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The guard explained I could not enter Pakistan without a Carnet, a bonded certificate, to guarantee I would not sell the car, and violate import taxes.
"Where can I get one?"
"Tehran," he said.
I gritted my teeth. It made perfect sense: I needed to drive a thousand miles in the opposite direction, all the way back across Afghanistan, through the border town where they tried to steal my car, then get an Iranian visa, drive to Tehran, get some French-sounding document, turn around, drive back a thousand miles to where I was, a curse of sisyphusian proportion, just so I could get through the damn Torkham checkpoint, and start up the Khyber Pass, to see what was on the other side.
"How much?" I said.
He pulled out a book, flipped some pages. "Six hundred dollars."
"Six hundred?" I searched his dark eyes. There was no indication of humor.
"Eh." He made a sideways motion with his head.
"Yes?" I said, wondering if he really meant no.
"Eh"--The same motion. Saying yes; shaking his head no. A clicking sound with his tongue. I tried to process it--some weird cultural cluck that made no sense to a rational western mind. But neither did going to one country to get a Carnet to get back through another country. Like backward time travel. I was going in circles. What kind of conspiracy was this? I could see no benefit, no baksheesh, for the guard. Maybe he was telling the truth. I had enough Traveler's Checks to afford it, although I might be broke, when I got wherever I was going.
"Iran?" I tried one last time.
"Eh."
I guess I was going to Tehran. I said goodbye to my two British and American friends. They could catch a bus to Pakistan, apparently. I turned around, headed back across Afghanistan. There was something I did not understand, how these people could say one thing, but to a westerner, it meant another. Maybe there was a purpose to my detour. Some sort of mindless manifest destiny. I drove onward. Talking to the camel-thorn. At least I still had my car.
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