 
What others are saying about

Looking for the Summer

"Looking for the Summer is a stunning novel of a metaphorical and physical journey across the Middle East. Though set during the 1970s, this story of war and pacifism and redemption is as pertinent to today's global struggles as tomorrow's news. Fashioned in exquisite language and bolstered with some of the most beautiful descriptive passages I've ever read, Looking for the Summer takes us on a voyage over deserts and mountains and through cities as the protagonist pursues spiritual, intellectual, political, and psychological enlightenment. This is a remarkable book and a must read for anyone seeking insight into the historical precedents for our post September 11 world." -- Marnie Mueller, author of Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother's Island

"A graceful autobiographical novel that breathes life into a perennial genre: the spiritual bildungsroman. The theme of a questing expatriate who renounces Western materialism in favor of an exotic pilgrimage to the East will be familiar to anyone who has fallen under the spell of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge or Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums....

"Although published prior to the events of 9/11, it is impossible to pick up Norris's novel without a heightened interest in its vividly depicted locales in a part of the world where our attentions are now so intensely focused. Several fascinating chapters are devoted to [the protagonist's] stay in Afghanistan. Written with a novelist's eye for characterization and a reporter's skill for observation, Looking for the Summer is the kind of small press gem that is often overlooked but is well worth seeking out." -- Bob Wake, CultureVulture.net

"Looking for the Summer brings to light the turmoil going through the mind of a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War...a powerfully written novel.... Highly important in its message about standing up for what one believes and about the personal growth one experiences while on a soul-searching journey as a result of taking such action...certain to have a profound impact on the reader. It is a must-read, unforgettable novel." -- Knowbetter.com

"During the waning years of the Ford administration, a rather unlikely alliance was struck up between an American, an Iranian, and an Afghani.... Within weeks of this chance meeting, the American protagonist would find himself traveling overland to Iran, and then on to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and eventually India, where the tale reaches a hopeful conclusion amid the squalor and depravity of Calcutta....

"In the hands of any author, Looking for the Summer would probably be a compelling read due to the inherent intrigue in the story's setting. But Norris is a masterful writer and storyteller, and he uses his craft to elevate this tale above mere 'compelling' or 'interesting' to the realm of uplifting and insightful. He deftly paints a portrait of his locations using a visual poetry that is neither self-conscious nor affected.... This is a fascinating novel, told in spellbinding English. I can't recommend it enough." -- Christine Hall, editor at Alternative Approaches Magazine

*****

LOOKING FOR THE SUMMER

by

Robert W. Norris

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Robert W. Norris on Smashwords

Looking for the Summer

Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Norris

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

*****

LOOKING FOR THE SUMMER

*****

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my gratitude to Yasushi Azuma, president of Touka Shobo Publishing, which first put out Looking for the Summer in print form in 1996. I am also deeply indebted to the many friends whose invaluable advice, encouragement, and support through the years made it possible for me to continue through the many drafts it took to make this book a reality: Bill, John, and Lanore Cady; Bill Cornett; C. Michael Gies; Jim and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; Shannon Kelly; Raymond Mungo; Nick Warren; Dan White; and Robert Yamaguchi.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wife Shizuyo

to my mother Kay Schlinkman

to my father Bill Norris

and to the memory of Midge Kelly

(may her soul rest in peace)

*****

A man's life is like the seasons. Every man has his own spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The most difficult time is between his spring and summer, the time when he must leave his youth behind and find his way in the world. Every man must, sooner or later, go looking for his summer. That is the most crucial time, the time that will determine the course of the rest of his life. -- An old man to a young man in a bar

Chapter 1

I had just returned to the Hotel des Mines on Boulevard Saint Michel from one of my customary evening walks. As I approached the front desk to retrieve my room key I noticed the two Asiatics. They were speaking and gesticulating excitedly in an attempt to communicate a message to the desk clerk, who spoke only French.

The taller of the two turned to me and asked, "Do you speak English?"

"Yes, I do."

"This man does not speak English. We must leave an important message and he does not understand. Can you help us?"

"Perhaps. What's the message?"

He explained that a German friend named Thomas Knorr would call the hotel and was to be told the two had arrived in Paris and would meet him in the German town of Lorrach in a matter of days. There was some urgency concerning a business transaction. I had learned enough French in my two months in Paris to give a crude interpretation. The desk clerk said he would relay the message if the German called.

"Allah be praised," the Asiatics exclaimed, throwing their arms in the air. "Let us celebrate your arrival at a good time. Come, we shall have some tea."

The three of us proceeded across the street to a tea shop, and made our introductions. The taller man, Hasan Fahtami, was a carpet dealer from Iran. He was in Paris looking to expand his family business. He had been to Europe once before. He was thin, clean-shaven, and well-dressed in European clothes. He had intelligent, dark eyes, and a bright smile. His companion was an Afghan named Ataullah Abduli, who was part owner of a small motel in Kabul. It was his first time out of Afghanistan. Ataullah was also dressed in Western clothes -- boots, jeans, denim jacket \-- but his clothes were worn and shabby. He was shorter than Hasan, but much stockier. He had a thick, wiry, black beard, a prominent nose, and a full head of black hair.

"You were very kind to help us, Mr. Thompson," Hasan said.

"It was nothing really. Please call me David."

"I will call you David-jan. Jan means 'soul' in Farsi, but we use it to mean 'good friend.' We are strangers to you, but you helped us anyway. No other people in this country help us. The French never help us. They never speak English and I know many of them do. It makes me angry when they refuse to speak English. They think they are better than we are. The people in our countries always help strangers. They are friendly people. I hate this country. The people are too cold. You should visit Iran and Afghanistan. They are ten times better than France. We are staying in Paris only a few days to make some business contacts. Then we will go to Germany. And you, David-jan, what do you think of France? Do you plan to be in Paris very long?"

"My experience here hasn't been too bad, but it is expensive and I don't know how long I can stay. I have no income and I don't think the money I have will last very long. Is it difficult to find work in Iran? Is it expensive there?"

Hasan told me there would be no problems finding a job. There were many Americans working in the oil business and many others teaching English. The cost of living was not high, libraries were free to use, a room would be easy to find, and the affability of his people would make me want to spit on Paris. Ataullah nodded in agreement. So impressed were they with the friendliness I had displayed that, much to my amazement, both Hasan and Ataullah offered their services and friendship if I would return to their countries with them. Dreams of adventure danced in my mind. I wasted no time agreeing to their proposal. They appeared pleased with my decision.

For the next two days I took time to help my new friends. I acted as their guide, taking them to all the favorite places in Paris I had discovered. I helped them buy gifts to take back to loved ones, secured their train tickets to Germany, and helped in processing their visas.

"You are very different from the other Americans," Hasan often said. "You do not act so proud and arrogant and rich. You are not afraid to mix with others who are different from yourself. You will like Asia very much."

Ataullah, in particular, fascinated me. Hasan was more westernized in his dress, his mannerisms, the way he expressed himself. He was ingratiating when dealing with someone he believed higher on the social hierarchy than himself, someone from whom he could gain something. Ataullah, on the other hand, was reserved and unpretentious. He seemed awed by the immensity of the buildings as we paced the streets, baffled by the complexity of the traffic, disgusted with the hectic pace of a city where few people had time for one another.

I spent an entire day alone with Ataullah shopping and walking around. The first day we met he had been dressed in Western clothes, but on this day when he showed up at my room, he was dressed in his native attire. To my eyes he appeared to be wearing a loose set of brown pajamas. A brown cloth was also wrapped around his head with the tail tossed over his left shoulder. Ataullah took no notice of the smirks cast his way as people passed him in the streets. He seemed completely unaware of the strange appearance he projected.

As the day passed, I learned Ataullah came from a nomad family in the Afghan desert and possessed no formal education. He could not read or write. He had gone to Kabul as a boy. At first he sold pudding in the streets, then became an errand boy in a small motel. He saved every scrap of money he could until eventually buying half interest in the motel. Five of his brothers had moved from the desert to help him run the motel. This was his first venture outside his country, something few of his countrymen were able to do. He had saved enough money to buy a passport, telling the government the trip was for business. His journey to the West was comparable to a man being thrust suddenly from the days of the Old Testament into the twentieth century. To Ataullah, Paris was like traveling to a distant galaxy far superior in technology and material goods, but inferior in the quality of its life. He said he missed the simplicity and the leisureliness of Afghanistan. His almond-shaped eyes scanned everything with an air of mistrust. What impressed me most about Ataullah was that, despite his apparent simplicity, he had been able to pick up portions of three foreign languages -- English, German, and Farsi \-- and communicate in them, even if in an unpolished manner.

At the end of the day as he boarded a train to Lorrach two days in advance of Hasan, Ataullah said, "I am thankful to you forever, David-jan. I shall not forget. I am Afghan. You come to my country and everything I have is yours."

I spent most of the next two days with Hasan. Although we were approximately the same age, Hasan assumed the attitude of an older brother, one who had experienced more of the world's joys and maladies and thus was responsible for passing on what he had learned. He asked few questions about my own life. I was glad of that. I was tired of constantly explaining myself to others. The things Hasan spoke about were so different and engaging \-- his military life as a driver for a general, his travels throughout Asia and East Europe, the customs and rituals of Iranian life, his many love affairs -- that it was natural for me to acquiesce and listen patiently. Hasan seemed pleased to have such an attentive audience.

It seemed his exposure to the world outside of Iran had corrupted Hasan to a certain degree, but I admired him. He was an adventure-seeker, a quality to which I had a strong attraction. When he boarded the train to Lorrach the next day, we agreed to meet again in Germany. He gave me Thomas Knorr's address and phone number. I could reach both Ataullah and him there. I was to wait for two weeks to give him time to buy a car that he would later sell in Iran to cover the cost of the journey.

Chapter 2

I returned to my room at the Hotel des Mines. It was a small cubicle with a bed, a sink, a writing desk, a closet where I had placed my duffel bag containing the few necessities I had brought with me, and a window that looked out on a brick building next door and a drainage pipe decorated with pigeon shit.

I lay down on the bed and reflected on the reasons I had come to Paris, the changes I had undergone in the short time I had been there, and the new opportunity that lay before me. I had come to Paris to write my first novel. I had about $2,000 and figured if I lived frugally the money would last a few months. I had an abundance of optimism, the one American trait I could not rid myself of no matter how much anti-American zeal I carried in my heart. I had faith that eventually something good would come along to help me out, as it already had in the form of my chance encounter with Hasan and Ataullah.

It was with a marked weariness that I had begun my commitment to writing. The change in time zones, the loneliness of being a stranger in a different land, and the inability to communicate in French had all taken their toll. I accomplished little the first week except the daily entries I made in a journal. I passed much of the time reflecting on my past while walking the gloomy Parisian streets.

The walking had prepared me for the writing. As I paced briskly up and down the major boulevards and narrow, winding streets, along the Seine, past the thousands of nondescript faces, by the centuries of man's architectural achievements, the outline of the novel took shape. I returned to the Gare de Lyon, the rail station where, four years before, I first met Michelle, the American art student who changed my life forever. In my mind I saw her again sitting on the same waiting bench and looking so serene and sad. Everything came back in a vivid recapturing of the past: the year I spent in military prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam; the journey across the U.S. and Europe when I made one discovery after another hitching around, riding trains, and sleeping in the streets with nocturnal creatures who seemed so Christ-like in my dementia; the headaches and long nights of study after returning to the States and pouring over ideas and literary works and language unintelligible to me in the beginning, but which gradually took on a semblance of meaning through my perseverance and many attempts of putting down on paper all the experiences that fate had provided me with in the divinely preordained manner by which I rationalized my commitment. It was all interrelated -- each suffering, adventure, chance encounter, action, result -- and I saw it all taking shape as something more than liquid, transient thoughts as I walked and walked that first week.

At first the going was slow and tedious, but each day brought progress. I set up a disciplined program of writing four hours, reading four hours, walking the streets, returning to the room for a couple more hours of writing, then retiring to bed to think of the day before falling asleep. The cubicle in which I lived and worked became as familiar as any place in which I had lived. I thought of it as my little haven of refuge for the insane. Indeed, it reminded me at times, by its dimensions, of the concrete cubicle in which I spent time in solitary confinement during the initial phase of my imprisonment. The familiarity of the Parisian room helped greatly in recalling the past and remembering the importance and sadness of the time I was attempting to recreate on paper.

I had undergone many changes these past two months. I began to see how when one is alone with one's thoughts during the whole of each day, reliving the past, acting as editor of the pictures and scenes of that past, picking out what is important to use, discarding what is not, seeing how one picture relates to the whole and how it can be used to the greatest effect, one becomes obsessed with the past, with its significance and symbolism. It was not long before many pains and joys once long buried began surfacing in a flood of emotion. Had someone observed me in that room, he would surely have thought me mad the way I would stare at a blank piece of paper for hours sometimes only to bury my head in my hands in a fit of shameless weeping over the pain and guilt of a previous tragic relationship or death about which I was thinking. Conversely, if I was reliving a joyous or humorous occasion, I often broke out in hysterical laughter, falling to the floor in a convulsion of spasms.

Of all the changes taking place inside me, the most encouraging was the confidence I was gaining in perceiving myself as a writer. I had rarely had the courage to call myself a bona fide writer until the move to Paris, to the "moveable feast" as Hemingway had called it. I was like a lunatic disciple the way I carried Hemingway's book of the same title with me everywhere, hoping in some demented way a little of the feeling and life of his words would rub off on me.

I found myself retracing Hemingway's steps, visiting all the places he had written about. The Closerie des Lilas was now a high-priced cafe for tourists. There were no famous writers or artists to be seen. The statue of Marshall Ney was still there, but gone were the war veterans who wore medals on their chests and sipped their aperitifs at the Closerie. The sawmill beneath the flat at 113 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, where Hemingway and Hadley had lived, was gone and the flat itself condemned and boarded up. The Shakespeare and Company bookstore was still on the Rue de l'Odean. Much of the old atmosphere still prevailed, but there was a newer commercial side to the store.

There was a unique atmosphere to all of Paris. I felt myself walking through the dust of time. What had been written about Paris was still true. It remained the center of Western culture, the city for the artist, young and old alike, from which to draw inspiration and impetus for work. Everywhere one turned, every street corner where one stopped to absorb the milieu, lay a wealth of material and experience to exploit. My wandering took me to all parts of the city.

There were the many nights exploring the streets around the Left Bank, riding the underground Metro trams with nothing else to do but watch the street people -- the old women sprawled over vents on side streets to keep warm, the musicians strumming their sad guitars, a hat partially filled with coins at their feet, the slow-moving, red-cheeked gendarmes patrolling their beats, the gaudy prostitutes selling love to broken heroes from years past.

There were the leisurely daytime strolls. I loved the smell of the crèperies, where thin pancakes were dispensed to street customers by old women hovering over circular griddles on cold, grey days. I loved window-shopping, peering at the individual shops of each street -- boot shops, glove shops, perfume shops, book shops, clothing shops -- each with its own unique display, dazzling works of imagination and style, in cramped spaces alive with the consumerism of Paris. I often lounged in the brasseries, the bars where people stood and drank. Outside each bar were crowded tables that faced the streets. Seated at one of these tables, I could peoplewatch, a wonderful sport for leisure that occupied many an hour for me. There were the ubiquitous food markets and fish marts with their neatly arranged rows of fresh fish stacked on ice. There was the smell of the sea at dusk when the fish marts were given a fresh douching, the water flowing to the streets, men in long rubber aprons with buckets in their hands laughing and bickering with one another.

There were the day noises of construction: jackhammers, hydraulic equipment, shovels clashing with rock, trucks grumbling and changing gears in a high-pitched whine. Often my strolls took me to the Seine, glittering with barges and boats. I watched it flow languorously in a timeless march past architectural wonders. The Louvre: I went there as often as possible to study the grim, mystical atmosphere of Rembrandt, the still lifes of Chardin, the sensuality of Reubin, and all my favorites of the Impressionists. The Notre Dame Cathedral: Its peak pointed to heaven in impressive supplication. The Eiffel Tower: It loomed over the grey, winter landscape like a stairway to the gods.

I loved the parks with their pondering sculptures, bundled women, children playing soccer, lovers in intimate embrace, drifters tossing bread crumbs to pigeons, bare trees in death slumber awaiting their spring birth. I often ran through the Luxembourg Gardens, my favorite of the parks. The running was best when my writing was slow and wearisome and I was troubled. It seemed I was free of everything except the rhythm of arms and legs pumping, heart beating, images and abstract thoughts racing through my mind. And always, at the end of those invigorating and therapeutic walks when the world appeared with much clarity, there was the return to my cubicle, my drab little haven, my place of rest, of work.

I thought of the friends I had made in Paris. There was Ann Dufeu, the attractive, middle-aged English woman I met on the train from Le Touquet to Paris. She had married a Frenchman thirty years before, lived in Paris all of that time, and was now in the process of obtaining a divorce. I occasionally took the Metro tram to Vincennes in the eastern outskirts to visit her. She was an encouraging friend and confidant. Her small home provided a wonderful warmth away from the cold, damp loneliness of my room. She was so youthful, energetic, and knowledgeable that in my fantasies I felt like a young Hemingway in the presence of a Gertrude Stein.

"Look at the simplicity of this Modigliani," she would say, pointing to a picture in one of her many books on painting. "Look how you can tell the age of his models without a line or crease in any of the faces. That is genius!" Or "Listen to this, David," playing a record from her collection of classics, "If you ever hear anyone speak of Air on a G String, you'll understand the beauty to which they refer." Or "When you fall in love again," showing me Andrew Marvel's To My Coy Mistress, "you can read this to your lady love and you will surely win her heart."

Ann taught me many useful French phrases. Over tea, omelettes, and champagne, she listened compassionately to accounts of my various drug experiences, particularly the story of the time I took LSD in prison and how it changed my basic perception of the world. Ann had read Aldous Huxley's accounts of his experiments with hallucinogens and was curious whether it was possible to see the world through the eyes of a Van Gogh or Breughel or Cézanne by taking a drug. She encouraged me, reinforced my faith and confidence in what I was doing, what the writing commitment was about. I believed myself fortunate to know her.

There was George Tingley, the young American composer I met at the library in the George Pompidou Center. He epitomized the struggling artist to me. His apartment on the Rue des Archives had no heat and was no larger than my own. A mattress took up most of the floor space opposite a portable piano and broken stool. He was studying under an eighty-nine-year-old master composer of modern French classical music. He was of little means. His entire existence was of composing and playing the piano in his dingy, cold room. His pale, ascetic face reminded me of the severe intellectuals of the Spanish hierarchy in many of El Greco's paintings.

We often went for walks in the grey, wet gloom of Paris and discussed our work. George was extremely helpful in showing me how to take a more tranquil approach to my work. I was in the rudimentary stages of the novel. The vicissitudes of my emotions and moods fluctuated daily according to the judgment I gave to each day's output. If I believed I had written nothing but trite and uninspiring trash, I became frustrated and depressed. If the work had gone well, I was exuberant. When I spoke of this tendency to George, he looked at me with a knowing smile as if to say, "I've been through that stage, understood it, and overcome the anxiety." He explained to me how one should work without judging daily quality, for it was the creative process itself that sustained one from day to day. The knowledge that came from seeing progress over a period of time was enough to overcome one's fears and others' criticism.

George showed me his own work completed since arriving in Paris a year before. It was enlightening to me, with my limited knowledge of music, to hear George draw parallels between the writing of music and literature. The interrelationship between the techniques, formulae, and planning of the two was much the same. Only the medium was different. Seeing George derive his impetus for life from his work, despite his discomforts and poverty, gave me a profound inspiration.

Finally, there was Gerald Paine, the American draft dodger who had fled the States in opposition to the Vietnam War and set up a new life in Paris. Gerald, two other expatriates, and two French friends ran a small restaurant on the Left Bank. I had read a newspaper article about American war resisters who were living in Paris. The name of Gerald's restaurant appeared in the article, which was mainly about Jimmy Carter's promise of pardon for the draft resisters as his first presidential act once sworn into office.

I visited the restaurant on a grey January day when it was too cold to work. I told Gerald about my own participation against the war, and the novel I was trying to write. We ate lunch together and discussed the proposed pardon and the newspaper article.

"Do you think the article presented a fair account of what your life in exile has been like?" I asked.

"That article on American war resisters dealt primarily with the lives of only three men in exile in France. It's probable that some people who read it could have been misled as to the real magnitude of opposition to the war. Our country, and I still think of the U.S. as our country, not France, has been at war in Vietnam for over 30 years. Hell, we practically financed it while the French were there in the early fifties. It's hard to imagine how any government could carry on a war which came to such a barbaric magnitude without strictly controlling information unfavorable to it. Hold on a minute."

Gerald disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with piece of paper on which various numbers were written. He placed the paper in front of me.

"These figures are now a matter of public record," he said. "The Selective Service System examined 15,612,487 men from 1965 through 1972. Only 1,727,608 or eleven percent of the total were inducted. The SSS final report also estimated from census figures that 500,000 to 1.7 million young men failed to register for the draft at all during this same period and still face five-year prison sentences and $10,000 fines. And the Department of Defense says there were 495,689 acts of desertion from August 1964 to December 1972. Numbers still differ as to the number of deserters at large. Military counselors' estimates range as high as 100,000 with perhaps only 10,000 abroad, in Canada mostly, and the rest living marginal underground existences in the States. Most deserters eventually returned to military control to join the ranks of those with less than honorable discharges. Open resistance to the war within the military was a good way to go to jail like you did or be sent to the front line.

"From these figures it's not hard to see that Carter's promise of pardon for 4,400 draft resisters falls way short of the scope of the problem. Case-by-case judgment would be impossible to implement. And racially prejudiced. Blacks and poor people who can't afford expensive lawyers will be left out. On top of the nearly one million bad discharges, a half million to 1.7 million nonregistrants, and up to 100,000 deserters at large, tens of thousands of civilian protesters still in prison or saddled with criminal records must also be added, as well as all those who took citizenship in other countries and are excluded permanently from the States as undesirable aliens by the Department of State."

Gerald took a large gulp of coffee, paused a moment as if to allow me to sift through all this information, then continued.

"And of course look at what the war did to our own veterans, the 55,000 who died in Vietnam, the 300,000 wounded, the 25,000 who are paraplegics. The war will never be over for our whole generation that was affected by it. And what about the generations to come? No one will really be able to tell how many of these veterans' babies will be deformed mentally or physically because of the aftereffects of the chemicals used in that war. Did you know that almost a third of all men in prison in America are Vietnam vets? Or that almost as many vets, some 50,000 by now, have killed themselves as were killed in the war itself?

"We all know what we did to Vietnam. We practically blew that country off the map by dropping three times the tonnage of napalm and bombs there as we did in all the war theaters combined in World War II! And even if you take the argument -- which is a sick one precluding all morality for there is no morality in any war, only economics -- that we were there to win, to stop the domino madness from spreading, in reality the military was hindered by the political system and the war was extended for one simple reason: Too many people were making too much money. Look at the stockholders' earnings for the majority of those corporations who had defense contracts -- Boeing, Dow Chemical, Lockheed -- and you'll see over, say, a ten-year period from 1963 to 1973 they tripled on a minimum.

"And, you know, the American government still refuses to recognize the new governments, continues to lie about them, refuses aid and the promises it made in international agreements, and won't establish economic ties, as it's done after every other war in our history, all of which denies Americans jobs. No, I can't get excited about Carter's proposed pardon, even though it is a far cry from Gerald Ford's cruel joke of a couple years ago. No Carter cabinet pulled out of Lyndon Johnson's dirty linen closet is going to bribe us into stating we were wrong to oppose the war. Total amnesty is the only answer."

*****

That was the only time I talked with Gerald, but his words remained etched in my mind. For the years since my release from prison I had shrunk away from politics and political thinking, practically to the point of possessing no political opinions at all. In those years my one previous political commitment, the participation in the antiwar movement from within the military, had become, in my mind's eye, an act of selfish determination to survive. The act itself, and all its consequences, drained me of all desire to participate in a political stand again. I turned inward, into trying to understand myself, and in so doing became something of a romantic anarchist whose sole desires and motivations in life were self-centered. The only reality was myself.

But that conversation with Gerald stirred something in me. It made me realize that I still belonged to a special group that had committed itself to an ideal, no matter how futile, and followed that ideal at the expense of families, careers, ambitions, and lives. We were, in a sense, martyrs. Through Gerald's concern for the others of that group I saw a bit of myself, the old self, resurface. There were still feelings of compassion and empathy for those who had experienced a much worse fate than my own. I derived a new impetus for my work and plunged into it with a new determination, a new willingness to write as honestly and clearly as I could about the things I had seen and experienced, the effect of that period of America's history upon me as an individual representative of a new, lost, paranoid generation.

In the short time I had been in Paris, the city had made a profound impression on me and instilled in me a belief in the divine guidance of the artist's life. Was there not a reason and purpose for every experience, every chance encounter, every new person placed upon one's path? I believed my meeting Hasan and Ataullah was more than mere coincidence. I believed their offer to take me with them back to Iran and Afghanistan was a predetermined act of fate. I had come to a vital fork in the road, and my destiny ultimately lay at the end of the path I chose. Once the choice was made, there was no turning back. I chose the path to Iran.

Chapter 3

Two weeks later I took a train to Basel, Switzerland, where I rented a room and phoned Hasan. The next night he met me at the German-Swiss border. From there we went to a tavern in Lorrach to have a drink and meet Thomas Knorr.

Thomas was a small, thin man in his early thirties. He had curly, blond hair, a handsome smile, and amiable, blue eyes. He had first met Hasan eight years before in Iran when he smuggled everything from guns to hashish to make a living. In recent years he had turned to a more legitimate and profitable trade. Through Hasan, he began buying rare and valuable carpets and selling them to collectors in Germany. He was proficient in Farsi and Pashto and now spent six months of every year traveling into the deserts of Iran and Afghanistan to live and trade with nomad tribes. He was the proprietor of a veritable house-museum and an expert on the art and history of the Near East.

After several beers we retired to Thomas's house in the hills above Lorrach. His wife and two children were in bed, but Ataullah was still awake and greeted me warmly. Thomas showed me around the two-storey, brick-and-stone farmhouse. Inside were hundreds of hand-woven carpets of every conceivable size, shape, color, and pattern. They were everywhere, abounding on the floors, in large, wooden chests, and on the walls of every room. There were also many other types of artwork scattered here and there: china, pins, bracelets, jewelry, boxes, paintings, stoneware, sculptures of bronze and stone, everything ranging in age from centuries in the past to the present age.

Thomas led us outside to his barn. Inside the barn was assembled a yurt. It was circular with a fence of thin, pointed reeds that surrounded the base. The basic support was an interwoven framework of branches of a thick, strong wood curved at the top to form half-arches. Overlaid on the foundation was a covering of animal hides that formed the walls and ceiling. Inside the yurt a circle of stones was placed in the center of the dirt floor. This was the fireplace. There was an open spot in the center of the ceiling for smoke to escape.

Hasan was tired and returned to the house to go to bed. Thomas lit a kerosene lamp. He, Ataullah, and I sat down on some carpets and smoked a pipe of hashish.

"Hasan says you are a writer," Thomas said. "What kind of book are you writing?"

I explained how I was trying to use my experiences as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War as the basis for a novel about a drifting, alienated generation in search of itself.

"I hope you can be comfortable while you are here. You may use the yurt as your room and workplace for as long as you like. Ataullah also sleeps here, but he is quiet and won't bother you."

Ataullah nodded and smiled.

"You're very kind," I said.

"Think nothing of it. Many people in many lands have helped me on many paths. I was a stranger to all of them, yet they willingly gave of themselves. I am in a position now to provide help, so I do. It is the way of the nomad. And now I must go to bed. I have to get up early in the morning. Please consider my place as yours while you are here. Good night."

After Thomas left the yurt, Ataullah wrapped himself in some thick blankets and I crawled into my down sleeping bag. I extinguished the flame in the lamp and fell asleep.

*****

The days at Thomas's passed quickly. There was a continual stream of vagabonds, poets, musicians, drug smugglers, and art connoisseurs from all parts of the world passing through. It seemed Thomas's house was a stopping point where they could share a meal, a story, a drink, and a pipe of hashish. A zest for adventurous living pervaded the place. Thomas and his wife, a stocky woman with a gentle face, were kept busy from sunup to sundown. They treated all of their guests as if they were members of a large, international family.

