HALF AN HOUR LATER, THE DRIVER PULLED OVER.
"Come on, you two," Babi said. "Come outside and have a look."
They got out of the taxi. Babi pointed "There they are. Look."
Tariq gasped. Laila did too. And she knew then that she could live to be a hundred and she
would never again see a thing as magnificent.
The two Buddhas were enormous, soaring much higher than she had imagined from all the
photos she'd seen of them. Chiseled into a sun bleached rock cliff, they peered down at
them, as they had nearly two thousand years before, Laila imagined, at caravans crossing
the valley on the Silk Road. On either side of them, along the overhanging niche, the cliff
was pocked with myriad caves.
"I feel so small," Tariq said.
"You want to climb up?" Babi said.
"Up the statues?" Laila asked. "We can do that?"
Babi smiled and held out his hand. "Come on."
The climb was hard for Tariq, who had to hold on to both Laila and Babi as they inched
up a winding, narrow, dimly lit staircase. They saw shadowy caves along the way, and
tunnels honeycombing the cliff every which way.
"Careful where you step," Babi said His voice made a loud echo. "The ground is
treacherous."
In some parts, the staircase was open to the Buddha's cavity.
"Don't look down, children. Keep looking straight ahead."
As they climbed, Babi told them that Bamiyan had once been a thriving Buddhist center
until it had fallen under Islamic Arab rule in the ninth century. The sandstone cliffs were
home to Buddhist monks who carved caves in them to use as living quarters and as
sanctuary for weary traveling pilgrims. The monks, Babi said, painted beautiful frescoes
along the walls and roofs of their caves.
"At one point," he said, "there were five thousand monks living as hermits in these caves."
Tariq was badly out of breath when they reached the top. Babi was panting too. But his
eyes shone with excitement.