speeches and music in a carnival atmosphere. 

Usually Americans speakers against the war began the program, speaking in English to large crowds.  The audience consisted of American expatriates and like-minded Europeans, including Italians, French, Spanish, German, and English -- mostly young.  American rock and roll bands that played anti-war songs and led the enthusiastic audience in anti-war chants followed the speakers.  "Give me an F give me a U, C, K, N, I, X, O, N, what does it spell" -- you get the picture.  It was a Roman version of a mini-Woodstock festival.  The music was accompanied with dancing in the Plaza, and the Italian craft sellers who normally did their business in the Plaza loved the additional customers.

Dorothy, Andy and I flocked to these rallies, which brought back memories of our intense involvement in the anti-war movement during our last few years in the San Francisco Bay area.  In fact, the rallies dovetailed perfectly with one of our reasons for leaving the United States at this time -- our opposition to the war and the approaching draft age for both Andy and me. 

During this time Andy and I also had all the other usual suspects to contend with

 -- Drugs of all kinds; relationships, sexual and otherwise; and rock and roll.  There was much good live music in Rome.  During this period a friend turned up on our doorstep straight from Pakistan with 3.5 kilos of the best hashish I had ever smoked, it was so good it would cause hallucinations, the only hash I have ever smoked to have done that.  She carried it in the false bottom of her suitcase, eight hashish bricks -- 4 inches by 12 inches and a half-inch thick.  This was when hashish was hard to come by in Rome; so needless to say, my brother and I were very popular for a time. 

Hashish is made from tar-like resins found on marijuana plants.  The active ingredients from the plant are concentrated in this residue; thus it takes much less of this substance to get the effects from smoking it.  The residue is formed into dense bricks, like slabs of hardened putty, dark brown to nearly black in color, and in this case had a gold foil seal placed on the upper third of the brick.  Later in Afghanistan I would learn how hashish was harvested and be invited by a lieutenant governor of one of the provinces to help with the harvest on his farm.  Despite the difficulty of getting hashish, we managed to smoke it on a regular basis.  In Europe hash fills the roll that pot does in the U.S. it comes from all over the Middle East and North Africa, most Europeans who smoked hash smoked it mixed with tobacco in either joints or pipes. But sex, drugs and rock and roll were clearly not what it was all about, although we did make the best of our opportunities. 

Andy and I both had our share of experiences with drugs in California and Europe.  We had tried them all, but I was wary of the harder stuff like heroin and morphine.  My view of the drug culture was such that I regarded alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, hashish, and psychedelics as fairly benign drugs.  For me, the most addictive in this lot was cigarettes, and the one I was trying hardest to quit using.  Then there was a harder class of drugs that you had to be much more careful about, including amphetamines, cocaine, and opiates such as morphine and heroin.  Andy had started getting into morphine with some friends in Italy probably as a result of some tough experiences he had in Spain.  It was his way of dealing with that pain and I wanted to get him away from that pain and the type of environment that facilitated morphine use. 

The plaza around the corner from our apartment held the outdoor café where I would sit discussing adventures both passed and future and the book titles we would give them friends.  My family spent many a good time hanging out at the café, which was always full of travelers and artists.  American movies were popular, and there was a local cinema just around another corner.  I saw the classic 1960s road trip movie, "Easy Rider," with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.  The story line of two men out for adventure cut so close to our journey that I felt it was speaking directly to me.  This was just before we started traveling again, and the movie haunted me during our trip to the East.  I hoped it would not be a premonition of what was to come.  I knew firsthand the ordinary hazards of riding motorcycles, having experienced my first car versus motorcycle accident at the age of 15, after getting my learner’s permit. 

Even before we left California, or even Michigan, I had always looked for signs of what was to come.  I believe everything that happens has a reason, that there are no accidents, that big occurrences are preceded by small incidents of the same nature, and that we profoundly and fundamentally affect and control this process by our actions and awareness.  When I learned about karma it made immediate sense to me that every individual is responsible for whatever happens to him or her.  We can't and shouldn't blame others for our problems, but rather we should own what happens to us and try to change the causes within ourselves and with our reactions. 