Of all the people who passed through the doors of Thomas's house, Ataullah remained the one who attracted my attention most. We often went for long walks together in the afternoons. Ataullah spoke longingly and proudly of his home. He did not like the fast pace of the Western world, the way people "all are like machines." He spoke of the vast stretches of desert and of the remarkable way the desert could change, like an ocean, and how a man could think and feel a closeness with the Creator, the Almighty Allah, in such an environment. There was no need for the machines of the West, no need for the crazy, reckless traffic, the airplanes and modern skyscrapers and computers and insurance and a mad obsession for money. He longed for the simplicity and leisureliness of Afghanistan, where people had time for one another, where there was a pride in their virility, strength, and tradition.

One day while walking along a path in the hills behind Thomas's place, Ataullah said, "I like this path. There are no cars on it and I think of Afghanistan, my other life. It is much different here, David-jan. You must come to visit me. There are no cars or machines. We are a close family and do not need these things. The children laugh and play. The men and women are happy. The people here in Europe are all for themselves and their machines. In Afghanistan we need only the family to be happy. How is it with your family in America?"

"My father died a few years ago. My mother lives alone. And I have a brother I haven't seen for five years. There are many families that are broken and not happy. I think there's an obsession with machines in America, too. In some ways I miss my home because for much of my life it was the only way of life I knew. But I'm happy to be here now and learning the ways of other peoples. Too often in America we think that ours is the best life, but it isn't necessarily true."

"You must always be who you are, David-jan. I miss my home very much. That is why I smoke the hashish more in Germany than at home. So I can dream. But I am not afraid. I wear my own clothes here. I know the people laugh, but I am not afraid of them."

There was something about Ataullah's honesty and sincere need for open communication and companionship that I admired. His observations and feelings were expressed directly as seen and felt without the filtering of logic and convention. His knowledge of the world was that of direct experience, the world of the immediate senses. He was not a large man, but he was solid with strong, massive hands. His hair was cut short and cropped down on his head. When unkempt, it gave him the appearance of a savage. His beard was thick and black, his lips full and expressive. There was a light darkness to his skin, almost a sallowness, though he seemed a healthy man. Occasionally he complained of a sharp pain in his stomach, which he attributed to the different food he was eating. His eyes were dark brown, squinted between flat eyelids. His gaze was probing and mysterious. He had a look that showed no fear, yet his eyes revealed a profound understanding and compassion.

That evening Thomas offered to share a pipe with two local German friends, Ataullah, and me. Hasan had gone into Lorrach to one of the bars. We went outside to the barn and entered the yurt. Ataullah built a fire. We sat around the fire, smoked a bit, and passed around a bottle of wine. Thomas brought out a cassette player and put on a rock and roll tape.

I sat quietly, legs crossed, and watched the actions of the others. Thomas was intently rewiring one of the speakers. The two Germans, one somewhat laconic and meditative, the other giggly and drunk, were engaged in a private conversation. Ataullah stood up and began dancing at one side of the yurt in a rhythmic expression of the hands and face. He seemed unaware of the others. He was expressing bodily what he was feeling inside. The music was speaking to him and he was reciprocating.

The drunken German appeared to be making fun of Ataullah. There was a mockery in his laughter. Ataullah completed his dance and sat quietly before the fire. He took a drink from the bottle, a scowl slowly forming on his face. The drunken German reached for the bottle. Ataullah kept a firm grip on the bottle and looked the German hard in the eyes.

"You do not take the bottle. You do not order. You say please first." Ataullah's voice was both threatening and restrained.

There was a moment of tension in which Ataullah and the German stared at each other, both gripping the bottle. The moment passed. The German relaxed his grip and politely asked Ataullah to pass him the bottle.

After the two Germans went home, Ataullah turned to me and said, "David-jan, I know what that man is. I know his life. My inside eyes can see his inside eyes. He is nothing inside. But I am a guest here and cannot tell him the truth of what I know."

Thomas put on a tape of Afghan music. It was a mysterious and wonderfully erotic mixture of strange sounds. Ataullah explained everything in Afghan music was symbolic of a spiritual quest. The sound of birds could be heard mixing with the strange wailing of a human voice, the pounding of bongo-type drums in metaphysical rhythm, and the sad strumming of a dambura.

Ataullah began dancing again, his eyes closed, his hands moving in circular and outward gyrations, his body spinning in a whirlwind like an ice skater in a graceful twirl, his head jerking back and forth, seemingly sliding from shoulder to shoulder. The music was pleasing, the fire hypnotizing, the ambience mystical. I applauded the performance. Ataullah was pleased.

"When the Afghan dances he is trying to release the inside man to the outside." Ataullah pointed to the sky and showed the circular movements of his hands. "When a man has reached his best, he can do this. It is very nice, yes?"

Satisfied with the evening, Ataullah went to bed. I stayed up awhile longer with Thomas, enjoying the quiet, the fire, the companionship.

"It is very nice here in the yurt, don't you think? But in the winter it takes a lot of wood to keep warm. I am too lazy to cut so much. You can stay here as long as you want in the yurt if you want to cut the wood. It would be nice for you, David. You could have a typewriter here to work. It would be very peaceful."

"That's very kind of you to offer. But I'll continue to Iran with Hasan. One of these days, when you have some free time, I'd like to speak with you about that part of the world. I'm afraid I know nothing about it."

"Yes. When the time is right. When the time is right, I will tell you what I know and what you need to know. But not tonight. Soon. I promise you."

Chapter 4

Over the next few days I came to know Thomas much better. Although he was but five-foot-seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, he seemed a much larger man. Everyone around him, including the vagabonds who continually passed through his home, looked up to him for guidance and entertainment. He carried himself with what was, to me, a spaced-out self-assurance. At times his eyes bulged out of their sockets; they were always scanning, perceiving. He looked people directly in the eye. His countenance, whether in thought, action, or speech, showed a continual activity of the brain. His forehead was lined with small wrinkles, not from age but from perpetual ponderance. He had that characteristic common to all thinkers: absentmindedness. It was hard to believe his business was not failing. It seemed he lost everything he touched. But this did not bother Thomas. He was, in fact, amused by it.

His body was one of the most flexible I had ever seen. His bones seemed made of rubber. He was more comfortable sitting on his haunches, feet flat on the ground, chin rested on his knees, than in an upright chair. When on the floor playing Karumbo -- an Afghan game of skill that resembled a combination of billiards and marbles and was played on a board with chips to be flicked by the player's fingers into corner pockets -- his legs were flat on the floor, his feet pointed outward at right angles, and his head perched forward to see things as closely as possible. In this position he looked like a simian on all fours.

One evening Thomas invited me upstairs to smoke a pipe, play some Karumbo, and visit. Our conversation turned to various philosophies of life. I felt a bit like an inexperienced student listening to the pleasant lecturing of a wise, old savant. An outpouring of words flowed from Thomas's mouth. His speech was a gentle expression without pause. I had the feeling there was so much inside Thomas, such an abundance of knowledge and energy, that it was to my detriment to interrupt him. I listened intently. He spoke of smuggling experiences and adventures in distant lands, his life in California with the people surrounding the Jefferson Airplane rock band, his years of study of the languages and art of the Near East, his trips to the remotest regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran in search of rare carpets. He spoke of his dreams of international brotherhood, freedom, adventure, and his need to stay in touch with people who had not lost their dreams.

Hasan entered the room with Carol, an American woman in her late twenties who was staying at Thomas's and would travel as far as Yugoslavia with Hasan and me. They sat on the floor and joined in the conversation. The topic returned to smuggling. Hasan expressed a distaste, the risk being too great for committing a crime that brought harm to other people.

Thomas continued, "When you are looking at a man who brings a little hashish with him across the border, you fail to see the other side of the circle. Is his crime any worse than that of the men living comfortably at the expense of others? of their pain? of their suffering? of their low wages? Is his crime any worse than that of the men who -- with their factories that are killing plant life, animal life, even human life -- make chemicals for next to nothing and then sell them for unreasonable profits? And not just chemicals, but all products.

"Every man has his vices. Every man has the criminal element in him. To those making money, the making of it is just as much a drug as the hashish is to the common man who needs to escape the misery of his life from time to time. Of course, hashish is like any other sensual aspect of life. If taken to excess, it does more harm than good. The important thing is to remain unattached to it, as the moneymaker must remain unattached to his drug. If one is attached to anything in life, he cannot fulfill himself spiritually. This is the truth of life, the inner life. Life is a series of interrelated circles. One must experience a little of each circle, each change, so to speak, in order to make a complete circle at the passing of one's life. It is important not to be hung up on any one circle, for it inhibits the inner life, the spiritual, from growing to a newer and wiser circle. One must be open to change, ready for change, as change means growth of the spirit, a coming closer to the whole. When we are born, we are totally free. Our soul is all-being, everlasting, eternal life in relation with the whole of life, of energy and forces beyond our comprehension. We all have this eternal life. Each person is just at a different stage of development in the attaining of the whole or eternally wise life. When we are born, we are like the fresh seed thrown to the soil, free of all outer influences, and then with the cultivation of environments and outside forces a covering envelops us. It is only the casting away of these outer skins, these programmed modes of thought, of behavior, of relationships, that we can attain any freedom or wisdom. We must develop the inner search. The wealthy men of the world are more shackled than most of the world's prisoners. Indeed, they are prisoners of their own possessions. It is very difficult to move to the next circle in one's life when one is bound in such a way.

"Of course, you may tell me to look at myself. Am I not attached to my own possessions and business? Do I not live comfortably and have a fair amount of money? And I say yes it is true that I have money and possessions, but in reality I am not attached to them. It would be just as easy to live in Afghanistan in a remote village as here. But I am a man like any other. I am willing to be a king today, for tomorrow I may be a pauper. And I will again be a pauper; the time will be right. The difference in my own eyes lies in the fact that I am not bound to my present life. I am living it and it is part of one circle that will lead eventually to the next. What the next will be I cannot say, but I look forward to it. This is why I smoke the hashish and still smuggle a little of it. It allows me to separate myself from this life, to look at life from a different perspective so I don't become too attached to it. I am not saying what I do is right for everyone, but each man must find his own way. It is important to experience a little of every life -- the businessman, the beggar, the criminal -- though I don't mean crime in the sense of murder, but crime in the sense we are all victims of the forces surrounding us, our environments, and to rebel against or reject these forces is criminal in the conventional way of thought. This is what I mean by criminal: to rebel against the environment in which you are molded or shaped. Thus, to rebel is to be open to change, and to change is to move to another circle, another step in the direction of life fulfillment."

Thomas paused to take a puff from the pipe. Carol laughed and said, "Thomas, if that wasn't a hash-inspired thought, I don't know what it was. I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning."

Carol and Hasan got up and left the room. Later Thomas and I talked about sometimes feeling as if one were outside oneself, seeing that self as a separate entity. At one point Thomas said something that was the exact parallel of a paragraph I had written in my journal that morning about the constant feeling of watching the curious comings and goings of someone named David Thompson, of laughing at his follies, of empathizing with his joys, of weeping at his sorrows. I procured the page from my notes and brought it back to show to Thomas. He read it, smiled, and nodded as if to say, "I understand you. We are of the same feeling and thought."

A few nights later after everyone had gone to bed, Thomas and I took some psilocybin. We put on our coats and went for a walk. The night was cold, but invigorating. We walked to the highest point of the hill behind his house. We could see all of Basel on one side and Lorrach on the other. The lights glimmered below in a U-shape as if we were on an island surrounded by a sea of stars. Nearby were black silhouettes of bare trees. Snow was on the ground. Thomas looked wistfully into the distance.

"David, this may be one of the most beautiful places in the world. I must take a picture of this spot, this circle. Look at this circle here where there are seven trees, each reaching out as if groping for love, for communication, much like the mass of mankind. This spot is right at the southern tip of the Black Forest and is unique. From here you can see three countries. I love this place. But it is so hard to live here much of the time. There are many games to play. People are coming and going all the time, people wanting to smoke a pipe, straight customers looking at carpets, people staying as if I'm running a motel. Everyone wants something. It's very difficult to handle constantly."

"I've noticed. You're on the go constantly from morning to late at night. It must put a strain on you. It seems to me eventually you're going to collapse. I can't believe your wife puts up with cooking for all these people. And your kids probably would like to spend more time with you."

"Yes, it does get to them and to me, but it is important to experience it. There is so much that keeps me here. Especially my mother and father. But I would also like to live in a community where there is brotherhood and people helping each other. Here there is too much suspicion and narrow thinking. Most of the people here are trapped by their environment. I need to break free from it all. I think often of the things I have done in the past, the adventures, and sometimes I believe I was closer to being free in those wilder days. It is possible, I think, to find such a place. Did I tell you about my six friends who have a farm in New Zealand? I helped them make all the connections and contacts. They made one run, sold their dope somewhere in New York for an incredible price, and now they are completely free with their lives.

"This is my dream: to have a group of people who are together and could set up a kind of world community, say, with one group in California, another in Canada or Spain or South America, and maybe one here in the Black Forest. In this way every couple of years everyone could trade environments and not fall into the same pattern of life. It would be healthy for all involved. Everyone would be continually learning new cultures and ideas. But this is all very idealistic and would take a lot of money with people who were intellectually and spiritually committed, a kind of international utopia for artists and free thinkers where they would not be hampered by politics and wars."

A heaviness came over Thomas. He sighed, a cloud of breath passing from his mouth into the night air. He seemed for a moment very much alone.

"But these are all just thoughts," he continued. "Just whispers in the wind, sometimes too fleeting, too fast. I also wonder if it is not possible that in this life we are not the hunters but the hunted. Do we not first give up our innocence, then our youth, our eagerness, our love, our faith in our fellow men, and finally our power, all for nothing? No real reward except a final willingness to leave this world? Ah, David, Asia will change you. You must be prepared. Your coming here was no accident. The time has come. I will tell you what I know."

We returned to the yurt, built a fire, and, as eerie shadows danced against the animal-hide walls, I listened until the early hours of the morning to what Thomas knew about the history, religion, and politics of Iran and Afghanistan.

Chapter 5

A few days later Hasan, Carol, and I were on the road in a new BMW. Ataullah would leave a few days behind us on a train. Carol would travel with us as far as Yugoslavia before heading to Greece to search for a job on some island. Beyond that she had no plans.

She had first met Thomas and Hasan five years earlier in Tehran, where she lived for a year. It was now seven years since she left the States to wander around Europe and Asia. The years had taken a toll on her. Too many drugs, too many lovers, too many nights with no food or shelter had left her with a hardened countenance for a twenty-six-year-old woman. She was still full of the wanderlust, however, and had many adventurous tales to tell about her travels.

Down the map we plunged through the Swiss night, southward toward Italy. In the beginning Hasan's driving frightened us. He was a madman behind the wheel, flying along winding mountain roads as if in a grand prix road race, taking chances passing other cars at high speeds on blind corners. Carol constantly admonished him, but Hasan laughed at our fear and told tall tales of his adventures as a driver in the Iranian military.

Night came and an incandescent moon guided our way. The Swiss Alps appeared as moving silhouettes. Their movement stirred me into reflections of the time I had sought refuge in their silent kingdom following my love affair four years before with Michelle in the fields outside Dijon. I had just finished writing about that time, about the revelations that came when retreating to the Alps to analyze what had happened, what direction life had taken me. How could I ever forget that magical morning I walked the climbing road toward Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn? I stopped across from an old stone farmhouse and a plump, rosy woman invited me into the house for coffee and breakfast with her family of ten. Everything from that moment of the journey was blessed with good fortune. Now I was back in the same part of the world, writing about that earlier time and its significance, accumulating more adventures of the kind only a desperate, wandering nomad in continual quest of his egocentric self could have. Glorious adventure! Glorious life!

Late that night we drove into Milan, Italy and took a room. It was an ugly, industrial city where, on that former journey, I spent a frightened night in the mammoth waiting room of the main train station watching Mafia-type punks harass harmless old bums who were there only for a few hours of warmth until the police hustled them out for having no ticket.

After a day in Milan the journey continued east through a thick fog to Trieste. We entered Yugoslavia. Hasan drove the BMW as if jet propelled. I took notes on the passing scenery: greenery, clear blue spring sky, rolling hills, scattered farms, stone-and-brick houses, blue distant hillocks and jagged mounds, white steeples on churches with red slate roofs. The road weaved like a snake through the pastoral scenery. We passed through green-brown forests, then rolling hillocks. Lonely figures with hoes slung over shoulders paced the sides of the road. Onward, onward, until finally around midnight we arrived in Nis, a city in the southeast, where Carol was to continue south to Greece, Hasan and I east to Bulgaria.

We waited for the train's departure before leaving Carol on her own. An atmosphere of depression, paranoia, and gloom pervaded the station: military guards in tattered, grey uniforms and heavy, brown overcoats, World War II vintage carbines strapped over their shoulders, the main waiting room filled with dirty, ugly peasants. In one corner lay an old shrew, shrouded in a layer of filth, decadence, and disease. She looked as if she might be dead. I approached and stared, poking her to see if she was alive. The old witch spit back at me feebly, a putrid, yellow ball of spittle rolling down her chin. The other peasants laughed and pointed fingers at us. Carol boarded a train. Hasan and I hurried out of the station.

We continued into the night toward Bulgaria, the BMW rushing past Soviet military trucks on a winding, rocky road. We arrived at the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border early in the morning. A Bulgarian military guard detained us for two hours before granting our visas at dawn. An eerie feeling possessed me as we passed behind the Iron Curtain. The word that came to my mind most as we passed that day traveling through the despair of Bulgaria was "grey." Everything we passed was synonymous with gloom, depression, suspicion. Everything was grey: the hills, the earth, the buildings, the sky.

We entered Sofia. Here, too, grey pervaded everything we saw. There were the dilapidated, brick houses and the new, rectangular, concrete high-rise structures, each looking the same as the others. Military transport trucks moved slowly along cobbled streets. There were no smiles on the men and women shoveling dirt on the sides of the road or on the ubiquitous police.

We wasted no time in Sofia and headed into the country, all the time approaching the East over dirt roads and cobble roads, through peasant villages and industrial towns where one or two large billboards displayed the communist worker. Everywhere we passed we saw old peasant women with slouched backs, bundled in woolen scarves, socks, and sweaters, packing hoes over their shoulders, pacing slowly in groups of three and four to the fields.

With the entry into Istanbul, Turkey came a subtle change in Hasan. While in the West he had been exuberant, relaxed, and carefree. Now he became increasingly distrustful of people, more and more protective of me. He was back in his element.

We spent one day at the Iranian consulate attempting to obtain a visa for my entry into Iran. I wrote on the application that I was a writer, not realizing the visa would be denied for political reasons. I explained to the woman processing the application that I was not writing about Iran. She told me to try again at the consulate in Ankara and to say I was a student.

We spent much of another day exploring the activity of the streets, visiting the Muhammadan mosques with their high-reaching minarets, and haggling with filthy venders, merchants, and black market dealers of all types. In one tea shop across from a mosque several drug sellers approached me. The pitch was always the same. "I have brown sugar, man, coca, hashish. You smoke, sniff, try. You like, you buy. Yes?" followed by a flash of brown teeth and jostling of my arm. Istanbul was a moribund city, plant-like, inert. Everywhere along the neglected streets were forsaken and starving dogs. On the outskirts along the shore of the Bosporus stood hideous, empty houses where thin, dark, hungry children played.

We left Istanbul and its crowded streets, full of older American cars, horse carts, all kinds of carts competing for limited, dirty space. We headed east toward Ankara. The journey took on a new aspect, dark and foreboding. This was no longer a vacation. It was a grim pilgrimage to an unknown destiny.

The road from Istanbul to Kismet was a solid stream of trucks and buses carrying great amounts of supplies and goods from all parts of the West to Iran. An army of vehicles -- Peugeots, Austins, Volvos, Macks, Desotos, Fargos, Fiats, Mercedes, Renaults, Fords -- carried gas, food, construction equipment, pipes and girders, tires, wood, people, other cars and trucks, everything imaginable to an ancient country bursting into the twentieth century with its new oil wealth. On this road Hasan proved his ability and superiority as the self-proclaimed best driver in the East. He swerved to the left and right to pass trucks in front of us, paved new lanes in the dust, narrowly missed oncoming traffic, squeezed between huge trucks where there seemed no space, passed to the extreme left of trucks passing other trucks, all the while weaving and honking, braking and shifting furiously, and screaming at the Turks.

"These fucking bastard Turks! They are worse than dog shit! Their mothers are whores! They think everything is war. You never see a Turk give way to another driver. They are crazy. They are donkeys' asses!"

Finally, we arrived in Ankara. I was able to obtain a visa. From Ankara to the Turkish-Iranian border was roughly 1,000 miles. We left Ankara on a sunny morning. A freezing wind blew dust in miniature twisters across the bleached land. Ahead of us were sun-baked hills with stone-and-mud houses scattered throughout. In the distance lay looming, white mountains. The bright sun gave the illusion of what lay ahead as a shimmering landscape with a dreamlike ripple of white rising beyond.

"This could be dangerous from here, David-jan," Hasan said. "It is still winter and there are bandits in the mountains. The road has much ice and they can easily stop cars on the road. There are still many gypsy types in the mountains. Yes, it is true. Four months ago they robbed and cut off the heads of three tourists. So when we go, we take three or four cars. The bandits only stop the single cars. There is no problem."

We drove on in silence for about an hour. Hasan turned to me and smiled.

"The next twelve to eighteen hours will probably be the worst. All Iranians are afraid to go through this country in the dark. When they go, they go during the day and in caravans. They are afraid of the bandits. Maybe I think I will be one of the first to cross alone in the dark. What do you think? This is adventure, yes?"

"I think we'll make it."

"Insha'allah, God willing."

We drove into the hills, climbing steadily as mounds of arid, brown-yellow soil and rock rolled smoothly into mounds of a darker purple-brown. The shadows grew longer. We passed a grave. The road was now empty. The land looked cadaverous.

"You see what I mean," Hasan said. "There are no cars. This is the really dangerous part. These people that live in the mountains, sometimes they come down to the road at night. They can look from far away and see if a car is alone. Then they can put a huge stone in the road to stop it. Many people have been killed for being so stupid. Maybe we can find a bus in Sivas and follow it. But don't worry, David-jan. If they come, I know what to do. I am not afraid. I will just run over them and kill them. I am crazy enough to do it. The bastards! Sometimes they come after you in an old car and pull over in front of you, but if that would happen I would not let them overtake me. I would run them off the road. This car does not matter when it is life or death. The bastards!

"It is very dangerous when you have something on top of your car. So many Iranians are crazy because they bring so much back from Europe with them. It is like inviting the bandits to come after you. I have heard many stories. But we will make it, Insha'allah. Maybe we will stay in Sivas."

There were many potholes and rocks in the road. Once again Hasan took control. The BMW seemed to fly over the road, avoiding the potholes. I had been afraid of Hasan's driving in Europe, but now on the Asian roads I felt secure with him at the wheel. He had excellent reflexes and was fearless, both of the road and of other drivers.

We climbed higher into the hills. Strong winds were blowing. We passed sparse, wind-sculpted brush, thin patches of snow, and an occasional mountain village where the soil had been worked by hand. Darkness came. We stopped in Amasya, a remote village, for gas and tea. There were some fat Turks in the teahouse playing backgammon, smoking cigarettes and hookahs, and drinking tea. They had oily skin and long eyelashes. The teahouse had a rancid, sweaty smell.

When we continued, Hasan had me take the wheel for a while. There was no traffic. With Hasan's stories of decapitated tourists filling my thoughts, I felt something I had never felt before. It was not so much fear as it was a kind of foreboding. Now and then I was convinced this would be my final journey. Shadows along the road jumped at me. Around every corner lay expectations of a boulder or log with fifty bandits prepared for plunder. There developed in me a sense of alternating abstraction and terrific concentration. An accumulating excitement grew in my heart.

Hasan retook the wheel after about three hours.

"You drove well, David-jan. Your concentration was good. It is not easy to drive this road. It is not for the unafraid or the meek. It is very dangerous here, but if you like adventure, this is it. I think I am the only Iranian to ever travel this road at night. The truck driver back there in Amasya, the one carrying the cars, he told me I was crazy. But I told him I was not afraid. Allah is with us."

We were in the high mountains. The road was icy. Snow was everywhere. At the top of a high ridge there was a crude restaurant, the only stopping point for many miles. We stopped for tea. The owner was an amiable man and spoke with Hasan about the condition of the road. We warmed ourselves by his fire. After a few minutes we continued.

The weather changed. In a matter of seconds the clear sky turned into a blinding snowstorm. The driving snow shot against our windshield like thousands of tracer bullets. Hasan deftly turned the car around and guided us safely back within a couple of kilometers of the restaurant before we were forced to stop. We covered ourselves with our sleeping bags, locked the car doors, and waited for the storm to subside.

I woke feeling as if sealed in a tomb of white. Hasan woke about the same time. We cracked our windows to see light flakes of snow still falling, but without the intensity of the night before. We got out to clean the snow and ice off the car. A few yards away were three men, one on a half-dead horse and the other two to one side, staring at us through steely, black eyes. They were wrapped in worn and dirty sheepskin coats. Long knives protruded from their belts.

"Kurds," Hasan whispered. "Mountain gypsies. You stay here and let me talk. They will not do anything as long as they don't know what we have. You get back in the car and reach under your seat as if you have a gun. Don't show any fear and all will be well, Insha'allah."

I did as told. Hasan walked within a few feet of the three men and stopped. He spoke to the man on the horse, the elder. They exchanged a few words, then Hasan returned to the car.

"Reach in the glove box and give me my wallet. Do it slowly. While you do it, keep your eyes on the horseman and stare in his eyes. He thinks you have a gun and he must keep thinking that. He wants twenty lira for sleeping on his land. The bastard! But we must pay. There will be no trouble that way."

Hasan walked back and handed the horseman the money. They said something to each other. The Kurds turned and disappeared slowly into the sea of white. Hasan returned, got in the car, and started the engine.

"That was very close," he said, letting out a long breath. Then he laughed. "So what do you think, David-jan. This is adventure, yes? We were lucky. Allah was with us. But I knew what to say. I praised his horse and his fine sons. The filthy bastards! I spit on their graves! He said we are on a ridge and the road is better in a few kilometers. We must try the road or he may be back with more Kurds."

Hasan eased the car slowly into motion. An ominously beautiful white surrounded us. The outline of the mountains was indistinguishable. Snow flurries blew crossways making it difficult to see. Hasan's concentration was remarkable. He guided the BMW as if he knew the road instinctively.

Soon the road became easier to mark as we descended from the peak. Then the road rose again. The wind increased as we approached another peak. Snow flurries enveloped us. Four trucks were stopped near the peak. We had to stop with them. One of the trucks moved out. Everyone followed, going on the assumption the road could only get better. In a few kilometers we could see ahead and discern three buses in the distance. The road was icy, but there was some traction as the road was full of rocks and potholes.

For the next four hours our progress was the same: twenty to thirty kilometers per hour, Hasan maneuvering the sliding BMW ahead of the trucks and buses for fear of not being able to start again if forced to stop, the road rising to summits where wind flurries were a blinding white and hurt the eyes, then dipping to lower elevations where boulders of slush and white mud crashed against the sides and frame of the car, all the while Hasan finding areas of the road with traction where other vehicles could not and were forced to stop. At one point we passed Salur, a mountain village of about twenty-five rock huts covered with snow. The land around us was more remote and beautiful than anywhere I had ever seen. Even its desolation was forgotten under the spell of its terrible splendor. I wondered how these mountain people could survive the winters.

We hit another low elevation and Hasan began to speed over the muck and slush of the rocky road. Suddenly, we smashed into flocks upon flocks of small brown and yellow birds. There were thousands of them on the road, drawn to the warmth of the mud. Hasan plowed into them. For a good twenty kilometers it continued, Hasan speeding along at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, honking, braking, flicking his headlights to scatter them. The birds flew in all directions like a grotesque parting of the Red Sea. The sky was full of birds. Hundreds of them ricocheted off the windshield, the headlights, and the front bumper, making dull, thudding sounds. It began snowing again. It was a morbid scene: snow pellets shooting at us and an endless wall of birds pitching away from us. Hasan was laughing.

"Some hungry man will have a feast. The sparrow meat is sweet and good." Then his tone changed. "I don't want to kill them. They are too nice. It is spring for them, too. They want to live. But that is the order of nature. I cannot stop and wait two months for them."

