End of Manners

by Francesca Marciano

  Imo nodded distractedly, as if these details didn’t interest her. Shirin kept silent, as if she wasn’t even following the conversation. But I pricked up my ears.

  “Why, what problems could we have if we weren’t with Abdur Raman?”

  “I don’t know. There could be some people with strange ideas,” said Hanif with that cautious tone he used when he didn’t want to alarm us.

  Imo had roused herself from her torpor and was energetically brushing her hair in long strokes with what looked like a Japanese wooden brush.

  “Hanif means that it won’t occur to anyone to kidnap us as long as we’re under the protection of the head of the village. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Hanif?”

  Hanif looked at her, caught momentarily off guard; he wasn’t always able to decipher Imo’s irony. Then he decided to nod and smile.

  “Yes, of course, no one can kidnap you if you are the chief’s guests. If anything happened to you, then it would be the chief’s duty to revenge you. We call it melmastia. It’s our tradition.”

  “Excellent,” said Imo and turned to me. I was gripping the back of Hanif’s seat, as stiff as if I’d swallowed a broom.

  “See? It’s the tradition. C’mon, Maria. Relax.”

  Abdur was waiting for us outside a little walled mud-brick house stuck out at a crossroad in the middle of the plain. He was sitting on an earthen stoop doodling in the dust with a twig, seemingly bored, as if he’d been waiting too long. He was a pale, unobtrusive-looking youth with a fake-leather jacket and cheap sneakers. I would never have guessed that such an unprepossessing and unadventurous-looking kid was going to be a key to our safety. Imo and I got out of the car to stretch our legs while Abdur and Hanif went into the usual lengthy repertory of greetings and pleasantries.

  “Remember not to shake his hand,” Imo muttered quickly as Abdur at last came towards us. I froze, my arm in midair.

  “Women don’t touch men’s hands here,” she whispered as she bowed her head, smiling and touching her collarbone. Abdur greeted us without interest, got in the car next to Hanif, in Imo’s seat, without giving it a second thought. Imo got in the back with me and Shirin.

  “And thus, it begins,” she announced to an imaginary audience. “From here on, all notion of hierarchy will be redesigned.”

  Hanif had perked up considerably, and was chatting away with Abdur in Dari as if they were picking up a conversation that had been interrupted a moment ago. His movements and the timbre of his voice acquired newfound confidence. He laughed, shook his head and even took to smoking the stinky cigarettes that Abdur had taken out of his pocket. For the first time I saw the male in Hanif, the man who goes home and orders his wife to bring his dinner. Imo seemed quite happy to be sitting in the back with the girls and to have quit being the boss for a change. She proceeded to interview Shirin about her life as a student in Peshawar. She found out Shirin was a fan of American movies and they launched themselves on a lengthy review of Ocean’s Twelve. Shirin admitted, despite Imo’s opinion to the contrary, that she would pick Brad Pitt a million times over George Clooney.

  The village clung to a steep wall in the valley. The houses were made of the same earth they stood on, like natural offshoots of the rock. They had the softened edges and irregular, squiggly contours of the sand castles that children make at the beach by letting wet sand drip through their fingers. A river ran along the valley floor, skirting cultivated fields, fruit trees, rows of poplars. Some children had seen the cloud of dust raised by the Ford and were already running towards us yelling at the top of their lungs.

  The head of the village—he was introduced to us as Malik—had been notified and was waiting for us at the entrance of the village. He was a short but sturdy man in his forties, wearing a brown pattu over his sweater. He had a fine, open face with green eyes lined by very fine wrinkles, sunburned skin, a short, well-groomed beard and a gun slung across his back. We greeted each other—Abdur and Hanif held shoulders and went through the motions of embracing. Shirin simply bowed her head without looking him in the eye. Imo imitated her perfectly, as if there were no other possible way in the world to introduce herself. She stepped out of the car, at once haughty and modest, and I was surprised to see her scarf sitting on the tip of her head, partially covering the cascade of black hair she had so carefully brushed. As for me, I felt awkward and stiff and mumbled my name, unable to utter an appropriate greeting.