I was a ordinary kid who fought with my older brother, played with the kids on the block, and ate TV dinners in the evening with my mother and brother.  But from my early teens I was also interested in healers such as Edgar Cayce and his teaching on karma and rebirth.  I came to the conclusion early in my life that rebirth is one of the answers to life's meaning.  I knew innately that death was unavoidable, and not something to be feared.  Already, I accepted death as the one thing in life that could be counted on.  Everything else, even the next breath is unsure.  I remember visiting the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on a family vacation, and being both awed and inspired by the ideals expressed in the construction and architecture, if not the organization.  By my teenage years, I was convinced that most religious traditions were dead, leaving behind only dry, hollow husks of the ideas and insights that had once inspired them.  I thought the living traditions had died, and the important unbroken lineages from one great teacher to another was lost.  I lamented that no saints were left, and the organizations left in their wake were corrupted by the politics of wealth and power. 

One of my early thoughts on the subject of rebirth was that I could see different animal qualities in people left from their previous lives.  I saw some people as being timid like a deer and others as being bold like a lion.  I saw much of the population of America as being the reincarnations of cows, which led to my teenage conclusion that this was the reason the population of America could be so easily led around like cattle and manipulated by politicians. 

I still vividly remember a dream I had in Rome that seemed to tell me that there was another higher option in life's pursuits, over and above the goal of wealth or knowledge.  That dream was a precursor to many of the choices that lay ahead of me and gave me guidance as to the path that I should take.  The character in the dream was a friend of mine who had the same first name as I.  This Steve stood with money in one hand and a book in the other, and was trying to decide which way to go when he realized that there was another choice, one that was directly overhead.  At this point he dropped both the money and the book, put his hands together in prayer, and rose straight up into the air.  This still remains the most straightforward dream I have ever had.  I didn’t need to be Freud to interpret it. 

So Rome became the stepping off point for the next part of the journey.  My brother and I lived in Rome for about six months, with the looming idea of continuing on with our travels.  By now it was early spring of 1970.  During our entire stay in Europe there was a constant flow of travelers going on to India and the East.  This flow had an effect on us like the current of a powerful river.  I felt a calling that was reminiscent of Horace Greeley's exhortation during the nineteenth century, but instead of the West, it was calling, "Go East, young man."  This had been pulling at me for quite some time.  We were saving our money and making connections, when a friend, Felipe, offered us a Volkswagen van that was 15 years old.  A 1955 model, it was two-toned in color with the upper half white and the lower half red.   In the back were bench seats that converted into a bed.

We put this van through its paces driving around Italy with our friends over some rough roads on which it did fine, including an approach to a bridge that caused us to become momentarily airborne.  As we approached the bridge, the road curved up sharply, which at the speed we were traveling threw the van up into the air.  The van came down hard on the bridge but with no damage.  That told me the suspension would make the trip, something I would remember later when passing a newer Volkswagen van with a broken spring on the side of the road in Iran.  Our van wasn't without its peculiarities; when you stepped on the brakes the headlights came on, the emergency brake was non-existent, and the horn didn't work.  Our horn was an old cow horn found in the countryside and stuck onto what was left of the side view mirror on the driver's side.  It was our editorial on the excessive use of horns in that part of the world and our lucky talisman to boot.  To me the fact that the horn didn't work was an asset because I was fed up with how frequently people in that part of the world used their horns for every minor frustration.  Later the non-working horn would make trading the van more difficult.  

We did have one minor mishap on our trial runs through Italy, a brake failure that Felipe promised he would fix before we took the van.  Our trusting nature would later almost cut the trip short before it started, but we didn't know that then.  It was in Rome where I started to learn how to drive in Europe and Asia; the first lesson was not to take your eyes off the road in front.  It seemed that the guy in front had the right of way always, meaning someone would pull out in front of you or changes lanes into your lane.   You had to be ready to see this and avoid the accident, one did not have the luxury of time to look in the rear view mirror in order to give way to others, all focus had to be in front.

