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Hajji Mohammed’s village was in celebration when we arrived. His profitable, bloodless encounter with our column of armed men had added to the gathering thrill of anticipation for the wedding. Khader explained how the elaborate rituals of Afghan matrimony had been unfolding for months before we’d arrived. There’d been ceremonial visits between the family of the groom, and the family of the bride. In every case, small gifts such as handkerchiefs or scented sweets had been exchanged, and precise courtesies were observed. The bride’s dowry of extravagantly embroidered cloths, imported silks, perfumes, and jewellery had been publicly displayed for all to admire, and was then held in trust for her by the groom’s family. The groom had even visited his bride-to-be in secret, and he’d presented her with personal gifts as he spoke to her. According to custom, it was strictly forbidden for him to be seen by the men in her family during that secret visit, but custom also required him to be helped by the girl’s mother. The dutiful mother, Khader assured me, had remained with the couple while they spoke to one another for the first time, and had acted as their chaperone. With all that achieved, the couple was ready for the culmination of the marriage ceremony itself, to be held in three days’ time.

Khader took me through the finest details of the rituals, and it seemed to me that there was a kind of urgency in his normally gentle, teacher’s manner. At first I guessed-rightly, I think-that he was reacquainting himself with the customs of his people, after his five long decades in exile. He was reliving the scenes and celebrations of his youth, and he was proving to himself that he was still Afghan, in all that his heart knew and felt. But as the lessons continued through the following days, and the intensity of his attention to them never failed, I finally realised that the long explanations and histories were for my benefit more than his. He was giving me a crash course in the culture of the nation where I might be killed and where my body might be laid to rest. He was making sense of it-my life with him, and my possible death-in the only way that he knew. And understanding that, without ever speaking of it to him, I listened dutifully and learned everything I could.

Kinsmen, friends, and other invitees streamed into Hajji’s village during those days. The four main houses of Hajji Mohammed’s fortress-like men’s kal’a, or compound, were tall, square, mud-brick buildings. High walls surrounded the kal’a, and one large dwelling stood in each of the four corners. The women’s kal’a was a separate set of buildings behind even higher walls. In the men’s compound we slept on the floor and cooked all our own meals. It was already crowded in the house that Khader, Nazeer, and I joined but, as new men arrived from distant villages, we all simply squashed in further. Sleeping in our clothes, we top-and-tailed across the whole floor, each man sleeping with his head beside the feet of the next. There’s a theory that snoring at night in sleep is a subconscious defence reflex-a warning sound that frightened potential predators away from the mouth of the cave when our lower-Palaeolithic ancestors huddled in vulnerable sleep. That group of Afghan nomads, cameleers, sheep and goat herders, farmers, and guerrilla fighters lent credibility to the idea, for they snored so thunderously and with such persistent ferocity through the long, cold night that they would’ve frightened a pride of ravenous lions into scattering like startled mice.

During the day, the same men prepared complex food dishes for the Friday wedding. Those dishes included flavoured yoghurts, piquant goat’s or sheep’s milk cheeses, oven-baked cakes made with corn flour, dates, nuts, and wild honey, biscuits baked with richly churned goat’s milk butter and, of course, a variety of halal meats and vegetable pulao. While the foods were being prepared, I watched as men dragged a foot-operated grinding wheel into an open space, and the groom devoted a tense hour to putting a razor’s edge to a large, ornate dagger. The bride’s father watched that effort with a critical eye. After satisfying himself that the weapon was suitably lethal, he gravely accepted it as a gift from the younger man.

‘The groom has just sharpened the knife that the bride’s father will use on him, if he ever mistreats the girl,’ Khader explained to me as we watched.

‘That’s a pretty good custom,’ I mused.

‘It is not a custom,’ Khader corrected me, with a laugh. ‘It is his idea-the bride’s father. I have never heard of it before this. But if it works, it might become a custom.’