The birds disappeared when we reached Erzincan, a foul city full of beggars where nothing seemed to flourish except mud, slop, and neglect. We continued without stopping, a look of disgust and hatred written on Hasan's face. We drove on into the savage, white land.

About an hour from Erzurum we came to the worst part. The road was solid ice. At the top of an incline there had been a wreck involving a bus and a truck. Other cars were pulled over. Several bodies were stretched out on the side of the road. A few peasants were attending the injured.

"We cannot stop, David-jan. These peasants are doing what they can for those who are hurt. We could do nothing more for them. Most of them will die. It will take more than a day to get them to a hospital and there are no real doctors in these mountains, only those who perform suspicious medicine and take your money. It is sad, but we must continue. Besides, these are Turks and they would as soon kill us and take our money and car and leave the others to die anyway."

We passed the scene slowly. Rivulets of blood streaked the snow. Those who noticed us stared with hollow and lifeless expressions.

Soon we were behind a group of trucks and some cars driven by Europeans. The procession moved slowly up another steep incline. Hasan thought they were driving without courage or authority.

"These idiots! People think it is so easy. They drive these cars from Germany to Iran for five hundred marks. They play with their lives. They make it dangerous for others because they are afraid. They are stupid idiots!"

Hasan maneuvered the BMW, slipping and sliding on the ice, to the front of the pack. All along the road cars were pulled to the side. Only Hasan managed to keep moving. We approached another incline, but had to stop when a truck forced us to the side of the road. We could get no traction to go forward. Hasan backed to the side of the road where a foot or two of gravel was exposed. Another two feet to the side was a steep precipice. Snow began falling again. An icy wind stirred up more flurries. I got out of the car and within thirty seconds was covered with snow. I pushed while Hasan gunned the car up the incline. I ran after the car, slipping on the ice, caught up, opened the passenger door, and jumped in. At the moment we crossed the top of the incline the BMW ran out of gas. We coasted down the other side for seven kilometers to Askale, where, luckily, we were able to buy some gas.

We pushed on until arriving in Erzurum in the late afternoon. Erzurum was a military stronghold that crouched gloomily within a crater of hills. Military troops had the road to Iran blocked because of the snow. We took a room at a hotel with a group of other travelers -- three Iranians, a Belgian, and a German, each transporting a car.

That night we walked the ancient, narrow streets. Scavenger dogs scuttled here and there. We came upon a diseased beggar squatting in the middle of the pavement. He shrieked at us. As we passed him he lifted up his shirt, performed an obscene gesture, and cursed us wickedly. We came to a brothel, which was really a prison for women. A guard checked us for weapons before allowing us to go from door to door of the grey hovels in which the prostitutes lived. There were perhaps fifteen different hovels. Inside on torn furniture sat fat, ugly, gaudy women who laughed at the foolish men they hoped would help buy their freedom.

The next morning we left the city. The road was open. We now traveled in a caravan of six cars. Hasan took the lead. We took an alternate route that led us into the mountains on the way to Agris near the Turkish-Iranian border. In the high hills was a honeycomb of caves filled with outcast families. Hasan said they were lazy people resigned to possessing nothing, nothing at all. They ate anything they could find: frogs, insects, roots. The BMW passed stone huts with turf roofs and cone-shaped earth mounds where mountain people dwelled.

We descended to a lower area. The sun broke through the opaque sky. The ice on the gravel road was melting. Here and there were trucks off the side of the road, stranded as no vehicles could rescue them until the snows melted completely. There was a distinct lack of mercy in this violent land. One truck that had tipped over had a tent pitched next to it by scavengers. There were about ten people. Half were children, the rest harridans and worn-out men. They saw our car approaching and began walking toward the road. The walkers moved through the snow as if in a trance. Thin and ugly people, coarse-featured, thick-lipped, insolent, savage-eyed, they looked as if they were waiting for something, hungry for something. They reminded me of vultures. We locked our doors. Grim-faced, Hasan gunned the accelerator and raced by them. Some of them pounded on the BMW with their fists and grabbed at the windows as we passed by.

"A man would be a fool to travel this at night alone. It would be inviting death," Hasan said.

My hands shook. My body felt like ice. I did not look back.

On and on we continued. The others in the caravan safely passed the scavengers. In a couple of hours we came to the top of an icy pass where at least fifty trucks were stuck. At the bottom of the hill two trucks were completely off the road. The road was not wide enough for the two trucks to pass each other, but they had tried anyway and failed. Now all the other trucks were backed up in both directions. It appeared there was just enough room for a small car to squeeze through the mess. Hasan gave it a try. Near the point where the two trucks had slid off the road we hit an icy patch. The BMW swerved to the side of the road into a snow-filled ditch just behind one of the trucks. We got out and began digging. Eight of the truck drivers helped us get the car back on the road. We were caked with mud, and our hands and toes were nearly frozen. The others in the caravan made it through safely. We were on our way again, but the trucks would probably be stranded for days along with the traffic that would stack up behind them.

We drove on without incident. A few times we passed a truck stranded off the side of the road, but saw no more scavengers. The only life we saw was an occasional flock of black and white sheep tended by dark shepherds who lived with their families in stone huts built into the sides of the snow-covered hills.

We entered Agris, another squalid military outpost where Soviet tanks and troop transport trucks were scattered on the sides of the road. We stopped in a back alley restaurant. Hasan inspected the kitchen before we ate kebab with rice and cream yogurt. We were about three hours from the border.

The road grew worse. The potholes became larger and more numerous. We were at the back of the caravan. Trucks approaching from the opposite direction splattered the BMW with slush and thick, brown muck. It was blinding and made driving difficult. One truck sprayed us with small stones and the windshield cracked.

We climbed atop another plateau to find two of the caravan stopped. One of the drivers, the German, had been forced off the road and hit a boulder sunken in the snow. He had a flat tire. The other man was one of the Iranians, a strong and quiet man whose arms rippled with muscles. A raging wind blew snow flurries over the road. The temperature was below zero. Wearing only a light sweater and no gloves, the Iranian changed the tire. The German watched in awe. Behind and below us lay an ocean of white. It was as if we were floating on top of a world of clouds. The wind howled.

We were back on the road, trailing the other two as darkness approached. Hasan was on another tirade.

"We are moving too slow. When it is dark, the road is too dangerous. These stupid idiots! We will be lucky to make the border like this. But we must travel in a pack because their spare tires are being used. If something would happen to another tire, it could be their death. They would freeze or the bandits would come. Fucking bastards! Sons of bitches! Look, David-jan. He doesn't know how to drive. He is afraid. He crawls through the holes in the road like a coward dog. He must go faster. It's worse for the car to go the speed he is going. The bastard! Look how he brakes when a car comes at him. I see these freaks all the time. They get paid five hundred marks and think it is like driving in Europe. Sons of bitches! He makes it dangerous for everyone."

We dropped out of the last elevation to the lower ground. We were out of the snow. The road was muddy, but getting better. We passed two more villages of mud hovels where wild dogs roamed the streets. Finally, we reached the border. Hundreds of trucks and cars were backed up. We would have a long wait to cross over into Iran.

Chapter 6

We were in the high passes on the road to Koi. All around us the pine forest sparkled. The sky was clear. Although he was obviously relieved to be back in Iran, a look of intent concentration marked Hasan's face.

"We are still close to the Russian border, David-jan. It would be easy for you to cross into Russia in this country," Hasan joked. "Maybe you can join other Americans who left your country."

"I don't dislike my country that much."

"I don't love the Russians, either. In fact, most Iranians don't like Russia. That is why I want to hurry through this country."

"But we're inside Iran now, aren't we?"

"This is Iran, but it is not Iran. This is Azerbaijan. There are always dangerous people in Azerbaijan. Mountain Kurds. Russian spies. Village communists who might cut your throat because you are a stranger. Iranian laws mean nothing in these mountains.

"The Russians have always wanted Azerbaijan. During World War II when the Russians needed a supply route, they and the British occupied our country. After the war there was a big crisis here. The Russians and British were supposed to leave Iran, but the Russians returned only as far as Qazvin. They still controlled Azerbaijan, but the Azerbaijan people wanted their own country and the Kurds also wanted their own country. This made a big problem. The Shah was still weak and depended on Russia for protection and supplies. The Azerbaijan group and the Kurd group were against the Shah and supported socialism and communism.

"At first, the Shah tried to send his forces to Azerbaijan, but the Russians stopped them at Qazvin. The United Nations, the Americans, and the British did nothing. Then our prime minister, Ahmad Qavam, promised the Russians they could have oil from northern Iran if they left Iran completely, and they did. After that the Azerbaijan and Kurd groups collapsed and Iranian forces took control of Tabriz and Rezaieh, where the enemy groups had their headquarters. And our parliament refused to agree to the prime minister's promise of oil for the Russians.

"The Shah has hated communism and Marxism since that time. They are not legal in Iran. Now we celebrate Azerbaijan Day on December twelfth every year and there is a big military parade. We must have a strong army because we must always be ready to fight against communism. I tell you these things because I want you to understand why this is still dangerous country. But when we get to Tehran you should not discuss politics. It is dangerous to discuss politics in Iran. There are many spies who listen."

We continued past Tabriz and through rocky hills. East of Tabriz we topped a crest and began a long descent down a curving, twisting road with no railing on the precipice side. We passed through rolling hills spotted with groves of birch trees and orchards of apple, pear, and cherry trees. Then it was wasted and flat and open again with great flocks of sheep pasturing among the stones. After that, the land grew bony and abysmal, riddled with misery.

Hasan rolled along at a hundred and forty kilometers per hour. We passed by the scene of two recent wrecks and Hasan mumbled, "Insha'allah, David-jan. It was the will of Allah that those drivers' stupidity made people die."

I was appalled at the number of abandoned wrecked trucks and cars off the sides of the road. I felt a sordid and repulsive agony. At one point along the empty reaches that sparkled under the high sun I saw two mangy dogs, thin as skeletons, gnawing savagely at a human corpse. It was an unreal moment and reminded me of the scene in Dante's The Divine Comedy when Dante saw Satan and his three heads chewing the bodies of Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. My imagination began to run rampant and I felt I had indeed fallen into the realm of Satan's foul breath. And if I were to imagine myself as another Dante inside the circles of purgatory and hell, what a strange form Virgil had taken in the person of Hasan, whose courage and aplomb had guided me thus far on our pilgrimage.

It seemed Death was playing with us both, wrapping us in its black wing. My distress was by no means alleviated by an inclination to disbelieve the reality of this experience. As I thought of it, possibly because of the steady, forward movement of the BMW, a modern vessel sailing through this valley of death, this voyage seemed very much a nightmarish hallucination. In all my previous visions of divine guidance and idealized existence never had I been surrounded so terribly by such a ring of death masks, death images, death reality. Even on that revelatory journey to Europe four years before when I thought I had seen so much of life and its essence and filth and squalor, there was not any kind of apocalyptic vision to match what I now experienced. The concatenation of death imagery flashed odiously through my mind: the old shrew at the Nis train station, the wall of birds near Erzincan, the death-filled wreck in the Turkish mountains, the Kurds we had nearly killed by the stranded truck, the graves of machinery along the sides of the road, the filth and ruin of mankind, the blood and howling lunacy of human existence all about us on this wretched land. These were not the poor, huddled masses of humanity conjured up so falsely in my utopian visions, but dark, ugly symbols of mankind's fall from grace.

In the same manner as the dogs gnawing on the corpse lying on the side of the road, I felt myself gnawing savagely at my own rectitude. I wondered suddenly: What was I doing? Why had I come to Asia? Was it out of a longing for self-renewal and self-forgetfulness? Had I possessed some innate knowledge of what I would find, knowing I had shirked facing death in Vietnam and so might be reinstated in the eyes of my persecutors by achieving some final, all-obliterating act of valor in hurling my body into the battleground and bloodshed of what I was now witnessing? But even here I was deceiving myself. It was not, at bottom, out of heroism or a dedicatory urge or a selfless idealism that I had come to Asia. I realized suddenly it was from a need to shed the serpent skin of my selfish, cowardly past. The road with its stillness and gloom stretched into the distance like a life of agony.

Hasan interrupted my morbid reverie, "We are close to Qazvin. After that we have only about two hours to Tehran. It will be good to see my uncle and aunt and cousins. This has been a good adventure, David-jan, don't you think?"

"It has been an adventure," I muttered.

We arrived in Tehran in the evening. First, we went to meet Hasan's uncle, a wealthy carpet dealer with whom Hasan was associated in business. There was a formal dinner in his uncle's elaborate home. Servants served chicken, rice, potatoes, yogurt, and whiskey. After the meal Hasan and his uncle met privately. There was a loud argument. The gist of it seemed to be about the amount of money Hasan was receiving. Apparently, the uncle had sponsored Hasan's journey to Europe. Hasan had successfully gained new clients, but was not to be rewarded as amply as he expected. Also, there was the question of his returning with a foreigner. Later I asked Hasan what had been said, but he only cursed his uncle. We spent that night at Hasan's cousins' apartment near the university they attended.

The next day we went to the bazaar, where the uncle's business was located. The traffic in Tehran was an unorganized mess. Five lanes of cars competed for two-lane space on every street. It took hours to travel just a few blocks. Honking, screaming, bumping, fist-waving, each driver was a veritable gladiator.

In the streets, young Iranian men strutted in their cheap Western suits. Some were students, others conceited idlers. They gossiped and laughed boisterously in their affected movement. Some, most likely from the outer hills and desert, wore turbans and cloaks. They looked handsome, lithe, and preoccupied. The city youths looked empty and smug.

I saw the picture of the Shah and his family in every shop and public building. Tehran was like a boom town exploding around an ancient village. Everywhere was evidence of modernization: neon lights, bars, pedestrians parading with radios held closely to their ears, X-rated movies garishly advertised, the absence of the traditional chador on young women who openly flaunted newly-discovered independence, the rubbing together of hands in an enterprising air, full of cunning and success, by the shopkeepers at the bazaar with its high-vaulted ceiling and honeycomb of streets and alleyways.

The extreme contrast between the villages we had passed through and the sprawling, urban agglomeration of Tehran shocked me. I remembered what Thomas told me about the rural exodus to the city: The countryside was not some quaint reminder of the ancient past, but a vivid example of the backwardness and poverty that existed behind the modernism of Iran. Iran's rapid economic development had been grafted onto older structures rather than replacing them. The modern sector had grown up side by side with the traditional rural economy, but the two existed in relative isolation. The size of the country and the disparateness and widely-dispersed nature of the population, coupled with a cumbrous bureaucracy and poor communications, had reinforced this gap. As a result, the benefits of imported technology and the spin-off from oil revenues remained, and were reinforced, around Tehran and a few select provincial towns.

In addition, Thomas told me, businesses that ventured into rural areas found that any benefits to be gained from cheaper land, government grants, and cheaper labor were quickly eroded for lack of skilled labor. Outside of Tehran the illiteracy rate was near sixty percent. It was difficult to retain skilled workers once they were trained. Also, it seemed local authorities frequently failed to provide, when required, essential facilities such as telephones, electricity supplies, water or access roads, or even housing for the work force. There was no incentive to establish businesses in a rural area. The high wages found in Tehran for qualified personnel made it impossible to attract good people to the villages.

The following day, we left Tehran for Mashad, where Hasan's family lived. As if sensing my thoughts about Tehran, Hasan said, "David-jan, you will like Mashad. It is not crowded and filthy like Tehran. Tehran is not Iran. The people here come from many places and you cannot trust them. They are too selfish. The people in Mashad are polite and friendly. You will find a nice job in Mashad."

We left the plain in which Tehran dwelled, ringed halfway around by snow-topped mountains. The road climbed steeply into the country to the east. We drove through forested mountains, through villages of adobe buildings with earth roofs and stone huts huddled against foothills banking mountain streams. We saw peasants chopping wood and butchering livestock, shepherds tending flocks of sheep, and burros grazing in the fields and staring enigmatically at our lone passing car. We came out of the mountains to low, green farmland. Indigo hillocks on the right paced our movement. We passed through many small villages and on into the sun-parched desert. An occasional village gave forth an air of sullenness, of secrecy and resentment. The scent of urine hung over these villages like a veil. Then we were out into the bare, odorless country again. We continued into the ineffable waste before us. Late at night we entered the holy city of Mashad. Hasan had spoken little during the trip.
Chapter 7

Hasan was welcomed home as if he were a conquering hero returning from the conquest of distant lands. I was introduced to his mother, father, three brothers, and two sisters. The family lived together in a six-room apartment with little furniture, but plenty of thick, elaborately-woven carpets and lounging cushions covering the floors. A large feast was prepared in Hasan's honor. Hasan recounted his adventures and how we had met.

The first few days with Hasan's family was an exciting time for me. There was much to become accustomed to: the sitting cross-legged on the floor for long periods of time, the formalities to observe, the squat toilets, the sound of the language, the chador the women wore in my presence. The warmth and affability of Hasan's family made me all but forget the morbid death imagery that had dominated my thoughts during the final stages of our journey through eastern Turkey to Tehran.

It was the time of Nowrooz, the Iranian New Year, and there was much celebrating and visiting. Hasan had many cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces, all living in various sections of Mashad. One evening we enjoyed a dinner at which thirty family members attended. The women gathered in the kitchen to prepare the meal while the men gathered in an adjoining room on a large carpet to read from the Koran. The eldest, Hasan's grandfather, sat at the center and selected passages to read. The other men acted as a chorus chanting in unison certain phrases when the old man paused between his recitations. When the ritual was finished, the women spread out some cloths on the carpet. Various articles were placed on the cloths. Everyone sat in a circle and the grandfather recited a prayer. Then the women served the food. It was a magnificent meal that included lamb, rice, spinach, Iranian bread, hard-boiled eggs, oranges, apples, and tea. After the meal was finished and the food cleared away, each person had to dance and sing a song in the middle of the circle. When it came my turn, I sang a Bob Dylan song and was greeted with much warm applause and laughter. It seemed all the members of Hasan's extended family were interested in my life, background, and how I had come to Iran. I was deluged with a flood of questions. Hasan acted as interpreter. All seemed proud of his English ability.

Later, Hasan told me about the importance of Nowrooz.

"It is a time of newness, good feelings, and generosity for Iranians. We celebrate the rebirth of the world by bringing together symbols of rebirth and placing them on a cloth put over the carpet. Did you notice the decorations, David-jan? There were many things -- eggs, grass, new coins, garlic, vinegar, apples, spices, even the goldfish in the bowl and some mirrors.

"All the decorations are symbols. Seven of them have names in Farsi that start with the 's' sound. These are known as haftsin. Haft means 'seven' and the other part, sin, means 's.' Seven 's's.' Maybe the reason the 's' sound symbolizes spring and rebirth is that sabz, the Farsi word for green, has a strong 's' at the beginning and 'z' at the end. Beginning and end, like a cycle. Our ancestors believed the cycle of life and death was part of the endless battle between good and evil. It is very interesting, don't you think?"

We visited many places and people during that first week. Mashad was a beautiful city compared to the brutality and pollution of Tehran. Hasan and his brothers proudly drove me around the city to see the various parks, gardens, and sites of Mashad. There was Aryamehr Park with its roses and fountains, Ferdowsi University, named after Iran's most famous poet, the tomb of Nader Shah, the last Asian conqueror and Napoleon of the East, and the Kuh Sanghi with its statues, garden, and large pool. All these places were beautiful in their own right, but paled in comparison to the golden dome and minaret of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza and the two minarets and turquoise-domed Mosque of Gowhar Shad.

These last two places constituted the central hub around which the rest of the city spread out. These were the places that attracted the 3.5 million Iranian pilgrims who came every year to pay tribute to the martyrdom in 817 A.D. of Imam Reza, the eighth of Iran's twelve Imams, and to the memory of Gowhar Shad, the wife of Shah Rokh, who erected the mosque in 1418 in her honor. Although the new city was laid out in broad avenues with ample parks and green spaces, the old Mashad with its narrow, winding streets and hidden byways of the bazaar was still alive and teeming with people and goods.

One day, Hasan took me to the bazaar to meet various family members and friends who worked in the carpet shops. He would leave soon on another business trip and we had to find a new place for me to stay. I would miss the kindness and warmth of his family, particularly his fourteen-year-old brother Hosein, with whom I had spent many hours exchanging Farsi and English lessons, but I understood the difficulty for a Muslim family sharing its home with a non-Muslim. Also, there was the question of my having to pay for my keep. The schools would not open for a few more weeks, and I needed to find a way to earn some spending money.

In one carpet shop, I was offered a chance to become a "street hawk," a person who roamed the streets in search of foreign tourists to bring back to the shop. If a sale could be arranged with a customer, I would get a small commission. Another street hawk named Rahim Ahmdi, who worked for the same shop and knew Hasan well, offered to take me in as a roommate.

Rahim was in his mid-twenties. He was very small and lithe with smooth, dark skin, long lashes, and a loquacious manner. He had come to Mashad as a boy after growing up in a family of shepherd nomads. He spoke portions of four languages, having picked up everything he knew from making his living on the streets. His room was on the bottom floor of a two-storey, brick-and-mortar structure near the bazaar. Two cheap carpets lined the concrete floor. The rest of the room included a single bed, a coat hanger, a samovar, two Iranian paintings on the walls, a few dishes, a kerosene lamp, and a kerosene stove. It was quaint and simple, quite suitable for living.

I now began to spend my days with Rahim walking the streets near the bazaar and mosque. Rahim was known in all the shops. He was the quintessential guide. He knew where to get the best prices, both on the black market and in the shops, as well as where to find the best or cheapest hotels, entertainment, jewelry, carpets, transportation, whatever one wanted.

The streets were alive with activity. Buildings were being torn down and modern buildings replacing them on nearly every street. Women in chador strolled by sensuously. Swarthy men in turbans strutted about. Peddlers pushing carts of fresh fruits and nuts hawked their goods. Children played and laughed. Horse-drawn carts and hand-pushed carts and imported cars from the fifties and sixties paced to and fro. Other men squatted on their haunches and spread their knives, bracelets, tools, pipes, samovars, and rings of precious stones out before them for tourists to see. Sounds from the various bread shops, grain shops, copperware shops, and carpet shops filled the air. I walked about in a daze, soaking in the atmosphere of the holy city.

In the evenings, Rahim's friends often stopped by the room. They spoke of falling in love with European women they met on the streets. They implored me to write love letters in English. There was a constrained paranoia about them. When they spoke of their dreams, they did so in a low whisper as if an enemy or informer might be listening. One or two alluded to a hatred of the Shah, but in hushed and hurried tones. Many expressed a desire to marry a European woman. It was the only way they could obtain a passport to leave the country. They had a strong fear of the obligatory military service and the punishment given those who refused to serve. When pressed for reasons to explain this, they said it was forbidden to discuss politics or religion with a foreigner. They told me, as Hasan had, I should not speak openly of my antiwar experiences in the United States.

One night, Rahim and I were alone. We were listening to some Iranian love ballads on his tape recorder. Rahim stared at me with sad and serious eyes.

"What is it, Rahim? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Do you think you are truly happy, David-jan?"

"I don't know. Reasonably happy, I guess. Why do you ask?"

"Will you always remember me?" His voice was suddenly soft and shy, like that of a little boy.

"Of course. You're very kind. I'll always remember you."

"But you will leave one day and go back to America. And then I will have no friends again."

"You have lots of friends. What about all the ones who visit you, all the people you know on the streets? Aren't they your friends?"

"They are not my friends. They are ghosts. They only come to see you. They only want to use you to make their escape. They are parasites. All young Iranian men are parasites. I am a parasite. We have no future. One day they will disappear, too, and I will be alone again."

Rahim became silent. We listened to the mournful tape. A breeze passed through the room. The kerosene lamp flickered and cast shadows on the walls. Rahim filled a pipe with some opium, lit the bowl, took a deep puff, and passed it to me. He looked at me with an empty curiosity.

"Hasan was right. He said you are not like the other Americans."

"Do you believe him?"

"Yes. You look strong, but you are gentle. There are many Americans in Iran and they do not try to be close to Iranians. They only want the oil and money. They live in big houses and have their own parties. They bring their own country to Iran and do not try to understand Iran. But you speak to us. You try to learn our language and eat our food. And there is a sadness in your face. I think you know about death and lost love. You are like Iranians. I hope you will always be my friend, even after you leave."

The days began to drag by. After the conversation with Rahim an inexplicable emptiness and weariness stole over me. The fever of work that had sustained me for so long disappeared and was replaced by boredom and restlessness. I often tried to put words to paper, but the well was dry. I was just deceiving myself. How could I have ever believed that mine might be a life of divine guidance? The writing was a sham, a mockery. I was a fool to think I had anything to say to the world. It was utterly impossible to convey the life-sensation of one's existence, that which made its truth, its meaning, its subtle and penetrating essence. Man lived as he dreamed -- alone. Loneliness was the hard and absolute condition of his existence.

I began to smoke opium and spend all my time in Rahim's room. The idea of walking the streets anymore became repulsive. For days I spoke to no one except Rahim, who left early in the mornings and returned late at night, always with a supply of opium he shared with me. During the days I held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with myself. In the gloom of the cavernous room I felt like a prisoner alone in a cell or an explorer lost in a wilderness. I concentrated on the folly of my past. The journey just ended, as well as my many other peregrinations, appeared to me in retrospect, however varied and amazing they may have seemed at the actual time of their occurrence, as nothing more than a forlorn succession of shapes -- uniform, dark, empty. The past was merely an illusion, a whirling cerebral chaos of events and sounds and shadows.

I thought of what Thomas Knorr told me about the Iranian character the night we took psilocybin and stayed up all night in the yurt. His voice came to me once more: "The Iranians are a proud people and have a strong sense of uniqueness. They can be chauvinistic, arrogant, and even xenophobic. They are convinced they know what is right and best. They feel a strong shame in appearing ignorant, which leads to a refusal to admit any kind of mistake. More than anything else, Iranians tend to be insecure, and this leads to a mistrust of people and events. No matter how good a situation might be, there seems to be a general feeling that it cannot last long. Life is seen as arbitrary and cruel. I think most Iranians have a latent cynicism. They trust no one. They can be devious and calculating. Do not fall for their flattery. If you do, it can lead to your ruin."

Paranoia fell upon me like a shroud. When Rahim returned each night and went about his routine of lighting the samovar, cooking some rice and lamb meat on the kerosene stove, smoking the opium and dreaming, I watched him in fear. I suddenly saw in his beady, truculent eyes all the nuances of the setup. It came to me that I had been set up as far back as in Paris. Hasan had used me to make himself look good to his relatives and friends. He was the benevolent savior of the poor, wayward American. No wonder he always introduced me as "different from the other Americans". He wanted to be seen as superior to those to whom he habitually ingratiated himself. Once Hasan finished with me, I was tossed aside like a hand-me-down rag doll to Rahim, Hasan's subordinate. I was useful to Rahim because foreign tourists would be more likely to trust him if he was seen with an American. Rahim and his cohorts could trick them out of even more money than usual because of my presence. Why had I not figured this out before?

Nightmares plagued me, death visions in my opium slumbers. It became a kind of "opium turningabout" as happened to Jack Kerouac in Tangiers with William Burroughs. Sometimes I became violently sick, vomiting and sweating and spitting mucus. My blood felt like ice water racing through my veins. I had a constant lump in my throat and a tight, twisting knot in my stomach. Two weeks after I began the opium binge I hurled myself on Rahim's bed in a spasm of despair. That night I asked him to refuse me if I asked for more opium.

It took two days to complete the withdrawals. The next morning I bathed my face in cold water. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and saw a stranger staring back. Soon my depression dissipated. I felt a mood of near ecstasy steal over me together with a morbid pride in having defeated the opium. I could once again face the streets.

Chapter 8

The last vestiges of winter disappeared. Spring was in full bloom. Everywhere trees were turning green. The weather was warming each day. I took to walking the streets again, but now alone. The bazaar shopkeepers who had been warm and friendly when I passed by their shops with Rahim now greeted me with suspicious indifference.

I believed myself watched wherever I went. Twice I thought I saw one of the street hawks tailing me. One day I befriended a group of Indians and spent the day visiting with them. They were on their way to Bandar Abbas, where they hoped to find work as laborers on a port construction project. When I returned to Rahim's room that night, he knew precisely where I had spent the day and what I had done.