Another of the peculiarities of the van was the paperwork.  Felipe had given us the title, but had not signed it or changed it over into our names.  This was later to present some problems when crossing borders.  Felipe's intention was that Andy and I would sell this vehicle for him; however, to me the arrangement was pretty nebulous.  How we would arrange the paperwork for a vehicle sale for Felipe was beyond me.  Still, we took the gift of the van as a sign, and with a few hundred bucks in our pockets, which could take you a long way thirty years ago in eastern Europe and central Asia, we felt financially flush and said our good-byes and took off.

Our plan, discussed in the outdoor café over countless cups of coffee and glasses of wine, was to go not stop until Afghanistan; after that all bets were off.  Our rudimentary route was to head north through Italy around the Adriatic Sea to Yugoslavia.  From there we would pass through the capital city of Belgrade, then on through Bulgaria and it's capital Sofia, then on to Turkey, passing the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, the capital.   From there we would head north to the Black Sea coast, and follow that to eastern Turkey, then south through Turkey, past Mount Ararat, to the northwest border of Iran.  From northwest Iran we would travel southeast to the capital city, Tehran.  From Tehran, we would go north, through the mountains to the Caspian Sea, and then make a beeline east to Meshad.  Meshad was the last major town in Iran before the Afghanistan border, and from that border we would head straight east to Herat. 

We had managed to get a handful of maps, but most of our navigational tools were the travelers' stories we had collected.  My brother had a pocket diary, and I had a camera.  I did take pictures of the whole trip, but they were lost a few years later in Amsterdam by Andy.

CHAPTER 1

I trudged along on foot, slowly counting out ten agonizing steps, then stopping to let the pain subside from my lungs and feet.  Ten more steps, then I stopped again.  Each step took me higher into thinner air, and deepened the gashes on my heels.  My horse gave up first.  I hadn't ridden him for days, thinking each of us were better off on foot.  He didn't collapse again, but I couldn't get him to move, and I couldn't go any farther alone.  I lay down on a boulder that was warm from the sun, and if I'd had the energy, I would have cried.  I hadn't eaten for two days, I'd suffered from dysentery for weeks and the five thousand-foot climb into the vaulted mountains and rugged granite 15,000 feet into the Hindu Kush mountains north of the Anjuman Valley in North Eastern Afghanistan had sapped any reserves that remained.  I lay on the side of the path, not moving even when the sun was replaced by rain showers that ebbed and flowed like waves.  The sun scarcely warmed my body before the forces 

drew back to unleash another wave of rain.     

I knew that I was dead.  I couldn't go on without my gear or I would freeze.  I couldn't carry it; I could scarcely walk by myself.  I couldn't turn around; the villagers would love to see me come crawling back, especially that guy I had hit over the head with my wooden staff two days ago.  Even if the others made it over the pass, it would take days for them to return.  I wasn't sure I could even make it through one night.  As I contemplated my approaching death, I began to hear screams.  The sound echoed off the granite walls of the valley, resonating in all directions.

The screams might have been an eagle, but I suspected it was a woman.  Even if I could have figured out where the screams were coming from, I had no ability to do anything about it!  At that moment, I perceived the sound simply as a distraction from my musings on life and death.  I considered that I was preparing to cross yet another border, one of many on this journey.  However, this border was shaping up to be the ultimate crossing between life and death.  I made peace with that.

Death was always part of my inner musings, ever since I could recall.  One of my earliest childhood memories was of my mother taking me to see my grandfather in his casket.  I was only five or six years old, but I remember touching his cold body and knowing this was no longer my grandfather, just an empty shell left behind.  My brother must have been there also, but I don't have a sense of him, or of anyone else.  Just me standing next to what was left of my grandfather who had been an icon in my early childhood.  He was a robust eighty-year-old who played with my cousins and friends every summer at Torch Lake in northern Michigan.  In the winter my mother, brother and I lived with him and my grandmother in Battle Creek Michigan.  Even at that early age, I wasn't frightened by death, but I was deeply intrigued with the notion that there was more to life than that which appeared on the surface.  This cold and still body in the coffin wasn't my grandfather -- his spark had left, but  wasn't gone.  To the question of the meaning of life, I considered death to be only the beginning of the answer. 

