Enter the Brigadier

"Mark, let me tell you something," the Brigadier begins gravely, "I believe that all people are brought together for a reason. When I came into Farhan's office last night the moment I saw you I knew why I had come."

"We phoned you," I jest.

"What? No, I didn't have to come. It was the middle of the night. But I knew there was a greater reason that I should come there. You see, Mark, people are like magnets that can draw similarly charged individuals together from even continents away."

"I thought it was oppositely charged bodies that are magnetically attracted."

"What?" The Brigadier splits his attention between the serpentine mountain road and our conversation.

"You said similarly charged individuals are brought together, but it's..."

"Yes, like-minded individuals. People with similar vibrations."

"Good vibrations. Now you're talking like a real Californian."

I reflect on the torment of the previous night's decision. The three burly Mujhadeen had taken a shining to me and wanted to take me to some of the remotest villages that had been damaged by the earthquake. They were ready to hit the road in the middle of the night and the door to their SUV had been open and I was three quarters in. Farhan had hurried over to me at the last second and said that the Brigadier was inviting me to go to his field hospital in Muzaffarabad the following day. I had asked Farhan what I should do and he had said I really couldn't go wrong either way.

In the end the mystery of the Brigadier was too compelling to pass up. As Ali had so accurately pointed out, the Brigadier was larger than life – literally. He rivaled the most mountainous of the mountainous mountain men in girth, filling his kurta like a tarpaulin-covered balloon, while he also strode a good six inches superior to the tallest of them. He had arrived in the middle of the night with the notoriety of a master problem solver, but had been unable to persuade either the doctor or the truck drivers to move from their positions. What had impressed me most is that he hadn't forced the issue in service of his reputation. Instead he had assumed Farhan's former position in the easy chair, occupying it like a throne, while generating a range of alternative solutions to the impasse. When he spoke, everybody listened.

His son, Arham, whom at first I took to be a servant, attended promptly to his father's commands which were issued calmly and with a certain tenderness. Unlike the Brigadier, Arham was bespectacled, his garb Western, frame compact, and he sported a curious collection of a dozen, long black chin hairs from that screamed out for culling. When it was determined I had cast my lot with the Brigadier he ordered his son to drive me to the hotel so I could collect my belongings and then bring me to his house where we would embark for the mountains at 4:30 am. It was 2:30 am at that point and the trip to the hotel and back to the Brigadier's house would take 45 minutes. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to enter the mountains neither well fed nor rested.