A few days later, I hooked up with another street hawk whose English was excellent and who seemed friendly and honest enough to trust. We met a young Canadian couple looking for some turquoise jewelry. The street hawk said he could make a good deal for them. We went to their hotel room to do some negotiating. In the middle of the transaction Rahim and one of his friends stormed into the room, grabbed me, and rushed me back out to the street.

"David-jan, you are crazy! You are a fool! Don't you know that man? He is an enemy. He is SAVAK. Secret police. He makes it dangerous for you and me. You must never talk to him again. You must be careful."

A distance now grew between Rahim and me. We spoke very little in the evenings. His friends stopped coming to his room. My mere presence seemed to make him nervous. I was determined to find other living quarters.

A few days later while mailing some letters at the post office, I met an English woman in her twenties who was also looking for work. She was living with an American couple teaching English at Ferdowsi University. They lived in a house about eight blocks from Rahim's room and needed a roommate to share the rent. I told Rahim about the arrangement. He feigned disappointment.

"David-jan, you are leaving me for a woman?"

"No, it's not that way at all. I just need a place to write. Besides, these people might be able to help me find a teaching job."

"I am very sad. I think you will forget me. Please do not forget me."

"We'll still see each other. I'll be only a few blocks away. I'm sure you can come visit me any time you want."

"That would not be good. Too dangerous for me. And maybe your woman does not like me."

"She's not my woman. And why would it be dangerous for you?"

"Too many eyes in the streets. Too many suspicious people like your SAVAK friend. Goodbye, David-jan. And be kind to your woman."

The house was quite comfortable. It had four rooms in the upstairs section and a bedroom and kitchen in the basement area. It was set away from the main streets. There was a shower and an outhouse in the courtyard, where three grape trees were blooming. The house had been rented many times in the past by foreigners who left behind a legacy of furniture and books. There were now enough books to comprise a small library: books on the Farsi language, books on Eastern culture and history, literary works by Faulkner, Kipling, Dostoevski, Flaubert, and many others. There was even a small stash of marijuana.

I liked my new surroundings. There was peace and quiet for work and study. I was away from the streets. My new roommates were good companions. Bob and Mary, the American couple, and Felicity, the English woman, had been friends for a long time, having traveled together before coming to Iran. Bob was about thirty and had a long, dark beard and long hair that surrounded a bald spot in the middle of his pate. He spoke in a low monotone and had a dry, sarcastic wit. Mary was short and thin with a wide smile and large, wire-framed glasses. Felicity had an unassuming appearance, possessed a wry, intellectual humor, and kept to herself much of the time.

I took up the novel again. It had been over a month since last doing any serious work on it. The going was slow and tedious the first few days, but as I settled more comfortably into a routine each day, I found myself once again filled with determination. I felt strong again. I was eating good meals on a regular basis. The new environment helped tremendously to redevelop the concentration necessary to complete the work.

As the book progressed and my strength and confidence returned, I began walking the streets at night, stoned, as if in an attempt to create a balance of mind. During the day I was in a trance at the typewriter, living in a world of dream and memory. At night, when I smoked the marijuana, I removed my mind from the train of day-thought connected with my work and confronted the physical world of mystery and danger as it existed in the shadows and dark corners of Mashad. I had my own little ritual: wait until it was dark and the moon ascended the sky like a spirit out of the grave, open the gate, the barrier separating the outside world from my new haven of refuge, and journey, as if stepping through a time warp, into the darkness and mystery of the Muhammadan streets.

I exulted with a fresh certitude in my avidity for adventure and my newborn courage. Had not that demon Cowardice possessed me since my prison days? Through this ritual was I not in some strange way exorcising my curse? Was it not now a need to prove my courage? not to the others, but to myself? There seemed no end to my recklessness, my need to know death and danger, my curiosity. I believed I had been through enough of the circles of purgatory and hell to understand them as the inevitable paths upon which one must tread to ever stand a chance of discovering paradise. It remained now only to seek out the circles to their fullest. Perhaps it was no longer a matter of courage, but simply of what had to be done. Certainly, most of my conscious fear had subsided, particularly in the wake of my bout with the opium, from which I emerged victorious and possessed of an even greater Dantesque curiosity. I had been mastered by curiosity my whole life. I wanted, simply, to know, and it seemed to be this desire that had driven me away from my family and all that was once familiar, driven me onto a path I did not understand and which had led me to this remote part of the world.

As I disappeared into the darkness each night, shuffling through the grey dust into the gloom, a cool, ironic calm fell over me. I yielded to a feeling of serenity, the delight of which consisted of a mute perception of the broad current of life, endlessly flowing around and inside me. It was an eerie world I experienced during these nocturnal wanderings. The whole of Mashad seemed very quiet and sad. I slipped stealthily through the black, labyrinthine streets. The chill air seemed to hang on my limbs. Here and there shadows scurried along as if afraid to be seen. I heard muffled sounds of sin and love and death hidden in the dark areas where the night swallowed the participants. Groups of huddled, dark beggars shot out twig-like arms that clawed at my legs. Once a woman in the shadows slyly lifted her veil and showed me her face.

It seemed as if I were passing through a hidden world. Twice I knew I witnessed a beating, but these, too, were performed silently in the shadows. It was as if I were a ghost myself walking in a spectral world. Nothing had substance or solidity. All shapes and forms took on the aspect of moving shadows and apparitions. There was an evil in the air, a sinister truth wrapping itself like a net over the consecrated streets of the sacred city. When I returned in the mornings from my Faustian ramblings and met my roommates, I looked at them through the eyes of a man returning from the excessive remoteness of a dream. Before falling asleep, the last sounds I heard were the mournful wails of some lonely muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. The wild notes of that chant floating on the wind ran through my veins with the chilling creep of death.

A new friend came into my life. His name was Eugene Katz, a young Jewish poet from Philadelphia. We met through Bob and Mary. Eugene was studying Farsi and Sufi philosophy at the university. He shared a room not far from our house with an Afghan writer named Mahmood, who had spent time in an Afghan prison for articles he wrote criticizing his government.

Eugene began coming to the house in the late afternoons to visit. He was passionate about language, poetry, and Eastern culture. He took a great interest in the progress of my novel and gave me much-needed support. He often brought his own poetry and read it to me. We spoke at length about my involvement in the antiwar movement from within the military. He had been classified 4-F while at university, but was active in demonstrations against the war. Our discussions often revolved around the lives and works of Bertrand Russell, Socrates, Jesus, and Eugene Debs. His major at university was Islamic studies and the Farsi language. He had done his share of experimentation with hallucinogens in a search for spiritual fulfillment, but the need for more discipline and study brought him to Mashad.

Eugene was intrigued by my descriptions of the nocturnal streets of Mashad. He, too, had a morbid curiosity and wanted to experience my nightly ritual with me. I enjoyed his company very much and quickly consented to his request. The next night we went out. The ambience of the streets, the altered perception brought on by the marijuana, and the swift pace of our walking, all provoked an excited loquaciousness in Eugene. He began to talk about Islam and Sufism.

"Islam is really a fascinating religion, you know. So many Westerners have a misconception about it. It's not all fundamentalists who want to terrorize the world. One would have to be born in this land, in the desert, to fully comprehend it and believe in it. Of course, Christianity and Judaism were also born in the desert, but they've become complacent in modern times and have lost their roots. Islam has, too, to a certain extent, but it still thrives in the desert and the people here seem to have a closer connection to the mysteries of life and death and God. Islam relies strongly on nature and a god who moves all natural forces. It's a religion that seeks to foster brotherhood among all men. The shahadah is like some mystic mantra that has the power to unite all the lonely souls of these high plateaus and vast, empty, desert areas.

"This is what has attracted me to the study of Sufism. Like Christianity, Islam has split into numerous sects, and among these Sufism has proved itself the most rebellious and resilient. Throughout Islamic history, Sufism has given rise to the majority of Muslim mystics, ascetics, ecstatics, poets, Antinomians, dervishes, scholars, and saints. The Sufis have always been the learned misfits, the beatniks and hippies of their societies. They've been the vision-seekers and the teachers, and they've suffered the most persecution.

"The Sufis essentially have been the greatest missionaries of Islam. Their interpretation of the Koran and Muhammad's life has been responsible for the conversion of many parts of the world. In the early days of Islam they were the ones who protested the lack of equality accorded the conquered peoples of Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and North Africa. They clothed themselves in a simple, rough cloth called suf as a form of social protest against the scale of luxury lived by the conquering Arabs. They studied the sayings of Muhammad and the lives of the prophets and adopted ascetic practices. They laid the foundations of Islamic law and religious sciences. They preached equality to the masses and fought corruption.

"The Sufi name remained long after the suf disappeared. Their asceticism went with the Arabs to all the frontiers of the Arabian empire and eventually took root here in Khurasan. Around the third and fourth centuries great changes began to take place. The Sufis had always believed in the purgation of the soul by asceticism, but at some point these mystics discovered that they experienced emotional transports in which they reached a heightened awareness of God. These men lost all awareness of the self and claimed to be conscious of only the existence of God. They found this heightened state could be reached by continual recitations of poetry addressed to God, chanting of the Koran, and dancing to music. A theosophy was born of this ecstacism that saw the unity between divine and earthly love and intoxication.

"This was the start of a split between the Sufis and the religious-political leaders of the time. A popular ecstatic by the name of Hallaj was charged with blasphemy because he chose Jesus as his model prophet and taught that through supreme mystical experience a temporary union was possible with God because God manifested himself on earth in the form of his saints. Hallaj also was accused of claiming divinity for taking the name Ana al-Haqq, which means 'I am the Truth.' In other words, he took one of the names of God. He was crucified and the Sufis of Baghdad were persecuted. Today he's often seen by Sufis as a holy martyr.

"Many of the Sufis who had been sympathetic to Hallaj also ended up in Khurasan. These were the true rebels, the Antinomians. They were the first revolutionaries as they opposed the doctrines of orthodox Muslims, whose law they regarded as something close to bondage. Perhaps the most famous of the Khurasanis was a man called Abu Sa'id who lived in the eleventh century. He took Hallaj's doctrine of human divination one step further. He encouraged his Sufi followers to dance and feast, and worship God with hearts of joy. He was probably one of the first poets who extolled the virtues of wine and God, and some of his quatrains have been wrongly attributed to Omar Khayam.

"From Abu Sa'id's time onward Sufi poets have made great contributions to Islamic literature, particularly during the time of the Mongol invasions. The fables, allegories, quatrains, and reflections on Sufi thought as written by the poets have given a vision of beauty and consolation to millions whose lives might otherwise have seen no hope.

"The Sufis have contributed greatly to all aspects of Islamic life and history. The great Islamic theologian al-Ghazali was heavily influenced by Sufi thought. He retired from the world for eleven years to become a wandering Sufi and spent that time in meditation. He wrote a book that reinterpreted Islamic law and theology with a Sufi emphasis on direct religious experience, sincerity, and inner devotion. As a result of this book, the ulama, or religious leaders, and Sufis drew closer together. Although the two sides never fully recognized each other, there was at least an acceptance that they each had a role to play in the Islamic community.

"The last three or four hundred years haven't seen very much in the way of Sufi influence on the history of Islam, but it still remains an intellectual force worthy of study. More than anything, I'm attracted to the lyrical beauty of the Sufi rebelliousness, the questioning of authority and convention, the search for alternatives, the recognition of man's weakness. Sufism, and in a broader sense Islam itself, is a faith of resistance. It gives a voice to the persecuted, distraught, and downtrodden. It provides the underdogs of society with a language of protest. Even revolution!"

We had been walking for hours. I had been completely absorbed in Eugene's oration. He was out of breath, but his face emanated the passion of his thoughts. We walked a bit farther in silence.

"I got a bit carried away with that lecture, didn't I?" Eugene said suddenly.

"Not at all. I didn't realize there was so much to Sufism. I'd always thought of Sufis as mad philosophers and whirling dervishes. You've given me much to think about."

"Well, I thought because of your experiences as a war resister and your search as an artist you'd be interested. Who knows, maybe there's a bit of the Sufi in you. For one thing, you're a wanderer and a thinker, a resister. Which reminds me. You must meet my Afghan roommate. I've told him about you and he wants to meet you. You two have a lot in common. What do you say?"

"Sure. I'd like to meet him. Why don't you two come over tomorrow night? We can go on another of these nocturnal excursions. It's great for loosening the tongue. Look at the roll you've been on tonight."

Dawn was approaching. We were tired. Soon the mournful cries of the muezzin would fill the air and the streets would come to life.

Chapter 9

The next night Eugene showed up with Mahmood. Bob, Mary, and Felicity were gone for the evening. Eugene introduced me to Mahmood, who shook my hand firmly and held my eyes for a long moment, as if to probe my inner truths. He was a handsome man near thirty, with close-cropped hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. He was not in his native attire, but dressed in faded Western clothes. He exuded an air of strength, intelligence, and gentleness.

I led them into the front room and served some tea. Mahmood did not speak English, so Eugene acted as interpreter, speaking in Farsi to Mahmood.

"Mahmood is also a writer and interested in what writers have influenced you and how you came to Iran."

I told of the American writers I admired: Jack Kerouac, Henry Thoreau, Henry Miller, Thomas Wolfe, Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck. I talked about how it seemed there was a common thread among their works that attracted me, that is, the constant wandering in search of a higher ideal. I quoted a line from Thomas Wolfe to clarify this point: "Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement."

I told of meeting Hasan and Ataullah and how Ataullah in particular had impressed me with his honesty and goodness of heart. I told of my journey with Hasan and my need to escape the familiarity of the West in order to see and learn about different worlds and ways of life. Mahmood listened intently, nodding his head frequently at Eugene's summary of my explanations.

"What Eastern writers have you read?"

"I'm afraid I've read only a few works of Western writers' interpretations of the East. For example, Kipling's stories about India and Hesse's story about a secret society's journey to the East, as well as his story about the Buddha. Of course, I've also been strongly touched by Dostoevski and influenced by Conrad's sea stories that take place in the East. I'm completely ignorant about Islamic literature and thought, but I'm here to learn and I'd like to study anything you can recommend."

I asked Eugene if they would like to smoke a pipe from the house stash. Mahmood consented, so I brought out the pipe and some marijuana. Several moments passed silently while we passed the pipe around. Darkness settled over the room and I lit a kerosene lamp. Then Mahmood said something to Eugene.

"Mahmood said to thank you very much for your kind hospitality. He has many more questions to ask, but would like to ask them while walking if that's all right with you. Enclosed walls sometimes have ears and he, too, likes the open air."

We took to the streets, where we slipped into conversation about religion and politics. Mahmood asked if I considered myself a Christian. I answered that undoubtedly there was a strong Christian influence in my upbringing, but that I did not consider myself a practicing member of any faith. I said that I relied heavily on Christ's teachings when I applied for conscientious objector status in the military and when I took the stand at my court martial. I believed the words of Christ were not the sole property of Christian dogma, but were applicable to all peoples. I expressed the belief that Christianity in its organized form was responsible for more wars and suffering throughout history than for the number of souls saved and lives spared.

"How long did you spend in prison? Were you ever tortured?"

"I spent a year in prison. I was never physically tortured, although I was beaten a few times and spent some time in solitary confinement. I was placed in a kind of brainwashing program where military psychiatrists tried to change my thinking to conform to society's standards, but I think they succeeded only in making me more confused and further alienating me."

"And your family?"

"My father died when I was in prison. He was a patriot and a World War II hero. He disowned me completely and unfortunately we still weren't speaking when he died. My mother lives alone now in California. I have an older brother somewhere with whom I've lost contact."

Again we were silent for a long time as we walked. Mahmood appeared to be reflecting deeply on my answers, as if searching for an elusive link with which to tie together our separate but not unrelated existences. He still had not revealed anything about himself, but, as I had not spoken extensively about the private areas of my life to anyone in a long time, it was a relief to unburden myself. The fact that I was doing so through the filter of an interpreter in the dark streets of a country halfway around the world made the experience even more mysterious.

"If you don't believe in the greed, materialism, and militarism of the United States and the West, then do you consider yourself a Marxist, communist, or socialist?"

"Truthfully, I don't know enough about those ideologies to consider myself an adherent to any of them. From the little I do know, the ideal is attractive, that is, an equitable, fair, and just society in which all members share equally in the work and education and welfare of the society and the benefits as well. But my feeling is that man is basically easily tempted by greed and corrupted by power. I think conformity and complacency are just as dangerous. I suppose I still adhere to the individualistic thinking of the West, where you still have, to a certain degree, a choice as to the path you must pursue. In the end, if I have to categorize myself, I'd have to call myself simply a pacifist and a humanist, whatever that means. But if, in categorizing myself as such, I'm then obligated to follow a strict set of criteria, then I'd probably be a miserable failure. I'm suspicious of all organizations, all groups and group behavior. Perhaps in the end I'm just a romantic anarchist."

Mahmood's lips peeled back in a grin, which grew into a chuckle, then an extended belly laugh. It was the first time Mahmood had openly displayed emotion of any kind. His laughter was infectious and the three of us bent over double with loud bursts of giggling that echoed through the silence of the night. Mahmood clapped me on the back several times. It seemed I had unknowingly forged a bond between us.

When we had recovered from our fit, he spoke to Eugene.

"Mahmood thinks you're a Muslim and revolutionary at heart. He says you're a jihad warrior, but you don't know it yet."

"What does he mean by that?"

Mahmood gave a lengthy explanation to Eugene.

"This is a bit difficult for me to interpret, but I think I can give you a rough summary. Mahmood says that one of the characteristics of Islam is that it implants in its followers a feeling of protest, of struggle, and of the rejection of undesirable situations. This is the meaning of jihad, the bidding to do good and the forbidding of evil. If a ruling system is undesirable and unjust, you must not submit or acquiesce to it. You must reject and refuse to put up with the system, and replace it with the ideal system you believe in.

"Christianity is based on submission and acquiescence. It says the sword and war have no place in religion. It says religion speaks the word of peace and that you must offer your right cheek when your left cheek is struck. Islam has no such logic. Islam says the best jihad is to speak of justice before a despotic ruler. The supreme form of struggle is when a man stands before an oppressive ruler and speaks of justice. This you have done. It's why Mahmood says you're a Muslim at heart. It's because you've resisted an unjust ruler and held to your ideals."

For the remainder of our time together that night Mahmood theorized and philosophized on Islamic teachings and the meaning of jihad. Eugene had a difficult time in keeping up, but managed to summarize the main points of Mahmood's ideas. What remained in my mind afterward was that there seemed to be two ways to view Islam. Islam had a connection with revolution. The seeds of revolution were to be found in the teachings of Islam, but the question facing revolutionary Muslims was whether the future path should be Islamic revolution or revolutionary Islam.

This on the surface seemed a simple matter of playing with words, but Mahmood explained it as the difference between means and ends. To him, Islamic revolution meant the way whose aim was Islam and Islamic values. In this path the struggle was not the end, but the means. Revolutionary Islam held that revolution and the fight was the aim, and Islam the means for the struggle. Because of this difference in approach, there were bound to be conflicts and contradictions in Islamic history, society, and the verses of the Koran itself.

It was this contradiction that Mahmood found intellectually stimulating about Islam. He believed a war of contraries was always present in the world. Every single thing in nature and history necessarily nurtured its own negating factor within itself. As the opposing factors grew, so grew the struggle between the two, which would end with the victory of one, a new order, and the appearance of a new synthesis. Correct behavior meant always becoming the antithesis, rejecting everything about the current situation. Everything was an ongoing conflict, which resulted in progress and in the end would lead to perfection. The struggle would never cease until perfection was achieved. At every moment, whatever was engaged in the struggle was legitimate in the eyes of Islam.

Mahmood stressed that this struggle was not confined to the battlefield. He wanted to make sure I understood his choice of words were metaphorical and that his use of words such as "conflict," "battle," "victory," and "struggle" applied equally to the concepts of justice and freedom, compassion and love, and political, economic, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual maturity.

Chapter 10

Mahmood's descriptions of Islam as a revolutionary force remained with me throughout the following day. I could not get his words out of my head. He had called me a Muslim at heart, a jihad warrior. Had I really been a revolutionary during my conscientious objector days? or simply a cowardly poltroon as my father believed and the psychiatrists tried so hard to pound into me? What role had I really played?

Like a specter from the past, that distant, eighteen-year-old stranger crept into my mind to haunt me. There I was again, a country bumpkin, bored with the mundane life of a small, California logging town, faced with a low number in the draft lottery and the certainty of being drafted soon, joining the Air Force under the impression I would never have to carry a weapon. I knew I had made a mistake the day I arrived with a faceless swarm of other confused enlistees at Lackland Air Base outside San Antonio, Texas. Somehow I survived the grueling weeks of basic training: the incessant screaming of the drill instructors, the stripping of each soldier's individuality, the hours of close order drill, the training in the use of weapons, the early morning wake-ups, the physical conditioning in the desert heat, the barracks inspections, the scrubbing of toilets and floors on our hands and knees, the tasteless food in the chow halls, the loneliness, the classrooms where the soldiers were inculcated into obedience and conformity, the fights between blacks and whites, the other young men from all parts of the country, each with his own particular prejudices and dialect and manners. I added fifteen pounds to my skinny frame. And I contracted pyorrhea of the gums.

It was strange that something like pyorrhea would have such a strong influence on the course my life took. If it had not been for that bloody, pillow-stained condition, I no doubt would have passed through the Air Force experience like any other automaton on the American merry-go-round. I was on the verge of being accepted into a special training program where volunteers were placed under simulated conditions that American astronauts experienced in space. The volunteers were tested for stress, blood and body chemistry and mental changes, and many other things. The gist of the program was that the volunteers would, after six months of testing, have their choice of what career field to enter, what locations they wanted for future assignments, and a chance for fast promotion. All this disappeared when the problem with my gums was discovered. On my last day of basic training I was given my assignment: I would be trained as a military policeman.

While the majority of soldiers returned home on leave and reported to other bases for their technical training after basic training, the others chosen to be military police (the most despicable and lowest career field in the Air Force) and I had to remain at Lackland for ten more weeks of specialized training. The hand of irony had played a cruel trick. I had joined the Air Force thinking I would never have to carry a weapon, but now I was to be trained in the art of combat and the use of deadly weapons. I knew I could never kill another human being. I lacked the courage even to use my fists to defend myself. The very thought of violence made me sick to my stomach.

I passed through my training without incident. But during those days of martial arts training, war games, K.P., instructions in the stripping, cleaning, loading, firing, and handling of M-16 rifles, .38 pistols, hand grenades, bayonets, and knives, the classes on crowd dispersal, first aid, attack upon and retreat from an enemy, arrest and seizure, drugs, communism, terrorist activities, patriotism, military police history, and the propaganda the instructors used to inculcate the soldiers into submission and obedience, there grew within my heart an inchoate attitude of rebelliousness. It lay dormant, simmering below the surface, waiting silently for the right moment to emerge from its hiding.

I was sent to Beale Air Base in the Yuba City-Marysville area near Sacramento, California. I was put on the flight line as a security guard for B-52 bombers that looked like gigantic prehistoric birds of prey. Thus began my days of walking in lonely circles on the flight line in the rain and heat, thinking, changing, growing, wondering what the purpose of my life was, what everything was all about. Eventually, I bought a car and started returning to Arcata on my rare days off, a drive of seven or eight hours from the Yuba City-Marysville wasteland. In doing this I was already committing a military crime by going beyond the 250-mile limit placed on leaves taken by members of Strategic Air Command bases, but I was so lonely and frustrated I went anyway and was usually drunk for two days before driving like a maniac to get back to the base on time and not be AWOL from my next shift.

During this time, I was thinking about Vietnam for the first time and having a gut feeling that the war was wrong. Although we were not allowed to take anything other than our guns and military equipment on the line, I started smuggling my radio and earphones and was listening for the first time to the words of popular songs instead of just the melodies -- songs by Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and all the others who were protesting the war. I was also reading the underground newspapers that were finding their way on base, the papers with all the antiwar, antigovernment stories about the atrocities committed in Vietnam, the Kent State shootings, the shooting of Ralph Bunch at the Presidio, and the hysteria running rampant on the campuses.

All the little irritating items of military brainwashing and propaganda were gradually building up inside of me. Things I had taken for granted before now made me bristle. There was the time three of us guards were called before the squadron sergeant after roll and he read us our rights and charged each of us with defecation on duty.

"What's defecation, Sarge?" I said.

"It's taking a shit inside the marked line you are NOT supposed to enter, only guard, and you know that only the flight crew are allowed inside that line, and last night one of you smartasses took a FUCKING SHIT inside that line and right under the cockpit -- that's what DEFECATION means!" the sergeant screamed.

"You've got to be shitting me," I said.

The sergeant did not think my remark was funny. There on the table as exhibit A for the prosecution was the big, black turd, hard as a rock, found the day before under the cockpit of the bomber I walked around for half my shift before changing to another place to guard. They were going to court-martial one of the three of us who was stationed on that post during the night, and actually use the turd as evidence.

It was the final straw in realizing that military life was not for me. From that day on I could not keep my mouth shut in pointing out the inconsistencies and lies whenever I spotted them. I started missing haircuts and was constantly reprimanded for my shoddy appearance during inspections. I started losing days off and was forced to undergo crowd control practice in case we were called upon, like the National Guard, to break up a civilian demonstration. I knew my sympathies would be with the demonstrators. I knew that if there was an enemy, it was the military. If the situation ever really came up, I would cast aside my weapons and join the other side.

It was just a matter of time before my order to Southeast Asia came through, which it did, and I was given thirty days leave before having to report first to a base in Texas for a month of intensive war training and later to a base in northern Thailand near the Cambodian border. This was shortly after Nixon illegally escalated the war into Cambodia, where B-52 bombers were dropping tons of napalm. When I left Beale Air Base for the start of my thirty-day leave, I knew I would never make it to Texas.

Two weeks later, I was in a car accident. I was unhurt, but it was like a sign from the heavens. Here was a chance to try to get out of the Air Force by faking a back and neck injury. The next day I was at the doctor's office complaining of pains from the accident, whiplash that could not be detected on the x-rays. I left the office wearing a neck brace and armed with a letter from the doctor recommending I be let out of the service.

I hitchhiked back to Beale Air Base, told the clerks I had been in an accident, and was assigned to the transient barracks. I started going to the base hospital every day, but the military doctors seemed to know I was just trying to shirk my duties. I kept insisting the whiplash was the real thing. The doctors would give me a bottle of darvon pills and send me back to the barracks, hoping I would not come back the next day.

This went on for three weeks. It seemed no one else on base was aware that I was back and not in Texas. I was content to wait for something to happen, but nothing did. Then one hot August day I ran into Terry Yavitz, one of the other security policemen I knew from a distance. We had rarely spoken to each other before, but when he asked me what I was doing on base I was overjoyed to be noticed by someone. He seemed an understanding soul. He asked if I would like to smoke some pot. Off we went for a drive in his VW van, and there I was, stoned for the first time, loving the feeling as we parked and watched the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. I confessed everything right there, half expecting him to turn me in to the legal department. He surprised me by saying that he was involved in the underground effort against the war and was one of the writers for an antiwar newspaper being printed secretly off base in Yuba City.

In the next few days, I found myself a member of a group of five short-haired hippies who were stationed at Beale, each in his last few months of military service, each radically opposed to the war and actively involved in writing for the off-base newspaper and spreading antiwar propaganda around the base. Two of the members were the base photographers and also working for the base newspaper. As such, they had access to classified information and used this information in many of the stories that appeared in the off-base publication.

Every night we met in the photographers' barracks room to smoke pot, listen to music, talk about revolution, and discuss my case and what should be done about it. Their room was a veritable den of iniquity with its black lights, strobe lights, and posters of Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan plastered on the walls along with the black light posters that glowed surrealistically in the dark when only the black light was on. Scattered about were all sorts of hip magazines and newspapers and books I had never read before. Piled high next to the stereo were dozens of rock and roll records with anti-establishment lyrics. Next to the records was an assortment of pot-smoking paraphernalia. We formed in this room a kind of conspiracy. It was exciting to be a member of a bona fide "movement," a very important member at that, being the first war resister they had known.

We spent endless hours discussing pacifism and Gandhi and Thoreau and Tolstoy, all people I had heard of before but knew little about. Soon it was apparent that I had to make a "statement" because it would not be long before the base clerks discovered I had not carried out my order. It was decided I should go to the base legal department to find out what my rights were and what I had to do to file for conscientious objector status.

