God Lives in St. Petersburg Read Online Free PDF

We were trying to go to Mazar. It’s very simple.”
    Ahktar said nothing.
    “Well,” Donk asked, “are you going to tell your father that?”
    “I tell him that already.”
    “Then can we go to Mazar from here?”
    The muscles of Ahktar’s face tightened with regret. “Unfortunately, that is problem. No one is going to Mazar today.” He seemed suddenly to wish that he were not standing beside his father, who of course asked what had just been said. Ahktar quietly back-translated for him, obviously hoping that his pea of an answer would be smothered beneath the mattress of translation.
    “Why can’t we go to Mazar?” Donk pressed.
    At this mention of Mazar his father spoke again, angrily now. Ahktar nodded obediently. “My father wishes you to know you are safe here. Mazar is maybe not so safe.”
    “But Mazar’s perfectly safe. It’s been safe for days. I have friends there.”
    “My father is friendly with American soldiers in Mazar. Very friendly. And now we are helping them with some problems they are having in this region. We have authority for this. Unfortunately, Mazar’s Uzbek commander and my father are not very friendly, and there my father has no authority. Therefore it would be good for you to stay.”
    After a pause, Donk spoke. “Who, may I ask, is your father?”
    “My father is General Ismail Mohammed. He was very important part of United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, which fought against—”
    “But Mazar’s commander was part of that same front.”
    “Yes,” Ahktar said sadly. “Here is problem.”
    Donk had met a suspiciously large number of generals during his time in Afghanistan, and was not sure how to judge General Mohammed’s significance. Warlord? Ally? Both? He let it drop. “Do you have medicine here?”
    Again Ahktar shrugged. “Some. But unfortunately it is with my father’s soldiers now. They are out taking care of some problems for Lieutenant Marty.”
    “Is Lieutenant Marty with them?”
    “Oh, no. Lieutenant Marty is in Mazar.”
    “Where we can’t go.”
    “Yes.”
    There really were, Donk had often thought, and thought again now, two kinds of people in the world: Chaos People and Order People. For Donk this was not a bit of cynical Kipling wisdom to be doled out among fellow journalists in barren Inter-Continental barrooms. It was not meant in a condescending way. No judgment; it was a purely empirical matter: Chaos People, Order People. Anyone who doubted this had never tried to wait in line, board a plane, or get off a bus among Chaos People. The next necessary division of the world’s people took place along the lines of whether they actually knew what they were. The Japanese were Order People and knew it. Americans and English were Chaos People who thought they were Order People. The French were the worst thing to be: Order People who thought they were Chaos People. But Afghans, like Africans and Russians and the Irish, were Chaos People who knew they were Chaos People, and while this lent them a good amount of charm, it made their countries berserk, insane. Countries did indeed go insane. Sometimes they went insane and stayed insane. Chaos People’s countries particularly tended to stay insane. Donk miserably pulled off his do-rag, the bloody glue that held the fabric to his skin tearing from his ruined eyebrow so painfully that he had to work to keep the tears from his eyes. “So tell me, Ahktar. What are we supposed to do here?”
    Before anyone could answer, Graves had a seizure.
    A few hours later, Donk was sitting outside the room in which Graves had been all but quarantined. He was petting a stray wolfish mongrel with filaments of silver hair threaded through its black coat, waiting for the village medicine man to emerge from Graves’s room. This man had claimed he was a doctor and offered up to Donk a large pouch of herbs as evidence. Donk did not have the heart to argue. The compound was quiet, except for some