Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller Read Free Book Online Page B

liberal, glumly admitted that on afternoons when someone’s due to get something lopped off, the place fills to its 30,000 capacity.
    But I still don’t understand how security is abetted by forcing women to drift silently about looking like pantomime ghosts.
    “The burqa is the rule of Islam,” says Abdul. “The rule of Mohammad, Jesus and all the messengers is that women should be covered.”
    I take the sort of deep breath you take before arguing with armed fanatics on their own terms. According to my Penguin translation, the Koran says that “the wives of true believers should draw their veils
close round them.” It doesn’t say that they have to cover themselves totally. It certainly doesn’t rule them out of work, education and life the way the Taliban have.
    “The burqa is the rule of Islam,” repeats Abdul, though the news that I’ve read the Koran cheers him up a bit. “I must ask if you are concerned about the years you have wasted in preparing for the next world.”
    I change the subject. When the Taliban took power, they made extravagant fulminations against the drug trade: evil, corrupting, the ruination of us all, etcetera and amen. In 1997, according to the UN Drug Control Programme, 200,000 Afghan farmers grew 58,000 tonnes of opium, mostly on Taliban-controlled land. The British government estimates that 95% of the heroin in Britain is grown in Afghanistan’s poppy fields. Afghanistan is also the world’s biggest exporter of hashish—those who consider their narcotic recreation a victimless crime may care to contemplate whose wages they’re paying.
    Now, the Koran doesn’t explicitly forbid making a fortune shipping smack to the infidel, but . . .
    “The purpose of Islamic law,” intones Abdul’s friend, “is to protect life, property, religion and the brain. Heroin is forbidden.”
    So why not forbid it?
    “We cannot stop the poppy from growing.”
    Yes, you can. Get some flamethrowers in amongst all those poppy fields I saw alongside the Jalalabad-Kabul road. It’d be a start.
    “It is not our people who consume it. It is yours. In the West, society is riven by drugs and prostitution. In the Islamic environment, young people have more love for Islam.”
    It’s odd, then, that they find it necessary to beat people for failing to attend prayers.
    “If a person does everything in accordance with Allah, then everything will be good. If not, we must implement the will of Allah by any means.”
    Eyes beginning to glaze, desperate to hear an answer that doesn’t invoke Allah, Mohammed or the Koran, I ask Akbar to ask them who they fancy for the World Cup.
    Abdul doesn’t blink.
    “In accordance with the teachings of the Holy Koran, no human being knows the future, only Allah almighty.”

    Oh, come on. Brazil? France? Argentina?
    “Only Allah . . .”
    Okay, okay. What do you do for fun?
    “To relax, we recite from the Koran.”
    The depressing thing is that I believe him. If I thought there was the slightest chance that, as soon as I’d gone, Abdul was going to turn to his mate and go, “There’s another dopey gringo sold on the gimlet-eyed holy warrior tip, you go and round up some birds and I’ll get some cans in for the match,” I’d be a lot less worried about Abdul and his mate and the country they’re running.
    When I get up to leave, two strange things happen. The first is that Abdul stands as well, clasps my hands in his and asks Akbar to ask me to stay in Afghanistan, become their brother and join their jihad. The second is that while I’m trying to think of a polite way to decline this kind offer, the room starts shaking. At first, I think it’s just me—nobody else notices, or if they do, they don’t care. After a few seconds, with the shaking growing more violent, and things starting to come off shelves, I ask Akbar what’s happening.
    “Abdul wants you to join the Taliban,” he says, wobbling.
    This isn’t what I’m worried about; I’m thinking that