The first lawyer I talked to was a true military hard-ass who told me I was crazy and should go immediately to see my commanding officer. He pointed out all the negative aspects of what I was considering. If I did not recant my current position, there was a strong likelihood of being pinned with a five-year sentence, a dishonorable discharge, and a life of shame and hardship. I left the lawyer's office depressed and wondering what to do next. Then I met another former security guard whom everyone thought was just a fat retard who could not cut it in the military. I had always thought of him as a sensitive young man trying to live his life as quietly as he could. He told me he was now off the flight line and happy to be doing menial chores and not carrying any weapons. I told him my story. He knew another lawyer who had once picked him up hitchhiking, talked to him like a human being, and treated him as an equal. He advised me to go see this other lawyer, Jerry Turnbull.

I did the next day. Jerry took an immediate interest in my case. He was relaxed, confident, friendly, and encouraging. He told me that he, too, was an antiwar man and had spent eight years of school studying to become a lawyer. When he was drafted, he considered going to Canada, but decided he could work better within the system rather than throw away his career and eight years of schooling. He was very professional about finding out all the details of when I had returned to the base, what I had been doing, what I had said to the clerks, the security police, and the other lawyer. He accepted my case and said it was the most important one he had ever had.

We set the wheels in motion for applying for conscientious objector status. Every day we had meetings in which he would counsel me on how to answer the questions that would be asked at various interviews with officers and chaplains who would judge whether or not my application and beliefs were sincere. It was all very serious stuff. I felt I was in over my head intellectually, but Jerry gave me confidence. Most of these interviews went smoothly.

About a month after I returned to the base, I was summoned to appear in my commanding officer's office. Two other high-ranking officers were present as witnesses. Lieutenant Colonel Arnold was seething, but controlled. At first, his questions were polite, almost sympathetic, but as I continued to give vague answers in the manner Jerry had counselled me to do, Lieutenant Colonel Arnold became more and more frustrated and began to leer at me. For the first time in my life, I was facing the hostility of a man who held my fate in his hands.

Lieutenant Colonel Arnold's face turned red. In a fit of controlled rage, he stood over me and bellowed, "Airman, if you don't straighten up and straighten up fast, I'm going to send you to prison for five years. I'll make an example of you to show what a coward and a communist and a faggot and a failure look like and how they are treated in this man's Air Force. I insist you tell me everything. Why have you changed so suddenly? Who are the people that have influenced you? Where do they live? Are you part of some organization? Are you connected with this filthy communist paper spreading propaganda around this base? I demand some answers to these questions and I demand them now!"

I felt like the enemy I was, but I just sat there not saying anything, tears coming to my eyes. Lieutenant Colonel Arnold relaxed a bit, gaining pleasure from seeing my will weakening already. He decided to give me one more chance. I was to go back to the barracks, get my thoughts and emotions in order, and return to his office the following morning, at which time I would be given the final official order to go to Southeast Asia.

I went straight to Jerry's office, scared and confused. He reassured me everything would be all right and that the next day it was imperative I not say a direct no, but continue to give vague responses to the order I would be given.

The next day, there were three more witnesses and a secretary to record every word spoken. When given the order, I replied, "I don't feel I'm mentally or physically capable of going."

Lieutenant Colonel Arnold said, "Boy, I'm going to court-martial your ass. You're going to regret this for the rest of your life. You're going to wish you never laid eyes on me you sniffly little coward."

I was spared having to endure pretrial confinement. I had to work every day mowing lawns, emptying garbage cans, cleaning toilets, and other chores around the lieutenant colonel's office until the court martial some three or four weeks away. Jerry continued to work hard on my case and we met several times a week to discuss strategy for the court martial.

One night I was summoned to general quarters. There was a phone call from my father. He had finally found out about the trouble I was in and was understandably upset. Our conversation involved such things as his telling me sometimes there were things we had to do in our lives that we did not like, but it was our duty and war was a part of this. He told me about his having to fight in Germany and not liking it, but doing it had been part of his patriotic duty. I said there was no relationship between World War II and Vietnam, and that the present war was unjust and I had no reason to hate the Vietnamese and besides the American government was corrupt and should not be in Vietnam and the war there had nothing to do with "protecting democracy" or any of the other lies the government was feeding us.

This was just a repetition of what I had read in the underground newspapers or heard in the pot-smoking sessions in the photographers' room. I was not sure myself of what I was saying. I was not articulate enough to convince anyone of what was, in reality, a gut feeling. A headache pounded at my temples. The conversation was heading nowhere.

There was a long silence. I could hear my father's labored breathing. Then he sighed and said, "David, if you don't rectify this horrible situation, you'll be given a prison sentence that'll brand you an ex-con and a coward for the rest of your life. You won't be able to vote, hold a public office, or work for any government agency. For that matter, just who the hell is going to want to hire a person without integrity or personal pride? You may think that you've lived for a long time, but believe me you haven't even started your life. I hate to see you throw it away. But that's exactly what you'll be doing if you follow the course you're on now.

"If you go to your commanding officer now and try to correct your mistake, you may get off rather easily, but if you don't you'll be lost forever and this is not just an old square talking, either. These are facts and I don't think you're so stupid that you can't understand them. God help you if you can't. You have an awful lot to lose and nothing to gain by your actions. Your mother, your brother, all your friends, and I will do everything we can to help if you change your mind. If you don't, then I guess you won't have much of anything or anyone. You'll no longer be a part of this family."

I screamed into the receiver, "Fuck you, Dad! Fuck you and everyone who agrees with you!" I slammed the receiver down. Those were the last words my father and I ever spoke to each other.

The day of the court martial finally came: October 6, 1970. The military courtroom was grey and solemn. The sun outside was shining brightly on the parched Sacramento Valley landscape where I had spent so many days and nights walking around B-52 bombers before finally making my decision. A parade of faceless men in nondescript military dress took the stand, pointing their accusing fingers at me as I sat next to Jerry at the wooden table facing the military judge. The judge sat in calm repose, weighing the facts of the case as they were presented to him. Meaningless military words filled the courtroom.

"...willful disobedience to a direct, lawful order...."

"The accused was handed his order at 13:00 hours on 30 June 1970, but failed to report to...."

"And so Your Honor the full sentence of five years at hard labor is requested to make a lasting example to the...."

Finally, I was called to the stand. The prosecuting attorney had no questions, the case, in his mind, already wrapped up. Jerry came forward to ask the questions we had rehearsed many times. The words flowed from my mouth in a mechanical stream, quotations from famous pacifists and resisters to the procession of history's wars: Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Eugene Debs. As I spoke, I wondered if I really believed what I was saying. The ideals were too far above me. Anyone who knew me in high school would have scoffed and laughed if they heard me quote Eugene Debs at his own trial:

"Gentlemen of the Jury, I am accused of having obstructed the war, of being unpatriotic. I object to that accusation. It is not true. I believe in patriotism. I have never uttered a word against the flag. I love the flag as a symbol of freedom.

"I believe, however, in a wider patriotism. Thomas Paine said, 'My country is the world. To do good is my religion.' That is the sort of patriotism I believe in. I am an Internationalist. I believe that nations have been pitted against nations long enough in hatred, in strife, in warfare. I believe there ought to be a bond of unity between all these nations. I believe the human race consists of one great family. I love the people of this country, but I don't hate a human being because he happens to be born in some other country. Why should I? Like myself, he is the image of his Creator. I would infinitely rather serve him and love him than to hate him and kill him."

When finished, I rose from the stand feeling dizzy. The courtroom recessed for the judge to come to a decision. An hour later he emerged from a grey and dingy room to call me before him. I was found not guilty of the original charge of willful disobedience to a direct lawful order, but guilty of two lesser charges of negligent disobedience to lawful orders. In essence, a whole day of deliberation had boiled down to the way I answered Lieutenant Colonel Arnold's final order to go to Southeast Asia. By following Jerry's counsel, we won something of a victory and saved perhaps four years of my life. There was, however, little consolation other than achieving a moral victory. I still had to spend a year of hard labor at the 2230th Rehabilitation Camp in Denver, Colorado.

A military policeman placed handcuffs around my wrists and led me to a patrol car waiting to take me to the base prison. Jerry followed me to the patrol car.

I forced a smile and said, "It could've been worse."

Jerry shook my hand. "You were very brave on the stand. I was proud of you."

I got into the patrol car. The sun was resting on the rim of horizon. A cloud of dust rose behind the car as it lurched toward the prison. I craned my neck for a final look and saw Jerry grow smaller through a brown haze until he was a tiny speck in the distance. Then I turned around to face the future.

*****

The memory dissipated and I was left with myself again. I knew no more now than I had known then as an inexperienced and naive eighteen-year-old. Had I truly been branded a failure, a communist, a coward, a good-for-nothing, a shameless poltroon? Had I been brave, as Jerry said? Had I been a revolutionary, a kind of jihad warrior? Did it really matter? It had happened. That was all. It was over, a part of the past. That had been a different person. Or had it? Was I not now, as I often contemplated, the composite of all I had seen, thought, and experienced in the past?

All I could truly say was that I still had no concrete answers. Like many members of my generation, I had been a confused young man rebelling against things I did not understand, swept along in a tide of what we all thought was important revolutionary stuff. It was an exciting time, but I wondered about the zeal with which we pursued our revolution. In my own case, I could not honestly say I had felt a commitment to a movement of any kind. I merely aped the popular slogans and anti-authority behavior of the time. I did not purposely try to be a martyr. Perhaps I had just been a spoiled, middle-class kid selfishly going to extremes to lash out against the unfairness of life. In my naivete and simple, idealistic reasoning there were ample symbols of this unfairness to lash out against: my father, big business, the military, the prison authorities. It had at one point seemed just a game, this rebelling against anything and everything. One thing was certain: I had been a willing player.

Tired from working on the book and the excursion into the past, I went to bed that night with a head full of tangled thoughts.
Chapter 11

On subsequent nights, Mahmood began telling Eugene and me about the history and activities of the underground movement in Iran. It seemed there were two main groups, each split into two factions. These two groups were not unified and espoused differing ideologies that were a confusing blend of revolutionary Marxism and conservative Islamic fundamentalism. One group was known as the Mojahedin, or the Organization of the People's Fighters. They advocated the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the instillation of a more just society based on a mixture of Islamic and socialist-Marxist principles. The other group was called the Fedayi, or the Iranian People's Fedayeen Guerillas. They were avowedly Marxist-Leninist and secular.

According to Mahmood, the origins of the guerrilla movement began in 1963, when the Pahlavi regime used massive force and violence to put down peaceful demonstrations organized by the opposition. SAVAK infiltrated and virtually eliminated the underground networks of the Tudeh, or Communists, and the National Front. The younger members of the new opposition began to question the traditional methods of resistance -- election boycotts, general strikes, and street demonstrations. In the next few years, small secret discussion groups organized by militant university students cropped up in the main universities. These groups met to explore new methods of resistance and discuss the experiences of China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Algeria.

The Fedayi, which formally adopted its name in 1971, was formed from three separate groups that began meeting in the mid-1960s. One group was organized by five students from Tehran, another by two students from Mashad, and the third by a group of intellectuals in Tabriz. The three groups merged in 1970 and negotiated a common strategy that was critical of the Tudeh and National Front. Once their strategy was fixed, they prepared for armed struggle.

Their first major decision was to send a team to the forested mountains of Gilan, an area near the Caspian Sea whose peasantry had a history of radicalism, and lay the groundwork for future operations. In early February 1971 two of the Fedayi sympathizers were arrested by local police in the town of Siakal. A few days later several of the members attacked the police post, killing three police. They escaped into the mountains. When news of the attack reached Tehran, the Shah sent a force of army commandos and SAVAK agents on a massive manhunt that lasted three weeks and resulted in the deaths of thirty soldiers and two guerrillas. The other guerrillas were captured and later executed, but in showing that a determined group of revolutionaries could shake up the regime a great propaganda success was achieved. Mahmood said that February eighth, the day of the Siakal incident, was now noted as the birth of the Iranian guerrilla movement.

Although the Shah unleashed a series of measures designed to combat any further growth of opposition, including SAVAK's arresting and killing most of the founding members of the Fedayi, some survived to continue the struggle. By 1975 it seemed the regime and the Fedayi were at a stalemate. At that time the Fedayi split into two factions. The majority faction wanted to continue the armed struggle, which it hoped would spark a mass uprising. The minority faction advocated increased political activity, establishing closer ties with the Tudeh Party, and an end to armed confrontation. This splinter group was now known as the Fedayi Monsheb. Although he did not state it directly, I had the feeling Mahmood supported this group.

The Mojahedin also had its origins in the early 1960s. The Fedayi developed mainly out of the Tudeh and Marxist wing of the National Front, but the Mojahedin developed from the religious wing of the National Front, especially from The Liberation Movement of Iran. Their intention was to break the clerical monopoly over religion and develop a new Islam that would synthesize features of European socialism with the ideals of early Iranian Shi'ism, and the advantages of industrial technology with the cultural values of their own traditional society. They aimed at formulating a lay-dominated religion that would be acceptable both to the anti-Shah clergy and to the modern-educated middle class and intelligentsia.

The Mojahedin believed that true Shi'ism stood against not only despotism, but also against capitalism, imperialism, and conservative clericalism. They believed it was the duty of all Muslims to create a classless society. The Mojahedin also had a history of violence that included bank robberies, bombing of police stations and other public buildings, and the assassination of SAVAK officials and persons symbolizing foreign domination.

In 1975, the Mojahedin had split into two factions. The Tehran members had reached the conclusion that Marxism, not Islam, was the true revolutionary philosophy. They thought Islam appealed mainly to the middle class, whereas Marxism was the salvation of the working class. Members in the provinces remained Islamic and refused to give up the Mojahedin name.

All four of the guerrilla groups -- the Fedayi, the Fedayi Monsheb, the Islamic Mojahedin, and the Marxist Mojahedin \-- published underground journals, recruited members from the universities, and sent organizers into factories. There were several differences among the groups that prevented any merging, but they shared the common goal of overthrowing the Pahlavi regime. Mahmood said that SAVAK killed and tortured both Muslims and Marxists. Consequently, there was organic unity among the revolutionaries. Marxism and Islam were not identical, but Islam was closer to Marxism than to Pahlavism. Both Islam and Marxism fought against injustice and oppression. Both inspired martyrdom, struggle, and self-sacrifice. Both had the same enemy.

During these nightly lectures, Mahmood also explained bits and pieces of his own past. He had been born of peasant stock in Paghman province, attended elementary school, and from there higher school that led eventually into Kabul University, where he studied law. He joined a Marxist study group, then became a member of the Youth League section of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. He participated in demonstrations in support of workers' strikes in 1968 in which the main issues were wages, working conditions, and vacations.

During this time, he was arrested for political activity and spent six months in jail. He dated his political awareness back to October 1965 when a demonstration against the government of Dr. Mohammed Yusouf, who had been appointed prime minister by King Zahir, was fired on by Afghan troops, killing three demonstrators and wounding many others. When I mentioned the horrors of the Kent State shootings in the U.S., Mahmood nodded his head solemnly, then continued his lecture.

He said in those days he was a Marxist and a follower of Hafizullah Amin, who was a powerful member of the People's Party. He saw in Amin a strong figure who was thought capable of organizing a diverse coalition of workers, peasants, progressive intellectuals, artisans, and rural and urban businessmen into a single front united against the monarchy. Mahmood admitted he was politically naive at the time. He said that in reality Afghanistan, outside of Kabul, was too illiterate and backward for its disparate groups to rally under a single banner. Mahmood repeated Marx's 1857 quote that "Afghanistan is a mere poetical term for various tribes and states" and said it was still applicable to today's Afghanistan.

He soon became disillusioned with Amin, who proved to be too much of a militant and hardliner for Mahmood's taste. Amin began to advocate an immediate conversion to socialism. Mahmood instead saw revolution for Afghanistan as a road toward socialism that ran through stages, each of which had to be fully explored before the question of a complete socialist state could be confronted. Moving directly into a socialist state imposed by a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat would be dangerous and reckless. The country was still historically and economically backward. It had to be guided slowly and carefully, through experimental democratic changes, from its feudal past.

Mahmood's support for Amin was severed when it came to light that Amin was merely a Marxist in disguise. In reality, Amin was a tool of the CIA and, while in the U.S. in the early 1960s on a scholarship and acting as head of the Afghan Students Association, was heavily involved in recruiting Afghan students to work for the CIA once they returned to Afghanistan and obtained important positions.

Shortly after Amin returned to Afghanistan, a split developed in the Party. On one side was Amin's following that called for immediate socialism. The other side was comprised of the followers of Babrak Karmal, one of the original founders of the Party, who advocated a revolution more in keeping with Mahmood's line of thinking. Mahmood's support shifted to Karmal's side, although his true hero remained the novelist and poet Noor Mohammad Taraki, who, in those days, was caught in the middle of the split.

Taraki was a Pushtun and self-educated. Although he had not gone on to higher school, he worked as a clerk in Bombay and took part in student affairs in the 1950s upon his return to Kabul. He edited various magazines that espoused a leftist point of view and wrote novels depicting the oppression of Afghan peasants and workers. His authority as a spokesman for the left led him to be elected as the original leader of the Party when it was formed in 1965. Mahmood was distressed that Amin had become a close collaborator of Taraki and seemed to exercise a lot of influence over him, although Taraki himself had a great amount of respect among the Afghan masses. The split in the Party did much damage to the revolutionary movement in Afghanistan, and was the main reason Mahmood was now in Iran. He had been afraid of Amin's power and the potential for a purge in the inner-party struggle. There were signs, however, of recent healing in the split, and Mahmood was optimistic about returning to a united party that could continue its struggle to overthrow Daoud, who had overthrown King Zahir in 1973.

At that point, Mahmood discarded his strict Marxist past and recognized Islam as the binding factor among the many Afghan tribes. He thought an Islamic state governed by the clergy would be even more disastrous than a state established under Marxist principles. He leaned more toward a coalition of the secular and non-secular, something similar to the Marxist Mojahedin in Iran. That was why he was in Mashad: to learn as much as he could about the Iranian underground movement and how it could be adapted to his own country. Mahmood said nothing about where the money for his living expenses came from. I did not ask, but assumed he had some supporters and was living off their contributions.

After these long homilies, Mahmood would abruptly change the topic and ask me probing questions about the oppressed in the U.S. He was particularly interested in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the black guerrilla organizations of that time. He was familiar with the names of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party, and the boxer Mohammed Ali. I was amazed that, despite Mahmood's intellectualism, his questions to me were distinctly naive. He often asked me if I knew these men and if so what their personalities were like, as if I were indeed a famous revolutionary myself and on speaking terms with all these famous names.

He discounted as unnecessary modesty my protestations that I did not know these men personally and knew little about their lives. He pressed me for details about those I had known in the underground movement. I responded by telling him about the blacks I knew superficially in the military and in prison. The story about Hank, the black man I became friends with during the initial stage of my imprisonment, seemed particularly intriguing to Mahmood.

Hank was thrown in jail a few days after I was. One Sunday Terry Yavitz visited me and gave me two tabs of mescaline, which I later shared with Hank. We spent the rest of the day talking, laughing, discussing revolution, and watching the jail pulsate and change colors. He told me he was a member of the Black Panthers and had joined the service to get trained in the use of sophisticated weapons. He planned to get kicked out of the service and go back to his community to train other Black Panthers in guerrilla warfare in preparation for the violent revolution that he believed was coming between whites and blacks across the nation. Soon, with tears streaming down his cheeks in a mescaline-induced display of emotion, he said, "You a good man, David, and I have good feelings toward you, man, but the day's gonna come when we gonna blow all you mothafuckin' white boys away, even you, you see, cause it's the only way we blacks will achieve total freedom."

Hank scared me with his talk and the propaganda newspapers he showed me that his friends smuggled in to him. He seemed to trust me, however, and often lectured me about the black revolution. In the evenings we smoked pot that was smuggled in with the underground papers. Those smoking sessions were carried on in the back cell, where we could blow the smoke through a barred window. We became too blatant in our behavior, and one night the fire alarm went off and all six of us prisoners were hustled outside in what we were told was a fire drill. We stayed outside for about fifteen minutes before being led back in the cell block. The first thing I noticed was the film capsule that we had stored the pot in was sitting on a window ledge in the back cell. We had completely forgotten about it. I picked it up and handed it to Hank, who stashed it in his locker. A minute later I noticed blue ink all over my hands. I went to the wash basin to wash it off and noticed Hank had the ink on his hands, too.

At that moment, the prison doors shot open and ten guards, Central Intelligence Division agents, and the prison warden rushed inside shouting orders. Hank and I were separated from the others. The guards spread-eagled Hank against the wall and frisked him. He was screaming obscenities. One of the guards cracked him over the head with the butt of an M-16. Hank slumped to the floor and was dragged into one of the solitary confinement cells.

I was spread-eagled and told if I did not keep quiet I would suffer the same treatment. The guards found the capsule of pot in Hank's locker. I was thrown into another confinement cell next to Hank's. Through the walls I could hear him singing out the words to a Richie Havens song: "Freedom, freedom. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." He kept it up far into the night.

We were stuck in those cells for three days. Twice a day we were taken out for interrogation sessions, but neither of us said a word other than we wanted to see Jerry, our lawyer. Finally, Jerry showed up and it took him about two minutes to figure out that the guards and CID agents had bungled their bust. They had not caught us with any pot in our possession. The blue ink on our hands was just circumstantial evidence. Jerry went to the window ledge where the pot was found and sprinkled with some kind of invisible fingerprinting powder. Jerry ran a finger across the window ledge and got the same blue ink on his finger. All Hank and I had to have done was accidentally touch the window ledge to get the stuff on our hands. In showing this, Jerry blew a hole in the case against Hank and me. We were innocent of any charge. The story spread throughout the base about the keystone cops who busted their own prisoners inside their own jail and messed up the job so badly that they could not prosecute. After that the prison guards hated us even worse and treated us badly. We were kept in solitary for two more weeks. One day the guards took Hank away. I never saw him again. A few days later I was transferred to the jail in Colorado.

This story amused Mahmood greatly. He asked me to repeat it on two or three occasions near the end of our long walks. It seemed to remind him of similar escapades he had had in prison with bungling Afghan guards. As we approached my place in the early hours of the mornings, he would grin, clap my back, and shake my hand heartily before he and Eugene disappeared into the darkness.

Each day as I sat down to write, my thoughts would return to the nights just spent with Mahmood and Eugene. Mahmood's talk of revolution, Marxism, communism, socialism, and Islam left me tired and confused. I had only a rudimentary understanding of these ideologies and the differences among them. I knew only that the greed of American capitalism repulsed me and that I was also against any form of totalitarianism.

I thought back to my time in Paris when George Tingley loaned me two Theodore Dreiser books, An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie. Reading those books had helped in approaching my own book. There was a parallel theme in Dreiser's work and what I was attempting: the dubiousness of the American experience, the so-called American Dream of forever chasing material gain and worldly desire at the expense of spiritual fulfillment. The thought often came to me that perhaps American ideas of life were so perverted the American child was inevitably doomed. I remembered one friend, a Vietnam veteran who lost his mind and was thrown in a mental institute. I believed that in his eyes I had seen the doom of a country whose inventive technology had cured many of the world's diseases, yet whose mental hospitals overflowed with thousands whose minds were filled with the Kafka-confusion of a world and pace of life they did not understand. Why was it Americans seemed to think themselves the chosen people when they were closer to a bunch of walking computers ready, at a given moment, to spout off the latest statistics and speculation on land deals, corporate stock splits, banking interest rates, the price of beef, who was the best bet in the day's horse races? Money! Money! Money! Numbers! Sizes! Statistics! Amounts! That was the babel of the American tongue.

The overall picture Dreiser painted of American society was fascinating to me. To emulate that work was but a distant dream. In that period of turn-of-the-century America \-- a period of intense separation of the rich and the poor and the beginning of the mass immigration of the industrial era -- Dreiser clearly portrayed the demise of the individual under the standards of American idealism, the pursuit of materialism at the cost of intellectual and spiritual decay. He successfully conveyed, better than anyone I had read, the ugliness of the life of the poor in sharp contrast to the indifference of the rich. The motifs running through Dreiser's work seemed to me as relevant to the corporate-military-industrial structure of the 1970s as to the United States of Dreiser's day.

An ideological struggle rampaged in my mind. I could not embrace a belief in capitalism, yet I was not sure of myself as a socialist, either. Idealistically, socialism seemed the best approach to the conundrum of politics, but the failure of the 1920s and 1930s inflamed my pessimism. If I was to pursue idealism, was it not more a question of religion? or more precisely of philosophy? Had not the greatest thinkers of history battled with all the questions without deliverance of a practical solution to how man could get along with his fellows?

What I doomsday prophet I had become! I believed the whole world doomed. Already in my young life I had seen too much hunger, greed, indifference, illness, all at the hands of those with vast amounts of money. The questions raged inside of me. Why Vietnam? Why Biafra? Why Angola? Why South Africa? Why hunger? Why dark fear? Why grim, painful death? In my Parisian doomsday fever, however, there still had burned that wonderful self delusion of divine guidance. Mine was to be a different path. I could never follow the patterned footsteps of my elders. I could not yet define my path in terms of a political or philosophical or religious belief, but I had felt nearer to grasping it as Paris nurtured me in her bosom.

How did I feel now? Not much had changed except for discarding the belief in the divine guidance of the artist. That disappeared somewhere on the journey through Turkey and Iran. I envied Mahmood's commitment and convictions. He had a clear purpose, a definite direction. Like Ataullah, Mahmood had a strength and simplicity that attracted me. I was comfortable in his presence, in the naturalness of his personality and character. I had something to learn from him. He was like a rock of stability in my senseless, confusing, whirling world.

Chapter 12

Work was going well on my novel. The days were sunny and warm. It was the middle of May and I had done nothing about finding a teaching job. I figured I had enough money to last another few months. Beyond that I could only trust to good fortune.

Eugene and Mahmood showed up one afternoon with a proposal.

"David, we've been given an extraordinary opportunity. Mahmood has been meeting with a discussion group that meets secretly once or twice a month. They discuss means of resistance to the Shah and often discuss about Mao, Che Guevara, and Castro, as well as the revolutionary experiences of Cuba, Vietnam, China, and Algeria. He's mentioned your experiences against the Vietnam War. Of course he hasn't used your real name. They seem interested in your case, and have given their approval for you to attend one of their meetings. I'll be allowed to attend as an interpreter if you're interested. There's a meeting tonight and they plan to discuss the effectiveness of national underground resistance to the Shah's declaration of the first of May as a celebration of 'Worker's Day.' What do you think?"

I consented.

That night, we walked to a neighborhood near Ferdowsi University. We stopped on an unlit back street. Mahmood said to wait, disappeared into an alley, and came back a couple of minutes later. The street was deserted. Mahmood motioned for us to follow him. At the end of the narrow alley was a garage. We entered the garage, climbed a rope ladder to a loft above, and crawled through a small window, pulling the ladder in behind us. From there a mud wall protected a courtyard, where we lowered the rope ladder and climbed down with the help of three others who lived in the house adjoining the courtyard. In the back of the house was a small, brick room without any furniture.

There were ten other men in attendance. All appeared to be in their twenties. Everyone sat in a circle on the worn carpet lining the floor. Eugene and I were introduced. Tea was served.

The leader was a dark, bearded man, about thirty. He was a wild-looking figure whose eyes flashed with the madness of religious fanaticism. At first, he sat, as in a trance, reciting passages from an old Koran, praying, singing, and raising his arms in suppliant gestures. The others watched silently. When he was finished with his exhortations, he addressed the group in a low voice. Eugene did his best to interpret the man's words.

"It is now over six years since Bahman 19, the famous day of the Siakal incident and the birth of the guerrilla movement. Our sympathies go out to the families and followers of our two Mashad brothers -- Mas'oud Ahmadzadeh and Amir Parvez Poyan, whose lives were not spent in vain. We must learn from their mistakes. Their methods were wrong and their Marxist beliefs belied their Islamic heritage.

"We must now consider more carefully the ideas of the founding members of the Fedayi and the Mojahedin. There has been too much violence and bloodshed. The ranks of all the underground have been decimated. We need to find an alternative to armed confrontation. We need to increase our political activity and form stronger links among the underground factions. We should also establish ties with the clergy. After all, it is Islam, in particular Shi'ism, that can inspire the masses to join the revolution and put an end to the terror, intimidation, and propaganda of the Pahlavi regime. Without the support of the masses, our efforts will amount to little more than individual acts of resistance and heroism."

