Near the corner, a blind storyteller sat under a canvas awning, calling to passers-by in Urdu and Pushtu. From an unseen loudspeaker near the mosque came the tinny wail of a Pakistani love song. In the distance, sunlight turned the parapets of Bala Hisar to gold, like a fairy-tale castle. The huge brick fortress towered over the city as it had since the time of the Moguls, the sun casting its shadow far across the sea of rooftops. Soon it would be time for dusk prayers.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” the blind storyteller said and began to tell the story of how the great Afridi leader, the Fakir of Ipi, had annihilated a British regiment in the shadow of the holy mountain, Shahur Tangi. A small crowd of old men and wide-eyed boys clustered around the storyteller. Near the edge of the crowd, a Pathan in a dark brown robe casually gazed over at the copper shop, rapidly quartering the street in a single glance. The Pathan was taller than most tribesmen, his body wiry and desert-hardened. He sat listening to the storyteller, with the deadly stillness of a beast of prey. With his dark stubbly beard and skin burned mahogany by the sun, only the most careful observer would have spotted him as a westerner by his features and cold gray eyes. Yet he was noticed.

A dark-skinned Mahsud, still in his teens, couldn’t resist stealing a shy glance at the foreigner, although he knew that no one was to speak of him. The moujahadeen of the Khyber said that he was a great warrior. Others said that he was an escaped murderer. Wherever he went, he was followed by whispers. No one even knew his name. Among the tribes he was known only by his code name. They called him “the Scorpion.”

The storyteller spoke of how the tribesmen had shot down the British biplanes with their breech-loading rifles and there was a murmur from the crowd. Did not the moujahadeen do the same to the godless Russians? Were they not men like their fathers? Then he told of how the great Fakir, who could not be defeated in battle, was finally slain by treachery. The crowd grumbled threateningly. The soul of the infidel was black with sin.

“It is said that the British cut out his heart. It was placed in a gold box lined with silk and sent to a museum in London city. The heart weighed ten pounds. Who can doubt it?” declared the storyteller.