Caravans by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online Page A

American wife went there for preliminary work on our big irrigation project,” Shah Khan explained.
    Moheb added, “We know that she reached Qala Bist, for we had letters from them. But that was nine months ago.”
    “What would your guess be?” I asked.
    “Judging from what’s happened to other ferangi wives”—both Moheb and his father used the word
ferangi
no matter what language they were speaking—“three things could have taken place. Miss Jaspar could have killed herself in despair, or she could have been locked up by her husband with no possibility of escape, not even to send a letter. Or she could have tried to run away. There’s a British railroad station, you know, at Chaman, but we’ve asked there and she didn’t reach Chaman.”
    “Your guess?” I insisted.
    “Putting myself in Nazruliah’s place,” Moheb ventured, “I would suggest these lines of possibility. Nazrullah was very kind to his American wife and tried to soften all the blows her vanity received. He took her as quickly as possible away from his domineering family, where his women must have made her life unbearable. At Kandahar he reasoned with her and helped her adjust to living on mud floors on twenty-seven dollars a month. She wanted to go back to America, but he refused permission, as was his right, and after a series of dreadful scenes she decided to run away on her own account and perished before she reached the frontier. It’s happened before.”
    “But why hasn’t Nazrullah reported these matters?” I asked.
    “For two reasons,” Moheb Khan replied, bowing to his father’s judgment. “First, she is only a woman and nothing to get excited about. When he gets back to Kabul he’ll explain everything. Second, because he truly loved Ellen Jaspar and still thinks she may have survived and will come back to him.”
    We sat silent for some minutes and I noticed that the wintry darkness had enveloped us, stealing down from the Koh-i-Baba on icy blasts of wind that ripped across the plain which lay between the fortress walls. Snow eddied in the darkness like the passage of a white horse, and we were alone in the massive room of a massive fort that had withstood shocks from the Koh-i-Baba and from other quarters.
    “Would you object, Khan Sahib, if I went to Kandahar and Qala Bist? Some very important Americans insist upon knowing.”
    “If I were your age, Miller Sahib,” the old man replied, “I should have gone to Kandahar long ere this.”
    “I have your permission, then?”
    “My blessing. In spite of the rude comments of my son, we Afghans do get excited about beautiful women. And if she is a ferangi woman, we respect those ferangi who get excited about her, too.”
    To my own surprise, I asked abruptly, “Shah Khan, have you a photograph of your granddaughter, Siddiqa? The one who wants to go to School in America?”
    “No,” the old man replied. “We true Muslimsdon’t like photography. It seems a violation of our religious principles. An intrusion on the essence of a man.”
    “And especially a woman?” I laughed.
    “Yes, it is quite contrary to the spirit of the chaderi. But I will tell you this, Monsieur Miller, she is an unusually pretty girl, and she is the child whom you caught kissing the soldier in the bazaar this morning.”
    I was shocked by his knowledge of an event which I supposed that I alone had witnessed. “The Marines are already on their way to Khyber Pass,” I mumbled.
    “If they had not been expelled,” Shah Khan replied evenly, proving that his intelligence service covered Americans as well as Afghans, “I would not now be talking with you. Moheb, get Monsieur Miller’s jeep.”
    When the younger man had left, old Shah Khan rose from his leather chair and walked with me to the door. I looked past him for a moment, staring at the fawn-colored chaderi, and the former sensation of overpowering sexuality repossessed me, and I felt dizzy, as if the shroud were exuding its own