Refugees

by Catherine Stine

  “Stop it,” she laughed. But Jude's antics didn't prevent Dawn's muscles from clenching tighter as they rounded the corner of Avenue A and her eyes rested on two bedraggled kids hunched in a doorway. Their vacant eyes stared past Dawn.

  “Excuse me,” Jude demanded.

  One came half-alive. “Yo, we need to get to Jersey. Can you help us out?”

  Jude tossed a quarter into the guy's outstretched hand, which was met with a distracted nod. Jude leaned over them to ring Pax's doorbell.

  They heard pounding footsteps. The door swung open, and the two drifters shifted off the doorstep. “Buzzer's broken,” said Pax as he tried to catch his breath. He had unruly black hair and untied Skechers and was tall but hunched like Jude. It seemed to take him a few beats to realize who they were. “Jude?” Pax's stare grew angry. “What are you doing here? The parents have been calling for two days!” Dawn averted her gaze to the bank of mailboxes. “You didn't do something loopy like run away, did you?”

  Jude seemed to shrink under his brother's gaze. “Well, yeah, um, we did, Pax. I thought you'd think it was a good idea. You know, you ran away.”

  “Don't bring what I did into this,” Pax retorted. “You can't stay here, end of story. What will I say when the parents are all over me? Huh?”

  Jude's voice was bolder, indignant. “You don't have to answer for me, Pax, I'm perfectly capable. But hey, at least have some manners and invite us in for coffee.”

  “How did you get here, anyway?”

  “We got a ride from your friends Bryce and Kaypo.”

  “Friends! Bryce is so burned out on drugs that no club will hire him, and Kaypo? He's such an herb.” A goofy grin spread over Pax's face. “Okay. Fair enough, dude, you deal with the parental factor. It is cool to see you, just a huge surprise.”

  Jude introduced Dawn, and they trundled up four flights into a cramped apartment smelling of sandalwood, a psychedelic rainbow shag rug on the floor. Jude had a shag back in Frisco. Dawn wondered if a preference for scuzzy long-haired rugs ran in Jude's family's genes.

  “It's gorgeous,” Jude gushed as he examined posters and embroidered pillows.

  Dawn spotted electric guitars, wah-wah pedals, amplifiers, and a DJ console. The array of instruments awed her. Professional musicians. The words trilled in her mind like an Ian Anderson flute riff.

  “Our band, Paxmania, is playing tonight,” Pax said. “I play guitar, and Sander here writes our lyrics and plays percussion.”

  A guy moved into the room as a lion might, feet stroking the carpet, blond mane streaming around his face. Pax was just Jude's brother, Burnout and Red Fro were losers, but Sander was not only insanely cute, he was the real deal—a working rock musician.

  Messy emotions began to branch through Dawn. She stared straight ahead at the instruments, willing herself to calm down.

  “Hey,” said Sander. He padded over to his drum set and pattered out a drum fill.

  Keep your head down, Dawn thought, or he'll see right into you.

  Sander flipped back his hair and glanced at Jude. “So you're Pax's brother, I've heard lots about you. You want to be an actor, right?” Jude smiled, nodding.

  Then Sander turned to Dawn, who was twisting her garnet ring around and around. “So what are you into, Dawn?”

  I'm into running. She turned that holy mother of a ring as if her life depended on it. “I'm into music.”

  firebrand

  Baghlan, Afghanistan,

  September 9, 2001

  Aunt Maryam ushered Johar in. Peering out nervously from under her burqa, she quickly closed the door.

  “What is it?” Johar asked. Maryam's movements were usually calm and deliberate.

  “While I was away this afternoon, speaking with a student's mother, Ramila said two men came to the door, asking questions.” Aunt Maryam's assistant, Ramila, was a girl who had studied longer than the others and knew the lessons: poetry, Quran, math, and, most forbidden, English. She lived nearby, so she often stayed late to share in the evening prayers, eat, and keep his aunt company.

  “What questions did they ask?” Johar removed his pattu and put it on the mat bordering the mud-brick wall.

