Chapter 7. Wyhet
I hope that someday I may return this evening to you.
—Traditional Afghan saying
The owners of the Caravan Hotel were Wyhet Seljuki and his colleague, Ahmad, whose last name I never learned. Wyhet Seljuki was a teacher by training—his English was very good—and the hotel’s congenial frontman. He was a slight man who sported a thin, dark moustache, but was otherwise always clean-shaven and well-groomed. I rarely saw him wearing anything other than dress slacks and a suit jacket. Ahmad stayed mainly in the background. Shorter and stouter, he usually wore casual pants and a shirt. Both were married, with young children.
On details of the hotel, my memory is a bit hazy. I recall it had a spacious dining area, replete with carpeted floor and Kilim rugs on the walls, one of which I bought and shipped home. We sat at low tables on the floor to eat. At one end of the restaurant was a divan where musicians played. Jean’s description of a below-ground restaurant she went to on her first night in Herat in 1975 suggests that it may well have been the Caravan: “We descended a stone stairway into a room full of rugs and pillows. A guitar player sat on a very low stage that was curtained in the middle of the room. It seemed an exotic dream.” Back of the first-floor restaurant were a set of bedrooms, with more upon a second floor, where there was also an open shower. One night, a scorpion came into my room: “I killed it with a brick that lay at hand,” I wrote in my notes. Wyhet was visibly upset the next day when I told him casually of the incident, offended that a scorpion had accosted a guest.
Meeting others, whether fellow travellers or local peoples, is a central joy of travelling. Places are interesting; some sites are breathtaking. But it is often the people one meets who leave the strongest memory. I am reminded of one by the notes I kept:
Visitors from all over would somehow find their way here. They often travel with only a floor mat or thin sleeping bag, and a small carrying bag or kit, large enough to carry two shirts and a book. Virtually penniless, they weave their way over whole continents for a year, two, three—forever; homeless and at home where they have that day’s meal; unburdened, uncareful, and seemingly happy.
One day, I met a traveller from Brazil. He was my age, but like many Japanese or Thai travellers seemed no longer to have a country. In his early days, he had lived and worked among the thieves and brigands of the Rio carnival—stereotypical greasers, he said, with pistols in their belts and knives between their teeth, committing illegalities to survive. But he left Brazil for Europe where he polished his school-bred English, and soon added French, Spanish, and Italian. He then returned to Brazil, but finding it had changed, returned then to Europe, but it too had changed. So now, he was alone in the world, but also seemingly content.
The candlelight by which we spoke ran its course. It was now very late. He was leaving the next morning. We shook hands. I never saw him again.
While this particular conversation left an impression on me, it was not unusual among my encounters. I met several individuals who had been travelling for many years, and who now seemed homeless. They were travelling light, not only materially but in their emotional attachments to their past lives.
I live today in a nice, comfortable home. I am surrounded by things—a warm bed, books, a car in my garage, a plethora of modern communication devices—the envy of many people. But I also sometimes envy the simplicity of life “on the road.” I once wrote that one does not so much have possessions as be possessed by them. And, not infrequently, I wonder how I would adjust if it all went missing tomorrow?
I think also of recent anti-consumerist movements among some young people. Are they perhaps getting back to something many of us lost along the way?
For the moment, the Brazilian and I had found a home in the Caravan Hotel.
I do not know why Wyhet took to me, but he did, and I to him. I trusted him completely, such that for several weeks I left my backpack and valued notes stuffed under the divan when I briefly returned to Europe.
Perhaps because of my interest in Afghan culture, Wyhet seemed to treat me as more than a paying guest. He became my teacher. There was not a lot of literature on hand dealing with Afghanistan, but I found two small books, Herat: A Pictorial Guide, written in 1966 by Nancy Hatch Wolfe, and The Afghans, by Mohammed Ali, published in 1969. (The latter, though now musty, remains something of a prized heirloom.) From these books, but mainly from Wyhet, I learned several Afghan parables and aphorisms, like “Some people have good steps and some people have bad steps” and “Because you are my friend, I will forget what you said; but if ever I should have cause to remember, that day our friendship will end.”
Wyhet’s poise and kindness were repeatedly evidenced. One day, sitting at the low table and drinking tea, I coughed, spewing the dark concoction over the carpet, my clothes, and even my face. Wyhet, ever the diplomat, said, “We say in Afghanistan, when the tea fights you, you have been remembered by a friend.”
I would read something and discuss it with him. We spoke often during the time I was there, especially when the restaurant settled down for the evening and he did not have to concern himself with the customers.
