This Shall Be a House of Peace

by Phil Halton

  The other men nodded and mumbled in agreement. A skinny young man with long hair in the back row spoke up. “Feed us, house us, and pay us, and we will be yours to command.”

  The Mullah turned his back on the men and took his seat again in the shade. He poured himself another glass of tea and slowly placed the pot back on the edge of his small carpet. When he spoke, he did not look at the men in front of him at all, but instead addressed Umar. “They are all welcome to study here at the madrassa with the boys, if they wish to learn. If they prefer, we will help them find jobs here in the village. And while they are travellers in need, I will feed and house them from the zakat. But we have no need of their help otherwise.”

  The older man remained squatting in his place and looked at the Mullah for a long time. When the Mullah did not acknowledge him, he turned his head slightly to one side and spat on the ground. Finally, he stood and left, the other men following him out of the compound.

  Umar watched them go and turned to the Mullah with a look of exasperation. “Twenty new families have arrived this week, and there are at least a dozen new shops set up along the road.”

  “Mash’allah,” said the Mullah.

  “We need help,” pleaded Umar. “Those men could have protected the village.”

  The Mullah poured a second glass of tea and handed it to Umar. Umar accepted it graciously but did not drink, waiting for the Mullah to continue, fighting to conceal his frustration. The Mullah held up a finger as he spoke to him. “Righteousness is the citadel against all harm. Accepting those men into our circle would bring more danger than they would repel.”

  “If not them, then who?” asked Umar. “Where will we find an army of righteous men?”

  The Mullah raised his hand, gesturing for silence. The boys in the madrassa could be heard again, the sound of their voices rising over the whistle of the dry wind between the houses. As they recited the Quran in unison, their voices rang out, strong and pure.

  Umar knew what the Mullah wanted him to hear, but looked pensive. The Mullah leaned in toward him, placing a hand on his arm. “Umar, how old were you when your father first took you to fight the Russians?”

  The checkpoint no longer stood isolated on the roadway by the chai khana, but was now surrounded on all sides by market stalls and tiny houses. Whereas the villages of old were set back the distance of a rifle shot from the roads, with houses clustered together to be more defensible, the new structures clung to the highway like a lifeline. Inside the low stone wall, Asadullah Amin and Wasif stood facing Rashid, each one carrying his kalash. Isa stood watch nearby, gazing up the road.

  “How much ammunition do you have?” asked Rashid.

  Asadullah Amin looked sheepish. Wasif’s voice was bitter when he responded. “Only a few rounds each. Umar never gave us any more than that.”

  “But we know that an empty gun makes two people afraid,” said Asadullah Amin.

  Rashid smiled and handed each of them a fully loaded magazine from the stack that was kept at the checkpoint. “We’ll stay here, while you two do a circuit up the road and around the village.”

  They changed the magazines on their rifles and cocked them as they had been shown, putting their old magazines aside. Newly emboldened, they walked together up the road and through the little market. It was not long before they were accosted by a group of young boys from the village. They were a motley bunch, each carrying a stick that he held like a rifle. They quickly gathered in a knot around the brothers.

  “Take us with you!” pestered one of the young boys.

  “We can help protect the village!” said another.

  Wasif gave the younger boys a contemptuous look before ignoring them and continuing to patrol up the roadway. Asadullah Amin gave them a small smile, and drew his hand sharply back and forth through the air in what what he thought was a martial gesture to tell them to form a line behind him. The young boys quickly fell into line, following Asadullah Amin as he walked through the market.

  At the far end of the row of simple stalls that had sprung up along the highway, a man was beginning to construct a new shop. His stall was built from skinny branches lashed together with strips of cloth to make a frame. The sides were covered with flattened cardboard boxes, with a piece of tarpaulin for a roof. What caught the boys’ attention, though, were the posters that the man had begun to pin to the cardboard. Neither Wasif nor Asadullah Amin had ever seen anything like them. Each poster featured a woman, dressed in little more than silks and sequins. Their bodies were curved, their hands held up as if caught in the middle of some seductive dance. Never in their lives had either of the brothers seen women who looked like this.

