Shir Ahmad muttered his apologies to the women for having to leave them, but I could tell he was secretly pleased because I think they were starting to do his head in. Slowly, I led him to where Ismerai was waiting. It took quite a bit of time because of all the handshaking he had to do on the way.
Once in the men’s room, Ismerai asked Shir Ahmad to sit down and presented him with a white envelope. “From Haji Sahib Khan,” he said. “He apologizes for not being here in person to celebrate your wedding with you, but he had to return to Shinwar to attend to some urgent business.”
Shir Ahmad accepted Ismerai’s words with some kind ones of his own and opened the envelope. Inside were about four or five pieces of official-looking paper.
My new father looked at Ismerai, confused. I looked at Ismerai, disappointed. I was expecting to see money.
“It’s a contract,” Ismerai explained.
“Oh, a contract,” we all said, continuing to stare at Ismerai.
Laughing, the old man took the papers off Shir Ahmad and slowly explained what they all meant. It turned out that Shir Ahmad and Haji Khan were now in business together—the joint owners of Kabul’s latest Internet café.
30
AFTER THE WEDDING party, my mother left with her husband to get our new house ready for the start of our new life, and the rest of us returned to Wazir Akbar Khan.
Back at the house, Georgie, James, and May opened a bottle of wine because apparently they were all “in need of a drink,” and one by one they tried to convince me to move into James’s room for the week.
“It won’t be so lonely for you,” explained Georgie, coming in from the kitchen carrying my tea.
“Your mother would want you to sleep there,” May tried.
“It will be fun!” cried James.
But I was having none of it. I wasn’t a child anymore, and my mother had only gone to another house; it wasn’t as if she’d nearly died or anything—not like the last time she’d left me alone with the foreigners. And besides, my mother had a TV in her room, and I was moving in there.
After getting a little cross with my friends and all their nagging, I picked up my kettle of tea and left them to their wine so I could settle myself in my mother’s room and finally get some peace. And as I arranged the cushions for the best view of the television, I felt pretty grown up about it.
“This is the life,” I said to myself, sipping at my drink and stretching out on my mother’s bed.
I plumped up the pillow and relaxed for the film that was about to begin.
Eight hours later I was woken by the sound of Georgie calling me to breakfast. The television was silent because the electricity had gone off, and as my head caught up with my surroundings I realized I’d fallen asleep before I’d watched even five minutes of the movie, which annoyed me slightly because it seemed such a waste of my new freedom.
I climbed out of bed, washed myself, changed my clothes, and went into the big house for breakfast. Only Georgie was there, as May had already left for her office and James wouldn’t come out of his room for another three hours at least.
“Did you sleep well?” Georgie asked, pushing a plate of bread and honey in my direction.
“Yes, thank you. Did you?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I poured myself a cup of sweet tea.
“So, did you enjoy the wedding party?” Georgie asked.
“Yes, it was pretty good. What about you?”
“Yes,” she agreed, “it was pretty good.”
We then continued eating in silence until Massoud turned up to take Georgie to her office and I jumped on my bike to go to school. Although it was always nice to spend time with Georgie, neither of us was really a “morning person.”
As usual, I went to the shop after class to earn my money, such as it was, and to tease Jamilla before she went to school.
“I read yesterday that Shahrukh Khan got married to another man,” I told her.
“Where?” Jamilla asked. “In Fawad’s Special Newspaper of Lies?”
“No, in an Indian temple, of course.”
“Very funny,” she said, fixing her scarf before walking out the door.
“I thought so.” I laughed. “See you after school, Jamilla.”
“Whatever,” she replied, in English, making the sign that James had taught me and that I had taught her.
As she walked out the door, I suddenly noticed she was starting to get taller than me, which didn’t please me one bit. I’d scratched a mark on my bedroom door when I first moved into the foreigners’ house, and I didn’t seem to be getting any higher. It was starting to play on my mind, so much so that I’d recently got to wondering whether I’d end up like Haji Khan’s midget man. Even Jahid had commented on my height when I saw him at the wedding.
“Hey, runt,” he’d greeted me.
I ignored him, obviously, because in God’s great plan for us all he hadn’t come off too well either. But it was still annoying.
“How old are you now?” Pir Hederi asked when I mentioned it in the shop.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe ten, maybe eleven.”
“Oh, well then, boy, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Come back to me when you’re maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and you’re still no higher than an ailing calf.”
“I’m not likely to be here when I’m twenty-five or twenty-six, am I?”
“Where the hell else are you likely to be?”
“Well . . .” I stopped to think about it, and realized I had no idea. “Somewhere else,” I said eventually, now even more disturbed by the thought that I might end up as a man-midget working in Pir Hederi’s shop for the rest of my life.
“Look, if you’re seriously worried, my advice is to get your mother to boil up a chicken in hot water, throw in some chickpeas and a spoon of scorpion juice, and take a glass of the water every morning when you wake up.”