  The first thing Malik did was ask Hanif to check if by any chance he could get a signal on his cell. The three men, Hanif, Abdur and Malik, walked up a slope and stood there, holding their cells.

  Imo pointed at the trio.

  “I bet American intelligence didn’t take this into account when they first went looking for Osama. This Roshan company is a really good story I should write.”

  “What is there to write?” I asked, baffled. I often felt Imo’s brain raced miles ahead of mine.

  “How introducing mobile communication was going to change the face of war tactics. When they were fighting the Russians or during the civil war, the mujahideen were just a bunch of guys hiding in caves. Now look: everyone can exchange all kinds of information that can’t be controlled. Just think of the amount of texting, messaging back and forth, that goes on in this country since Roshan moved in. No wonder they have more mobile phones than running water in these mountains.”

  We gazed at the men facing one another—dark silhouettes against the clear sky, swathed in flapping cloaks—each hunched over his mobile, plying the keys like three little boys pointing toy pistols at each other.

  “Besides, it’d be such a fun story to research,” Imo continued. “I bet Paul knows a lot of interesting stuff about this.”

  I looked sharply at her. She had dropped his name once too often.

  “How are you going to get in touch with him?” I asked.

  “He’ll be at the lodge when we get back. And I got his mobile, anyway. His number is worth gold, believe me.”

  I watched the men some more; they persisted for a while, reluctant to surrender to the lack of reception, then finally gave up.

  Malik led the way through the village and we walked behind him, along narrow alleys winding past the houses. Carved wooden doors opened onto courtyards, offering glimpses of mats and brightly colored quilts spread out on the ground, freshly rinsed aluminum bowls propped up next to cisterns. The sun was beginning to go down, soon it would set beyond the valley; the air was growing chilly, smoky, redolent of firewood and spices.

  The rumor that foreigners had arrived must have spread right away. The children scampered towards us from all directions, the smallest giggling with excitement, pretending to run away terrified only to come back again and flit away once more as soon as we took a step towards them. I wondered whether the little ones had ever seen Western women before. This village seemed so remote, we could easily have been the first ones to show up in a long time. The older children lowered their eyes and pretended not to be interested, but we heard them whisper and chuckle behind us the minute we had passed them. Some were bent double under great bulging sacks of firewood. They scrutinized us from below and burst out laughing among themselves, unable to stop.

  Young men sat cross-legged in the fading sun in small groups or leaned on the low stone walls; as soon as they saw the camera they asked to be photographed. They huddled together, keeping Malik in the center, next to Hanif, parading their guns menacingly towards the camera. They froze in the same gloomy expression as all the other men I had photographed in Kabul, only to regain their childish nature a second later, as they saw themselves on the digital screen.

  Women appeared fleetingly around corners, in the windows, behind the courtyard doors. Unlike in the city, there were no burqas here, Hanif explained, the village being a kind of extended family and the chance of meeting perfect strangers remote; the women wore just a headscarf, but as soon as they saw men coming they would turn away, giving us their profiles, which they swiftly concealed with
the corner of their veil as if they were pulling a curtain. It was an economical, graceful gesture; they probably performed it every day, every time they encountered a man. They must have grown up doing this, I thought; it seemed to come to them as naturally as breathing.

  A stove was burning in the small room in Malik’s house. We were sitting on red cushions on the floor. The room was painted in bright pink and was bare except for a metal cot with peeling blue paint, a stack of folded quilts and rugs in the corner and a page from the Quran nailed to the wall. Garish red cotton curtains hung over the windows. A boy brought in a tray with an aluminum teapot and some glasses. Malik smiled at us, sitting straight-backed and cross-legged. He slowly poured the tea into the glasses and offered them to us. He cradled his hands in his lap, waiting for us to tell him what we had come for, what we wanted from him.

