I’m enjoying reading Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Newby, perhaps the last of the rank amateur explorers, has perhaps seen a small bump in sales of his books as a result of his recent demise. Newby and his friend Hugh Carless set off to explore the remotest bits of north-east Afghanistan in 1956, and the book is the record of the trip.
The whole ill-prepared Newby-Carless expedition reminds me of my friends Chuck and Mike during the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s. Chuck and Mike were living in New York, downwind of the crippled reactor in Harrisburg, Pa. (Anne and I were living in Philadelphia then). At the height of the crisis, when we all thought the dang thing might blow, in the middle of the night, Chuck and Mike said, “let’s get outta here,” and jumped in their car. They were on the road for several hours before they realized they were driving west, into Pennsylvania.
Anyway. Having honorably failed in their attempt to get to the top of Mir Samir, a 19,880-foot mountain, Carless and Newby wanted to push on to the province of Nuristan, but met with resistance from their local horse drivers, who feared its Wild West-style reputation. Nuristan was converted to Islam only recently, and by the sword. After arguing with the porters for several hours,
…Hugh lost his temper.
‘Go back then!’ he said. ‘Go back to Jangalak and tell your people that Newby Seb and I have gone to Nuristan alone—and that you let us go alone! They will call you women.’
As soon as he had said this is was abundantly clear that both Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan were prepared to let us do this very thing. Hugh was forced to try a more subtle approach….
‘When I return from Nuristan… I shall demand audience of General Ubaidullah Khan and tell him what you said about “idolatrous unbelievers.” General Ubaidullah Khan is a man of importance and …he is also a Nuristani.’
The effect of this was remarkable. At once all opposition ceased. Before we finally fell asleep long after midnight I asked Hugh who General Ubaidullah Khan was.
‘So far as I know,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t exist. I just invented him; but I think he’s going to be a very useful man to know.’