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them with rocket-propelled grenades and a wall of bullets fired by men with nothing to lose and everything to gain.” It was a famous victory for the mujahideen, he told me, a triumph that was spun into songs and sung around campfires for years to come. And as quickly as they had appeared, rising from nowhere to unleash hell on the Russians, they melted away again, “like ghosts drifting back into the landscape.”
    But they hadn’t got away with the attack.
    As the victorious mujahideen crossed the mountains of Nuristan, marching their way toward secret war camps dug into rock, they were swallowed up by a blizzard that ripped at their clothes and tore at their skin. In the roar of the wind they failed to hear the blades of the helicopter that came whooshing over their heads, dropping brilliant burning light upon their path. As they ran for their lives, the Russian air force tracked them every step of the way, on and on into the night, finally forcing them into a narrow gorge where they were ambushed by five hundred waiting Russian soldiers. The mujahideen didn’t stand a chance, but somehow they foughttheir way out of the valley to split and scatter under the cover of a leafless forest, throwing themselves into icy mountain rivers and burying themselves under a meter of snow.
    “Yes, we lost a lot of good men that day,” said Pir with a sigh. “We also lost most of our toes . . .”
    I looked at Pir’s cracked feet. All ten toes peeked out from the leather straps, carrying thick yellow nails.
    “So, is that how you came to be blind then? From fighting in the jihad?”
    “Mercy, no,” he grumbled. “I lost my sight the day I got married. I saw my wife for the first time, and she was that ugly my eyes closed down and refused to work again.”
     
    Pir usually finished with me about five thirty in the evening. If I timed it just right, I’d hit the main road about the same time Georgie was being driven home, and I would hitch a ride with her back to the house. Like most foreigners, she had her own driver, Massoud, which I thought was pretty good considering she only combed goats for a living.
    “They’re not just any old goats,” Georgie told me one day as I laughed about her being the richest goat herder in the whole of Afghanistan. “They’re cashmere goats.”
    “So what? A goat’s a goat, born to be eaten or dragged around a field by
buzkashi
horsemen! What’s so special about some dumb cashmere goat?”
    “The wool, sweetie. It’s very expensive. Women in the West will practically sell their souls for sweaters and shawls made out of cashmere. And luckily for your country, Afghanistan is home to some of the finest cashmere in the world.”
    “So why aren’t all the goat herders rich then?”
    “Well, most goat owners don’t realize the value of what they’ve got, so they let the cashmere drop off, or they shear it off with the rest of the wool and throw it away. You see, it’sthe soft undercoat of the goat which is the good bit, and it needs to be combed out and separated. In its raw, unwashed state, this can sell for about twenty dollars per kilogram.”
    “Ho, that’s not bad.”
    “It’s not bad, but it’s also not that good.”
    “No?”
    “No. Not yet.” Georgie smiled and raised her eyebrows as if she was about to tell me some big secret. “Even if the farmers know about the special wool, they will only collect it. It’s then shipped off to Iran or Belgium or China, where it’s mixed with inferior wool and sometimes reimported, which is pure madness. Now, if we could set up the facilities to treat the wool in Afghanistan and make it as good as good can be, your goat herders would be very rich men indeed. Well, compared to what they are now anyway. It would also create more jobs and develop into a proper industry. And that’s why I’m here in your country, to help everyone do just that.”
    Georgie leaned back into the seat of the car and seemed very pleased with