  “How long have I lived here? Why were girls coming to my house? Where was my husband?” Aunt Maryam checked to make sure the curtains were closed, then removed her burqa, letting it fall, wrinkled, in a corner near where Bija slept on a square of carpet. His aunt's brown eyes were sallow and puffy with worry in contrast to the vivid blue of the lapis lazuli earrings her brother, Tilo, had given her before he'd gone to England. She kept them on even to sleep.

  “Were they Taliban?” asked Johar.

  “Who else?”

  “What did Ramila tell them?” Johar asked anxiously.

  “She told them my husband was a cloth merchant on the road to Herat. She said the girls helped me with washing and cleaning.” Aunt Maryam laughed bitterly. “Lovely lies, eh?”

  Johar sighed. “At least they didn't torture the truth from her.”

  “Not this time.” She walked toward the back room. “Some chai is in order.”

  When Johar and his brother were younger, before the Taliban, Aunt Maryam never hid her village school. Children would flock from Baghlan and the nearby villages. They would sit in eager rows on the carpet as they listened to the morning lessons. Maryam had a decent blackboard and chalk then, and even the English textbooks Tilo had brought quietly in from England. “You must learn to read Dari, but also to speak English, the modern language of the world.” She had pronounced the word English slowly so that her students, who called it Ingleesi, could hear its common usage. But that was then.

  His aunt returned with steamy chai, and little Bija stirred from her nap. She burst into hungry tears.

  Johar bent down and lifted her in his arms. “Hello, my jewel.”

  Bija's tears stopped. “Jor! You're here!” she screeched in Dari, then settled into his lap. Johar searched his pocket for the flask of milk he'd managed to coax from Marqa.

  “My milk!” Bija grabbed it greedily and drank. Johar put the kebab he'd saved from the chaikhana on a plate of rice that Maryam laid down.

  “What a lovely feast!” she cried, and joined him on the carpet.

  Johar smiled and stroked Bija's forehead. She was three years old and growing fast. Aunt Maryam had her hands full trying to teach the older girls while Bija played. “Where is Ramila now?” Johar asked.

  “Her brother picked her up. She said she would try to stop by later to drop off vegetables from the bazaar.”

  “Have you eaten today?” Johar asked, worried as he watched Aunt Maryam take delicate nibbles to draw out the meal.

  “A bit of rice,” she answered. Johar and Daq tried to bring her food, but it was painfully clear that a visit every few days was not enough. As difficult as it was to have the family separated like this, the brothers needed the hillside compound for shepherding, and Maryam had to live in Baghlan in order to teach.

  “Soon we'll have a real feast,” Aunt Maryam said wistfully.

  “Yes! When all this is over,” Johar answered, “we'll have mounds of gabli pilau and a barrel of keshmesh.”

  “I'll make samosas,” added Maryam. “Samosas with yogurt and mint.”

  “Picked from the finest gardens in all of the country,” Johar added.

  “Samosas are yummy!” Bija shouted.

  “Inshallah, someday.” Maryam sighed.

  Johar glanced around the room. It was almost bare except for a faded carpet over the dirt floor, the mat bordering the wall, and a square of Persian fabric with gold and turquoise designs tacked to one of the walls. Under the window stood a row of flowering plants in Russian porcelain that his aunt watered fastidiously. Johar saw these objects— the rug, a piece of fabric, plants—but in his mind's eye he saw additional objects, more precious than her wall hanging and her porcelain, hidden like prayers. Schoolbooks and weaving supplies were stuffed under tiles, behind a false wall, in a mud s
inkhole under a water gourd, sewn inside the bottom of old prayer carpets. Like the burqa, the head-to-toe covering that kept his aunt's face a secret, she was an expert at veiling her existence as teacher and weaver. It was as if each person lived in opposite worlds at once: conforming in the apparent world, but nursing a rebellious fire behind closed doors.

  Bija tugged at Johar's tunic, shaking him from his reverie. “Tell me a poem.”

  Johar cleared his throat. “Let me see… I'm thinking of a Rumi poem.

  “My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

  I become a torture to those I'm with.

  If you're not here, nothing grows.

  I lack clarity. My words

  Tangle and knot up.

  How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.

  How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.”

  Bija clapped her hands. “More poems,” she demanded. “That was lovely, Johar.” His aunt touched his arm.

