This Shall Be a House of Peace

by Phil Halton

  The crowd filed past Qasim, surrounding the bandit. The Mullah stepped into the loose circle, gesturing for everyone to stand back. “Umar, Rashid. Turn him. Let him face the graves of his victims.”

  Rashid pushed Noor down to his knees and the Mullah stood behind him. The Mullah’s hands had begun to shake, and he gripped the bandit’s shoulders to keep them still. His voice carried across the fields. “Believers! Equivalence is the law decreed for murder. Let the murderer die as did his victims.”

  The crowd roared in agreement.

  “Let him suffer as they suffered!” said the Mullah.

  Noor shivered and wept, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. The Mullah held him upright by the back of his collar, although Noor strained to lie flat on the ground as though he meant to prostrate himself and appeal to the crowd’s pity. Rashid stepped forward at a signal from the Mullah, and drew a bayonet from under his kamiz. He handed it to Qasim, who held it uncertainly, and who for the first time appeared to hesitate.

  The Mullah gestured to the graves. “Justice stems from the knife in your hand, as they are your witnesses.”

  Qasim took a step toward Noor and grabbed the bandit’s head as one does a sheep before its slaughter. Noor’s eyes opened and rolled wildly as he struggled to look over his shoulder at his executioner. The front of Noor’s shalwar darkened, and Qasim’s face wrinkled at the smell. The Mullah kept a hand on Noor’s shoulder to hold him steady. He knew that a clean cut was necessary or the execution would turn into a bloody shambles.

  Noor spoke in a small voice. “God have mercy. I did it. I killed them. But I am truly sorry, I swear it. God have mercy.” The bandit who had once terrified the villagers was transformed into a pitiful creature, less than human, as he begged for his life. His executioner himself was in tears as he held the knife at his victim’s throat.

  The Mullah spoke gently to him. “Qasim, this is your right, and is not adjudged to be murder. But know, as well, that God blesses those who pardon sinners. Mercy is the province of God, but also of great men.”

  Qasim dropped the bayonet on the ground at once and turned away from Noor. “I see the terror that was in the eyes of my uncle and his daughter when I look at him. I would not slaughter a sheep in this state, much less a man. Even if it is justice.”

  The Mullah took his hands off of Noor’s shoulders, letting the man fall to the ground. He embraced Qasim, speaking softly into his ear. “May God bless you, your kindness and your mercy.”

  Umar lifted the bandit up onto his feet and freed him from the rope that had bound his hands. Noor fell to his knees at the feet of the Mullah. “Mercy! Please, mercy!”

  The Mullah lifted him by his arms and brought him to his feet again. “Noor, son of Wafa, you are a great sinner,” said the Mullah. “But you are forgiven. Live your second life righteously, unlike your first.”

  Noor gave him an uncomprehending look. He stammered a reply. “I will. I will.”

  “You are free, Noor,” said the Mullah. “Take your freedom and use it well.”

  Noor pushed through the crowd, who still stared at him harshly. He walked quickly through the fields surrounding the graveyard and then broke into a run. Soon he was running as fast as his legs would carry him down the hillside and away from the scene of his trial. The crowd watched as his back grew smaller in the distance.

  The Mullah called for their attention. “Remember, we are not punishing men for the sake of punishing, or fighting for the sake of fighting, or even fighting just to protect ourselves. We are engaged in a struggle — all of us — to rebuild society as it once was. A society that is perfectly in line with the will of God.”

  The crowd murmured appreciatively and began to disperse.

  Umar clasped the Mullah by the hand and spoke to him warmly. “There has been enough death,” said Umar. “This feels like justice in a way that killing him would not.”

  The Mullah nodded and turned to look off in the distance to where Noor had run.

  Noor walked along the side of the highway, anxious to get away from the village. He had no belongings beyond the dirty clothes that he wore, but this was a life that was familiar to him. As the sun went down the air began to cool. Although the coolness felt pleasant, he knew that the night would be frigid. Noor stretched out his pace and walked a little faster, although he did not know exactly where he was headed.