Despite any intellectual understanding, I was only eighteen years old as I faced my own mortality.  My last border crossing was three months earlier, the one that delivered me into Afghanistan, and I had not intended that the next border would be my final one.  I wholly expected an orderly procession into Pakistan, and then India. 

Entering Afghanistan from Iran had been relatively simple.  The chief concern in Meshad, the last major Iranian town, was changing enough money to cross the border.  My brother and I went to eight different banks, but at each we were turned away and directed down the street.  Finally, Andy changed money with a hustler, then counted out enough rials for fuel and an oil change -- a feeble attempt to prevent the pervasive dust that settled in the oil filter from inflicting more damage to the engine of our fifteen-year-old Volkswagen van.  The road leading out of Meshad was paved -- a wonder seldom seen on our route -- but after about thirty-seven miles the pavement ended and we were back to dust.  After two more hours of driving we passed poppy fields.  I saw Andy's eyes widen, but I was driving and didn't intend to stop until we reached Herat where we would spend our first night in Afghanistan. 

After clearing Iranian customs in a small border town we drove at least five miles through open barren desert.  It was sort of a no man’s land before you entered Afghanistan.  Somewhere out in that desert that they called dasht was a line of demarcation.  Generations earlier a diligent cartographer had deliberately drawn this line on a map to define the end of Iran and the beginning of Afghanistan.  Driving across the dasht, the placement appeared arbitrary.  As in so many political borders, there was no intrinsic physical existence of Iran to one side, and Afghanistan on the other.  The same sort of line runs through the Sonoran desert in the North American southwest that divides the U.S. from Mexico.

The line in the dasht was the same, only more so, in terms of time as well.  As the odometer counted off our progress into Afghanistan, the time period seemed to telescopically retreat by hundreds of years.  Even the light became different as I drove through the vast, flat wasteland that was the desert border between Iran and Afghanistan.  The light held every rarified quality imaginable -- clarity, purity, intensity, luminescence -- as if clearly of another world.  Changes were on the way, starting with the herds of sheep I was driving past.  Unlike the usual flocks, this crowd was mostly black, with only a few white sheep sprinkled in for counter-point. 

Seeing these herds of black sheep made me feel right at home, because as far back as I can remember I was a black sheep.  It wasn't only me; it was a designation shared by my mother and brother compared to the greater, extended family.  My mother, Dorothy, was the youngest of four sisters from a proud family of Michigan pioneers.  Her father was forty-five years old when she was born.  Norton was an early park ranger in the fledgling days of Glacier National Park;  he served in World War I; and met his wife in the hospital while recuperating from an combat injury.  Later he became a respected educator in Detroit. 

My mother and her sisters were attractive young women who reaped the benefits of education and travel and then customarily wed the most promising young suitor.  My mother broke the pattern by asking for a divorce from my father when I was four years old, initiating a habit of crossing borders wherever and whenever they existed -- socially, culturally and physically.  Imprinted as such, I learned to see borders as zones of transition from one type of culture or experience to another. 

I have one brother, Andy, who is precisely -- to the day -- eighteen months older than me.  We were born in Michigan in the early 1950s, products of the post-WWII baby boom.  The three of us were a family constantly in transit, moving restlessly from one town to another, one house to another.  In order to support my brother and me, our mother persevered to complete her masters' degree in library science while working full-time and caring for two small boys.  However, Dorothy did not fit the staid librarian stereotype, and to prove it, she moved us out of Michigan and straight to Palo Alto, California in 1961 when I was ten years old. 

For my mother, it was a return to her first adventure as a young woman just out of high school in the early 1940s, when she embraced the war effort by working in an airplane factory in southern California.  Twenty years later, Dorothy became active in local Democratic politics, doing door-to-door polling.  She also became a first-time homeowner in Palo Alto in 1964.  The house wasn't new, but it was an Eichler, a California-bred design well ahead of its time with vaulted ceiling, exposed beams, radiant heating built into the floors, and plenty of windows.  It was a spacious house with four bedrooms, one for each of us, plus a guestroom. 

