Thunder Over Kandahar

by Sharon McKay

  It was spring, the new month of Safar. Mist enveloped the girls, leaving a shine on their burkas that starlight turned into sparkles. Thistles scratched their legs until thin streams of blood dribbled down into their shoes. As they climbed, the air grew colder. Toes turned into frozen nubs that rubbed and burned, and fingers grew so stiff they turned into claws.

  The second night of steady climbing plunged them both into a sleep so thick and deep no fear could penetrate it. Twice they awoke, but only briefly, to the clank of bells as donkey caravans passed nearby.

  Groggy and bleary-eyed, they slept the days away. On the third night they dragged themselves up and followed the stars. Rutty roads, hairpin turns, and stony paths that led nowhere constantly took them in the wrong direction. Thankfully, the donkey droppings they passed told them when they were headed the right way. It had become harder and harder to talk and climb at the same time, and as the air thinned, their heads began to ache.

  “Listen.” Yasmine, in the lead, stopped. “Mountain music!” she said as they listened to the muted braying of long-necked, soft-eared karakul sheep. The sheep, bedded down for the night, were no threat, but a barking dog might alert a young shepherd, who might run to his father or brothers and tell them about two unaccompanied girls walking in the mountains. While all tribes had a code to provide asylum to strangers, runaway girls would not be given such consideration. Yasmine motioned with her head as the two gave the small herd a wide berth.

  The cliffs in the moonlight were sharp-edged, the rock the color of the corrugated metal used for roofs of mud homes in the village. Boulders threatened to roll down from above and crush them. Their hands were raw from gripping rocks, their ankles swollen, and their toes stubbed numb. The discomfort Tamanna had felt in her stomach was replaced with a grinding pain in her hip. Using a thick branch as a walking stick, she carried on, uncomplaining. Whenever the path allowed, without speaking, Yasmine draped Tamanna’s arm over her shoulder and the two struggled on side by side. They had refilled the plastic water bottles from glacial streams dozens of times. They were beginning to feel the sting of hunger. Once a day they ate from the bag of food. At the foothills of the mountains they found berries, but it was early in the season and they were small and tough.

  They were taking a short midnight break. They would not rest for long; the longer they sat, the harder it was to get up again. Yasmine pointed up to the dark hills illuminated in the moonlight. “See? The mountains look like elephants. In England, Mother read me a story about Babar.”

  “Your father once spoke of Barbur, the founder of the Mogul dynasty,” said Tamanna, her voice edged with exhaustion.

  “No, Babar the Elephant,” said Yasmine as she pulled Tamanna up onto her feet and took her arm, placing it over her shoulder.

  “Do you mean Emperor Babur, the first emperor of India? He loved Kabul and grew tulips.” Tamanna, stumbling, was confused.

  “Babar the Elephant. He wore a green suit!” Yasmine grabbed tree roots and branches to pull herself along.

  “What is suit?” With her free hand, Tamanna rammed her stick into the dirt and pulled herself forward

  “It is what Western men wear.”

  “Emperor Babur had an elephant, but I do not think it was made to wear Western clothes,” said Tamanna.

  “No! Babar was not a real elephant, silly. He was a drawing. He was made up.” They had to stop for a moment and catch their breath.

  “I do not understand. Did Barbur or Babur have a pretend elephant that was made to wear Western suits?” Tamanna did not find the idea of dressing animals totally unreasonable. Elephants in Pakistan and India were often decorated in strange ways.

  Yasmine took a deep breath. “In Europe there are books just for children. A writer makes a story and an artist matches the story with drawings. Babar is French,” said Yasmine.

  “But you met him in England?”

  “I did not meet him. I told you, he is made up.”

  “Is he British or French?”

  “He comes from Africa.”

  “An elephant wears a suit, comes from Africa, but lives in England and France. Yasmine, I do not understand.”

  Yasmine took another breath. Explaining seemed hopeless, but she would give it one more try! “Babar’s mother was killed by hunters in Africa so he ran away to Paris, France. He met an old lady in Paris who took care of him, bought him clothes, and even sent him to school.”

  “This elephant reads!”

