Mohammad made the people believe he would call a mountain to him, and from the top of it he would offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. So the people assembled; Mohammad called to the Mountain to come to him—again and again, but the Mountain remained still and some of his followers muttered, but he remained unabashed and told his followers to remain patient and then a call came from the Mountain—but only he heard it—it seemed to say to him, ‘Come.’ So Mohammad stood up and declared he would go, and so he went to the Mountain.

      ‘The Holy Light watches over us.’ That is what Mr. Khan would say to me each time he held this old Quran in his hand. Mr. Khan was old, but no one was sure what his real age was. I lived with him in the Hunza in the north-west of Pakistan—the great mountain range was all around us, but few walked this path, only mountain goats and Taliban fighters. But it was another mountain thousands of miles away that was Jabal al Noor or the Holy Light, where the Prophet received his first revelation and this was the reason why Mr. Khan was here and why we had constructed the tunnels and it was why all the Qurans came from far and wide—from places I never knew or had visited. I would carry the old Qurans for Mr. Khan. We would place them inside the great complex of tunnels that ran for over a mile that lay cut into the rock buried beneath the earth like a fox's lair and black as a starless night. Outside was a standing stone the sun had washed white, that was taller than any man and some said was as old as the mountains themselves. Mr. Khan created the tunnels because God had told him so after his visit to the Holy Light in Mecca. In the revelation, he was told the day of judgement was coming and that he, Mr. Khan, must send out word to all the lands of the Prophet and beyond, that all the words of God in the Holy book that had been damaged by accident, fire or through mischief were to be sent to Mr. Khan. If he could he would repair and then make them whole and send them back out to the faithful. Those that were beyond repair he must bury in a mountain till the day of judgement itself.

      He had created the tunnels by his own hand at first and everyone said it was a miracle. They had no supports or struts of any kind and one could stand up in them—not just a young boy, but also Mr. Khan, or any of the Taliban fighters that sometimes slept there. Some people would say the tunnels were as the word of God revealed to his Prophet.

      Last summer the world shook. A—great earthquake had come and it seemed that it might kill us all. Some of the tunnels collapsed. The Qurans fell off their stacks and were buried. Even every loose sack I helped carefully fill with book after book had been swallowed whole by the Mountain.

      But the great stone washed white by the sun remained upright, not even a faint crack was to be found. Mr. Khan said it was God's will and a sign the days were closer to the end because of the wicked and the Kafir and that our work must begin again in earnest as now throughout the lands of the Prophet many Qurans would have been damaged. He sent me out again to the villages—but this time the villagers were angry that I was there to collect broken books and had not offered to help them with anything else. This time they showed no respect and said that the old man was a fool and soon for his grave.

      But elsewhere in other places far from the earthquake, other Qurans came, and not long after even the locals forgot their anger, remembered their faith and more books arrived. Sometimes very old Qurans like the one Mr. Khan carries with him arrive. Perhaps 100, 200 or even 400 years old—with beautiful calligraphy and some with the illumination of beautiful patterns and harmonies of wonderful shapes. I often get lost and drift away and study these wonders from the old world.

      Most of the books of the Quaran are not so old. If they can be used again, we rebind and then reuse and send them back into the villages and mosques. We only place those that are beyond binding—with fallen loose pages, or those with pages missing, or those with whole parts missing, burnt, stained or torn, with just the fragments of the holy words of God—in the sacks and then place them deep inside the tunnel complex. Sometimes large groups of children my age—some younger, some older—walk on a pilgrimage from the madrasas just to see Mr. Khan's cave of Qurans. I am not sure how many books are here—in whole or part. Mr. Khan says we have 1,000 sacks or more and each full sack I know is itself filled with millions of holy words.

      My father told me before he went away to fight with the Mujahideen against the Russians and never came back that he and his father and his father before were descendants of the conquered as well as the followers of the Great King Alexander when he crossed the mountains into Indus. In addition we had the formidable fighting blood of the Khalsa, our ancestors were the initiated Sikhs, but that we also had Mughal relations. He would take me to the odd rock carvings that lay beside the path Alexander's men came by and the world conqueror himself trod. Some carved in Sanskrit left by the Old Kingdom of Tibet when it invaded China and the Indus in the 7th century, but my father said it was much older and that even Alexander saw it. Some of the rocks had giant hairy men and no necks with long extended arms waving, carved into them. One was over two metres high.

      The day before he left he sat me and my sister by the rocks and told us of the old world and that where we lived men always fought and this had been the way before even the Holy book and was still the way, but maybe Allah could stop it. He stood up beside the great carved giant and told me that when Alexander crossed into Asia and the Indus, he came across a group of sages who did not bow but stomped their feet by that very rock. One of the sages said to Alexander:

      ‘King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth's surface as this we are standing on and you are mortal like the rest of us, even though you covet and ache for much, much more. You will soon be dead and you will own no more of this earth than that is sufficient to bury your bones.’

      Alexander could have killed him on the spot, said my father, but he knew the sage was truly free and spoke the truth and it was then the great Alexander knew he would not return home. My sister and I myself knew our father was talking about himself and we wept. Then our father took our hands and said that we must recite the Throne Verse, as he did, to enter the protection and security of Allah each evening, before we slept or set out on any journey. Then with our final words together, we all recited in unison: ‘His throne includeth the heavens and the earth, and He is never weary of preserving them. He is the Sublime, the Tremendous.’

      I like old books, old things