By age thirteen, I had lived in thirteen different houses.  Now we were in the thirteenth house and there was finally room for all.  One large wall in my room was unbroken by windows, creating a convenient canvas for my imagination.  I completely covered it with the trappings of adolescent life -- the psychedelic rock concert posters, school art projects, broken guitar strings, twigs, and the ultimate iconoclastic poster of the late sixties, the single yellow daisy with the words, "War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things."

 The wall across from the bed had a large window, approximately ten feet long, which looked into the side yard.  From the inside, I had covered the window glass with notebook-sized sheets of multi-colored translucent paper.  The bedroom had white curtains, and when the curtains were drawn in the day, with the bright sun shining on the window, the effect was to create a rainbow curtain of light.  

My brother, Andy, and I were diametrically opposed to each other both in appearance and temperament.  He took after our father with black curly hair, and freckles.  We were both nearly the same height, but he had our father's sturdy build, and always outweighed me by ten to twenty pounds.  I took after our mother with straight, light brown hair, fair complexion and a wiry physique.  I also inherited my mother's Nail Patella Syndrome, which accounted for our slight build, and irregular knees and elbows.  My brother and I were close enough in age to have much in common, despite our differences.  Usually these differences complemented each other, allowing us to work well together, although there was an underlying tension in our relationship.  When we did fight, we fought hard.  In these fights and all my physical struggles, I was forced to use my head.  I was no match physically for my brother, or most others.  My view of violence was that it seemed a poor way to resolve a problem. 

Although Michigan was the only state we had lived in before moving to California, we had traveled to thirty-four states on family vacations or visits to far-flung relatives.  Instigated by our mother, we were a family with a persistent dream of travel.  Hers was an over-whelming curiosity that served her intellectually as a research librarian, and whetted her appetite to go new places -- to see the world.  Our house served as a catalyst for that dream when Dorothy found a buyer that made a trip abroad a reality. 

We planned to leave Palo Alto in February of 1968.  That summer in the San Francisco Bay area would become the summer of love, but the war in Vietnam was raging, and Andy would be 18 before the year was over.  All during the fall of 1967 while the three of us marched in peace rallies in San Francisco and Oakland, Dorothy met with draft counselors to determine how being overseas would affect our draft status.  To her joy, she was told that we couldn't be making a better choice.  There existed a little-known loophole in the draft law which allowed that if one turned 18 overseas and registered with the American Embassy as a resident of that country, a special draft board based in Washington, DC was assigned -- Draft Board #100.  No one had ever been drafted from this draft board.  This loophole was well positioned for the wealthy and connected to take advantage of if they wanted their sons to avoid the draft-- just send your son overseas to go to school before turning eighteen.

In addition to selling the house, we sold most of our belongings.  We hedged a little, though, since we didn't know precisely where we were going, what we would find, nor when we might return, so we left some items in storage in California.  I was sixteen and in the tenth grade.  My most treasured items went into storage -- a telescope, a slalom water ski that I made in junior high woodshop, and my collection of rock and roll posters.  

I inherited Dorothy’s strong wanderlust, along with her attitude to challenge borders.  For me, one of the attractions of travel is the seduction inherent in crossing borders, moving rapidly from a known set of conditions to an unknown, where people and places can be as different as day and night.  

The three of us went first to Mexico where we made arrangements for a leisurely Atlantic crossing on a passenger freighter that would provide ample time to weigh plans or regrets.  The differences in temperament between my brother and I were reflected as the freighter, filled with agricultural products, lumbered away from port.   Andy rode in the stern of the ship, gazing back at the receding lights of Veracruz.  I made my way to the bow, eager to face the open seas and my great, unknown future ahead.  Not that I didn't have close friends that I would miss, but the borders ahead excited me more than the life I was leaving behind.