  Imo had brought out her notebook, put on her glasses and was neatly laying out articles downloaded from the Internet, as if she were at her own desk. Hanif was nervous, fidgeting on the cushions. He sensed the moment had come and he didn’t know quite how to broach the subject of why we were there.

  “So, Hanif,” urged Imo as she polished her glasses with the edge of her shawl, “can you please tell Malik that tomorrow morning we would like to speak to the women and, in particular, to Zuleya’s mother and sisters. That we want to ask them about the suicides.”

  Hanif didn’t move a muscle.

  “Is that a problem?”

  Hanif shook his head.

  “Come on, then, translate, please.”

  Hanif shuffled on the cushions, then launched into a long “discourse, five times the length of the question Imo had asked. Malik was nodding at first, then suddenly frowned; he appeared to take umbrage. There was silence. Then Malik began to speak, very calmly, his fingers laced in his lap. His general attitude “was indecipherable to me. He spoke at length. Shirin followed him with rapt attention. Hanif nodded nonstop. Then he translated.

  “Malik says first let’s eat and then we will talk.”

  “Is that it?” Imo asked in disbelief. She turned to Shirin, but the girl looked away, begging off.

  “Yes, that’s all,” Hanif said. “You can wash your hands with this.”

  He offered us a basin and filled it with hot water from a brass jug.

  The food was a treat for the eyes and delicious. A mound of saffron rice topped with raisins and almonds, studded with gleaming pomegranate seeds. Bowls of freshly made yogurt to accompany pieces of spicy meat and fragrant corn bread just out of the oven. Everything was presented with grace, gathered into little pyramids on aluminum plates, enhanced with spices and perfumed leaves. I asked for permission to photograph it and Malik laughed, making a sweeping gesture as if to say, “Go ahead.”

  We ate from shared plates in silence, gathering up the food with bits of naan. The men exchanged rapid comments, deftly plucking up the food in their fingers. Malik waited till last to serve himself, letting the guests take the choicest morsels.

  Every so often Malik said something to Hanif and then beckoned him to translate to the guests. Hanif proudly explained that Malik had fought alongside General Massoud against the Russians for ten years and then against the Taliban during the civil war. Malik recounted the hard winters spent with his group way up in the mountains.

  Abdur Raman and Hanif especially approved Malik’s tales of prowess and eagerly translated for us in turn—whether Malik was recounting how he had launched a mortar shell on the target or executed a Russian prisoner who’d refused to convert—as if there were no difference between a cutthroat and a soldier. The impression one got from Malik’s tales was that war was not something that had wrenched him and his men from their tranquil village life; it wasn’t even tragic or exceptional. War had been like life itself: the guns propped against the wall had become household objects just like cooking utensils and no Afghan man could conceive of living without them.

  Imo was interested in the details. Where did they sleep, what did they eat, how did they survive the bitter cold?

  “Malik says often they had to walk for days,” Hanif translated. “They slept on the ground, sometimes in a cave for warmth. They’d only have a little bread with tea for food.”

  Imo and I expressed our admiration at their sturdiness with brief moans of wonder.

  “Very strong men, the mujahideen.” Hanif chuckled.

  Malik nodded and encouraged Hanif to translate more.

  “He says no American soldier is strong enough to do what the mujahideen did. Americans can only fight a war sitting inside a plane drinking Coca-Cola. And besides, they don’t even know how to aim right!”

  We all dutifully laughed at his joke and conceded.

  Malik stopped laughing. His eyes hardened, as if the joke no longer amused him. He spoke to Hanif at length, raising his voice, moving his hands with fervor. When he was done talking he shook his head a couple of times, making a spiteful sound with his tongue. He seemed bitter.

  Hanif translated in a hushed tone.

  “Two months ago the people in the Helmand Province had to bury one hundred and seventy bodies because of a NATO air raid. Malik says the Americans bomb without bothering to look who they are killing. They say they have come here to protect the Afghan people, but they keep killing them like flies. It is time they go away.”