  Yasmine thought for a minute and then said, “Yes. Now, while Babar was in Paris eating bonbons, his father, who was the King of the Elephant realm, ate poisonous mushrooms and died.” Yasmine walked a little faster. Tamanna did not seem as tired as before.

  “What is a bonbon?”

  “A candy.” A memory flashed through her mind. She was in her bedroom, in their flat: a yellow quilt, toys on the floor. She was just four or five years old. “Just one quick story. Baba and I are having dinner with the Chancellor,” said Mother. She wore a pretty dress, high heels, and her hair was long and flipped over her shoulders. Baba came to the door. He told Mother that she was beautiful. Mother laughed.

  “He became an orphan?” asked Tamanna.

  “Who?” Yasmine was still in the shadowy world of a child’s memory. She swallowed hard.

  “Babar. You said his father ate bad mushrooms,” said Tamanna as she let go of Yasmine and began to walk on her own.

  “His cousins Celeste and Arthur came from the Elephant realm and found him in Paris. They asked him to return home and become the new king since he was now educated. Soon everyone in the Elephant realm dressed like the French.” The path was steep. They climbed hand over hand.

  “How do the French dress?” huffed Tamanna as she yanked her walking stick out of a tangle of thorns. She knew a little bit about France. Yasmine’s father had taught them geography. France was part of Europe and across the water from the little island of England, which was ruled by a queen, except that there was no king so really she was the king. France was a beautiful country that produced an alcohol called wine, which was illegal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan produced opium, which was a drug and illegal in France.

  “Mother says that French women are the best-dressed people in the world,” puffed Yasmine. Without asking, Yasmine took Tamanna’s walking stick and put it on her back, wedging it under the haversack. The stick was useless, even a hindrance, when climbing up steep embankments, but they dared not throw it away. Trees were getting scarce and it was harder and harder to replace the walking stick. Once in a while Yasmine could see Tamanna’s movements in the moonlight. They were stilted and pained. But not once had she complained.

  “What happened to the old lady, the one who took Babar in and cared for him?” asked Tamanna.

  “She came with Babar to the Elephant realm.”

  “Are there any more Babar stories?” asked Tamanna.

  “Of course.”

  And so a gray elephant in a green suit accompanied the girls as they climbed.

  Chapter 15

  Blameless Stars

  As another dawn broke they stood on a hilltop. Above, the soaring mountains, streaked in ruby, yellow, and muted silver, looked cold and foreboding. Below, poplar trees flashed silver and green leaves. Small white almond flowers blanketed the hills. But down deep, in the gullies and crevices, were graveyards of trucks, tanks, donkey bones, and maybe human bones, too.

  A twig snapped. Yasmine grabbed Tamanna’s arm and pulled her down behind a rock. “There!” She pointed. Above, standing on a rock face, a boy waved to them.

  “What should we do?” Tamanna whispered.

  Yasmine shook her head. They could not have outrun him even if they had wanted to. He was young, maybe eight or nine years old. Carrying a shepherd’s crook, he leaped from rock to rock, skipping with the grace of a mountain goat. He came closer, then stopped in front of them and grinned. He looked to be made of dirt and dust, but he was beautiful all the same, red-cheeked and cl
ear-skinned, wearing an old, dirty, western-style snow jacket with a zipper and hood.

  Waving his crook like a flag, he whirled it over his head and pointed to a crevice in the rocks. “Follow.” He spoke Pashto. Tamanna understood perfectly, but Yasmine struggled with the language. Still, she had learned much from Tamanna over the past months.

  Yasmine pulled back. “Tamanna, he could be the child of a Talib or the son of a warlord. He could be anyone.”

  Tamanna did not respond. Yasmine looked closely at her friend. Her face was gray, her eyes half closed and dull. Worse, she was sweating. She has a fever, thought Yasmine. It was a snap decision. She looked back at the boy, who continued to motion to them, then reached over and pulled Tamanna to her feet. “Lean on me.” They followed the boy.

  A stone hut stood in the middle of what had once been a compound. Dilapidated beyond use, the outside wall at the very front was a pile of stones jumbled together with handmade bricks. Soaring rocks protected it on three sides. Inside the courtyard, bleached bones—they looked as though they might have been the hip bones of horses—were piled against the hut to be used as spades and shovels. Scrawny chickens ran in and out of a small twig pen. A fat cat, more black than white, sat on bricks warmed by the sun. A half-dug garden of newly planted herbs and vegetables lay beside the wall.