I returned one day from shopping in the market. I purchased cheaply from a small shop a salmon-coloured velvet cloth. The cloth, which I still possess, is about 30 inches by 16 inches in size, with a finely embroidered floral pattern and bordered with white frills. I liked the cloth’s pretty simplicity at the time but treasure it more now. It likely has little monetary value, but to me its value lies in the larger story it tells. I showed the cloth to Wyhet. Seeing it led him to tell me about an Afghan wedding ceremony, which I recorded in my notes:
About 15–20 days before the wedding night, the bride’s parents take a gold pin and string a green thread, synonymous with life and happiness, through the corner of a kerchief sewed by the bride-to-be. The kerchief is placed on a glass plate on a tray of sweets. The groom’s parents come to the home of the bride’s parents, at which time one-half of the bride’s purchase price is paid, the minimum being 50,000 Afs. (The rest is to be paid on the wedding day.) The parents then go to the home of the groom’s parents where others are waiting for the tray of sweets and to celebrate. There is a party with much singing. Candy is placed in the groom’s hair. Any of the candy that falls is a treasured item of the unmarried boys.
On the wedding night, the women of the bridal party take the bride aside. The women shave and bathe her as she sits upon the embroidered cloth—a sozani—of the type I had purchased. Once prepared, she is then taken to a house wherein a mattress has been laid central to a room. She and her husband lie down upon the mattress, at which point the man looks at her through a mirror, and she at him in the same way. Next, he gives her a spoon of sweet water, but the movement of her hand to her mouth is controlled by her mother. Then, she returns the deed, but his hand too is controlled by her mother. This part of the ceremony is meant to show that the bride is indifferent and does not desire a man. She should be solemn and sad.
At last, the bride’s mother tells everyone gathered to leave so that the marriage can be consummated. But if they are undesiring of children at that time—for example, they are completing studies—they may merely sleep together that night, while she returns to her father’s home the next day. The husband may visit his wife two evenings every week, but the marriage is not consummated until such time as the object is children. By tradition, when the marriage is finally consummated, the bride must show each of the mothers the next day a kerchief bearing her blood.
I felt honoured that Wyhet took the time to tell me of this ritual. But there was something else quite profound about the simple bridal cloth I had bought. It was, in fact, a sacred item, a treasured part of the marriage ceremony. That it was selling for a pittance in a Herati shop must surely have said something important of the seller’s desperation.
In fact, it said a great deal. Our discussion of the ceremonial cloth revealed for me a larger story about Afghanistan. Hard to imagine now, but many foreigners travelling the country before 1970 saw it during what Western scholars have termed Afghanistan’s Golden Age (1949–73).1 That period saw a modern university and a national museum built in Kabul and a liberal constitution introduced in 1964 that provided for free elections, as well as civil rights, including women’s rights.
But the Golden Age unravelled after 1970, the year Afghanistan experienced a severe drought, although elements remained, as we can see from Margot Miller’s recollection of a scene in Kandahar in 1972:
We talked quite freely to some Afghan women, though they were covered in a chador. There was a big, open circle where you drove around and a statue or a fountain, but no water in it, and open boulevards with medians full of marigolds. We sat on the street to watch the king go by in a big black American car, a Cadillac or something, waving.
But all was not well in Afghanistan, despite such displays. The drought, coupled with growing concerns about the government’s failure to implement promised reforms, culminated in the overthrow of King Mohammad Zahir in July 1973 by his cousin and former Afghan prime minister Mohammad Daoud Khan. Zahir Shah had ruled the country for forty years, presiding over a period of peace and modernization, including a new constitution that laid the foundations for future democracy.2 Don Skelton, who travelled through Afghanistan later that year, had clear memories of the coup’s immediate aftermath:
People were very sad. Everybody had a portrait [of Zahir Shah] in their house with a little scarf over the picture. There were a lot of great public displays of sadness. But there were also a lot of secret police. You didn’t see anybody carrying a banner down the street; it was a pretty quiet place.
I learned later that many items of classical Afghan culture were stolen and sold cheaply to foreign buyers during the period after 1970. The cloth I had purchased was a small part of the country’s heritage being sold, but it also told a larger story about Afghanistan’s political troubles. While poverty and starvation stalked the rural countryside, corruption was running rampant. A few members of the elite, centred in the capital, were getting wealthy, while the majority suffered. Hunger and hopelessness soon gave way to anger. As in Iran a few years later, the monarchy bore the immediate brunt of this discontent. But anger also fell on those petty officials who aggrandized themselves and too often besmirched the traditional values and morals of conservative Afghan society. Another vignette of my time at the Caravan tells such a tale.