  Imo said Malik was right, that it was a shame and she couldn’t agree with him more. She went on for a while, explaining how in the West many people were just as angry and wanted the troops out of Afghanistan, but Malik seemed to be only half listening to her. Maybe he didn’t care much for a woman’s opinion on the subject of war.

  Abdur Raman took away the plates, bundling them in the oilcloth we’d eaten on. He disappeared into the next room, probably the kitchen, where the women of the household had cooked that sumptuous dinner and of whom, so far, we hadn’t had a glimpse. He came back with another basin of hot water for us to wash our hands, another sign of their presence next door. It struck me how the women had been looking so carefully after our banquet without making the slightest sound. I had noticed every detail of what had been coming from across the mud wall: the fragrance of their beautifully arranged plates, the way they had scattered flowers in the water basin. I envisioned them as magical, supernatural creatures invisible to human eyes.

  Malik rinsed his fingers, still sitting in the same position. There was another silence that no one dared break. Abdur Raman came back in with two kerosene lamps and set them down on the floor. Outside, night had fallen and the stars were flickering through the icy air like bright gems pinned to the sky.

  Now Malik spoke, looking Imo straight in the eye. He spoke with composure as before, in a quiet, neutral tone, moving his hands only to bring his cigarette to his lips. He then turned his palm to Hanif to translate.

  “Malik says that you foreigners think that we treat our women as if we were living in the Middle Ages and that this is of great concern in the West and you always write about it in your newspapers.”

  Imo said nothing, merely gesturing as if to say, “Go on.” She had adopted a placid, Buddhist demeanor, as though nothing could ruffle her. She had obviously devised a different strategy than the more aggressive one she had used with Roshana.

  “He says that now women can study and learn to read and write. Even here in the village there is a school for women who had not been able to learn during the Taliban time and Malik is very happy that now they can go there.”

  Imo nodded, showing how much that pleased her.

  “He says that now women can walk in the streets, play music, laugh and dance at ceremonies, and that even here, not far from the village, there are women who are doctors and they are very good. He also says he himself fought for their freedom when he defended our country from the Taliban together with Massoud.”

  Imo nodded again, with the same beatific smile.

  “And he wishes that in your newspaper article you will say that Afghan women have reclaimed their fr
eedom.”

  “Of course,” Imo agreed in a whisper and bowed her head for a second, closing her eyes. Then she turned to Hanif.

  “But tell him, please, that we would like to speak to the women of the village and hear from them about this—”

  Malik raised his hand to interrupt her. He probably understood a little English and he must have grasped the sense of Imo’s objection. Hanif hastened to translate.

  “Tomorrow you may go to the school and speak to the women who are learning, but Malik says you are not to distract them from their work.”

  “Right. And?”

  “And you may speak to them only for one hour, from seven till eight.”

  After this disposition, which to me felt quasi-militaristic, Malik dismissed us. We were shown to a small room on the other side of the courtyard, where a stove had been lit and mattresses had been prepared with bedding rolled at their feet.

  “Oh, look at that,” Imo said. “Isn’t this cozy?”

  I wasn’t particularly happy with our sleeping arrangement. It was cold and very dark, and I was afraid there might be mice scurrying across the floor.

  “I bet all the men we’ve met till now have killed someone,” I said to Imo.

  We were sitting on our mattresses, with blankets wrapped around our shoulders.

  Shirin had laid her glasses and neatly folded headscarf at the foot of her bed and had gone to sleep straightaway; we could hear her regular breathing on the other side of the room. It was freezing. Imo had wrapped her precious shahtoosh around her head like a turban and now looked dashing and fairytale-like in the oblique light of the lantern. A little earlier a woman had glided into the room with a kerosene lamp. She had whispered the same word a couple of times, patting her hand repeatedly on the bed and then left as rapidly and silently as a ghost.

  “You can bet on it,” agreed Imo. “I’d say all the clients at Babur’s Lodge, and a good eighty percent of the Afghans we passed on the road.”