  The boy plunged ahead of them, grinning, shouting, and leaping. As the wooden door was flung open each girl pulled her burka down over her face and peered through the grille. A tiny old woman, so bent she looked as though she might topple forward, clung to the door frame and gazed up at them through eyes nearly buried in wrinkles. Soft white hair fell out of her headscarf.

  “Grandmother, visitors!” yelled the boy in Pashto, laughing.

  A cackle erupted out of the old woman’s mouth. Both girls recoiled from the sound as she raised her hand in greeting. Just like the boy, she motioned to them to come closer. Another rasping noise arose from her throat. The boy, still bouncing and laughing, bolted ahead of them.

  Yasmine entered the hut first, Tamanna followed. It was a very poor home but as tidy as the wind-swept, mountainous land around them allowed. A worn rug covered the floor and a large toshak, also old but clean, was pushed against the wall. Yasmine and Tamanna removed their shoes.

  Sit, sit, said the old woman with her hands. The boy had already put a pot on a small wood stove that sat in the corner. It was a surprise to see such an expensive stove in a poor house. A small kerosene heater was tucked away in a corner, another surprise. A plastic jug lay on its side near the heater.

  The woman cackled. The boy nodded. He could decipher the noises coming from the old woman, but to Yasmine’s and Tamanna’s ears the sounds were indecipherable.

  “My grandmother wants to welcome you.” The boy’s grin never left his face, and he had blank, dreamy eyes. Tamanna realized it first. He was bool—sweet, gentle, but not intelligent. Tamanna looked at him with kindness. Such a child might be treated with indulgence by his family, but in the villages or in the city he would be an object of disdain.

  He darted out of the house, returning with the cat in his arms. “Beelow,” he yelled. Tamanna and Yasmine nodded, yes, yes, the cat’s name was Beelow. Each took a turn petting it. The old woman tapped her grandson’s arm, nodded her head vigorously, and made another screeching noise.

  “Grandma says, ‘Chai, chai!’” The boy dropped the cat and danced in circles. Tamanna and Yasmine sat on the pillow as the boy passed them each an earthen mug filled with green tea. “My name Zmarak. Means lion cub. Father, Zmaray, lion!” The boy thumped his chest.

  “Is your father here?” Yasmine asked, tentatively.

  “He is martyr,” said the boy, loudly and proudly.

  Both girls exhaled and relaxed a little. Even the pain in Tamanna’s hip seemed to dull, though she was still sweating. They sipped their tea as the fire under the stove warmed them. It was hard to keep their eyes open.

  “Speak, before I shoot!”

  Yasmine instantly awoke to the sound of a bullet as it was released into a firing chamber of a gun. The cocked rifle rested against Tamanna’s temple. Tamanna, too, awoke with a jolt. Both looked down the barrel of an old-fashioned gun, the kind Yasmine had seen in old western movies she and Baba used to watch on the television in England. Instinctively they covered their faces, Tamanna with her hands, Yasmine with the end of her headscarf.

  “Tell me who you are and what you want.”

  Then, from the other side of the room, the grandmother’s long, guttural whine filled the air. The man with the gun understood the woman’s squawking and pulled back. The old woman, sounding like a crow, cried out again and again. She was pleading with him, her hands folded over her chest. The man stared first at Yasmine and then at Tamanna with eyes lined with black surma. He wore a dirt-brown shalwar kameez, leather boots under baggy pants, and a turban, its trailing ends wrapped around his nose and mouth.

  “Why do you walk through the mountains alone? Where is your man?” He seemed to be asking the old woman and the girls at the same time. Zmarak, the boy, sat in the corner petting the cat.

  “Please, we are travelers. This woman and boy gave us refuge. We will leave now,” Tamanna answered in Pashto. In that moment she caught a glimpse of the early-morning sun through a paneless window. How long had they slept?

  Tamanna struggled to stand but her hip gave out and she tumbled back to the ground with a muffled thump. A woolly sheepskin and the toshak padded her fall.

