A few months previously, on my second visit to Afghanistan, I had been lost in the Salang Tunnel, a showcase of Soviet engineering eleven thousand feet up in the Hindu Kush. A lack of helicopters and time had forced me to return overland to Mazar from the Panjshir Valley, a two-day trip that for complex reasons I was forced to tackle alone. It was still winter, and the mine-lined road up to the pass was blocked by snow for several miles at either end.
The tunnel itself was two miles long and pitch-dark. Half a mile in, my torch batteries went flat. The surface of the tunnel floor was badly decayed, full of slippery rocks and deep holes filled with freezing slush and ice.* I was already tired from the journey, and after what seemed like hours of cursing and floundering in this terrible place, my legs soaked, my knees and shins bashed and aching from countless falls, I felt badly demoralised. Just then an unseen presence reached out of the darkness and took me by the hand. Friend or foe? There wasn’t a chink of light by which to tell, and the hand’s owner never said a word. Instead, he or she began pulling me gently but firmly along the tunnel. This person seemed to know the topography of the worst rock-falls and how to avoid the deepest pools. Even so, it was another half an hour before we rounded a gradual bend and a pinprick of light revealed itself.
As the rocks and ruts of the tunnel floor took form I released the hand and stole a glance at my saviour. He was a man of about my age, with the high cheekbones and narrow eyes of a Hazara. The tatty clothes and sandals he wore indicated that he was a porter, a regular passenger through this tunnel. At the other end I had passed men like him bearing jerry-cans of diesel on their backs. This one wore a Burberry scarf around his head.
When at last we reached the full-beam dazzle of the tunnel’s exit he put on a pair of battered pink sunglasses and marched ahead without changing pace. I kept up with him, smiling and waiting for him to communicate, but he trudged on without once speaking or raising his eyes from the ground. So it went for another two hours, the road winding gently down between peaks as crisp and white as a toothpaste advertisement. Below the snowline we heard an engine. A smart Toyota Landcruiser rounded a corner and stopped when it saw me. The driver wound down the window and the man in the passenger seat leaned across him, looking me up and down.
– Need a lift? the passenger asked mildly, in flawless English. I was exhausted, and thanked him from my heart as I scrambled in, leaving the door open for my silent tunnel guide. But as the guide moved to join me, the driver barked something in Dari, stopping him dead, and leaned back over his seat to slam the door shut. I pleaded with the English-speaker, but he shook his head, unmoved.
– No room, he said, untruthfully. As the truck turned around I looked guiltily out at the man who had delivered me from the tunnel. He had propped his pink sunglasses on his forehead and stared sullenly back, his shoulders slumped, stock still at the side of the road.
– Here, said the English-speaker, producing a flask of hot sweet tea. Drink.
The Landcruiser was already turning around for the descent down the hill. The decent thing to do would have been to show solidarity with the porter by climbing back out, but I was too tired and the Landcruiser was too comfortable, and the moment was quickly lost. My rescuer was the mayor of the next town down the road. He said he came up this way each evening to monitor the pedestrian traffic and to help anyone in need. I looked back, but my guide was already out of sight. I realised with an awful pang that I had neglected even to pay him for his help. I never saw him again, but the tea, as I cautiously sipped it in the back of the lurching vehicle, tasted like elixir.
Tony Banks’s intervention with the Home Office was masterly. A month after our surgery visit Mir rang to announce that he had received a letter granting him Indefinite Leave to Remain. He sounded pleased and relieved to be on the road to full refugee status so soon. ILR status meant he was eligible for all kinds of benefits not conferred on those with ELR. For instance, he could apply for an education grant to continue his medical studies, begun in Mazar. The Home Office would also issue him with new identity papers, blue ones instead of brown, that were almost as good as a passport because they permitted their holder to travel abroad. And in five to seven years, if he was still here he could apply for full British citizenship and a passport the same colour as mine: Dieu et mon Droit and all that. In the short term ILR was a valuable psychological fillip for Mir, who had some other exciting news to share: he had secured his first job, in a West Ham restaurant. Would I care to come and visit him there? He wanted to speak to me, he said, as well as to show me some proper Pashtun hospitality.
The restaurant was a busy diner just up the road from the football stadium on Green Street. Dun-coloured curries bubbled cheerfully beneath hot-lamps along a stainless-steel counter, but it still seemed an unwelcoming place. It smelled and sounded alien, acoustic clatter bouncing from its linoleum floors and utilitarian walls. I slipped into a formica-clad booth, conspicuous among the other customers, who were exclusively Asian, and waited for Mir to make an appearance. The laminated menu was in Urdu, and non-speakers were invited to select from photographs. Whatever they were, the dishes on offer were absurdly cheap by west London standards, further evidence that a virtual parallel economy operated in this part of the city. I ordered what looked like a chicken tikka masala and a glass of lassi. I had assumed Mir was a waiter here, but the grubby dishcloth slung over his shoulder when he finally crept in from the back indicated that as yet he was no more than the bus boy. He asked permission to join me from the manager, who looked at his watch before reluctantly agreeing.
– The boss. Paki bastard, Mir muttered mischievously as he slid in opposite me.
He seemed happy but tired, and it soon became apparent why. He had been washing floors and dishes in this place for twelve hours a day all week.
– It’s no problem, he said. I don’t have to work these hours. I can work for as long or as short as I wish, and the money is good.
But it wasn’t good. Mir was being paid £2 an hour for his labours, cash in hand and no questions asked. Here at last was hard evidence of the fabled immigrant black economy. No one really knew what jobs like Mir’s cost the country in lost taxes each year, but sections of the press and certain politicians were fond of suggesting it ran into billions.
– The money is not the problem, said Mir. I have heard of some people who are paid £1 an hour. The problem is Hamid. He is a bad man. I need to move somewhere else.
It wasn’t just the fact that Hamid sometimes smoked chars or drank alcohol that was troubling the teetotal Mir. His host was a Pashtun like him, but he was a hypocrite who lived in flagrant breech of Pashtunwali, the code of honour that was supposed to govern the social behaviour of their tribe. Mir had explained the four pillars of this code in detail in Afghanistan. The first was badal, meaning revenge, and the obligation to exact it. Such Old Testament thinking was not confined to Afghanistan’s Pashtuns – the persecutors of Mir’s family in Mazar were Hazara, after all – but the language of vendetta was one that Mir understood. It was the threat of badal that had prompted his flight to Britain. The second pillar was nanwatai, the obligation to show humility to the victor in a fight or dispute. Nang, meanwhile, meant honour, especially the honour of family and clan and the obligation to defend it. It applied particularly to the women of the family and could be enforced if necessary by a lashkar, a sort of tribal raiding party. A recent horror-story in the Western press told how a lashkar had gang-raped a woman from a rival family to avenge the insult of an unapproved liaison. Such things were not uncommon among the Pashtuns, particularly in the tribal areas of north-west Pakistan. It was an example of the application of nang gone mad. Finally there was malmastia, the obligation to show hospitality to all visitors, even to one’s enemies, and to do so selflessly and without expectation of recompense.
But as Mir had discovered, there was little selflessness about Hamid’s conduct in London. He had lost no time in guiding Mir to the local social security office in order to apply for the emergency housing benefit to which he was entitled. Mir’s gratitude had turned to astonishment when Hamid told him in terms none too equivocal that he