  “But it's almost curfew. Amniyat nist! You'd better be going.”

  “You're right.” Johar rose reluctantly. He kissed Bija and his aunt on each cheek. “See you in three days, then?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Salaam. Bring Daq too.” She covered herself with her burqa before opening the door. “Johar, one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “If anything happens to me—” She paused. “Do you remember the family plan to meet at Suryast?”

  “The camp in Peshawar that your friend went to when she ran from the mujahidin.”

  “That's right. If the situation gets worse, we must do what we can to remain safe.” She paused. “You promised to care for Bija if she needs it.”

  Johar nodded. “I know.”

  “Thank you.” She peered out into the street. “Be careful. Do not wander from the main road, Johar. Taliban.” Worry returned to her brown eyes.

  Worry filled him too as he hurried down the dark road to his hut. The angry words in the chaikhana replayed in his mind. Taliban this, Taliban that. Arab foreigners here to fight our American enemy. Aunt Maryam and Uncle Tilo had taught him that the Western lands were woven with many colors: brown, yellow, red and white—with many Muslims as well. Yet Johar had heard people here say that all in the West mistrusted Islam. That didn't make sense—brown, yellow, red, and white were bound to have different opinions. Underneath all this mistrust, fear must lurk. Fear existed on all sides, for sure. If Allah had created the world, then surely he'd created the infidels, nonbelievers, as well. Only a madman would create a world doomed to fatal division. And wasn't Allah just and pure?

  Johar was startled from sleep when Daq stumbled into the room, set out his quilt, and unearthed his radio. Strains of the Talib-run Radio Shariat crackled forth. The announcer ranted down a list of commandments: no kite flying, no musical instruments, no laughter in the streets. There was static as Daq switched the dials. He was always searching for a station that offered more than lectures. It was frightening how fast the Taliban had risen from a small group of rural clerics and Pashtun farmers to the power they were now. They had seized almost all the stations around Baghlan for their shariat broadcasts. There were only a handful of stations up north still free to play music.

  General Massoud's Alliance army, made up of Uzbeks and Hazaras, but mostly Tajiks like Johar, had staved off the Taliban's encroachment in the northern fronts around Taloqan and Mazar-i-Sharif. Johar prayed that the Alliance would force the Taliban south until they were far past his town, then even further south, past the capital, Kabul. Until then Johar felt that every day might be his last.

  But the Taliban continued their ruthless push north. In a few years even General Massoud's warriors would not be strong enough to stop the Taliban from seizing the whole of Afghanistan.

  Johar heard more static and slips of voices. Finally the melody of tanbur and rubab danced through the house, and his brother sighed beside him. Johar missed Daq these days. Even though his body was next to Johar's, his mind was worlds away.

  After some silence Daq spoke, as if he could read Johar's thoughts. “A soldier came to the chaikhana with startling news. General Massoud is near death.”

  “Massoud near death!” Johar's insides tightened. This was tragic! If Massoud died, the north would fall in days, and a Taliban stranglehold on the entire country would be ensured. Massoud was hope. Massoud was life, the future. Johar felt sick. “How did it happen?”

  “They say he was hit by an imposter reporter with a television camera that hid an explosive,” Daq replied. “They say it was an Al Qaeda spy helping the Taliban.”

  “Al Qaeda?”

  “The Arab fighters who came here from other countries,” Daq explained. “The warriors whom Naji trained with in Kandahar.”

  “Why are they here? They don't belong on our soil,” Johar exclaimed. “They fill up our bazaars and chaikhanas. They push the townsfolk around. And what will become of the Alliance?” Johar was overcome by a sense of doom.

  “They're here to help fight the West, but what do you care?” Daq snarled. “You are not rushing to join their cause. Let the Taliban take over. They know how to keep order. They would have stopped the mob who killed our father. If I became a soldier, it would not be for the Alliance. It would be for the Taliban.”

  “But you are Tajik. Tajiks fight with the Alliance.”

  “It's complex. What do you know of it? All you know is weaving and poetry.”

  Johar was silent after that. He was frightened of his brother's hatred and new allegiances. Their tension reminded him of lines from Rabi'a's last poem, which she wrote on the wall with her own blood: I knew not when I rode the high-blooded steed, the harder I pulled its reins the less it would heed.

