A Librarian, in Afghanistan                           5

picking our way along river beds and jostling over irrigation
ditches, taking more than seven hours in all to travel 100 miles.
Our car failed us twice, both times miles from any help; but our
driver always had the proper tools and props. When our emer¬
gency gas can sprang a leak in the boiling sun at Jalalabad, he pro¬
duced a ball of pitch, kneaded it and sealed the hole, even as the
hot raw gasoline oozed around it. I learned later that he had nursed
a new Thunderbird over the pass and through the gorge road to
Kabul. Some say it will be there until the new road is built unless
he should consent to bring it out.

My last weekend in Afghanistan coincided with the celebration
of Eide, so there was time for another venture into the mountains.
For this trip we managed to draw the "new" jeep, and traveled
north and west deeper into the Hindu Kush to Bamian. Here in
the valley of the Ghorband River was a series of cities and exten¬
sive cliff dwellings. The community, Graeco-Buddhist in origin,
flourished for many centuries until Genghis Khan came through
in the twelve hundreds. With the death of his favorite grandson
near Bamian, so the story goes, Genghis Khan ruled that no native
person should be left alive in the valley. The capture of one city,
which had proved much more difficult than anticipated, was
finally made possible only with the help of the daughter of the
local ruler. She had fallen in love with one of the generals and
helped his cause by sending a message by arrow, telling how the
water supply could be cut off.

Two huge Buddhas remain among the hundreds of rooms
carved in the tufa walls of the cliff, the largest measuring one
hundred and eighty-two feet. Hinged arms, now gone, were
attached to ropes so that Buddha could give his blessing to the
multitude assembled in the valley below.

Other holidays were spent in and around Kabul: climbing to
the "noon gun" past Baber's tomb and on up the mountain over¬
looking the city; wandering through the Bazaars (rugs, spices,
fruit, hard«'are, tinsmiths, rock salt, automobile parts, and even a