Caravans Read Online Free PDF Page A

movement. “You ride,” he commanded.
    There was something that no stranger ever became accustomed to in Afghanistan: the peremptorycommand of the educated Afghan. “You ride!” a friend said, and you got the feeling that if you didn’t leap on the horse immediately one of those omnipresent carbines was going to go off. So I threw my right foot into the cupped hands and, leaping upward to match his strong lift, I was astride the white horse.
    At Groton I had taken horsemanship, and I could ride passably well, but it quickly became apparent that I was not going to tell this horse what to do. Yet the semi-wild animal loved the feel of a man on his back, for he tore across the huge field in such a way as to blend his movements with mine. I thought: He wants to frighten me, but he also wants me on hand so that there’ll be someone to frighten. He did not exactly ignore the reins, nor did he respond quickly. Like a willful child he must have thought: If I pay no attention to him, this rider may forget the whole thing. But when I quietly insisted that he obey my commands, he accommodated himself to them, tardily and with a trace of rebellion. He was a superb horse, and I brought him back to the jeep, where Moheb Khan stood talking with Nur Muhammad.
    When the horse was close to the idling jeep, Moheb suddenly reached for the accelerator with his hand, jammed it down so that the engine exploded once or twice, thus sending the horse high in the air. Fortunately I had not yet dropped the reins, and I tugged at them fiercely to bring the frightened beast back under control. I was furious with Moheb for this reckless act—training his horse at my peril—and on the spur of the moment I dug my heels into the flanks of the white beast and wetore across the open land, turning and twisting and cavorting for some minutes. At the end of our exciting ride I brought the horse back to the jeep and called sternly, “Nur Muhammad, turn off the engine.”
    But before he could do so, Moheb Khan again jammed the accelerator pedal to the floor. This time I held the horse steady, then threw the reins to Moheb. “He’s a good horse,” I said.
    “You’re a good rider, Miller. Better than any American I’ve seen yet.” I laughed and he asked, “You don’t fathom the brand?”
    “Who can fathom the brain of an Afghan?” I joked.
    “Not I,” Moheb confessed. “But your failure does surprise me.”
    “Where’d you get the horse?” I asked again, as we walked toward the main house, an imposing mud-walled castle around which clustered twelve or thirteen smaller buildings.
    “Some traders brought him down from the north. Said they got him over the Oxus in Russia. I had a man from the Russian embassy out one afternoon and the horse did seem to recognize Russian commands.”
    “Splendid beast,” I said, “Russian or whatever.”
    Moheb Khan led me through the rugged door of the main house, whose mud walls were more than thirty inches thick. I said, “They must keep you cool in summer.”
    Moheb replied, “More important, they withstood British cannon for eleven days.” He pointed to spots where there were deep indentations. With an imperial afterthought, he indicated to Nur Muhammadwhere he should wait, then took me in to see his father.
    Shah Khan—his name could be translated as Sir Mister and was hardly a name at all—was a slim patrician who had served as adviser to three successive kings. He was thin and gray, wore a trim mustache, expensive Harris tweeds tailored in London, and a heavy gold watch chain across his vest. Normally he spoke Persian, but in dealing with foreigners, he preferred French, for he had attended the Sorbonne; but he was also competent in English, German and Pashto, the language of the countryside. Like all educated Afghans, Shah Khan looked to France as the source of culture, to Germany as the source of military instruction, to America as the source of canned goods, and to England as the fountainhead of