Khyber Pass
It’s time to make our way to Pakistan. A car with armed escort now follows our van. Children fill potholes and ask for spare change. The land is terraced, with smugglers’ routes winding throughout the hills. The climb up the pass is tortuous, blocked by slow moving trucks. Buses are packed: 50 inside, 30 on top. Bicyclers peddle up the pass, each pulling two more bikes still in their protective wrapping, to be sold at the Smugglers' Bazaar. "Everything under the sun is smuggled along this pass," Rupert explains. Reaping the benefits are masterminds whose fortresses we see along the razor edges of the surrounding ridges.
We pass a pick-up truck. I quickly turn my head. Best not to be seen taking pictures. Taliban in a patrol car behind us turn on their siren…then pass us. Cement anti-tank pyramids line the road. I'm warned that only the pavement itself is guaranteed safe. We’re in the domain of fierce tribes; if I step out of the car, I could be shot.
Danger lies buried as well; the landscape is littered with landmines. Soviet helicopters, flying low like perverted dust croppers over Kansas, scattered the pernicious, non-discriminating weapons across the plains. Rupert describes his first day in Afghanistan, hearing an explosion--then coming across a still-warm torso with head and legs blown off: a man had been walking along bent over with wood on his back. As Rupert stared at the carnage, another man calmly walked past him, into the same minefield in search of more firewood. A few years ago, Kabul hospitals were treating some 50 mine victims a day. That number didn't include those killed--mostly children--who were buried where their bodies were blown apart.
The Koochi--a tough nomadic tent people-- have the right idea. They drive their goats ahead to explode the mines. When the Taliban insisted that Koochi women cover their faces, the nomads told them to go to hell. I point my lens at one of the women. She throws stones at me.
At last we’ve made it to the top of the pass and step out of the van. Waiting at the border crossing, I whip out my emery board and give three little girls a quick manicure. Friends for life.