  Wasif walked up to the shopkeeper as he fastened the posters to the outside of his stall, and kicked at a box of cassettes and CDs on the ground at the man’s feet. “What are you selling here?” demanded Wasif.

  The shopkeeper didn’t turn around to look at them, speaking through a closed mouth, pins clenched in his teeth. “Things that people will buy. Come back later when I’m open for business.”

  Wasif waved his hand at Asadullah Amin and the young boys to call them forward. “You won’t be opening for business,” he said. Wasif grabbed onto one of the slender poles holding up the front of the stall. “Get the other side,” he said to his brother. Asadullah Amin grabbed the support opposite his brother. “No one will have the chance to buy your filth,” Wasif said.

  The shopkeeper turned toward them just as the boys pulled on the two poles and pushed the rickety stall over on top of him. The thin frame snapped as it collapsed, ripping the cardboard sides and tearing the posters. The man was still tangled in the tarpaulin as Wasif and Asadullah Amin pulled one of his boxes out from under the debris. They spilled the contents out on the ground, and Wasif brought the butt of his rifle down hard on a stack of CDs. They shattered into fragments that spread across the roadway, looking like the wreckage of a broken mirror. Asadullah Amin and the others joined in, pulling out more boxes of goods and smashing them to bits.

  While they continued destroying the goods, the shopkeeper managed to crawl out from under the debris that had been his stand. His voice shook as he grabbed at Wasif’s shirt. “Enough! You’re nothing but child bandits!”

  Wasif tried to twist out of the way, but the man managed to get a fistful of his shirt and held him fast. The shopkeeper lifted him off the ground and shook him hard before dropping him and slapping him across the face. Wasif, his eyes screwed tightly shut, dropped his rifle on the ground with a clatter while the man continued to assault him.

  Asadullah Amin raised up his kalash and aimed at the man, shouting, “Take your hands off my brother!” The man ignored him. The young boys pelted the man ineffectively with rocks from close range, but he held his grip on Wasif. A crowd gathered quickly and pressed in closely around the commotion. Asadullah Amin felt as if the temperature had risen by a few degrees in only a few short minutes. The shopkeeper shouted at Wasif as he slapped him: “You will pay for everything you have broken!”

  Asadullah Amin poked the shopkeeper with the muzzle of his rifle, pressing it hard into the man’s back. His eyes closed involuntarily when he heard a sudden burst of automatic fire. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he had not fired. It was Rashid, holding his rifle over his head in one hand, pushing to the front of the crowd as he fired bursts of warning shots. Isa was beside him, using his rifle in both hands to push the crowd back from the wreckage of the stall. The shopkeeper still held onto Wasif’s shirt but turned to look at the men, his face a mask of rage. “They destroyed my shop!”

  Asadullah Amin shouted back at him: “We don’t want your vulgar things here!”

  Rashid moved close to the shopkeeper and placed a hand on his chest. The man let go of Wasif, who scrambled on the ground to find his rifle. He grabbed it and stood, bringing it up almost vertically, muzzle pointing up under the man’s chin.

  Rashid’s voice was calm when he spoke. “You are welcome to own a sh
op here, friend, but not one that corrupts society or that is against Islam. Everyone is safe here under the rule of Islam.”

  Asadullah Amin pulled a piece of a poster out of the wreckage, which he held up to the crowd. It showed the cleavage of a Bollywood star. “But this is not Islam!”

  “Death to kafirs!” shouted someone in the crowd.

  “Allah-u akbar!” shouted another.

  The crowd pushed the shopkeeper away as it moved in and began to destroy what little remained of the shop. Rashid and the others stood back and let them finish what the boys had started.

  Mullah Shafiq pushed twigs into a small fire that he had lit near the back of a shallow shepherd’s cave set in the hillside. The orange glow could barely be seen from the highway or from the village in the valley below.

