A Shared Secret

I caught a glimpse of wisdom in his fierce, smoky eyes. Eyes that had squinted against decades of relentless sun and wind; causing long furrows and deep rivulets to form on his face. To me this made him even more timeless than the high, weathered mountains that surrounded us in this land of frozen waterfalls and warring tribes.
The ancient Pashtun cart vendor dug into a grubby leather pouch, pointed to me and asked our interpreter what my birth month was. I was eight years old. He had to have been pushing 80. Or 800; I could easily have believed either.
From the pouch he extracted a small stone and held it up between thumb and forefinger. Furrowing his gray brows, he motioned for me to hold out my hand then gently placed the stone in my palm, as though he had just passed me an age-old secret.
I was struck by its dull red beauty; its jagged rough-cut glory as the uneven facets caught the afternoon light. I stood transfixed, half-hearing the man ask another question. “Rrooby,” the interpreter answered. The Pashtun mumbled the word to himself a couple of times, then nodded his head and waved toward it, and then to me; smiling and gesturing that I should have it.
In my young boy’s mind I saw Alexander the Great’s army marching, spears in hand, across each rugged face of that precious jewel. I saw desperately cold rivers overflowing their banks and cascading beautiful blue, frothy water into roaring torrents below. I saw impossibly steep, winding trails no wider than a man’s hand doggedly crisscrossing the face of mountains so daunting they had smashed a thousand conquerors and produced this incredibly tough, yet scandalously generous people.
What that tribesman gave me that day was worth far more than a ruby’s market value in Rawalpindi. He gave me a glimpse into antiquity and humanity – into the subtlety with which chasms of culture, age, and language can be bridged if one takes a moment to show real interest in another’s life. He shook something in the bedrock of my soul; instilled a burning desire to experience, not just to see. To understand rather than to simply learn.
I think he knew deep down that day when we shared our stolen glance that he was doing far more than entertaining a young foreign boy in a wild land. In that one moment when his eyes met mine, we both knew it would change us forever.