  His mind raced over the events of the day. Now that he was forgiven, he was safe from revenge by the relatives of that old man. As for any of the others that he had robbed, or worse, that was not the case. There was safety in numbers, such as he had sought with Tarak’s gang. That was all gone now. He had heard the Mullah and the others as they had carried Tarak’s body out of the madrassa.

  Noor’s chest was tight, his breath short, but he pushed onward. As the sky darkened, he felt safer. His limbs loosened again and felt less stiff; he began to relax. The road followed the course of a mostly dry riverbed. Not having any reason to stop, even as the night deepened, he kept walking.

  His mind recalled the first few lines of a song that some of the other men would sing at night. He stumbled over the words, though the tune was clear in his head.

  “There is a boy across the river …

  with a bum just like a peach …

  But alas, I have never learned to swim.”

  He chuckled to himself as he sang the rest, repeating it over and over as he walked. The road rose up over a low hill, and when he reached the crest he could see down the highway toward a light that shone by a small building. Noor stepped to the side of the road and crouched. He watched and waited patiently for some time. Dark figures passed in front of the light as men moved alongside the building. He counted three men, perhaps four, all of whom were moving restlessly, at least one of them holding something that looked like a rifle. He saw that the building sat at a choke point in the rough terrain around the dry riverbed that forced travellers to stick to the road, with no possibility of finding a bypass. Noor recognized what that meant, and therefore who those men must be.

  Noor walked down to the riverbed to find a place to sleep in the remaining hours of the night. Worried about how he might be received by the men near the light, he decided to approach them in the morning instead. Early, when the bandits would be slow.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 12

  The evening sun was disappearing in the distance, leaving only a red smear across the horizon.

  Weeks had passed since the fight along the highway. The men had settled into a simple routine. Bandits continued to rob travellers farther out in the district, but a degree of peace had settled over the valley below the madrassa.

  The checkpoint on the highway had become permanent. The men had stacked heavy rocks waist-high in a ring, forming a position to fight from by the side of the road. The dushka taken from Tarak’s truck was mounted behind the rocks on its salvaged tripod, the machine gun’s thick barrel pointing down the road toward Kandahar.

  At the changing of the shifts, all of the Mullah’s men sat together inside the protective ring of stone. This evening Umar and Rashid had come down from the madrassa and prayed with Wasif and Asadullah Amin, all four kneeling on carpets laid out on the hot asphalt of the highway. Now, their duty fulfilled, they chatted. Without the Mullah present, the banter between the men was lighter. They all sat with their weapons across their laps, fingers absently running over the warm metal. Lala Chai passed among them, filling glasses with tea by lamplight.

  Umar held out his glass to be filled. “You have never told us how you came to be students at the madrassa,” he said.

  Wasif was focused on his kalash, which he had decorated with brightly coloured plastic wrappers from the trash that blew around the checkpoint. He pulled the bits of plastic tightly around the grip and forestock of the rifle, tucking in the edges to hold them in place. He shifted uncomfortably at Umar’s question, and did not look up as he answered. “The Mullah found us, up by the madrassa.”

&nb
sp; “And your family?” asked Umar.

  “Our parents were killed,” said Wasif in a tight voice, “working in the fields.”

  Asadullah Amin spoke quietly, “And our sister, too.”

  The men sat in silence, absorbing this. “And do you have other family? Cousins?”

  Wasif shook his head, working hard to hold back a flood of tears. “We don’t know. We were very young. Neither of us knew the name of our village, or even of our father. My brother is my only family. I took care of him until the Mullah found us.”

  “You’re not from here originally?” asked Umar.

  “I’m not sure where we are from, exactly,” said Wasif.

  “I remember that we walked a long time with nothing to eat,” said Asadullah Amin.

  “We had nothing but our clothes,” said Wasif.

  “And the chador,” said Asadullah Amin.

  Wasif looked embarrassed. “We carried it with us. I guess it was our mother’s …”

  “It is all we have of her,” said Asadullah Amin.

  Everyone sat in silence, deep in thought. Rashid tried to lighten the mood. “Taking care of Asadullah Amin all that time — that makes you the mother of a lion!”

  Both Umar and Rashid laughed, but Wasif turned red. “At least we have family!” he said.