  Yasmine, trying to keep her face covered with one hand, reached out to help Tamanna with the other. She was about to speak when the gunman turned the gun on her. The old woman’s screeching had turned into a long, slow moan, the gunman paced back and forth, but the boy only smiled as he murmured into the cat’s ear. For a few moments there was silence. Tamanna’s eyes darted around the room. She spied the place where the boy and old woman must have slept. The ground was as hard as iron and covered only by a thin sheepskin. The gunman stood between them and the door. There was no escape.

  “Who are they?” the gunman asked the grandmother.

  The old woman turned away. The cat screeched and jumped out of Zmarak’s arms. The boy leaped up and threw his arms around the gunman’s legs. Tamanna took a breath, expecting the man to beat the boy. But instead of shoving Zmarak into the dirt floor, he reached down and patted the boy’s head. The gunman’s hands were small and dirty, the nails bitten, and to Tamanna’s ears, his voice seemed strange.

  “We mean you no harm. We are trying to reach the border,” said Tamanna. Perhaps it was the fever that made her brave, perhaps her judgment was impaired, but she spoke out, unafraid of the consequences. She revealed her face and looked the gunman in the eye.

  There was a pause, no one spoke. The gun was lowered, and the wrapping around the gunman’s face was pulled away. The man was a woman.

  “Welcome,” she said.

  Zmarak clapped his hands and reeled with laughter as the old woman sighed and pulled herself up to stoke the fire.

  “My name is Ariana. This is my mother, and you have met my son, Zmarak,” she said.

  Tamanna was about to say something but instead she sniffed. They all did. Chicken!

  Ariana’s gun stood propped up by the door. They sat around a long cloth, the family’s dastarkhoan, having feasted on chicken stuffed with grain and nuts. There was fried eggplant and yogurt dip and many rounds of naan. It was overwhelming.

  Tamanna, too sick to eat more than a few mouthfuls, paused and thought of the wedding feast Mor had planned. Mor, Mor . . . be well, be well. May Allah protect you. The tears that crawled up her throat were sudden and unexpected. She swallowed. Mor would tell her to watch for signs of good luck and bad. Good follows good, bad follows bad. Tamanna looked at the bowl now emptied of food, then around at the company. This was a welcoming home. They were warm, full, and, for the moment, safe. Surely this was a good sign.

  “It is a miracle that you have got this far on your own. It
is strange . . .” Ariana’s voice trailed off.

  “You have been kind. We thank you,” said Tamanna. The old woman beamed.

  “You have made my son and mother happy. You can thank us better with a story.” Ariana smiled.

  “I am not good at speaking, but perhaps I can try and tell you the story of an elephant who wears a suit,” said Tamanna, mustering all her energy. Neither knew this word suit, but Zmarak and his grandmother laughed anyway. Even the cat seemed to be listening. Tamanna was unused to being the center of attention and certainly, in her whole life, she had never told a story. Sitting around a dying fire, she told the young lion cub and his grandmother the story of Babar.

  Ariana stood, took her gun, and went outside. Her back against the wall of the house, she looked up at the stars.

  “My Pashto is not as good as my friend’s, but may I speak?” asked Yasmine, standing in the doorway.

  Ariana nodded. “Sit.”

  Yasmine crouched beside her. “Thank you. Without your help . . . I am not sure how much farther we could have gone.”

  “Your friend is sick. My mother will take care of her,” said Ariana.

  “Why do you dress like a man?” It took Yasmine courage to ask such a personal question.

  “Because there is no man in this house, so I am the man,” she said simply.

  “To dress like a man is against the rules of the Taliban. The hills are filled with Taliban, and warlords, too. Why do they let you live as you do?” asked Yasmine.

  “What? Do you think the Taliban follow their own rules? Their laws are to control others, not themselves! They do what is convenient. It is not convenient for them to kill me. They have uses for a woman beyond marriage.” Ariana turned and faced Yasmine.

  In the dim of the hut Yasmine had not looked at the woman closely. Now, under starlight bright enough to read by, Yasmine saw a face so sharp and lean it might have been chiseled in stone. Ariana was beautiful. In the British world that she had once lived in, Ariana would have graced the covers of magazines. People with cameras would have followed her. Then Yasmine looked more closely. Mother and daughter had similar features. That old woman had once been beautiful too.