One day, a high official in Afghanistan’s Education Ministry came to the hotel. Though living now in Kabul, Herat was his birth home. He stayed a couple of days. One evening, he, a couple of his friends, several Western visitors, and I were sitting around the low restaurant tables when the mood suddenly changed:
There was an American girl in her early twenties, dark-haired and subtle in her moves like a jazz dancer. She was lithe and pretty, and very flirtatious. One night, in the hotel, she began dancing an elegant dance that mixed Middle Eastern belly-dancing and Western ballet. It was beautiful, sensual, and sexual.
It was also dangerous, as in the room were several powerful Afghan businessmen and local bureaucrats. One of them was an education minister from Kabul. He struck me as cold and sleazy. He, in particular, almost drooled watching the American girl. We talked. The more we talked, the more we did not like each other. But more than that, I sensed danger.
There was a man who waited tables in the hotel. His name was Ferooq. He struck me as being a weasel, but a transparent one, and so fairly harmless. But he too was apparently worried, and—unbeknownst to anyone else present—slipped me a note to give to the young dancer that read, “Miss! This Kabuli man who is talking with you is not a good man. Several times he wanted to find you and have you but I didn’t show your hotel to him. If he asks your address, please don’t tell your address to him and tell him ‘I leave tomorrow.’ Thank you, Farooq.”
I succeeded in steering the young woman away from accepting invitations or giving out information to the businessman.
At one point during the night, the businessman gave me a look of suspicion, perhaps anger. He sensed that I had intervened in some way. Minutes later, he and his entourage exited the restaurant.
The next day, Wyhet told me more about the minister. How he had married at the age of sixteen but habitually cheated on his wife and never told anyone about her. He was wealthy enough to have four wives, the maximum allowed under Islamic law in Afghanistan, but no one wanted to marry him because of his reputation. It was common knowledge that he harassed women in the bazaar and had raped at least two women in the past. Then, as now, he seemed to think that his wealth could solve all his problems. I have no doubt that the young woman was spared harm by our intervention, though she remained unaware of what had occurred. I saw her again at points along the trail to India, the last time in Goa where she was dancing beneath a full moon.
That memory haunts me still. I think often of how a single meeting or event can take on a weight of meaning that far exceeds any other particulars. This was the case of my all-too-brief encounter with Wyhet.
During one of our conversations, Wyhet told me about his father. I later wrote the story in the form of a poem titled—“Ode to Saladin Seljuki,” which I dedicated to Wyhet:
Son of many sons
a Turk
and the son of kings;
a statesman; more,
a philosopher, who once wrote
two books, each of five thousand pages
concerning the resonance of one line
of the Koran.
When he died, his second wife—for his first
had preceded him after bearing
his two sons—purchased
a great tomb
wherein her own future estate
was made secure beside him.
There each Holy day she comes,
bringing dishes of his favourite foods
yet, sitting, eats nothing.
She weeps.3
After writing the poem, I left it in the drawer of memories that I never expected to revisit again and that I thought at the time was relevant only to me. How wrong I was.
A few days before I left, Wyhet invited me to overwinter for free in his hotel. Foolishly, I declined the offer. I was anxious to depart to India; why, in retrospect, I do not know. That I did not do so remains to this day a regret, one magnified by the events that shortly befell the country.
Knowing that I was leaving, Wyhet said he wanted to make me a special meal. He said proudly that he had obtained fresh goat and lamb for the occasion. I had somewhat studiously avoided meat to this point but could not refuse his generosity. My last evening, I was treated to a large and sumptuous meal of several servings, the best of spicy meats and sauces, sweets, and fruit. I have learned since that it is part of Afghan hospitality to repeatedly encourage guests to eat fully of every dish offered and for guests, in return, to eat however full one is.4
The next morning, Wyhet and I shook hands and said goodbye. I said we would meet again, and genuinely believed what I said, but it was not to be.
Sometime in the early 1990s, I was at a Heritage Day festival in Edmonton, which celebrates Canadian multiculturalism. There were a number of tents set up to reflect the country’s cultural diversity in dress, music, and food. There was an Afghan tent, and I went in. I got talking to a young man who told me he was from Herat. I asked him if he knew of Wyhet Seljuki. He said, “Yes,” and told me that Wyhet and his family had escaped to the United States. He took my address and phone number. I did not think about it further; it seemed a far-fetched possibility that anything might come of it. But a few weeks later I received a phone call from Wyhet. After many years, I still recognized his voice. Like before, he told me stories, but this time they were not happy ones but ones of suffering and torture, of how he and his family had survived for a time in a Pakistani refugee camp, things upon which he subsequently elaborated in a letter I received. To my eternal regret, however, I did not immediately reply. When I did, my letter—including the poem I had years before written in honour of his father—was returned. Wyhet and his family had moved without a forwarding address.
Wyhet was a good man in a good country who deserved better from me and from the world. May the time since have brought his family and him some peace, hope, prosperity, and happiness.