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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan ?? Outside the gates of the U.S. military base at Kandahar airport, Jalat Khan selected a stone from the gravel on the shoulder of the road and swallowed it.
Then Khan, a jobless wanderer in a turban and robe, did it again. And again. Pretty soon, a crowd had gathered, oblivious to the U.S. Army Humvees rolling out of the base on routine patrols.
Even the clatter and roar of American helicopters and transport planes ? part of the daily base traffic that usually turns heads ? couldn't compete with Khan on Thursday, who invited spectators to hear the rattle of stones in his belly as he prodded his swollen paunch.
"When I started stone-eating, people couldn't believe it. They told me that this was magic," said Khan, who developed the habit three years ago because ? in his words ? he was hungry. "This is the one quality I have. Wherever I go, people watch me and gather around."
Part of Khan's mystery is that he's not out to make money from his talent, though he'll take digestible food if it's offered. He's happy to sit cross-legged on the ground and talk.
And because he occasionally pops a stone into his mouth, people listen ? even though he admits to being out of touch.
"I don't know what's happening," Khan said of the successful American bombing campaign that helped oust the Taliban, and the hunt for al-Qaida holdouts in Afghanistan's remote mountains. "The Russians came and left after fighting, and then the Arabs came and they left. Now the Americans are here, and I don't know when they are leaving," Khan said.
Khan, 30, who sought safety on the border with Pakistan during the U.S. bombing campaign that began in October, said he swallows up to one pound of stones daily. He sticks to smooth, round ones about the length of a little finger joint, and passes them every three days.
"I had a very healthy and strong body when I started eating stones," said Khan, who compared his taste for pebbles to an addict who craves tobacco or drugs. "Then I became weak and thin."
Before the Taliban came to power, Khan rented a plot of land in his home province of Helmand, west of Kandahar, and cultivated opium-bearing poppies. But the Taliban banned the practice in 2000, and Khan's father spent all the money earned from opium, so nowadays Khan travels the desert.
He said he had just walked 67 miles from the Pakistan border to Kandahar, the biggest city in the southern half of Afghanistan.
Pausing for a break outside the U.S. military base, he said he dreamed of marrying a U.S. female pilot, who could fly him to Dubai, or maybe the United States. At the same time, he described the Taliban, known for unrelenting, often brutal edicts carried out in the name of Islam, as "good people," without elaborating.
The Taliban's traditional support base was among majority ethnic Pashtuns like Khan in southern Afghanistan, where many people are more forgiving toward a movement that, for all its pitiless excesses, had imposed peace over most of a lawless land.
"This land is bloody. This soil is not sincere with anybody, even with Afghans. Mine is the only body that has benefited from this land," he said.
Ouch
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan ?? Outside the gates of the U.S. military base at Kandahar airport, Jalat Khan selected a stone from the gravel on the shoulder of the road and swallowed it.
Then Khan, a jobless wanderer in a turban and robe, did it again. And again. Pretty soon, a crowd had gathered, oblivious to the U.S. Army Humvees rolling out of the base on routine patrols.
Even the clatter and roar of American helicopters and transport planes ? part of the daily base traffic that usually turns heads ? couldn't compete with Khan on Thursday, who invited spectators to hear the rattle of stones in his belly as he prodded his swollen paunch.
"When I started stone-eating, people couldn't believe it. They told me that this was magic," said Khan, who developed the habit three years ago because ? in his words ? he was hungry. "This is the one quality I have. Wherever I go, people watch me and gather around."
Part of Khan's mystery is that he's not out to make money from his talent, though he'll take digestible food if it's offered. He's happy to sit cross-legged on the ground and talk.
And because he occasionally pops a stone into his mouth, people listen ? even though he admits to being out of touch.
"I don't know what's happening," Khan said of the successful American bombing campaign that helped oust the Taliban, and the hunt for al-Qaida holdouts in Afghanistan's remote mountains. "The Russians came and left after fighting, and then the Arabs came and they left. Now the Americans are here, and I don't know when they are leaving," Khan said.
Khan, 30, who sought safety on the border with Pakistan during the U.S. bombing campaign that began in October, said he swallows up to one pound of stones daily. He sticks to smooth, round ones about the length of a little finger joint, and passes them every three days.
"I had a very healthy and strong body when I started eating stones," said Khan, who compared his taste for pebbles to an addict who craves tobacco or drugs. "Then I became weak and thin."
Before the Taliban came to power, Khan rented a plot of land in his home province of Helmand, west of Kandahar, and cultivated opium-bearing poppies. But the Taliban banned the practice in 2000, and Khan's father spent all the money earned from opium, so nowadays Khan travels the desert.
He said he had just walked 67 miles from the Pakistan border to Kandahar, the biggest city in the southern half of Afghanistan.
Pausing for a break outside the U.S. military base, he said he dreamed of marrying a U.S. female pilot, who could fly him to Dubai, or maybe the United States. At the same time, he described the Taliban, known for unrelenting, often brutal edicts carried out in the name of Islam, as "good people," without elaborating.
The Taliban's traditional support base was among majority ethnic Pashtuns like Khan in southern Afghanistan, where many people are more forgiving toward a movement that, for all its pitiless excesses, had imposed peace over most of a lawless land.
"This land is bloody. This soil is not sincere with anybody, even with Afghans. Mine is the only body that has benefited from this land," he said.
Ouch
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