  Shafiq adjusted the bundle of clothes that he used as a makeshift bed, and tried to find a position in which he could sleep while lying on the stony ground. As he got comfortable he took off his glasses, putting them carefully in a pocket of his chapan. He could see perfectly well without them.

  The cave was primitive, but suited his purpose. Let the villagers think that he was an ascetic. A mysterious magician. And until he had money again, he had little choice in terms of accommodation.

  His small pot of water had begun to boil. Shafiq threw a handful of tea leaves into the pot and wiped a metal cup with the tails of his coat. It had been a long time since he had had sugar for his tea. Soon enough, he thought.

  Reclining on his side, he chewed on a piece of naan that he had taken as payment for blessing a young child with an eye infection. It was not much, but it was all the boy’s parents could afford. A warm fire on a cold night is better than a delicious meal, he thought. And as Mullah Shafiq knew well, eating something was always preferable to eating nothing at all.

  He dipped his cup into the pot of tea, holding it with his fingertips and blowing to cool it. He adjusted his posture, leaning against the side of the cave, sipping at the tea as he thought about the farmer and the problem that he had promised to solve. What wondrous ingredients would he claim to have found to make a ta’wiz powerful enough to banish a djinn? His mind quickly switched to thinking instead about how he would spend the money that he earned from doing so.

  CHAPTER 18

  Inside the chai khana, the Mullah sat in the centre of a crowd of village men, who filled the raised platforms and packed the room. As he looked from face to face, he realized that more often than before, he did not recognize the men. The village was growing at a rapid pace, and more and more travellers were using the chai khana as well. Discussion went back and forth among the men, although very little was being agreed upon. Rashid sat in the back of the room, outside of the tight circle around the Mullah. The Mullah sat silently between Umar and Asadullah Amin, listening to each of the speakers in turn. Lala Chai passed among the men, pouring tea into their cups from his long-spouted teapot. One of the villagers, a short man with a bushy beard and hair that stuck out from his face like a lion’s mane, spoke louder than the rest, his voice carrying over the din of the others as he came to dominate the room.

  “Of course it is good to grant mercy,” said the villager, “but now that murderer is back out there somewhere. The safety of our people must be the first consideration.”

  Umar quickly rebuked the man. “Mercy stems directly from God,” he said. “Who are you to say that it is second best?”

  “What of justice?” asked the villager. “For the murderer and his victims, but also for the whole community?”

  “Justice and mercy are not exclusive. This man will now follow a straight path, insh’allah,” said Rashid.

  “And if not,” added Umar, “justice will find him as surely as a raindrop runs to the river.”

  Another villager who had been silent now spoke up. “We have spoken of justice, protection, and piety. All important things. All things that have been recently brought to the village. But there are other things that we need, as well.”

  “Many things,” said another man nervously.

  Umar gave him a skeptical look. “What are these ‘many things’ that you speak of?”

  The village men looked at each other, each hoping that some other would make the request for the group. Finally, the man with the lion’s-mane beard spoke for them all. “The growing season has been good, so we have some crops to sell. There are also things we need to buy.”

  Umar held up his empty hands. “Unfortunately, we have little money to give, my friend. What we have collected is for the madrassa.”

  “Haji,” said the man, “we don’t need charity. We need help getting our goods to the market in Kandahar and back.”

  “There are too many tolls to be paid,” said the man. “Travelling alone, each of us would have nothing left.”

  Rashid spoke up again from the back of the room. “I know what you are asking of us. But who will pay for our fuel? And perhaps our ammunition, as well?”

  “We will do what is right, as you have always done,” the villager replied.

  “What is right is not always clear,” said Umar.

  Rashid stood up and moved to stand beside the bokhari stove around which the platforms formed a rough circle. “There are a dozen checkpoints from here to Kandahar,” he said, gesturing down the highway. “Not one of which will let us pass easily if we have goods they want to steal. We may bring more trouble onto our heads than we solve by fighting with them.”