  “How was Aunt Maryam?” Daq asked finally, in a more docile tone.

  “She's worried. Men came to her door today asking about her students,” Johar replied. The merry lute countered his anxious mood.

  “And what did she say to them?”

  “Ramila answered. She told them her students were helping her with chores. But what is to stop them from bothering her again? They must suspect something.”

  “She should stop her teaching,” Daq remarked.

  The tanbur reached a high pitch, and its notes stirred Johar's anger. “How can you suggest something so wrong? Teaching is her life. Life doesn't stop because we're living under tyrants.”

  Daq snapped off his radio. “Tyrants? Naji's not a tyrant. He says the Taliban will bring money and jobs into Baghlan, build Afghanistan into a true Muslim state.”

  “Naji has stolen your mind. Go fight, then, and leave me to the sheep.”

  “Maybe I will. Don't try to follow, because you'll never make a good soldier.”

  Johar heard thumping. He froze as noise from outside the stone enclosure sifted in: men's voices speaking in urgent whispers. It was way past curfew, and the roads should be empty. Johar's stomach clenched. He heard Daq scramble to hide his radio. They both knew it was a jail sentence if the radio was discovered.

  “Hide, Johar,” Daq ordered.

  “What about you?”

  “I said hide!”

  Now voices were inside the courtyard and pounding on the latched door. Johar should face these intruders by Daq's side; after all, wasn't his brother protecting him, even now? Yet every drop of Johar's blood quivered with the urge for invisibility.

  The pounding again, and Daq's stern command: “Johar, do what I say. Now!” Johar raced into the storeroom and squirmed into a hole beneath the floor for water jugs. He scrambled to pull a prayer rug over the hole.

  “Open up!” a voice demanded.

  Johar sensed Daq's hesitation. “Open up, or I'll break this door down,” the man shouted again.

  Daq's footsteps plodded heavily toward the door. Someone kicked the door once, then twice. Johar heard Daq unlatch the lock.

  “Time to fight!” Johar heard a familiar voice but dared not peek out. “Tell him, Farooq.” Farooq? He would never b
reak into their house! And Farooq would not fight voluntarily, even if it filled his stomach in winter, even if it meant new boots.

  Johar heard a sharp slap, and Farooq let out a grunt. Someone was hitting him.

  “Tell him,” the voice ordered again. Where had he heard that voice? At the chaikhana. It was Naji's!

  “We're going to join the Taliban army.” Farooq choked out the words.

  “What is this?” demanded Daq. “Coming to my house in the middle of the night? For what? We'll talk tomorrow in the chaikhana. Go now. I have not yet made up my mind.” Daq's tone was indignant.

  “I've made up your mind for you,” Naji replied sharply.

  “Get off. Stop! Put that gun away!” Daq's voice was fearful now. Johar was filled with a nightmare image of a Kalashnikov pointed straight at his brother's temple, and his mind flew to the day eight years back when his father was forced up the sheep hill. He could almost smell the warlord's acrid sweat and hear the snap of the guns. Johar couldn't just hide. He climbed from the hole and crept toward the door that led to the outer room, taking care that his steps were silent.

  “Now. Collect your pack and hurry,” Naji yelled. “Or else I will end it here!”

  “Bastard!” The English curse catapulted from Daq's mouth. Naji wouldn't understand but would hear hatred in the tone.

  Johar peered around the wall. Naji's gun was rammed right against his brother's ear. Johar's insides burned as if pierced by firebrands. “No!” Johar bellowed.

  “What did you say?” Naji turned to Farooq, fury on his face. Johar hid again behind the wall.

  Farooq's voice shook. “I was starting to say, ‘No, curses do you no good, Daq.' ”

  “Hmph,” Naji grumbled.

  Johar saw Naji inch Daq to the door, his gun now on Daq's back. Farooq lagged behind a step. If Johar could grab a log, if he could only gather the nerve to strike Naji…Johar crept toward the logs near the smoldering fire.

  Farooq's head spun around, and his eyes locked with Johar's for one precious moment. He waved frantically for Johar to retreat. “Hide,” Farooq mouthed.