June 1972
Our departure from Afghanistan was marked by Kafkaesque administrative procedures and stifling heat in Kabul. After failing to obtain an Indian visa (denied to the Frenchman for lack of funds, granted to the Swiss), we decided to fall back on Pakistan and the mythical Chitral Valley.
One last act in Afghanistan: smuggling out a fox cub bought by a Quebec woman, a symbol of disorderly romanticism in a world dominated by drugs and male oppression. The journey to Peshawar, on the roof of a bus with the animal tied up, evokes a parody of an Alexandrian expedition through the Khyber Pass.
Peshawar, a border town saturated with junkies stranded by the Indo-Pakistani war, offers a culture shock: tropical humidity, teeming alleys without women, and a sordid hotel where the increasingly aggressive fox forces the group to flee. Hypocrisy of local students (demonstrations for Vietnam rather than against Pakistani poverty) and rampant corruption.
The text mixes absurdity (the fox as a stowaway), disillusionment (Asia “as expected,” between brothels and rats) and a touch of nostalgia for Afghanistan, despite its excesses.
Paradise is no longer a quest, but a resignation to the present moment. The road to Mingora promises to be a new flight forward, between folklore and survival.