The Sands at Reg Rawan
Reg Rawan looms over its bazaar
In an old book I read about the sands of Reg Rawan, drifting high against a hill to the east of Charikar. People said that the sands were so fine that your feet would sink deeply into them, making it difficult to get to the top. The author hadn’t been there, but she recounted a legend about them. A famous Sunni Imam had been cornered there some centuries ago, fighting infidels. He knew there was no escape, so he prayed for deliverance. Allah split the side of the mountain and the Imam entered, never to be seen again. Local people said they could hear cymbals playing from the interior of the rocky mount at night, since the Imam sat there on a wonderful thrown surrounded by jewels and presumably aides. One day the Imam will reappear in glory from this spot.
I asked my drivers about this legend and one of them said he had heard it, too. We decided to make a trip.
We drove down country roads, asking for directions at each intersection, since none of us knew the way. We drove through a small bazaar and saw the sands at the end of the road. At the base of the mountain was a shrine to the Imam. Two gentlemen and a group of children gathered around us. One of the men told us something about the sand dune, “Reg Rawan (moving sands) are given that name because if you take even a grain of sand from this place, it will return here.” That might have disappointed me, since I had intended to take a small bag for my sand collection.
An Imam's Shrine
We asked about the shrine. The children wanted to lead us inside. One of the men, who lived across the street in a village home, told us,
“The shrine is to the Imam buried under the mountain. Inside the shrine are three tunnels. One leads inside the mountain, the second tunnel leads to Ghazni (hundreds of miles distant), and no one knows where the third tunnel goes.”
“Who dug them?” I asked.
No one knew the history of the tunnels, just where they went.
“Is this an old legend that is no longer believed, or is this a true story?” I asked, since one of the men had already expressed some doubt that the Imam was really inside the mountain.
“It’s true,” he answered simply.
“How do you know?”
“Because our fathers told us, and their fathers told them. Plus,” he added, “a test was performed. A cat was chosen, and an earring put into its ear. The cat was sent down the tunnel, and she reappeared in Ghazni – with the earring proving it was the same cat.”
A girl pulled at my hand to show me the tunnels inside the shrine. The roof on one side had collapsed and the door locked. The another door led down a set of stairs… At the end of the steps, the darkness gaped into the dirt. I scrambled down after the girl. My friends stayed at the top, but handed us their cellphones to use as flashlights.
The tunnels under the shrine
There were indeed three tunnels leading…where? The cellphones barely made a dent in the blackness. I felt the walls with my hands: packed dirt. The girl was crouched before me, willing to go further, but I would have had to crawl on my hands and knees and then back out. I decided to leave it for a future trip, one with better lights.
Then we drove to the base of the great sand dune. Young boys were selling fruit drinks at the bottom, for tourists, but we were the only ones there. I kicked off my shoes and started to the top, one of my friends Naseef following behind. The dune was very steep and even with crossing back and forth, I grew disappointingly exhausted. Naseef was huffing, too. On the other hand, he was at least 30 years my junior. The boys came scampering up after us; then they would fling themselves down the dune in somersaults and return again. One of them climbed up with a drink, which I gulped down. As I rested, I picked up rocks laying scattered all around. They were a beautiful blue. The mountain seemed to be made of blue limestone. I could see no source on the plains below for the reddish sand. At the very top, we could see much of the Shamali plain spread with orchards and villages, a river coursing through it.
Then I ran and jumped my way downhill.