  Rashid put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It was only a joke, my friend,” he said. “No one doubts the good you have done by caring for your brother.” Asadullah Amin stood and quietly bid the men good night. Rashid watched him disappear outside the circle of lamplight.

  “Tell me, Wasif, have you ever seen an Uzbek before?” asked Umar.

  “Never,” said Wasif. “What do they look like?”

  Rashid laughed and pointed at Umar. “There is one sitting right there!”

  “Truly?” asked Wasif.

  “There are Uzbeks like my family in Kandahar, but only a few. My father and his father were carpet traders. We moved back and forth from the north to the south, but we are from Maimana originally.”

  Wasif looked puzzled, but said nothing.

  “Do you know Maimana?” asked Umar.

  “Is it a country?” asked Wasif.

  Umar laughed. “No, it is a city in the north.”

  Rashid chided Wasif. “You don’t even know your own country!”

  “I know it well enough,” said Wasif, his temper flaring.

  “The mother of the lion has claws!” said Rashid. Both he and Umar laughed again, and Wasif’s cheeks reddened.

  Umar waved Lala Chai over to fill his glass with tea. Lala Chai glanced at the others, checking to see if they wanted more, as well. Rashid held out his glass and asked Umar a question, steering the conversation away from Wasif. “And how is it that you came to be here?”

  “Much like you, I imagine,” said Umar. “It wasn’t really my plan.”

  “Honest men don’t speak in riddles,” said Wasif.

  Umar ignored the jibe. “When I was a barely a man,” began Umar, “I joined the mujahideen with my father and uncles. When my father was killed, my oldest uncle sent me to work for the leadership of the tanzim, where it would be safer. I organized logistics from Iran, and I studied Islam.”

  “Iran is far from here,” said Wasif.

  “It is,” said Umar, with a touch of kindness in his voice. “But I wanted to learn, and so I made the journey. There are schools now in Herat, but the best teachers are in Pakistan. I was travelling this highway to Quetta when the Mullah asked for volunteers.”

  “Quetta is not so far,” said Wasif.

  “Perhaps not by road,” said Umar, “but it is far from my heart.” He looked Rashid and Wasif in the eye as he spoke. “To think that I wanted to go to school to learn Islam, when here we are actually living it.”

  Asadullah Amin sped up the hill toward the madrassa, hoping that no one would follow him. His mind was filled with memories of his family, growing fainter every day. He had held back the tears that now filled his eyes until the pressure had become too much. He wept silently as he walked, trying to both release his sorrow and control it, so that by the time that he reached the madrassa he could face the other boys.

  As he began to walk through the terraced fields just below the village, he saw the Mullah walking down the path carrying a lantern in one hand, with a bowl and ewer tucked under his arm. He quickly wiped his face with his sleeves, hoping that his reddened eyes wouldn’t betray his weakness.

  The Mullah saw him approaching and stopped, lifting the lantern so that its light shone farther down the path.

  “Come with me,” said the Mullah. “I have a task for you to help me with.”

  Asadullah Amin merely nodded, keeping his face low so that the lantern wouldn’t shine directly on it. If the Mullah noticed that the boy had been crying, he said nothing about it, leading him through the upper fields to the kishmesh khana.

  The little building with its thick walls sat squat and forlorn amongst the dead fields. Inside, Isa sat leaning against the wall, his chains slack. His face was hollow, his skin sallow. He held his body still in the dank air of his prison.

  His eyes opened at the rattling of the lock on the door. The door opened, and what little light there was in the night sky illuminated the room. The Mullah stood in the doorway while Asadullah Amin peered from behind him.

  “Awake, my brother. The day is new, another gift from God.”

  Isa barely moved his jaw as he spoke, but he turned to look at the Mullah. “It is the middle of the night.”

  The Mullah ignored him, unlocking the chains wrapped around Isa’s wrists and ankles. “How are you feeling?” Asadullah Amin watched as the Mullah’s hands moved gently to unwrap the chains.

  Isa did not answer the question directly. “What have you decided for me?”

  The Mullah’s eyes flashed in the reflected light as he turned his face up toward Isa. “I have not spent all this time making a decision. I spent it listening for a decision.”