At this point, several members began speaking simultaneously. Eugene could not keep up with the flurry of opinions, all seemingly dissecting the pros and cons of whether the revolution was to be Marxist or Islamic or a combination of the two. All seemed to agree that if the regime could be toppled, the revolutionaries should carry out reforms, build an independent society free of its dependence on the West, redistribute the wealth among the masses, and create a classless society.

The leader finally held up his hand to end the discussion. The purpose for the meeting, he said, was to bring to the attention of the members that he had received some new pamphlets and tapes of lectures by two important figures connected to the underground. One tape was by Dr. Ali Shariati, whose ideas were said to have inspired the original Mojahedin. Dr. Shariati believed Shi'ism and the teachings of Ali, the first Imam, provided the basis for changing society and removing the yoke of Western values and dependence. He saw Marxism as tyrannical and capitalism as exploitative. What was needed was a return to the compassion and spirit of equality taught by Ali. He also believed that Hosein, the third Imam whose act of resistance had made him Islam's original martyr, exemplified man's inalienable right to resist, and true Muslims had the duty to fight against despotism, foreign exploitation, and false clergy who used Islam as an opiate to lull the masses into subservience.

The other tape, which had been smuggled back into Iran from someone who visited some Shi'a shrines in Iraq, was a sermon delivered by Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini headed the clergy's opposition to the Shah's Land Reform of 1963. The Shah arrested Khomeini, which provoked serious riots for three days throughout the country. The army was called out to put down the riots and there was much loss of life. Khomeini had been in exile since that time, but continued to lecture against the Pahlavi regime and call for a holy war to overthrow the government and replace it with an Islamic state.

We listened to the tapes. From what I could understand of Eugene's interpretation, the contents of the tapes sounded like rhetoric and propaganda that was just as strong as what the revolutionaries were supposedly fighting against. I was more interested in studying the faces and reactions of the members of the discussion group. They listened intently, respectfully, as if the voices on the tapes were those of revered leaders truly of a higher order. Indeed, the tapes had a curious, dramatic rhythm that entranced the listeners, carrying them from one high pitch of emotion to another so that by the end of the two lectures all were thoroughly exhausted.

The meeting ended with the leader calling upon the members to read through a number of pamphlets he distributed and to be prepared for a more detailed discussion at the next meeting. The members were asked to bring with them ideas for alternative protest activity. He said something to Mahmood, who nodded as he and the leader cast a glance in my direction. One of the members disappeared for a few minutes, then returned and said it was safe for us to exit. We retraced our steps through the courtyard and garage.

Back on the streets again, Mahmood, Eugene, and I walked awhile in silence. Eugene was the first to speak.

"What did you think? Rather exciting stuff, wouldn't you say?"

"It was all a bit over my head. I get confused trying to figure out which of these groups are which, how they differ in ideology, what their goals are, everything. It seems they all adhere to the same basics, you know, the overthrow of the Shah, but I don't see how the religious factor and secular factor can come together. I guess you'd have to be a Muslim to catch all the cultural and religious nuances."

"I know what you mean. But you have to agree that we're right on the edge of a major revolution in the making. What we witnessed tonight might have some historical significance in the future. If this revolution comes to pass, we can always tell our grandchildren that we were here and witnessed something important."

"It's still too much for me to comprehend. I'm not sure it would be safe to attend any more meetings. This satisfied my curiosity tonight, but I don't think I'd like to get involved actively. I'm no revolutionary. All I did in the past was not part of some global undertaking."

Mahmood interrupted and asked Eugene to tell him what we were talking about. After listening to Eugene's summary, he looked at me anxiously and said something. Eugene interpreted.

"Mahmood says that the leader seems to trust you. There's a calm and respectful air about you he hasn't seen in other foreigners who claim to be revolutionaries. He knows about your resistance to the U.S. government and your time spent in prison. He thinks the members can gain a different perspective by listening to your ideas on passive resistance. As he mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, they need to explore other options to the failure of the past. Perhaps all the inner squabbling the underground movement has gone through has blinded them to any objectivity. They seem to need an outside opinion. He wants you to speak at the next meeting."

"But all these groups have a bloody history. From what I can understand their tactics are too extreme and violent. I appreciate the chance to be able to sit in on one of their meetings, but no way could I become a member. For one thing I'm not Iranian and have no right to comment on the rights or wrongs of a government or culture I don't understand. Besides, I could never condone the bombing of an embassy or the kidnap and murder of any human being."

A look of disappointment came over Mahmood's face as Eugene explained what I had said. He thought a minute, then began speaking again.

"He says that your protestations are precisely the point. The fact that you're not Iranian, not a member of the group, and not an advocate of violent reprisal allows you the objectivity they lack and need. Remember this is just a discussion group and what they're looking for is ideas to discuss and experiences to listen to that'll make them think more deeply about alternative action. They're accustomed to dealing with a world of martyrs killed in battle. Your history is more in keeping with the teachings of Ali and Jesus, who, by the way, is respected as a prophet in the Koran. The leader would like his members to hear about the experiences of one who has carried religious ideals into effective action and resistance. He thinks you have something to say that goes beyond national boundaries. He, too, seems to think, as Mahmood does, that you may be a Muslim at heart without knowing it. Mahmood asks you to at least think about it."

"You make me sound like some kind of saint. My past actions were really selfishly motivated. I know that and I think I can honestly tell you that fear and cowardice played a much larger role than courage in taking my stand. Anyway, that was a long time ago and I was a different person then."

"All Mahmood is asking is that you think about it."

"All right, all right. If it's that important to him, please tell him I'll think about it, but that's all. I'm not making a firm commitment here. I'll tell you what we all need right now is a stiff drink."

Mahmood laughed when Eugene told him about the drink. He seemed relieved that I might agree. We separated, agreeing to meet again in a few days when I would have my answer ready.

I had trouble getting to sleep. I tossed and turned all night, wondering what I had gotten myself mixed up in.

Chapter 13

My dilemma of whether or not to speak to the discussion group was resolved for me three days after the meeting. Eugene showed up early in the morning in a state of great excitement.

"You won't believe it, David. You just won't believe it. SAVAK has found out about the discussion group. They raided the leader's apartment last night, but fortunately he was tipped off about the raid and had already split by the time SAVAK broke into his place. He's underground now. Maybe he's left the city. But SAVAK found all the literature in his place and he's a marked man."

"Do they know about Mahmood and you and me?"

"Mahmood doesn't think so, at least not at the moment. But if they round up any of the other members or manage to find the leader, it's likely SAVAK will torture them to extract information. And the first thing they'll mention will be about us foreigners. You know, blame all the instigation on the foreign element. Mahmood plans to just lay low for the time being. He says I should spend a month or so outside of Iran, just to keep my face out of circulation. I plan to go to Pakistan to continue my studies. In Bhit Shah near Hyderabad there is a cultural center dedicated to the life, teaching, and poetry of Shah Abdul Latif, one of the most famous Sufi saints. I know some people who'll put me up there."

"What about me? What should I do?"

"Mahmood thinks it's best for you to leave the country, too. If any of the members are caught and blab, you'd be the first one they'd mention. They all had discussed your situation and knew about your antigovernment activities in the States. They don't know your name, but it wouldn't be hard for SAVAK to trace you down. There are a lot of foreigners in Mashad, but not many with your background. Besides, SAVAK already has a lead on you through that street hawk you told me about. If they pressed your friend Rahim, you can bet he wouldn't be very loyal to you for long, not with some electric prod stuck up his ass. I'm sorry, David, but that's the situation. You need to go to the Afghan consulate while there's still time, get a visa, and get out of the country."

*****

I was on the bus to Islam Qala the next day. I had wanted to say goodbye to all the Iranians who helped and befriended me, but Eugene warned against it. I simply got the visa, packed my belongings, bought a bus ticket to Herat, and left Mashad in the morning. I said nothing to Bob, Mary, and Felicity about the discussion group or the SAVAK raid. I said only that it was time to move on and that I was going to India.

I was the only Westerner on the bus. All the other passengers were Afghan men returning from working in Iranian factories. Some were dressed in native attire and some in Western style with boots, jeans, and denim shirts. Many were jabbering within their individual groups. Most regarded me with nothing more than a passing glance.

I took stock of my situation as the rickety bus rambled through the brown monotony of the desert. Clearly this was a new turning point for me. My money supply had dwindled to the point where returning to Europe was out of the question. My only choice lay in continuing eastward. I was exactly halfway around the world. Travel and living were obviously much cheaper in this part of the world. I doubted I could find any work to sustain me, but I had heard there was the possibility of finding work on a freighter out of Calcutta. If I could make it to Japan, I might be able to land an English teaching job. Bob and Mary had given me some contact names and numbers.

For the present, I would head to Kabul and look up Ataullah. My thoughts turned back to the time spent with him in Paris and Lorrach. After the confusion and paranoia of my Iranian experiences it would be good to be greeted by Ataullah's frank openness and simplicity. Although I had not had any letters from Thomas, I imagined the possibility of his yearly excursion to Afghanistan coinciding with my arrival. Perhaps he would take me along on one of his treks to a remote village in search of carpets. I remembered our night on psilocybin when he said, "Think of it, man. They still have tribes there. They still have tribes. How many countries in the world still have tribes?" A feeling of optimism filled me as I mulled the possibility for further adventure.

Islam Qala was a frontier outpost in the middle of nowhere. It consisted of a rundown police barracks, a shabby hotel, the customs bureau, a bank, and a crowded teahouse on the Afghan side. There were already several buses ahead of us unloading passengers and goods. Several moneychangers and venders accosted the passengers as they hurried back and forth between the teahouse and bureau. On the Afghan side were more buses reloading people and baggage.

I lingered in the back of the line waiting to go through customs, watching the commotion, and listening to the banter of the returnees. There were a few other foreign tourists, mostly long-haired hippies, but they held no interest for me and I did not engage them in conversation. Eventually I was passed through with a cursory inspection. My escape from Iran was as mundane as my entry had been.

So now I was in Afghanistan. The others seemed impatient to be off on the last leg of the journey to Herat. I was in no hurry. I was content to be lost in my thoughts and watch the various buses, all filled to bursting. A vender approached me with a sly look and offered hashish at an inflated price. I ignored him and he drifted off. Finally, I boarded a bus, arrived at nightfall in Herat, and took a room in a cheap hotel in the New City with two Afghans who spoke a little English.

I spent the next day wandering around the bazaars in the Old City. I was struck by the dramatic difference between the relative wealth of Mashad and the poverty of what I now witnessed in Herat. In Mashad the streets were alive with colorful taxis and pedestrians, the mosques fixed with lights and loudspeakers, the shops decorated with huge pictures of the Shah and his family and gaudy depictions of Muhammad, Ali, and other important figures from the Koran. There was no color to Herat, just a drab brown and grey. There were no decorations on the buildings. The few taxis were smeared with rust. The paint on the droshky carriages had cracked and peeled off years ago. I saw now why Hasan and Ataullah appeared to me as unlikely traveling companions when I first met them. I saw now the vast difference between them in manner, wealth, and dress.

There was a conspicuous absence of Western influence in Herat. I felt as if I were time traveling, stepping into the pages of the Old Testament. The people of Herat in the narrow bazaar streets had an outward peace and dignity, moving about their work as if it did not matter, as if it could be done the next day or the day after. The coppersmiths, the cobblers, the saddle makers, the fruit venders, all the various shopkeepers, worked as they had for centuries. Under the trees in the heat, many Afghans slept. Some of the shopkeepers were also dozing in their stalls.

The smells of the bazaar were mixed and varied. The reek of blood emanated from the butchers' stalls. The musty odor of the produce stalls hung heavy in the air. The bakeries gave off a fresh mixture of dough, soot, and sesame. The overall effect on the senses was both overwhelming and intoxicating.

The history of Herat was that of central Asia. It was a history of repeated destruction and reconstruction. Conqueror after conqueror, from Alexander to Ghenghis Khan to the occupation by the British, had taken the city, destroyed it, then rebuilt it. Two large highways, used since earliest times, intersected, one from north and south, the other from east and west. The plain in which Herat lay was fertile. Irrigation canals watered the countryside, turning arid soil into flowered gardens and fruit orchards where grapes, melons, quinces, pears, peaches, and mulberries flourished.

The Afghans were a virile people. The attitude of the crowd in the bazaar was one of mild disdain. I saw few beggars. The men were proud of bearing, savage and distinguished in appearance, and they met my eyes with the unquestioning, straightforward glance of a powerful animal. Their faces carried an expression of glazed fatalism that showed no trace of fear. Their bodies were strong and supple. The few women seen in public were shrouded in full-length chadors with embroidered masks. One of the Afghans I stayed with in the hotel told me the beauty of the Afghan women was so great that no man could control his desire for them if they were unmasked.

I stayed one more night and took a bus early the next morning. The sunrise was glorious, the low distant mountains resplendent in varied tints from golden brown to violet. We entered the open desert. I was again the lone foreigner on a bus loaded with Afghan men. A mass of bobbing turbans atop dark, proud faces filled the bus. The land resembled a sea, simultaneously tempestuous and totally still. Across the glaring distance there was nothing but an empty stretch of arid desert. I looked at the others. Their coarse, masculine features betrayed no self-doubt. It appeared they thought of nothing. Nothing within themselves disturbed them. Life seemed, on the surface, a tangible and simple affair, unlike the affected appearances of the Iranians I saw in Mashad.

There were rumors of brigands on the road from Herat to Kandahar, but the danger was supposedly only for those who traveled alone at night. Nomad yurts, a few herds of grazing camels, their slow movement filled with noble dignity, and flocks of sheep speckled the desert landscape. We passed through a few dusty earth-hut villages where dark, wizened men relaxed on their haunches. These towns were invariably the same: a small bazaar nestled in the shadow of an earthen fortress; narrow, crooked streets running in all directions; square, flat-roofed houses crowded together.

We came to Kandahar, Afghanistan's leading commercial center. The people had a freer air about them than those in the villages. The city had much less the atmosphere of a remote fortress than Herat. We stopped for tea in a teahouse that was full of smoke, full of men, full of rich, masculine smells. The men moved with a self-conscious swagger. They roared rather than laughed. They shouted rather than talked. They looked at me through eyes of utter indifference.

We continued toward Kabul, stopping three times during the day for the Afghans to roll out their prayer carpets and, facing Mecca, pray. At Ghazni, where mud ruins, an old castle, and two remarkable towers lay, we witnessed a magnificent sunset that bathed the mountains in the east in a fiery red and deep violet. It lasted but a few minutes. The night grew dark and solemn.

Two hours later, we arrived in Kabul. Two of the Afghan passengers helped me get a taxi to Ataullah's motel. Ataullah was surprised and pleased to see me. He introduced me to his partner and his brothers, then showed me to a room. He brought some hashish and tea. We visited for a long time about our time together in Paris and Lorrach and my many adventures on the road.

Chapter 14

Kabul was situated in a large, fertile plain surrounded by high hills rising into the Hindu Kush mountains. The whole of the city seemed a mass of mud huts, although the newer part of the city bore signs of modernization: apartment buildings, a hospital, and a university. There were many wide streets lined on either side by poplar and mulberry trees. There were also many gloomy, narrow lanes that even in the daylight were so dark one had to walk slowly and take care not to fall into a ditch.

I spent much of my time relaxing, smoking hashish, writing, and walking the streets around the central bazaar area. In most places the streets were full of primitive wooden booths on which were laid mats of hemp. There were rows upon rows of stalls on which the venders sat cross-legged. Those who could not afford to buy a site sat on the street corners and sold their goods. It was always crowded. In the midst of all the activity passed donkeys laden with wood, bricks, and straw. Camel caravans passed slowly. Riders on horses pushed their way through in a domineering manner. The air rang constantly with the Pashto words for "move out of the way" or the "give me some money" of a few scattered beggar children who put forth their hands in an embarrassed manner and stared beseechingly with sad, dark eyes.

The second-hand shops sold articles that were so unusual it was a mystery how the articles had made their way into the shops. It was possible to buy mousetraps, old musical instruments, yellowed pictures of former European leaders, decades-old English military uniforms, and aging copies of paperback novels in many languages. When bargaining, the venders remained quietly in their stalls, drinking tea and smoking their nargiles. They seemed to resent a visit of inspection as if it disturbed their peace and contemplative existence.

In the bazaar, there were many dogs that sat in front of the stalls. They sought out the sunny places and lay in the dust and filth. They never got out of the way of the moving swarm, preferring to be trodden upon or run over. Most were mangy and stared through vicious eyes.

Ataullah's motel was a run-down place with a kitchen and about twenty rooms filled with tattered carpets and beds of rope called charpoy. The people who frequented the motel were a curious sort. They were mostly of the younger vagabonding set, Europeans who came east to the lure of cheap living and an easy access to drugs. They were reminiscent of the drifting bohemians I met on my journey to Europe four years before who had instilled in me an excitement with their talk of literature, philosophy, and revolution. The people I now found myself surrounded by, although much the same in appearance, were more decadent. They had faded into a vegetable existence. The ugliness of their wasted youth reminded me of shabby old men living out empty dream existences. They talked only of drugs. They smoked all day, stared into space, and made friends only for a meal or a bus ticket.

One night, I was in the kitchen talking with Ataullah's brothers, who were trying to teach me some Pashto. An Australian man suddenly stormed into the kitchen complaining about a lack of sugar served with his tea. Ataullah's brothers argued he had been served plenty. The man was high on heroin. The air grew more oppressive with every word he spoke.

"Give me more sugar," he demanded.

Sensing a violent confrontation, I intervened. "It seems to me a petty thing to argue over."

The man took notice of me for the first time. "You've got to put these people in their place or they'll walk all over you. You should know that as a white man."

"I just got here a few days ago. I don't know about the local customs, but I think you're being a bit demanding."

He regarded me for a moment, then took two steps toward me. "Well, if that's the case, welcome to Afghanistan, mate."

From his back pocket flashed a switchblade knife, the blade suddenly open and about an inch from my throat. Ataullah's brothers formed a quick circle around us. I noticed a scar on the man's neck. It looked like a mad, exaggerated grin. My heart beat wildly, half in terror, half in a curious, senseless sort of enthusiasm. There was a moment of terrific suspense. Then the man's yellowed eyes closed heavily. He laughed a loud, insane laugh and withdrew his knife. He left the kitchen in hysterics, bumping into walls and furniture on the way out. He was sick with jaundice.

Ataullah was busy much of the time. Although occasionally I helped his partner write business letters in English \-- for which I was given free room and board -- I spent most of my time alone, avoiding any contact with the other Westerners. There was, however, one man of interest staying at the motel. He was a German named Rolf who lived in a bus on one of the parking spaces. He was different from the other travelers. He was not sluggish and dull, but enthusiastic and energetic. He made his living hauling travelers in his bus to and from Europe. He was about forty, spoke five languages, painted abstract landscapes and portraits, and was well-versed in literature and philosophy.

I usually visited Rolf in the evenings. We would prepare a dinner of pilau, a rice dish with raisins and lamb meat, before retiring to the top of the bus to watch the stars and discuss life. One night I told him about Eugene, Mahmood, the discussion group meeting I attended in Mashad, and my subsequent escape from Iran.

"So what have all these revolutionary experiences taught you? You don't seem to me to be that much of a revolutionary yourself. I think you're more of an observer of men than an active participant in their affairs," Rolf said.

"I suppose you're right about that. The one political act or stand I made landed me in jail and I've spent a good portion of my life since then trying to rationalize what I did. I've become passive and indecisive. The thing I admire about people like those I met in Iran is that they still have the passion and commitment for a cause. They have courage. I envy them. Their lives have purpose and direction. This journey I've taken has carried me halfway around the world in search of something I can't put a name on. I know I'm repelled by capitalism. I have an attraction for some form of socialism, but I can't commit myself to what I don't understand. Idealistically, it seems the best answer to man's inability to live together peacefully, but socialism, too, has a history of violence and upheaval. It's all pretty hard to figure out. What do you think?"

"Socialism, communism, Marxism, all these 'isms' lack a soul or spiritual base. They're connected only in terms of class struggle and a fight for equality in the production and consumption of material goods. In that sense, they're not so different from capitalism. What about the spiritual struggle? Islamic Marxism? It's a joke! It's just another form of cultural imperialism that would force people to conform to a standardized way of thinking and behaving.

"Democracy, individual freedom, human rights? Also a bunch of rubbish that can never be inflicted upon impoverished nations and peoples. What do uneducated peoples know about such things? They can think only about where the next meal comes from. It doesn't matter what form of government they live under. There's only one reality and that is mankind's inability to organize itself. Accept man's ineptitude. Accept his weaknesses, his greed, his stupidity. And love him for it all. No one can possibly know what the answers to life are until after we die. It's like the preacher said, 'All is vanity and a striving after wind.'

"You can't save the world alone or through any ideology or 'ism.' That's the only truth I know. Oh sure, you can chase after a spiritual path. Become a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist if you must. But you won't find any answers there, either. The world's religions are just a bunch of exclusivist groups, too. Stick with science, knowledge, the art of survival. Study languages, communicate, make life interesting for yourself, that's what I try to do. Here, go on, have another hit off the pipe. Concentrate on the moment, look at the stars, appreciate what is here and now. If you're meant to find any answers, they'll come to you in due time."

We continued to smoke and watch the stars. I thought about what Rolf had said. It made sense to me. It was much better to be carefree and let things take their own course rather than get too muddled up in some false ideology. But still I wanted clear answers to my questions. I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to put a stop to the confusion that raged in my brain. I wanted to understand the forces that had driven me to this part of the earth.

Rolf cleared his throat and began to speak again. "You know, you remind me a bit of myself when I was your age. I wanted to experience everything, to find all the answers. I, too, couldn't be contained within the walls of my own country and culture. I rambled about and learned to speak the languages of other countries. I asked them all the same questions and found no answers. I lost my own identity and found myself, too, as a man with no country. But what a glorious transformation that was and still is.

"Yes, how glorious to have the entire world as your home. Most people don't know this. They don't have the spirit to reject the boundaries that bind them. It's up to the individual to take that first step, to cut those ties. So what holds people back? Perhaps love? Love of convention and family ties? As far as I can see, all of love is just a wishful image. The actual occurrence never lives up to the image. In moments of suffering, knowing we are loved does little to help or comfort us. When we lie at death's door, our absent lovers can do nothing for us but weep. So what's the answer? Do we end by despising the things and people we once loved? Do we end up loving the things that brought us misery and humiliation?"

Rolf took a deep breath and sighed as if in remembrance of some long lost lover. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, then continued. "No doubt you think I'm rambling aimlessly, but surely you'll encounter these questions and many others in your own mind as you continue east. What you've experienced thus far is nothing compared to what awaits you in India. You'll see the very dregs of human misery and despair. And despair is a malady that increases the more the mind dwells upon it. Not only despair, but also self-pity, that most squalid of emotions. I mention self-pity because it's exactly this you'll feel as you wander through the blatancy of death-in-life as it exists in that region of the world. You may find it hard to admit, but I can assure you that you'll feel self-pity. The adage of the constant work of one's life being the making of one's death will never have been so evident. You must experience India if you're to have any fathomable idea of what I'm saying."

I stared at Rolf with a look of incomprehension. Something about the certainty of his words frightened me, as if he possessed a vision of my future. I wanted to ask a question, but nothing formed in my mouth. He laughed.

"There's no need to fear India," Rolf said. "As an artist, you must experience it. India will wrap itself around you in ways you cannot imagine. If you feel fear, that's natural. Fear is in everything a man does. Fear always remains. You can destroy everything within yourself -- love, hate, perhaps even doubt -- but as long as you cling to life you cannot destroy fear. Ah, but why go into it any further? You'll see. You'll see."

Chapter 15

Every evening when I visited Rolf I found him studying. Sometimes he would be reading a medical textbook, sometimes world history, but more often than not he would be studying Pashto. He had a deep interest in language and how it should be taught and learned. He had supported himself on occasion by teaching English and German during his travels. He also believed it was imperative for the world traveler to immerse himself in the local language in order to enhance his experience of any particular country. Our conversations often revolved around this topic.

One night, Rolf asked, "What would you have done if you had accepted a teaching job in Iran? How would you have approached your lessons?"

"I don't know. I really have no answer to that question. I suppose I would have used a textbook and had the students memorize vocabulary and sample sentences."

"Your classes would have been boring. The language would have been dead to the students. Rote memorization serves no purpose other than to frustrate and bore them. Language has to be seen as a living thing with a direct connection to the students' own lives. Language has power and the students should be able to have opportunities to use this power in order to manipulate events, to communicate."

"I'm not sure I understand. What do you mean by manipulate events?"

"Take for example someone new to a country. What do you think his most basic needs are?"

"Well, buying food, finding a place to stay, getting around, things like that."

"Precisely. And that's what you should try to recreate in the classroom. First, find out what the students' needs are and what their level of ability is. If we take a group of beginners who have had no exposure to the language, the place to start would have to be numbers, names of basic food items, a few common verbs, and some simple sentence patterns such as 'How much is this?' 'What is this?' and 'This is such and such.' As far as possible you should bring in actual samples of the food items in question to let the students handle them, manipulate them, build up images to associate with the new sounds and words they have to learn. Then you should set up situations that have the students handle the items while using the language to manipulate events like giving, taking, buying, selling, and exchanging. At each stage of practice you can add a few more items, clothing items for example, and the different verbs associated with them. I can tell you from long experience that this kind of learning promotes much better long-term retention than does rote memorization. Language has to be useful for the students. It has to be something tangible."

"How about when you study on your own? Don't you try to repeat new sentence patterns and words? Don't you rely on memorizing for self study?"

"Yes, but I'm very selective about what I try to memorize. And I try to imagine exchanges in which I use the new patterns and vocabulary with a native speaker. I try to imagine his or her response. I pick out expressions that I can put to use in my daily life. I get out there in the streets and practice with as many people as possible. I don't worry about mistakes. I learn the equivalent for 'How do you say something something in Pashto?' or Farsi or Urdu or French, whatever the case may be. Go to the bazaar and practice bartering with the venders. Go to all the different kinds of shops. You don't have to buy anything. Just practice. Take a pencil and paper and write down new vocabulary. And have a sense of humor. Don't get discouraged when you fail. Failure is the best teacher I know. Every time I fail to communicate something I really wanted to say, I find out how to say it so the next chance I have I can say it. It's a never-ending process, but it eventually becomes an obsession."

"I think I know what you mean about study becoming an obsession. In my case, though, the obsession is with my own language. I'm afraid I haven't committed myself to studying a foreign language beyond the basics for survival, but I may be headed in that direction some day. I feel so inadequate at times not being able to communicate in anything besides English. And I'm still a novice at my own language. If nothing else, trying to write a novel has taught me that much. I still don't know half of what I should. Perhaps I should give up the writing for a while and study a foreign language."

"Studying a foreign language is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to be a good language teacher. In order to truly understand the processes the students are going through, especially their frustrations, you have to see language through their eyes in reverse. If the students' language has a different word order from English, your understanding of that can be a great help in anticipating what kind of problems they face in producing natural-sounding English sentences.

"An example can be seen in the differences between Japanese and English. Japanese has a basic word order of subject, object, verb, whereas in English it is subject, verb, object. Also, in the English relative clause, the modifying elements come after the head noun, but in Japanese they come before the head noun. It isn't unusual to hear a Japanese person produce a sentence like 'My friend is the black shirt wearing person,' instead of 'My friend is the person who is wearing a black shirt.' In a sense, the Japanese student of English has to learn to think backwards, as does an English speaker learning Japanese. If you have a basic understanding of what differences and similarities there are between your own language and the students' language, then you are better able to plan useful lessons and set up activities that give the students practice in the areas that probably give them the biggest problems."

"I see what you mean. But is grammar really all that important when it comes to communication? It seems to me that, as you said, if a person is able to use a limited vocabulary of a few verbs and nouns and use a lot of gestures, he can still communicate. By trying to interact a lot with native speakers, doesn't it make sense that you can pick up a lot without having to rely too much on grammar study?"