“We’re not allowed to eat even chicken these days because of the bird flu, never mind scorpions,” I told him.
“In that case, you’re screwed,” was all he said.
“You have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Georgie told me when I returned home later that afternoon to drink tea with her in the garden. “Girls mature faster than boys—that’s a fact. In a couple of years you’ll catch up with Jamilla, and then you’ll overtake her. And really, Fawad, you’re far too clever to end your days in Pir Hederi’s shop, so calm down.”
“Do you really think I’m clever?” I asked.
Georgie laughed. “Fawad, you’re the most intelligent boy I’ve ever met! You are . . . what is the phrase in Dari? I don’t know. In English we would say that you’re ‘bright as a button,’ meaning you’re amazingly clever and lively for your age. Honestly, I’ve met adults who haven’t got the sense you were born with. You are a very special little boy who will one day grow up to be a very special man. And you’re also very handsome.”
“Wow, I’m pretty good then, aren’t I?” I laughed.
“You sure are, Fawad.”
As I looked at Georgie, her lovely face sweating in the summer sun, I suddenly felt a cloud of sadness come over me. Things were changing so fast, and they would probably never be the same again: May was moving back to her country to have her French baby; I was moving to Kart-e Seh to begin my new life; James was worried about who was going to cook for him now my mother was gone, and why Rachel didn’t want to marry him; and Georgie—well, nobody knew what Georgie was up to.
“Are you going to leave Afghanistan?” I asked, watching her carefully.
“Who told you that?” she asked back, surprise making her voice grow high.
“Dr. Hugo told me before he got beaten up by Haji Khan.”
“He what? Khalid did what?”
My heart stopped. I’d gone and done it again.
“It was only because he loves you,” I added quickly. “And really it was all Dr. Hugo’s fault because he was trying to make him ‘back off,’ and Haj
i Khan said that you were in his teeth and he called Dr. Hugo a motherfucker and then he got really angry. But he didn’t kill Dr. Hugo or anything, even though he told his guards that he was going to rip his throat out.”
Georgie stared at me over her sunglasses.
“I’m in his teeth, am I?” she asked finally.
“Well, that’s what he said.”
“How romantic,” she replied, but she spoke the words in a flat way like it wasn’t romantic at all.
“So, are you leaving Afghanistan?”
Georgie shrugged. “Right now, I don’t know, and that’s the honest truth. Maybe it will become clearer on Friday when I go to Shinwar.”
“You’re going to see Haji Khan?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t, but I guessed she was about to give Haji Khan his answer.
“Can I come with you?” I asked.
“Well . . . I don’t know. I’ve got a few things to sort out.”
“Please, Georgie. What if you do leave? This might be the last chance I get to see Mulallah.”
“To be honest, Fawad, I’m not sure I’ll have time to visit Mulallah and her family.”
“Okay then, Haji Khan.”
My friend looked at me through her glasses.
“I don’t know . . .”
“Please, Georgie. I’ll be ever so good, and I won’t make any trouble, and I’ll play by myself when you need to speak to Haji Khan and—”
“Okay, okay, you can come!”
“Great!”
“But only if your mother agrees.”
Using Georgie’s phone, I immediately called my mother to ask if I could go to Shinwar for the Friday holiday. She agreed, as I knew she would, because when it came to a choice between Shinwar and leaving me in a house with James and a pregnant lesbian, Shinwar would win every time.
“Don’t forget your prayers, and be good!” she yelled in my ear.
“I won’t, and I will,” I promised, making a note in my head to show her how to speak properly into a phone when I next saw her. She was shouting so loud I could have heard her in Tajikistan.
As with our other journeys, it was Zalmai who arrived at the house to drive us to Shinwar, but this time Ismerai came with us and we were taken in a Toyota pickup with a guard in the front and two more outside in the back.
“Expecting trouble, are we?” Georgie asked when she saw our escort.
“No, not really,” Ismerai replied. “Haji just wants to take precautions with you both, seeing as you are such special guests.”
“Oh, come on.” Georgie laughed. “What’s happened?”
“Beyond the usual?”
Ismerai took off his pakol to scratch at the few bits of hair left on top of his head.
“Okay. Last week the governor escaped a roadside bomb and there have been a few other incidents, but nothing to get worked up about.”
“Because of the poppy ban?” Georgie asked.
“Poppies, power, the time of the year . . . who knows? This is Afghanistan. We don’t do peace that easily, as you well know.”
As we traveled to Shinwar, Ismerai tried to take our mind off roadside bombs and “other incidents” by pointing out the places where people had been blown up in the past. “This is where the mujahideen ambushed a Russian convoy toward the end of the jihad,” he said as we came out of Kabul and into the mountains. “Here there was a mighty battle that lasted a full week . . . here we had some of our best sniper positions . . . here we dug tunnels into the hills to escape from the Communists . . .” He then pointed out the death sites of fallen friends and forgotten heroes and basically sent us all into a bit of a depression.