  “What will you do with me?” croaked Isa.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” said the Mullah. “I will do what is right. The will of God. He has set us all on a path that we must accept, no matter how difficult.”

  Isa, now unchained, sat leaning against the wall, waiting.

  “I asked how you feel,” said the Mullah.

  Isa sighed deeply. “Like a new lamb, just born.”

  The Mullah gave a rare smile. “Come then. It is time to rejoin the flock.”

  The Mullah lifted Isa under the arms. “Get on the other side,” he said to Asadullah Amin. They limped through the doorway together and set him down against the wall. By the doorway were the ewer of water and the bowl.

  “Before we go any farther, you must wash,” said the Mullah.

  Asadullah Amin helped him to pull the dirty kamiz over Isa’s head, and then the Mullah took a cloth and dampened it, washing gently around Isa’s hands and wrists, which were rubbed raw from the chains. Isa looked at the Mullah in wonder, his voice just above a whisper.

  “And after I wash, we will pray together.”

  The conversation at the checkpoint continued after Asadullah Amin had left. Umar turned to Rashid. “And what about you, my friend? How did you come to find yourself here with us?”

  Rashid deflected the question. “I’d rather hear from Lala Chai,” he said. “Tell us about fighting the invaders with your teapot.”

  The group burst into laughter. Lala Chai was composing a retort when Isa appeared at the edge of the lamplight. The Mullah and Asadullah Amin stood beside him, helping to keep him on his feet. No one had seen him clearly in the weeks that he was chained in the darkness of the kishmesh khana, but in the light of the lamp it was clear that he was a broken man. His clothes hung off of his body like a sagging tent, and his skin appeared bloodless yet was covered in red scratches. The laughter died out immediately.

  Wasif jumped to his feet. “Why is he free?”

  “We don’t need drug-addicted apostates among us,
” said Umar.

  Isa stood hunched over, his filthy shalwar kamiz hanging loosely from his thin shoulders, but did not look up or reply.

  “Do you think that I freed him just to hear your curses?” asked the Mullah.

  Wasif picked up a stone from the road, weighing it in his hand. “He’ll feel my curses, not hear them!”

  Wasif cocked his arm to throw the rock. The Mullah moved closer to Isa and raised a protective hand. Wasif froze. “Rashid,” asked the Mullah, “what do you think of my bringing Isa down here?”

  Rashid was silent.

  “He thinks the same as we do,” said Umar. “That there is no place for sinners here.”

  The Mullah ignored Umar, and waited for Rashid to reply.

  After a moment, Rashid spoke quietly. “There is a bigger sinner here than Isa.”

  “There are no sinners here other than Isa,” spat Wasif.

  “Who are you speaking of?” asked Umar.

  The Mullah left Isa standing by the edge of the lamplight and stood beside Rashid, placing one hand on his shoulder. “Tell us about this sinner.”

  Rashid’s face looked blank, almost wooden. “Unlike you,” said Rashid, “I didn’t fight the Russians.”

  “That’s not a sin,” said Umar.

  The Mullah held up a finger, gesturing for Umar to be silent. “Go on,” he said.

  “I am not one of you,” said Rashid.

  The Mullah’s face was impassive. “I have long known that,” he said. “Tell us your name, and where you are from.”

  “My birth name,” said Rashid, “was Oleg Pugachev. I was born in Leningrad, and was drafted when I was eighteen.”

  Wasif looked around at the others. “I don’t understand.”

  Umar’s face tightened into a knot. “I do. He’s a liar.”

  “I haven’t lied,” said Rashid softly.

  The Mullah’s voice was also softer than normal, more conciliatory. “Everyone sit down now, and listen.”

  Everyone arranged themselves on the ground, leaning against the circle of rocks at the checkpoint. Rashid and Isa sat with the Mullah on one side of the shelter, while everyone else sat opposite, facing them. Rashid’s face was grim, but at a signal from the Mullah he continued his story. “I was assigned to an infantry battalion based in Khost. One night, we landed by helicopter. We were ambushed right away, and I was hit through the thigh and the head. Most of the others just jumped right back on the helicopters, but I was left behind. With the dead.”