"Well, it depends on the needs of the student. If he's going to travel to a country for a short time and doesn't plan to try to carry on any intellectual discussions or business negotiations, maybe he can pick up a few words on the streets without combining that practice with other study. But I'm more interested in trying to become as fluent as possible. I mean, what's the sense of studying just the surface of something? It's a waste of time. When I study a foreign language, I want to use it to communicate beyond just buying a few items at the market. I want to find out what people think. I want to find out about their culture, what makes them tick. I want to express my own ideas and feelings. To do this takes a lot of time and effort, and to get beyond the surface of things you need a firm grounding in the mechanics of the language as well as plenty of practice in the communicative aspect. You have to combine the two. First, you gain a certain amount of passive knowledge, then you activate that knowledge by a lot of trial and error."

"How do you go about activating passive knowledge? What kind of bridge do you use?"

"Lots of listening practice that forces students to respond. Listening is by far the most difficult, but most important part of language study. I'm not talking here about a teacher standing in front of a class dictating sentences like a robot. Students gain a false confidence in their listening skills if their teacher stoops to using an unrealistically slow speaking speed just to improve comprehension in the classroom. The students get used to the teacher, think they can understand native speakers pretty well, then boom they go out into the real world and are shocked when they hear the speed of two native speakers having a conversation.

"All native speakers of all languages use the minimum amount of energy necessary to achieve comprehension. Take English as an example. The rhythm of English is based on the contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables. All words have stable stress patterns when spoken in isolation, but when words are placed in phrases and sentences, many of the stressed syllables are weakened or disappear completely. When spoken with ideal pronunciation, a question like 'What are you going to say to him?' is fairly easy to understand, but when it's spoken at natural speed as in 'Whaddaya gonna say da im?' it becomes an incomprehensible stream of sounds to many students. They can't distinguish where the word boundaries are. They need lots of practice in listening to natural English and responding to it in some way.

"Another problem is that students have a tendency to try to understand every word they hear. They waste too much energy concentrating on what is unimportant. They often concentrate too much on the parts they can't understand and in the meantime the speaker is continuing what he's saying and the students end up missing everything. They need to learn how to relax, to let go what has been said and concentrate on what is coming. They need to keep a rough summary in their heads and try to anticipate what will be said. Of course, this takes much practice to learn how to listen efficiently, but it's really better for their confidence to have a general idea of the topic being spoken about and not worry about getting all the details. As a teacher you can give them certain strategies for stopping the speaker, clarifying what they think they've understood, and asking for repetition.

"At any rate, these are a few ideas that might be useful if you ever do teach English to foreign students. The same principles can be applied to your own study of language. It's all connected, you know. All study, that is. No matter what you study, it must be done with passion. Otherwise you're wasting valuable time and energy that could be put to better use. If your passion is communication, language, expression, then by all means continue on that path. Why not continue to write while also studying a foreign language? In that way you have two means of exploring what you're pursuing. It all boils down to discipline, to a clarity of vision and thought and purpose. Is that what you're seeking?"

"I'm still not sure at this point. But somehow it seems language and communication have been important driving forces in my life. They're leading me somewhere. It's something I have to think through more clearly."

*****

That conversation remained with me for the next few days. During my solitary walks around Kabul my thoughts were continually on my future, my destiny, why I was where I was at and what had brought me here. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that in my life the key event that catapulted me upon the seemingly aimless path I had followed to this point was the day of my court martial, the one sentence I spoke: "I don't feel I'm mentally or physically capable of going." The power of language, of that one simple sentence, saved four years of my life. It had transformed my world completely.

The full realization that that sentence had in effect determined the course of my life stunned me. I had long realized the importance and the effect of my decision to face up to the government -- much of my determination to become a writer stemmed from a desperate need to rationalize and explain myself as a so-called traitor and coward -- but to boil it down to one sentence as the turning point and symbolic guidepost to the rest of my life hit me like a thunderbolt. It was not just the writing of a single story that was driving me. Indeed, it was much larger than that. I suddenly saw it clearly: a vision of my future. Language and language study would be at the core. Somewhere, somehow, I would find a place where I could live, work, and study. Language teaching was a distinct possibility.

Ataullah got some time off. He invited Rolf and me to spend some time with his family in the desert outside Ghazni. We rented a jeep and drove directly to Ghazni, then headed a few kilometers north off the main road before reaching the village. Sheep and goats grazed in the plain while a few powerful mastiffs kept watch. The inhabitants, who numbered about fifty, were hard at work. The men were plowing sparse fields and tending the flocks. The women sat in front of the yurt-like huts knitting and playing with the children.

Ataullah introduced us to his father, whose face was that of a ruined hero, savage and beautiful, with wild-looking eyes that seemed accustomed to scanning great distances. It was hard to tell his age, but he looked immensely old, eminent, saintly. Ataullah's mother was a small, gaunt woman with a worn face, but she was proud and held her head high. She had discarded the chador and wore simple clothing made from sheepskin.

We spent four restful days before returning to Kabul. During the days we helped tend the flocks. There was plenty of time for idle gossip. The villagers were very curious about the U.S. and Germany. They were flattered by Rolf's ability to speak Pashto. We were treated as if we were royalty. Great meals of rice, lamb, Afghan bread, tea, and fruit were served. One of the lambs was butchered upon our arrival. In the evenings we sat around fires sharing a nargile of hashish, watching the stars, listening to the somber sigh of the earth. A wonderful peace settled over the desert. There came upon me that night a moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived, like a glimpse of some everlasting, some saving truth, and in that moment I looked at Ataullah's father and felt a warm affection for my own dead father.

The time came for me to continue east. My 30-day visa expired. Unfortunately, Thomas had not shown up. I had wanted to share many thoughts and discoveries with him, but that was all right. The time spent in Afghanistan had been good, a time of peace in a timeless land. Ataullah and Rolf drove me to the bus depot. I embraced them both with a genuine fondness, knowing I would never see them again. They had both taught me a great deal and I was grateful we had shared a portion of our lives together.

Chapter 16

I took a bus to Pakistan. It passed through the village of Jalalabad. Lying beside the Kabul River in the midst of a fertile plain, it was an oasis of verdant green with groves of date palms, orange trees, pomegranates, and beds of flowers ablaze with color. From there the bus climbed the Khyber Pass through a panorama of jagged hills rising above the Afghan plain. We came to Torkham on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Shopkeepers accosted the bus passengers with solicitations of drugs and food while the authorities stamped the passports. From Torkham the bus continued to Peshawar, where I bought a train ticket to Rawalpindi.

The train ride through the dusty Indus Valley was long, hot, and uncomfortable. There were many stops where soldiers either boarded or got off the train. Across from my seat an old man with a shabby, white beard sat on the floor. He whispered to me, "Bhutto, bah!" made an obscene gesture, and spat his contempt. Whenever a soldier walked by, he tapped my leg and spat. He sang a mournful song to the rhythm of the wheels clattering on the tracks.

I spent the night in a cheap motel room in Rawalpindi. The next day I took a crowded train to Lahore. In the brilliant sunshine it swept past rice fields and stagnant pools full of white lotuses and standing herons, past people patting pie-shaped cow turds and slapping them onto the sides of mud huts to dry, past men with bullocks and submerged plows preparing rice fields for planting. In the different train stations were fruit venders and their carts, and janitors in white uniforms who swept the platforms with palm fronds. Each town had its own shantytown by the railroad tracks: smaller towns of grass huts, cardboard shelters, pup tents, hovels of paper and twigs and cloth. Everyone in these shantytowns was in motion: sorting fruit, folding clothes, fanning a fire, mending a roof.

A plump, middle-aged Pakistani was seated next to me. He smiled and said, "You are English?"

"No, American."

"My name is Ali. You are staying in Lahore?"

"Yes, then on to India. My name is David."

"You have friends in Lahore?"

"No. I suppose I'll find a cheap room near the station tonight."

"That is very dangerous. You must not stay in those hotels. The managers and workers are bad people. They steal from their customers. Sometimes they put hashish in the rooms and tell the police the customer is selling it. The police arrest the customer. It is a bad business. The managers and police share the money and goods they take from foreigners. I know these things because I have a small hotel and these people make me ashamed. You must stay with me tonight."

"But I don't have much money."

"Do not worry. You are my friend. I am an honest man. I will give you a modest price. Lahore is very dangerous now. The people are angry at the government. Many think our elections were not honest. The army is in the streets everywhere and you must be careful. I insist you stay with me. I am your friend."

"You're very kind. Thank you."

We arrived in Lahore in the early evening. Processions of rickshaws, pony carts, and veiled women filled the narrow lanes. The larger streets were congested with swarms of jostling people who had the starved look of predators. Armed soldiers were everywhere.

Ali hailed a pony cart. We threw our luggage on and hauled ourselves into the passenger seat. Ali said, "Please hold your bag. Someone might take it and run away. We will soon be at my hotel. You will be safe there. The people cannot be in the streets at night, but many are."

The pony cart drew alongside Ali's hotel, a modest building on a side street of McLeod Road. We offloaded our bags and Ali showed me to my room, which contained a single bed, a wooden chair, and a small table with a lamp on it. The room was clean, but had no decorations on the walls.

"You must be tired from your journey. Please, you rest and I will call you in one hour. My wife will make us a fine supper. You are my only guest tonight, so we will have time to visit." Ali smiled ingratiatingly and left.

Ali's wife prepared a supper of seasoned rice, skewered chicken, yogurt, lentils, and bread. She withdrew to another room to leave Ali and me alone. Ali poured some tea.

"Will you stay long in Lahore?"

"I'm afraid not."

"It is a pity. Lahore is an old city, very interesting with many places to see. It has long been a culture, business, and intellectual center for Pakistan. I am sorry you have so little time. But perhaps it is best. This is a bad time for politics."

"It seems to be a bad time for politics everywhere."

We visited for a long time. Ali was a good conversationalist and an interested listener to my tales of adventure on the road through Asia. He told me about the history of Lahore, and the legend of its founding by Loh, the son of Rama Chandra, the hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana. In the eleventh century Lahore came under Muslim rule. In subsequent years it was attacked and destroyed by Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes, as well as by Timurlane and his Muslim Turks. Babur seized the city in 1524 and began the reign of the Moghuls. Ali elaborated at great length about the emperor Akbar and his openness toward people of all faiths, his contributions to government, administration, architecture, and the arts in general.

According to Ali, Moghul power dwindled in the eighteenth century. There were constant invasions. The Sikhs gained power briefly before their infighting caused their empire to collapse and be taken over by the British. It was late by the time Ali reached this point of Lahore's history. He yawned, stretched, and patted his full stomach.

"I apologize, Mr. David, but I must save the rest of the story for another time. Perhaps you will read about this part of our bloody history. Even today it continues. You have seen the soldiers in the streets. If you have the chance, you should at least see the Moghul City and the Fort. These are the greatest legacies of Akbar. Perhaps I can guide you tomorrow for a small price?"

"It's kind of you to offer, but I'm set on continuing to India. Thank you anyway."

"As you wish. I will arrange to take you to the station in the morning. Now we shall retire to our rooms."

"Thank you very much for the fine meal and your stories. I've enjoyed myself very much."

"The pleasure is mine. Good night, sir."

I went to bed and thought about Ali's stories and kindness. Two or three times I heard muffled bursts of gunfire coming from the streets. It took me a long time to get to sleep.

The wail of the muezzin awakened me the next morning. Ali accompanied me to the station and helped me get a ticket to Amritsar. The train was overcrowded with passengers and there were soldiers everywhere. I thanked Ali again and found a place to sit. At the border all the passengers debarked to go through customs and have their bags checked. The Indian border guards handled the Muslim passengers' baggage roughly and processed their paperwork as if handling a herd of cattle. There was a tension in the air.

I stood in line a long time. The customs agent who took my passport was a large, stocky man in his fifties with a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and a brown turban wrapped tightly around his ears. He had a stern manner, his countenance showing little emotion, but his eyes looked weary, penetrating, and wise.

"What is your occupation?"

"I'm a student of language," I said, remembering the refusal of my visa application at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul when I said I was a writer.

He looked through my duffel bag and pulled out the volume of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland that I had found in Mashad and brought with me. His eyes brightened and he asked, "You are also a student of poetry and literature?"

"Yes. I would like to be able to write someday."

"I am familiar with this book. I read it when I was in England many years ago. I went to university there and studied literature, poetry, and philosophy myself. It was a very good time in my life."

He continued rummaging through my bag and found my manuscript. "And you are writing a book now?"

"It's an amateurish attempt."

"You should not think so. All artistic efforts are worthwhile. At one time in my youth I aspired to be a writer. But as you can see my destiny proved otherwise."

He replaced everything in my bag except the manuscript. He handed it back to me and looked wearily beyond me to the long line of passengers waiting to be processed. "This checking of baggage and passports is boring work. It will be perhaps an hour or two before we are finished. Would you be so kind as to condescend to read to me from your book? It would be a pleasure for me and would help to pass the time for us both."

I consented. For the next hour I read from both my manuscript and the T.S. Eliot book. After all the baggage was checked and passports stamped, the customs agent asked permission to ride together with me to Amritsar, where he was stationed.

He asked many questions about my ideas on the writings of Thoreau, Plato, and Jesus. He listened with a patient ear to all my ramblings. Then he said, "You seem to have a level head on you. Your experiences have been many and surely you have thought deeply about politics. What is your view on politics?"

"I've struggled a lot with that question and have thought deeply about it, but I'm afraid my answer is very simple and perhaps too idealistic. It seems to me all politics are essentially business-oriented, and a dirty business at that. To truly institute change through politics takes a serious and total commitment, a commitment that, in the end, usually is the destruction of the participant. I personally don't have that commitment anymore. My one stab at political action put me in prison, estranged me from my father, and in a sense drove me out of my own country.

"I suppose revolution is possible in the world, but usually one form of military-industrial government is replaced by another. I'm talking here mostly of the more powerful governments, the Americas, the Soviet Unions, the Chinas, and so on. Only the uniforms change. The same game of domination, greed, avarice, and manipulation remains. As long as there are physical boundaries between countries, there will always be mental and psychological boundaries, which, in essence, means prejudices and a lack of understanding between the different peoples and cultures.

"As an individual, I'd like to create change in the world. But, as far as I can see, the better way is through art, expression, literature, music, and poetry rather than through politics. This must seem to you a very naive and immature opinion. It's the only one I have, though, the only one that makes any sense to me, simple as it is."

The customs agent looked at me thoughtfully for a moment.

"No, I don't think it is so simple. The best ideas are the ones that can be expressed simply and understood easily. I agree with you. I also have an apathy for politics. And I have a deep pessimism for the future of mankind. I feel an alienation from the human race. The sustenance I draw for living comes in the form of young people like yourself who have a vision. Alas, the one great man I have seen in my life, the Mahatma Gandhi, also had a vision, but his work was a futile one.

"You will see this in my country. I am ashamed to speak so toward my countrymen, but I fear it is the truth. It is, in Eliot's phrase, a wasteland. There is no future for my country. There will be no great changes, not politically, for India is in a terrible state of near anarchy that will never change.

"I must also warn you about the so-called spiritual comfort that so many of you of the West seek in my country. I tell you it is only as parasites living off the false superstitions of the uneducated that these spiritual leaders have gained their fame. Just as the Western world has defiled the life and message of Christ through its bloodthirsty crusades so have the people of my country defiled the life and message of the Buddha. Many of my countrymen are hypocrites, those who profess to have a relationship with God. They are merely satisfying the ostensible human need for power and domination through an alternative medium to politics. In truth, I am more of a Christian than a Hindu, or a Buddhist or Muslim for that matter. I believe more in the life of Christ, but I am like you in that it is a personal relationship. There is no need for me to join an organized religious body to convey this. I am sad when I see Muslims and Hindus, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Arabs fighting each other. They speak of holy wars, but this is a contradiction in terms. I have no faith in organized religions. There is only one truth in life and that is death. I am so weary of death. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the sole salvation is through the medium of art.

"I have taken enough of your time. Here, shake my hand. Do not lose your vision. You are young. Have faith there is a meaning to all this madness. God be with you in your thoughts, your dreams, and your work. Thank you very much for speaking with me."

We arrived in Amritsar. I bought a ticket for the morning train to Delhi. I slept that night on a hard bench in the station waiting room.

Chapter 17

The train from Amritsar belched a ribbon of thick, black smoke as it headed down the Punjab Valley toward Delhi. It was packed with people stacked like cordwood. Many rode on the tops of the passenger cars and others clung to the sides. The train passed through a land of flat, square fields, crisscrossed by a network of turquoise canals.

A beggar woman was led down the aisle of the car in which I rode. She was on a leash and being lightly twitched with a willow stick by the man who held the leash. As she came closer I noticed her head was shaped like an ugly, distorted pyramid. The jaw and mouth formed its base. As one looked up toward the eyes, the forehead, and the top of the head, it narrowed to almost a flat point. A metal band was wrapped around her forehead. Moving in spastic jerks, the woman placed her right hand in front of her and made grunting noises in the way of begging for money. No one seemed to pay her any mind. I stared in disbelief. A porter ushered the two of them to a third-class car containing various animals.

Another passenger nudged me with a grin and said, "Untouchable."

"Pardon me."

"She is an Untouchable. That band was placed around her head at birth so the brain would not grow. It is the only way she can bring money to her family. Her life is good only for begging."

"That's sick."

"That is India."

The train arrived at the old section of Delhi. A seething swarm of people surrounded the passengers as they got off the train. Everywhere skinny, brown rickshaw drivers and hawkers of cheap goods clamored for attention. I allowed myself to be swooped up by one driver who took my duffel bag, hooked it onto his bicycle rickshaw, and drove me to a bazaar area where I could find a cheap room.

We rode past whole communities living on the streets next to the train station. Women in tattered rags with cracked, yellow feet and rings in their noses stood cooking stews of begged vegetables over smoky fires. Children ran back and forth, some pissing on their toes. The narrow, winding streets and wide bazaars were littered with debris. Thick, intimate odors filled the air. Cripples walked the streets alongside half-naked natives with elephantiasis, with jaundice, with pellagra, with paralysis, all scooting about or assisted by various wooden supports and carts. Literally thousands of people with rickets, leprosy, skin diseases, and bloated bellies moved through the filth, the slime, the muck of the ancient streets. Old English buses, bicycles, scooters, taxis, horse-drawn carts, camel-drawn carts, human-drawn carts, all carrying different cargo, competed for limited space. An elephant ambled down one street, its rider seated upon a howdah. My senses were assaulted on all sides. I gawked at everything.

I found a room for a dollar a night in a crowded bazaar section of Old Delhi. It was a brick cubicle in a ramshackle hotel. The only furniture was a charpoy. In the corner of the cubicle was a squat toilet. A single window overlooked a narrow street in the bazaar and the tumultuous crowd that inhabited the street. The heat in the room was suffocating. Exhausted from the journey and the sights and sounds of the streets, I lay down on the charpoy and slept fitfully for several hours.

For the next few days, I walked the streets. Everywhere I saw poverty, hunger, disease, violence, nightmare misery. I did not shrink from these imprecations. I found myself seeking them out, as if there were something to be learned from them, some answer to that persistent "why" that dogged my every step. I felt myself moving through the tumult that surrounded me, but in a stupor like a man fallen into a lethargy who believes he is being buried alive.

I walked through the refuge quarter of the city. I went there every day to stare at the chained-off society, as if it were a perverse circus sideshow. Its air of unreality lured me. The people lived in houses built of tins and boxes, hideous things, hotbeds of epidemic, places where breeding seemed to go on at an unbelievable rate. These poverty-stricken and diseased people had little else to do. The strange thing was how the older people had grown reconciled. Their faces had grown smug. Their eyes shone with a sleek look. They seemed almost glad of their misery. They were scattered all about in every pose of contorted collapse. It was like a picture of a massacre or a pestilence.

There were people with catalepsy, with tuberculosis, with syphilis, with all sorts of worms, with eye diseases, saddening things with which the exposure, the filth, and the malnutrition had shackled them. The old men sat there like vultures, wrinkled and hideous, staring back at me. Others lay prostrate about the chained-off streets, their faces gaunt and colorless. When they closed their eyes, they looked as if they were dead. I looked at and smelled and listened to the sick who could not raise their bodies. The lepers were spotted head to foot with sores that were covered with a dirty, whitish foam. A dreadful stench issued forth from their putrid limbs. Some clawed their fingernails upon themselves like junkyard dogs that can find no relief from the great fury of their itching skin.

I was struck by the extraordinary stoicism with which they bore their sufferings. I felt humble and meek, filled with self-disparagement, abasement, and a despair that would not go away. As I returned each night from these visits to the purgatorial streets, I inevitably stopped at the same bazaar stall near my room. Exhausted from the heat and destroyed emotions, I bought fruit or liquid refreshment. The shopkeeper was an old, wrinkled man who had seen many generations of suffering and still held his head high, composed like a Buddha who had succeeded in separating his self from the cares and pains of this world. His impassive repose was like a display of great dignity. I was overwhelmed by the abstracted silence of this man who sat cross-legged in graceful quietude all day long in his tiny space of the world.

One evening while sitting at the old man's stall, I saw in his face the face of sublime goodness, a face in which I could find no commiseration at the sight of suffering humanity, no fear of it. In a moment of excruciating self-pity I seized his hand and wrung it with all the force of my dumb gratitude, like a man does to a close friend when there is no time for words. The old man smiled and passed his hand over my head.

I returned to my room and flopped on the charpoy. Rolf was right. What I felt most keenly was precisely what he told me: self-pity. I placed my head in my hands and wept bitterly, the flood of tears bringing with it memories of all the petty sufferings and tribulations I had experienced in my worthless life. I groped for some joyful image that could dispel the confusion, the shame, the ignominy, and the depravity that marked so much of my last few years. I focused on a scene from my childhood. There I was on an early morning in the redwoods, fishing with my father in the creek that flowed near our property line. The sun was not yet over the ridge of high trees. The sound of the creek was enchanting. The chirping of robins and sparrows filtered through the air and was swallowed by the forest. I felt a tug on my line and jerked my pole carefully. Dad was by my side, coaching me patiently and lauding my performance with a gentle word.

That singular image brought back the consummate joy that was my childhood. In my childhood there was nothing more mysterious, wonderful, and ominous than the forest. Our entire family life was surrounded by, breathed upon, and dominated by the existence of the forest. The food, warmth, clothing, and shelter provided by Dad's toil originated from the forest. The redwoods in my eyes were almost spiritual in their timelessness, their immense size and beauty.

I had felt myself the luckiest boy alive on the face of the earth. Dad was a man of the earth, a logger who cleared the timber of our land, built our house, and planted our garden with strawberries, carrots, beets, lettuce, and tomatoes. He was the man who built the tree house that rested gloriously like a castle on a burned-out stump on the far side of the garden. Mom was a woman of country charm who lovingly cared for the garden, picked wild berries and made thick, sweet pies, prepared the food Dad worked hard to provide us with, kept our home spotlessly clean, and gave us the endless warmth of her love.

A flood of bright images welled up inside me. There I was and there I am: a ten-year-old boy on an April day sprawled out among the dandelions sprouting through the unmowed grass of our backyard that stretches for two acres before succumbing to the brooding forest. I scan the length of the yard. To my far left near the house is our baseball diamond, complete with backstop, pitcher's mound, and bases. It is a short distance to the left field fence. Beyond the fence stands our neighbors' dappled Appaloosa. The remote center field fence is marked by the beginning of the forest and a thicket of wild brambles. Right field is an open area with Dad's toolshed marking the foul line. Behind the toolshed is the prominent landmark: a towering redwood tree.

At the entrance to the forest is a small, burned arch at the base of a dead tree that points to the sky like a charred finger. If you crawl through this burned section of timber, you enter another dimension: the dark forest with its soft, fern-covered floor. The forest is always dripping with moisture. It is somber, silent, old as time. Occasionally you see the curious and wide-eyed deer that bound away to a safe distance upon hearing your approach and then stare at you. You see the squirrels that scamper up trees in lightning-quick movements, then stand upright on hind legs, sniffing the air, munching on some morsel of forest food they have scavenged. You see the sparrows and robins that flitter to and fro and chirp their warnings and admonitions in voices that are sharp and clear and echo throughout the forest. Whenever I enter the forest, I am transported in time. I am a dreamer, at various times The Great Explorer, The Great Pioneer, The Great Hunter, Davey Crockett, or Kit Carson. My brother, boyhood friends, and I wage spectacular battles in the forest, encounter fierce enemies -- Indians, Nazis, wild savages -- and always we emerge victorious.

The images continue. There is the joy of country baseball, playing games of catch or flies-up with Dad, my brother, and my friends, bouncing a rubber ball against the back steps of our house and imagining World Series games -- bottom of the ninth, two out, me on the mound. There is the summer Little League, where four teams compete on the roughshod elementary school diamond, my team coached by Dad, who spends his evenings after work coaching us boys in infield practice, outfield practice, and game situations.

Baseball is an obsession and epitomizes the perfect joy of my childhood. This joy is in the oiling of a new baseball glove and breaking it in. It is in the sharp crack of bat meeting ball, the good-natured chattering and horseplay of my teammates, and the Saturday games where sometimes I play shortstop (my specialty is ranging to my right into the hole to snag a liner one-handed and fire a strike to first a step ahead of a slow-footed runner) and sometimes take the mound (the one game in particular when I pitch a no-hitter with my no-speed fastball and excellent control and Dad takes the team out for hamburgers and milk shakes to celebrate). It is in the feel of the earth, the dirt on my uniform, my hands, my bat. It is in the camaraderie with the other players, all of whom have solid baseball names like Tim Isacson, Eric Flynn, Charles Gamble, Tom Nordstrom, Burt Buck, Cap Powers. It is in the shape of the field, the clumps in the outfield, the wooden backstop, the chalked foul lines that are never quite straight, the rickety wooden benches used for the stands, and the fields beyond the left field fence that seem like green oceans with scattered groups of sheep and cattle sailing on them.

There are the many characters who live in Jacoby Creek: Old John, the hermit who lives in his one-room shack with its pot-bellied stove and grows the biggest and best vegetables around; "Dude Falk," the retired rancher who has an acre of fruit trees; the Okies who live in clapboard shacks at the end of Jacoby Creek Road, their yards covered with rusty frames of old cars with weeds sprouting out through the windows, their whiskey stills hidden somewhere in the forest, and their kids forever covered with fleabites; the Davis family, who run the largest sheep ranch in the county; and the McCovey family, who live on the hill overlooking our house, that same hill, shaped like a large helmet, down which my brother, the three McCovey girls, and I slide on cardboard boxes hitting incredible speeds and sometimes crashing at the bottom.

There are all the golden places of mystery and discovery. Near the elementary school there is the old Grange Hall, where Cub Scout and Boy Scout meetings are held, where the rear window is jarred loose and a friend and I can slip into the open space and explore the large kitchen, the storage closets, and the attic in which stacked scores of yellowing copies of Boy's Life are kept. We spend hours reading about the adventures of boy scouts who have saved lives and performed heroic deeds. We dream of duplicating those deeds to the delight and wonder of friends and relatives who will spread the story to all corners of the world.

There is the tree house on the six-foot deep, burned-out stump near the garden. The tree house has a trap door on the floor. On summer nights my brother and I often sleep in the tree house listening to the sounds of deer feeding on shrubbery at the base of the stump, the wind swaying the surrounding trees, and the monotone of the creek.

There is the rock quarry and cave (where bears are said to live) beyond the Okies' shacks. There are the forbidden, stagnant, insect-infested pools of green water near the quarry. Monsters are rumored to dwell beneath the surface of the pools, lying in wait to snatch an unsuspecting boy and drag him to the depths of the nether world.

Eight miles away in the town of Arcata there is the Catholic Church with its grim rows of benches, its pulpit, its dark closet for confession. Every Sunday Mom plays the organ for the church choir while I play secretly with my plastic army men. On Saturdays I have to attend catechism lessons. I always ask the nuns, much to their consternation, such precocious questions as:

"Why can't I see God?"

"How can God always have existed?"

"Why do I have to say ten 'Hail Mary' prayers instead of just five to excuse myself to God? What difference does the number of prayers make? I mean, does God have some special statistician up there?

"How can God see everything if he's got only two eyes?"

"Why is God always punishing people if he knows the plan of their lives anyway?"

"If God is so powerful, why did he make man evil?"

"Why is God always white?"

The nuns never give satisfactory answers. Invariably, they say "Hush now. You just have to accept all this on faith."

"What is faith?"

I am already becoming a royal pain in the ass, already beginning to question all forms of authority. Dad and Mom give me the nickname of "Yeahbut" because every time I am told to do something I always respond with a "Yeah, but ..." and protest that what I am told to do is unreasonable.