As we slipped down into Nangarhar and on into Shinwar, the sun burned hot through our windows, making it difficult to talk without completely exhausting ourselves, so we fell into our own thoughts and daydreams until we arrived at Haji Khan’s home.
I’d never been to his Shinwar compound before, and though it was smaller than his place in Jalalabad, it was much nicer—more like a home than a palace. Of course it was a home filled with guards carrying guns, but they were more in the shadows than at the other place.
As the Toyota came to a stop in the driveway, Georgie was the first out. Bending to the ground to stretch out her back, she then lifted her arms to the sky, holding them there for a moment, high above her head, as if she was feeling the air between her fingers.
“God, I love this place,” she said to no one, sighing. Then, turning to me, she added, “You know, Fawad, this is where I first fell in love with Afghanistan.”
“And with Haji Khan,” I added for her.
“Yes,” she accepted, “with Haji Khan too.”
I smiled, because this was important. If Georgie was to make the right decision about her future, she needed to be reminded of everything she loved, not of all the other things that had come to make her sad.
Ismerai came over to join us.
“Go sit on the carpet, and I’ll join you in a minute,” he said. “I’ve just got a couple of phone calls to make.”
Georgie and I nodded, and we walked over to a red carpet that was lying under a huge tree. The air was much cooler under the leaves, and above our heads birds sang to us. Life just didn’t get any better than this.
“It would be sad never to see this place again,” I said to Georgie as she kicked off her sandals and sat back to stretch out her legs.
“Yes, it would,” she admitted. “You know, it’s a shame that so many people don’t get to experience days like this.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. Then, after thinking about it a bit more, I asked, “Why?”
Georgie smiled. “Well, there’s so much more to your country than war, as you can see, but unfortunately we rarely get to hear about it. I don’t think people get the full picture—about what Afghanistan is like, and what Afghans are like.”
“Yes, it is pretty good here,” I said, “as long as you’re not hungry.”
“Or no one’s trying to kill you.”
“Or you don’t get sold by your family.”
“Or you don’t lack electricity or clean water.”
“Or . . . or . . .” I was struggling now. “Or you don’t get your head blown off by a gas cooker.”
Georgie put her chin to her chest and looked at me over her sunglasses.
“It happened once, to a woman in our street,” I explained.
“Oh,” Georgie said, lifting her head back up to the sun that winked at us through the leaves, “well then, you’re right. It’s a pretty good country if you don’t get your head blown off.”
“Or your legs,” I added. “There are still a lot of land mines.”
“Or your legs,” Georgie agreed.
“Actually, what is so good about Afghanistan?” I asked, and we both started laughing.
“Okay,” Georgie said, stopping first. “For one, I’ve never lived anywhere where the sky is so blue it can leave you speechless.”
“It can get very blue,” I agreed.
“And though life is hard here, much harder than we can imagine living in our nice house in Wazir Akbar Khan, there is also kindness hiding behind the walls of these houses, and love.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, let me think how to explain. It’s like the books about your country. Most of them would have you believe that Afghanistan is a land of noble savages, heroic men who kill at the first provocation, and in some ways maybe they are right. There is a quick anger within you all and a brutality that is sometimes shocking to us, but mainly the Afghans I’ve been lucky enough to encounter have been simple people with good hearts who are just trying to survive.”
“I wouldn’t call Haji Khan simple.”
“Well, no, you’re right, again,” Georgie admitted, “but although he’s not poor, he still has a good heart. Khalid means well, I know that, it’s just that sometimes . . . Well, hey, come on, let’s not even go there.”
As Georgie blew the smoke from her mouth, Ismerai returned. His phone was closed, and he had a smile on his face.
“Come,” he said, struggling a little for breath. “We’ve got something to show you.”
Zalmai drove us to a place about fifteen minutes away from Haji Khan’s house. Bouncing off the main track, we came to a stop outside a half-finished building where workmen were still busy building walls and moving dirt around in wheel-barrows.
As we stepped out into the air, Haji Khan appeared from the house talking to a man holding a large notebook. When he saw us, he shook hands with the man and walked over, with a smile on his face. He certainly looked a lot happier than the last time I’d seen him, and as usual he was dressed in the finest salwar kameez of pale blue with a gray waistcoat matching the color of his pakol.
I decided that if I ever got bored of wearing jeans, I would definitely find out who his tailor was.
“So, what do you think?” Haji Khan asked when he reached us. He spoke in English, and I guessed it was to stop the workmen from listening to his conversation.
“It’s a beautiful area,” Georgie said. “Are you building another house then?”
“Yes, I am building a new house,” he said, “but this house is for you. If you choose to accept it or not, this is also a matter for you.”
I was pretty amazed by his words, and I felt my mouth drop open with the weight of a million questions wanting to spill out but not being allowed to.
Georgie said nothing.
Born Under a Million Shadows Page 24