Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter: A Bio-Anthology

In the Afghan Jungle

In the Afghan Jungle Everybody laughs when you tell them you'd like to hunt tigers. "There aren't any more. Tigers and tractors don't go together. Five years ago, it would have been a different story! But now ... " "That so? What about this skin here on the wall? And the tiger cubs sent to Moscow last month? And the donkey thatwas tom to pieces in SaraiKamar ? And the watering-hole on the Vakhsh?" "Nobody denies it. Ithappens. Four years ago apack ofwolves appeared in Sokolniki; can you then say that there are wolves in Moscow? How the Muscovites would laugh their heads off at theidea of someone wanting to go wolf-hunting! Yetin Sokolniki there was a whole pack ofthem, while with us it's just single animals straying in here. Maybe they crossed the river-the devil only knows how-since there are tigers over there." "Where?" "On the otherbankoftheAmu-Darya, but that's alreadyAfghan territory. You might find tigers there in the jungle, especially at night." "Good, that's where I'm heading!" "But that's even more impossible than hunting tigers here." "Why?" "There are no bridges and no ferries over. Our sentries make sure that nobody crosses one way or the other-no spies, no smugglers, no Bassmachi,1 no criminals." Ibl Egon Erwin Kisch, the Raging Reporter . "You don't mean to tell me that nobody ever crosses theborderT "There used to be a lot of traffic back and forth. People would float over on their burdyuks. But now that's been stopped. Of course, someone makes it every now and then; the border is too long-the Amu-Darya alone flows almost athousand kilometers between the Soviet Union andAfghanistan. When the sentry sees someone swimming across, he fires, and the Afghan is even faster on the draw." "The Afghan? Why should he shoot? He could just as easily arrest anyone trying to come·over." "You think the sentries are posted every few yards? Besides, the guard can't tell where the current will deposit the swimmer. And as soon as he's ashore, he can disappear into the jungle without atrace. That's why the sentry shoots first·and asks questions later." "One has to take the chance, I guess ..." "Don't be foolish. Aforeigner inAfghanistan, in the border forest, with a Russian rifle ..." "But there are tigers over there?" . "Yes, and even more poisonous snakes and scorpions." At first it was impossible to scare up anyone to act as interpreter for such an undertaking, no one in fact who would even say where the burdyuk ferrymen could be found. When I finally discovered them on my own, they made up all kinds of excuses not to go: they had no horses (what did they need horses for, I'd bring my own), the nights were now too light ... I offered them forty rubles. They agreed to sixty. No one knew why I rode out alone one evening around seven to the outskirts of the village. From there we started out at dusk: five men, draped in goatskins and armed with large sticks, and I, leading my horse by the bridle. We passed some Tajiks working on the canals. At the bank of the river we came to ahaltbehind aclump ofbushes. Three ofmy five companions removed their·chalats and their pointed shoes, rolled up their trousers, and.finally even removed the tyubeteyka from their heads. I too wanted to undress, but they. said there was no need to. The skins they had brought along were immersed in water, weighted down with stones, and kept there for five minutes. Then by means of small wooden tubes held to their mouths the men breathed the breath oflifeinto the In the Afghan Jungle fleece, which began becoming a body again, began breathing and moving. Stumps of legs, tied off with string and sticks, like liverwurst, swung impatiently as they woke to life, even the scrotum growing taut. The more breathless the blowers, the more bodily the hides became. They glistened, wet, in the moonlight. The night was hellishly light. I put my rifle on the ground, climbed up a slope,· and, hidden behind a tree trunk, surveyed the scene. The valley stretched before me aU bedecked in lavender. The mathematically straight, mathematically parallel furrows of the cotton· fields ran almost to my very feet. Not long ago, beasts of prey roamed at will...