There is Dad's sawmill out in the Arcata lowlands. I love to climb the huge log decks, explore the workers' lunchroom with its pinup pictures of naked women, play among the piles of sawdust, smell the pungency of freshly-hewn timber, and listen to the roaring machinery that lifts, saws, carries, and stacks the logs and boards of Dad's world of toil and sweat. I love this world and its alliance of community. Nearly all the fathers of my friends work in the woods and sawmills as choker setters, fallers, sawyers, truck drivers hauling massive logs on dirt roads, planers, green chain pullers, all of them stained by the rich, masculine smell of the woods: sawdust, oil, and sweat.

This joyful world of mine is also in the November smoke that emanates from the fireplaces of Jacoby Creek, in the smell of freshly-mown lawns, and in the April bees buzzing from flower to flower to gather their pollen. It is in the wild and terrifying winter rain that unleashes storms of unyielding power, in the winter flooding of the creek that changes the creek's course every year, in the clear and fresh green of the countryside after a spring storm, in the crackling of a winter fire, in the raw, damp smell of new firewood stacked in the woodshed, in the breakfast smell of bacon and fried trout, and in the sound of popcorn popping in the kitchen on Sunday nights. It is there in the salty mist of the fog off Humboldt Bay that steals across the fields and forest on autumn mornings, in the spring smell of eucalyptus, in the summer clouds that hang in the sky like puffs of sea foam, and in the ochre-colored sunsets. It is in the darkness that prowls softly through the silence of the forest at night. It is in the earthy fragrance of the trees, the grass, and the flowers that surround me on this April day as I lie stretched out, head cupped in my hands, chewing on a blade of grass, and surveying the stretch and sweep of this very special world.

As I lay there on the charpoy reliving these scenes from my childhood, I realized suddenly that what I had seen in the face of the old shopkeeper was the gentle, compassionate, loving visage of my father before all the trouble began. It was the image I long ago buried and forgot. For too long I had carried with me only the remembrance of the bitterness of our separation, the anger and heart-rending venom that polluted our renunciation of each other, and the horrible guilt that was my legacy for failing even to make an attempt at reconciliation before his untimely death while I was still in prison.

I somehow played a role in his death. The disease, despair, and misery that I now obsessively plunged myself into on the streets of Delhi was, in effect, the answer to what I sought. This was where the road had been leading me all along. This was the end of it all: a manifestation of the pain, shame, and frustration I had caused my father. Before I could ever be purged I would have to wallow in, absorb, experience, and fully understand what Rolf called the "very dregs of human misery and despair." I now understood. The depth of this dark revelation was fathomless. I choked on my self-pity and felt myself falling into an abyss.

Chapter 18

Dysentery overtook me. I lay for three days in a sweating fever upon the charpoy. I became like the prostrate death-forms of the Delhi streets. I was so weak I could not lift my body and lay in the sticky warmth of my involuntary excretions. I prayed for death, for deliverance from the agony of existence. In my fever-hallucinations I experienced tempests, disease, exile, and death. Death lurked in the air, in the water, in the bushes of the hallucination scenery. In one scene death took the form of black shapes that crouched, lay, and sat among large redwood trees, half hidden within a dim light, all making sounds of pain, abandonment, and despair. In another scene a row of marching skeletons rattled in my mind. One approached and took the form of my father laughing sardonically and pointing a finger at me.

At times I was conscious of someone pouring water over me and rubbing my forehead. A murmur of voices surrounded me, but I could not speak and did not know who they were. The fever broke on the fourth day. I dragged myself into the street to the shopkeeper's stall. He gave me tea, fruit, and yogurt in silence. In a couple of days my strength began to return.

I had only about $300 remaining, but I did not care. I began to walk the streets again. I bought some new clothes and got a haircut. I walked to the new part of the city and found a Western hotel where many foreign tourists stayed. It had a large swimming pool and was a good place to escape the heat. I went there several days in a row. I would swim for a while, then sit off to the side of the pool by myself and become lost in dark ruminations. The contrast between the world of the streets outside and the isolated bubble of healthy, laughing Westerners in the hotel was not lost on me.

One day, a woman of about twenty-five approached. She was wearing a bikini. Her long, black hair glistened in the sunlight. She had dark, penetrating eyes and her smile was like a wonderful gift. She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in a long time.

"May I join you?" she asked.

"Sure, please sit down."

She placed her towel next to me and sat down on it.

"I've seen you here the last few days, but I never see you in the lobby. Are you staying someplace else?" she asked. Her accent had an agreeable sound.

"Yes. I'm staying in a room in a bazaar section of Old Delhi. I don't have enough money to stay in a hotel like this. I just come here to use the pool and get out of the heat."

"That must be interesting. Staying in a place near all the real people of India, I mean. All the foreign tourists here are so boring. You seem somehow different. I noticed you before. You have a look, how should I say, a tired and deep look. Are you an artist?"

"I don't know if I can call myself an artist. I'm trying to write a book, but it isn't going well. By the way, my name is David."

"I'm Chantal. I'm pleased to meet you."

We shook hands. The warmth and softness of her hand sent a shiver through me. I had been in the company of men for so long I had forgotten the pleasure of a woman's touch. I found myself staring at her, then suddenly became self-conscious and embarrassed. I withdrew my hand and looked down at my feet.

Chantal giggled and said, "It's all right. I'm not a witch. I won't put a curse on you."

"I'm sorry. It's just that...that I haven't talked with a...a beautiful woman like you for quite some time. Please forgive me. I'm a little nervous. Where are you from?"

"Sao Paulo in Brazil. Are you American?"

"Yes."

"I thought so when I heard your voice, but before that I thought you might be European. You have a different posture from the other Americans I have met. Americans usually walk tall and a little arrogantly and are sometimes loud. They are easy to distinguish from other Westerners. You seem very quiet and tired and you walk slowly with your head down."

"I suppose I should take that as a compliment."

Chantal giggled again and touched my shoulder. "Oh yes, please do. I meant it as a compliment. You give me the impression of always thinking deeply about something. I like that. So many of the people I meet are frivolous, always bragging about their experiences. They are too confident and always trying to impress."

"Thank you. My thoughts aren't so deep, though, just confused. So what are you doing in India?"

"I'm what you might call a free-lance corporate secretary and interpreter. I worked in New York for a large international company, saved some money, and am now traveling around the world. My company has subsidiaries all over the world, so when I'm ready to work again I can work in Bombay, Cairo, Istanbul, most of the European capitals, and of course in Brazil. I've just come from Manila and Bangkok. I plan to meet some friends in Bombay in a couple of weeks, but I wanted first to visit Delhi and then the Taj Mahal in Agra. What about you? What brings you to India?"

"It's a long story."

"Please tell me. I have no place to go today and I'm interested to hear your story."

I told her everything. It was more a confession than the telling of a story. I began my tale with meeting Hasan and Ataullah in Paris, but her gentle questioning and sincere reactions sent me on digressions and detours that covered my childhood, my prison time, my high school years, the adventures in Turkey and Iran, the years of working labor jobs and futile attempts at short story writing, my father's death, everything. She encouraged me to elaborate on every nuance and detail. Each time I paused in my narrative she responded with remarks prefaced by "Tell me more about..." "How did you feel when..." "But don't you think that was..." "What do you think would have happened if..." and "You must have been...." It gave me the courage to continue.

By the time I finished, it was early evening. I felt thoroughly cleansed as if I had been exonerated of a great, moral crime. My spirit was buoyant, lifted from the weight of self-commiseration. Speaking with Chantal and responding to her intelligent probing allowed me to examine and explain my life with an objectiveness I had not possessed before. Always in the past I was too self-absorbed, too involved with the immediacy of the experience, to ask the questions of myself that Chantal asked. I had searched in vain for some religious or philosophical truth that would answer the conundrum of my own existence. Each failure to latch on to the truths I sought had brought with it an even more wrenching despair.

Now, however, I was struck by an extraordinary realization. In my attempts to convey myself on paper or to other men I had consistently been thwarted by a tendency toward philosophical rambling that may have provided some temporary intellectual relief but no resolution to the problem of the self. I had never probed beneath the surface of my emotions. I had never examined my life from a feminine viewpoint. It was not so much the substance of Chantal's questions that brought the mollification I now felt as it was the manner in which she asked them. It was in the way she tilted her head, the way she brushed her hair back while holding me with her eyes, the way she shifted her body, the way she leaned forward and touched my hand or shoulder softly, and the way she cupped her head in her hands thoughtfully before proceeding with her next question or remark. It was in everything she did.

A long silence settled between us. I suddenly felt very tired. We were alone at the pool. The other bathers had left some time before. We listened to the sounds of laughter and movement coming from inside the hotel. A light breeze played upon our faces. Chantal took my hand.

"Shall we buy something to eat and take it to my room?"

We feasted on chicken, rice, and fruit. We spoke very little, but there was no discomfort in our silence. We were content to sit on her bed and hold each other with our eyes. We finished our meal. Chantal got up, brought out some towels, and said she wanted to take a shower. After she finished I did the same.

I stepped out of the shower, dried myself, and wrapped the towel around my waist. Chantal was lying under the covers. I lay down beside her. I reached to caress her hair. She smiled at me and offered no resistance. We kissed, softly at first, playfully, then hungrily. She moaned and emotion swelled my throat. I slipped beneath the covers, aching for her body, her mind, her soul. We were two dancers enmeshed in a frantic play of insatiable yearning. We made love until our energy was spent, then fell asleep, curled against each other, arms and legs intertwined as if we were one.

We spent the next two days and nights together. It was a time of supreme happiness for me. The weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. Every ounce of my being was concentrated on Chantal, her grace, her fluidity of movement, her excitable interest in everything around her. We visited various parts of Delhi and where formerly I had seen nothing but death imagery and despair I now saw children playing, beaming faces, and life in motion.

As we lay together on the second night, Chantal looked into my eyes and said, "This has been a wonderful time for me. You make me very happy."

"You make me happy, too."

"Where will you go from here?"

"I suppose Calcutta."

"What will you do there?"

"I've been told I can probably find work on a freighter as a galley hand. I haven't thought much beyond that."

"Will you continue to write?"

"Yes. Thanks to you I've found a new feeling of optimism."

"Good. It's important that you not give up on your writing. You've found something rare and wonderful. I love the study of language. It gives me a source of inspiration. It's like music. Literature and poetry are the highest forms of this music. I envy you. When I use language in my work, I'm only repeating the words of others. But you are creating something good, something meaningful, with your writing. I want to be able to do something like that. I want to express more of my own thoughts, more of myself. I also want to create."

"You express yourself very well. It is I who envy you. I speak only my native language, but you can speak several languages. That's an art in itself. And you're a beautiful, free, caring person. You give life and happiness to others simply by existing. Look what you've given me."

Chantal's eyes looked down, then shifted to a distant contemplation before returning to mine. "That's very kind of you," she said, running a finger across my chest. It felt like a feather gliding along my skin.

"Will you return to your country?" she asked.

"I'd say the odds for that are fairly strong, but I can't foresee what'll happen tomorrow, let alone beyond. But, yes, things seem to be developing that way. And you? When will you return to Sao Paulo?"

"Probably within a year or two. I do miss my family, but first I'll go to Bombay, then to Europe and work." She again looked at me directly, sighed, and said, "And tomorrow I'll go to Agra."

"For how long?"

"Perhaps two days."

"Will you come back to Delhi?"

"I don't know. I may go on to Bombay from there. I haven't decided yet."

"May I see you off at the station?"

"I would prefer that you not. No more words, OK? Let's just make love."

When I awoke the next morning, Chantal was gone. There was a note left on her pillow.

David,

Thank you for the wonderful time. You are a kind and loving man and a sensitive lover. I still am not sure if I will go to Bombay or come back to Delhi. If I come back. I will be on the train that arrives at 4 p.m. If not, you have my address in Brazil. I feel certain we will meet again. Good luck in everything you do.

Love, Chantal
Chapter 19

I went to the train station every day at four o'clock for the next three days. Chantal did not return. I had known she would not, but something inside of me refused to believe it. When the realization that she was not returning hit me on the third day, I felt numbed as if paralyzed. I was seized with a last, furious desire. My despair was boundless. I knew my hopeless fantasies about her were unrealizable.

I trudged along the teeming streets. I walked and walked, thinking of Chantal and reliving every precious moment of the short time we had spent together. As I continued to walk, my thoughts cleared and I had a vision of her as a kind of guiding angel sent to deliver me and point me in the direction I had to take with my life. A thin smile creased my lips.

I spent two more days in the sweltering heat of Delhi. I was down to my last $100 and could no longer delay my decision. On my way to the bus station I ventured again through the new part of Delhi and saw wealthy Sikhs riding horseback in the streets, proud and unwavering men who occasionally kicked certain wretched ones in their path. I saw women dressed in bright saris, their heads wrapped in gold embroidered scarves, and wearing heavy silver chains and bangles on their arms and ankles. There were other slim, beautiful girls and women who carried large, earthen jugs on their heads.

I left Delhi early in the morning. The journey lasted two full days. One vista shifted into another, a dizzying displacement of hill and air, of haze and all the shades of green and brown. All along the road were animals and people. Green parrots flew across the road. Fat, black water buffaloes ambled slowly along. Monkeys and apes performed acrobatics on the cornices of houses. Elephants and zebus, half-asleep, deliberately stepped between staring, waving groups of people. Peacocks shrieked at the bus. Half-naked figures squatted around flickering fires, preparing evening meals. Bandy-legged men in the bus spit betel juice from their red lips through the windows, as if in derisive comment on the abject condition of life.

Calcutta was a mass of tenements, hovels, temples, mosques, shrines, warehouses, shops, and factories. It was worse than Delhi. The smoke of thousands of cow-dung fires used for cooking by the inhabitants of the streets hung over the city. Everywhere in the overflowing streets lay the squalor of diseased life and morbid death. There were those squatting upon the pavements, scarcely noticed by the passing swarms. They claimed attention only as the crows began to prod their bodies. They had neither the will power nor the energy to destroy themselves by their own hands, as some did. I saw one man leap in front of a train pulling into a station. After the train passed, the man, his legs amputated at the waist and bleeding profusely, was on his back in an attitude of supplication, his hands extended, and in an agony of deep desperation. His shrieks were wild and sounded like the laughter of a madman. He finally collapsed. He still breathed, but the convulsions of death were upon his mutilated body. His lips moved as if he would speak. Blood flowed fast from his mouth. Then he lay still, his eyes open and staring wildly at the sky.

I passed through a leper colony that was on the other side of a railway bridge. Not far away was a vast garbage dump. Some of the lepers lay on beds inside mud huts with their limbs bandaged. One boy sat against an outside wall, his arms and legs smeared with a blue ointment. Next to him was another child whose finger stumps were raw and bleeding. There was a woman using the grey stump of her hand like a wooden spoon to stir a pot of steaming liquid. A few nuns from Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity, the Nirmal Hriday, came that day bringing bandages, food, and cats to keep at bay the garbage-dump rats that sometimes crossed over to the colony to chew on leprous limbs.

I followed the nuns back to the Nirmal Hriday. A highly scrubbed and antiseptic shed was crammed with many rows of stretcher beds with moribund occupants. The shed was a place where a person who had been totally neglected since birth could die with a scrap of dignity. The occupants of the beds lay very still, only occasionally blinking and grabbing at scraps of food. The nuns moved continuously down the rows of stretchers, dishing out food to those who were able to eat, shaving the heads of those with lice, dressing the sores of the rancid ones, and cleaning up the ones who shat involuntarily. There was one man with a gangrenous leg wrapped in rags who was taken outside, because of the stench, to have his leg hosed. The water triggered the blood to flow over his green flesh. Bone and muscle dropped off the leg. A crow flew down and picked up a piece of bone that had fallen from the foot. I vomited and left.

I walked along the Hooghly River. It was silted badly from the ashes of cremated bodies. Garbage lined the streets. More than once I saw, resting in the piles of garbage, a dead baby whose skin was parched and cracked. I bought a bottle of rotgut wine from a black market dealer, got drunk, and passed out on the streets.

I awoke the next morning with a pounding headache. The morning heat was already piercing and insufferable. I bought fruit and bottled water from a street vender and watched the wretched masses. I thought of them as participants in a great stage comedy. The cruelty, the insensitivity, the petty meanness of this human comedy struck me hard at that moment. A new desolation crept over my soul, a wild, aching loneliness. The flood of my thoughts welled up, then swept over and through me. What succor could I ever expect in this land? I felt weak and hollow within. Chantal was already a distant ghost, blown away into the past. The only way was forward, leaving the baggage of Asia behind.

I found a park with some trees that provided shade to sit under. I stared incomprehensibly at the sky. A group of about twenty young Hindus approached and sat demurely around me. One moved closer, smiled wanly, and said, "Do you mind, sir, if I ask what you believe?"

"Excuse me?"

"We would like to know what you believe."

"Are you talking about religion?"

"Religion, philosophy, spiritualism. What is your faith?"

"I have no faith. I believe in nothing."

"Then you have found enlightenment?"

"No. I haven't found enlightenment. I've found no answer other than there is no answer."

"Then you are Buddhist?"

"No. I'm not Buddhist. Why do you ask?"

"We are seekers of the truth. We saw you sitting here gazing at the sky. You appear to us as one who has found something. Will you grant us the favor of teaching us what you have learned."

"I'm not a teacher."

"All men are at times teachers, at other times pupils. Truth is present in every man. We wish to hear the truth of your life."

"I'm sorry. I know of no profound truth that can teach you anything. But since we're here together at this moment and discussing this topic of truth, perhaps you'd be kind enough to answer some of my questions."

"I shall try."

"How can people ignore the suffering in this country? How can you keep from going insane?"

"There are many kinds of suffering. All men suffer. Has your own internal suffering not been equal to the suffering of those you see around you?"

"I have no way of quantifying what I've suffered, but I feel it's nothing compared to the swarms of hideous creatures I've seen in Delhi and Calcutta. Don't you at least feel pity for these unfortunate people? Don't you feel any semblance of pity for someone lying on the hot pavement with a wide, open wound across an exposed leg and hordes of maggots feeding on the green insides?"

"There is no room for pity where all require it. I believe these cripples and beggars perform their litanies not for pity, but simply for recognition. Their hideousness has become their only means of climbing out of the abyss of incessant loneliness, which again is present even within the rich and the healthy. We are all afflicted. These cripples and beggars are pitiless. In the course of their lives they eventually cease to pity even themselves. They have recognized and accepted themselves as symbols of the horror of human existence. They are indeed the symbols of every man's private demons."

The young Hindu's words struck a chord in me. I thought again of the sight of the man lying on the street, completely composed, as if his leg, in which the maggots were feasting, were a separate entity and not attached to him. It came to me that what I had seen was not the decay of a single man, but the symbolic decay of a whole method of thinking and living, of a whole system of consolations and philosophies and hopes, built up during my years of wandering and searching, and now, in the swift passing of thoughts, destroyed utterly. The outstretched hand groping for a few pennies had not been the man's own, but that of my father, reaching out to me beyond the grave and the torment of the private hell we had created together.

I knew then what I had to do. I jumped to my feet. The group of Hindus also rose. I grasped the one man's hands and shook them vigorously. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm afraid I must go now, but thank you. You've given me something very important."

I headed toward the docks, confident of finding a ship that would take me on. My stride was quick and a feeling of felicity and certitude heaved in my chest. There was much to be done. My destination was fixed. I would visit my father's grave. I would place a flower on the grave and ask for reconciliation and forgiveness. I would find my mother and brother. I might even check into the Carter pardon. I would finish my book and lay the past to rest.

I was going home.

###

About the Author

Robert W. Norris was born and raised in Humboldt County, California, where he played basketball in high school and junior college. In 1969, he entered the Air Force, subsequently became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, and served time in a military prison for refusing to fight in the war. In his twenties, he roamed across the United States, went to Europe twice, and made one journey around the world. During that time, he worked as a millhand, construction laborer, stevedore, mailman, baker, saute cook, and oilrig steward.

Norris has lived and taught English in Japan since 1983. He has an M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Newport University in Newport Beach, California. He is the author of Toraware, a novel about the obsessive relationship of three misfits from different cultural backgrounds in 1980s Kobe, Japan; Autumn Shadows in August, an hallucinogenic mid-life crisis/adventure, and homage to Malcolm Lowry and Hermann Hesse; and The Many Roads to Japan, a novella used as an English textbook in Japanese universities. He has also written several articles on teaching English as a foreign language. He and his wife live near Fukuoka, Japan, where he is a professor at Fukuoka International University. Check his home page.

If you liked this story, read these other novels by Robert W. Norris.

Toraware

The year is 1983. The place is the Kobe-Osaka area. A 33-year-old American drifter and Vietnam War veteran has just arrived in Japan seeking one more adventure and an escape from his past. A promiscuous, rebellious, 23-year-old Japanese woman has just returned from a two-year homestay in a Canadian mission, where she was sent by her parents to cure her suicidal behavior. A snobbish, upper-class, 22-year-old Japanese woman who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality is about to graduate from university and enter the frightening world of adulthood. Three people searching for a place to belong. Three people dancing on a psychological highwire. Three people about to become enmeshed in a relationship that will change each of their lives forever. Toraware is a special novel that takes a penetrating look at the obsessions, suspense, grief, misunderstandings, and joys of people from very different cultures and backgrounds who are brought together by fate to find the separate life paths they must follow.

"Crafted in excellent style and patiently honed.... The Japanese characters are wholly convincing....The ambivalence and spiritual guilt of Yoshiko, one of the tragic heroines of Toraware, about an abortion she underwent years ago, is perfectly captured.... [Norris has] captured the unassuagable melancholy at the deepest core of the Japanese soul [and] succeeded in convincing us of the reality of [his] vision." -- Kansai Time Out Magazine

"A wonderful novel about that last love/lust journey some of us take before we segue into middle age, acceptance and stability. It is a dangerous journey, not for the weak of heart. Along the way are demons lying in ambush, and false trails which can lead to madness, suicide and even murder. Robert W. Norris has created characters we will grow to love, despite their many flaws, characters who, we hope and pray, will make it through, characters we will always remember. Be prepared to stay up nights as you follow their progress. A number one read!" -- Paul Clayton, author of Calling Crow

"Intriguing...absorbing...holds the reader from the opening page.... The line between eccentricity and losing your marbles is a fine one. As Norris tellingly shows, often it is just a matter of luck as to which side of the line you exist on." \-- Mainichi Daily News

"Toraware goes beyond the gaijin experience.... [Norris] manages to evoke the rootlessness felt by young Japanese uncertain about their future." -- The Japan Times

"Human emotions, dark pasts, trials and tribulation, and complicated relationships are nothing new in literature. These are all common themes in countless novels, and we've seen the same scenario play out time and time again. Every now and then, an author comes along and makes these themes special, though, and strikes the right notes with his or her readers. Robert W. Norris has done this with his novel Toraware." -- Chris Howard, Curledup.com

"Norris has crafted a work filled with passions, ambivalence and spiritual angst all wrought in believable and readable manner. Characters are nicely fleshed; the Japanese characters are completely convincing. Norris captures the inner cravings of the two women in a true to life manner.... Toraware is a compelling account focused upon a collective human need for acceptance...an intriguing tale sure to please." -- Molly Martin, Epinions.com

Toraware is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.

Autumn Shadows in August

Finalist in Multicultural Literature category in Dan Poynter's 2012 Global eBook Awards.

Modeled roughly on Malcolm Lowry's Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid, this novel is part homage to Lowry and Hermann Hesse, part mushroom retrospective, and part middle-aged love story. David Thompson (the protagonist in Looking for the Summer) is an expatriate American teaching at a Japanese university and suffering from hepatitis C. His wife Kaori is recovering from cancer surgery. Feeling a strong sense of their own mortality, confusion about the significance of what they have done with their lives, and a need to escape the constrictions of their life in Japan, the two set out on a journey to Europe to retrace a path from David's adventurous youth and locate a German benefactor from the past. What lies ahead -- a trip through the Magic Theater, a sudden death, an encounter with Lowry's ghost, and a descent into the Capuchin Crypt in Rome -- will change their lives irrevocably.

"Autumn Shadows in August is an extraordinary and enjoyable kunstlerroman or artist's novel. The protagonist, David Thompson, is a writer who is influenced by and identifies with two master novelists, Hermann Hesse and Malcolm Lowry. From the surreal prologue to the final page, Autumn Shadows in August is packed with direct and veiled allusions to the lives and works of both authors....

"Author Robert Norris's writing style is rich in symbolism. Norris tends to intersperse his narrative with expository writing -- a technique employed with great effect by yet another expatriate pacifist writer, Aldous Huxley. Autumn Shadows in August reminds me of Huxley's later novels in other ways as well, in particular for the protagonist's almost mystical detachment and sense that he and his loved ones are part of something greater than themselves. By the novel's end, the reader has glimpsed the forces and obstacles that shape an artist and compel him to write." -- Karen Breda, librarian and Amazon reviewer

"Robert W. Norris writes fully and well of the question many of us are coming to -- what on earth have we done and did any of it matter? The whole of Autumn Shadows in August as the protagonist looks backward and his wife looks forward is a finely wrapped gift." -- James Fadiman, author of The Other Side of Haight

"Autumn Shadows In August is an engaging and entertaining novel...very strongly recommended for all general fiction readers for its evocative telling and unique style and presentation of a timeless tale...an overall remarkable story." \-- Midwest Book Review

"This absolutely breath-taking novel brings the reader to a whole new level of understanding life. It will not only stir your own realizations of where your life has taken you, but also open your mind and heart to new adventures." -- Reader Views

"This is one of the best novels I've ever read! It's an inspiring, meaningful story of a journey through the mind of an enlightened and experienced soul; at the same time it's an exhilarating and humorous adventure, an exploration of great art, literature, and architecture, and a beautiful, emotionally enthralling romance. But this book is far more than the sum of its parts, and my feeble literary reviewing skills can do no justice to this eloquent and multifaceted tale. This book is highly recommended." -- Amazon.com reader

"Though Norris's writing is descriptive and fluid, this is not a book I would recommend to a casual reader. However, those who have a taste for books with deep, intense, emotional, and soul-searching plots will find Autumn Shadows in August a great read." -- Joanne Kiggins, The Compulsive Reader

"Autumn Shadows in August is a journey in miles and of states of mind. The reader travels through Europe with an American expatriate who recapitulates his past in a transcendental and evocative fashion. Along this mind-expanding sojourn, we also travel over the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan and into India, where the protagaonist's life is transformed. Autumn Shadows in August is an insightful and very enjoyable read. I'm glad I went along on this personal journey." -- David Echt, author of Messenger from the Summer of Love

Autumn Shadows in August is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.

The Many Roads to Japan

A Search for Identity

Originally developed as a textbook for Japanese EFL university students, The Many Roads to Japan tells the story of the adventures of a Vietnam War conscientious objector who had to follow many twists and turns in his life journey before finding his niche in Japan. The exercises at the end of each chapter are designed both to provide a review of the most important information contained in the chapter and to give practice in skimming for main ideas and scanning for specific kinds of information. The discussion/essay questions are meant to involve the students personally by asking them to respond to events in the main character's life and relate them to their own experiences. Suitable for low intermediate ESL level and above students, The Many Roads to Japan is also a good story for native speakers of English. An excellent resource for peace studies, too.

"Mr. Norris's description of the world of adventure as well as that of misery reminds me of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, or Herzog.... Norris's story of a symbolic life is a gift from his own experience, and it gives us something good, meaningful, and inspiring.... The comprehension questions, exercises, and discussion/essay questions are quite useful in helping Japanese students to think in English and in encouraging them to express themselves in English as well. This is the ideal textbook I have been looking for, and while using it, I am happy to say that I can steer clear of the traditional grammar-translation method, which I find so time-consuming and ineffective." -- Professor Kazushige Sagawa, Aoyama Gakuin University

"Excellent! I was mesmerized by the visual descriptions of all the places seen by the narrator and the struggle he went through to find the meaning of his life, and what he really wanted to do with the rest of it. I think it's a great learning tool for any student, and it was certainly well written. I'm putting it in my keeper file. There's a lot of information in there you'd never find anywhere else. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down." -- Beth Anderson, author of Night Sounds, Murder Online,and Second Generation

"The Many Roads to Japan influenced my students a lot, not only in studying English but also in searching for their own identities and thinking about how to live their lives." -- Kazuyo Yamane, Peace Studies lecturer at Kochi University

The Many Roads to Japan is available at Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Click here.