  “But we cannot stay trapped in this valley forever,” said the villager.

  “Better to live in the valley than die on the highway,” replied Rashid.

  The men were silent for a moment before the villager turned to the Mullah. “Haji Mullah, with no disrespect to the opinions of the others, what do you think?”

  When the Mullah spoke, there was complete silence from the others in the room. “You have all spoken of many things. But all are tied to one idea. The idea is that of a strong community. The murderer’s trial and its outcome are but a grain of sand in the desert compared to the work that is ahead of us. There are more sinners to be dealt with. The justice of God must extend across all within our community.”

  The crowd murmured their agreement.

  “We have had men try to set up under our protection to peddle music and filth. These are the things that distract others from the correct path. What we build here must not allow such things to take root. Small allowances made now will bear ill fruit in the future.”

  “Not if we pull out these evils at the root,” said Umar.

  “Insh’allah,” added Asadullah Amin.

  “The murderer who was tried for his crimes atop the hill was granted mercy,” continued the Mullah. “This is good and just, and pleasing to God. But that the murders occurred in the first place is an example of what happens when we are lax.”

  “It is a sad state of affairs,” said the lion-bearded man, “when even fathers cannot protect their daughters against wickedness.”

  The Mullah nodded and raised a single finger above his head, pointing upward. “Which is why we must take matters into our hands, insh’allah.”

  The crowd listened eagerly, and the Mullah stood to address them.

  “From now on, any woman not wearing the chador in public will be respectfully escorted back to her family home.”

  “And what then?” asked a man in the back of the crowd.

  “Then her father or husband will be punished for failing in his duty. This is the law,” said Asadullah Amin.

  The Mullah smiled at him and looked around at the faces of the villagers. “Asadullah Amin is correct. Does anyone doubt that this is as it was in the time of the Prophet?”

  The Mullah looked around at the assembled men, but no one spoke against him.

  Wasif and Isa stood together at the checkpoint. Wasif gripped his kalash tightly in both hands and held it across his thin chest. Around him stood or crouched a crowd of young boys, many from the madrassa, including Lala Chai. The bolde
st of the boys begged them to see his rifle.

  “Please show us how to use a kalash,” asked the tallest of the young boys.

  “We wish to become mujahideen like you,” said another.

  “We are old enough to fight, just show us,” added the tallest boy.

  “You’re no better than us,” said Lala Chai.

  Wasif waved them away, pacing a circle around the outside of the low stone wall and pushing the boys back. “Give us room,” he said. “This is not a game. We are here to protect the village, not to entertain children.”

  “I’m no child,” said Lala Chai, “and I can protect the village as well as either of you.”

  The boys’ disappointment was evident in their expressions, but ignoring Wasif they now turned their attention to Isa instead.

  “Sing a song for us,” asked the tallest boy.

  “Or recite a poem. Something funny,” said another.

  Some of the boys snickered at the memory of Isa’s previous performances, which had been bawdy and loud. Isa looked sadly at the boys, his eyes deeply set in his face, and shook his head. “I don’t remember any of those songs,” he mumbled.

  The boys continued to demand that Isa perform for them, but he remained silent, finally turning away. Wasif climbed on top of the low stone wall, facing the boys, and waved his arms at them for silence. “I will recite a poem for you,” he said.

  Isa looked at him curiously and the boys shuffled around to stand in front of him in silence. Wasif cleared his throat and began to speak in a measured, almost musical, cadence.

  “Be cautious, enemy, our hearth is dear to us. It is our love, it is our soul.

  Many tyrants of the time have made assaults upon us here.

  Many invaders have been put to shame here, struggling in vain.

  Many have gone away from here in distress.

  It is our love, it is our soul.

  “It is an abode of tigers, adversaries cannot live in here.

  It is a garden of nightingales, crows cannot come in here.