A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story

by Qais Akbar Omar

  “I do not know why this man has been so cruel to all of you. And I do not know what to say to you now. There is a war. You know that. The people who are trying to kill us Hazaras all have guns that the Americans gave them. Maybe you know that, too. All we have is shovels. We need a tunnel to protect ourselves.

  “I told him to use new people every day. I told him to get people from the street, and to give them good food, and make them work for one day, and at the end of the day let them go home. How can I apologize to you for all that he has done to you?” he asked. His face looked stricken.

  “Please go to your homes, go to your families who are waiting for you,” he said softly. We dropped our shovels and buckets and headed silently toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  For a second time, we had been rescued by somebody we had known in our old life, from the time before being Hazara and Pashtun meant we were supposed to think of ourselves as enemies. Kabul was a small town then, and people like my grandfather and my father knew everybody, or so it seemed when we walked through the shopping district and many people greeted them by name: Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Jews, Hazaras, Sikhs, and Hindus—everybody.

  We came out into the daylight and the air. The men were happy to stand straight again after so many days, but the two women were ashamed of how they looked and kept trying to cover themselves.

  “Wait,” Berar announced. “There is one thing that must happen before you leave.” We froze in fear. Our minds were set on leaving. And now there was something else we had to do.

  Berar told us to walk with him to the silo. He also called his commander to join us, along with two other Hazara men we had not yet seen.

  The commander, who had been so ruthless, carried a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand. After a sip he belched.

  Inside the yellow silo, we climbed a staircase all the way to the roof. It was about eight stories, but it felt much higher as we climbed one flight of steps after another. We could hardly make the climb, we were all so exhausted. Our fear increased with every step. We did not know what would happen next. I knew that Berar was my friend, but I did not know what he was doing. Even I was afraid.

  When we stepped out of the stairwell onto the roof, it was very windy; it could have easily knocked any of us down, because we were so feeble. Everybody held on to somebody else. I held my father’s hand. The roof had a railing around the edge, but it did not look sturdy. The weather was very clear, and we could see for a great distance.

  Berar was standing in the middle of the roof. He called us to come. We all surrounded him. His commander was standing near to him. Still sipping his Coca-Cola, and still burping. Suddenly, Berar turned around and kicked the commander in the stomach. Berar was very fast, like in the kung-fu movies. The commander fell to the ground and coiled like a snake.

  He cried out, “Why?” He was rubbing his stomach. Berar did not answer. Then he nodded at the other two men. One man picked the commander up on his shoulders, and in one fast move carried him over to the edge of the roof and tossed him off.

  We were too shocked to know what was going on. We all listened to one long scream, and then a thud. There was fear in everybody’s faces. They thought he would toss all of us, one by one. But I did not believe Berar would do that, though he looked a lot taller and broader and stronger than the last time I had seen him.

  Berar picked up the half-drunk bottle of Coca-Cola and flung it over the edge of the roof. “Now we are all happy!” he said.

  But no one was. Not even Berar, who studied the ground far below, searching for words.

  “This man was supposed to have been put to death in Pul-e-Charkhi prison, but he was freed when the Mujahedin overran it,” Berar told us. “In a war, every man is needed, so he was sent here. But wicked people like him bring shame to us Hazaras and to the Mujahedin. Some who were released from the prison are now seeking their private revenge in the name of Mujahed. Some of them joined the factions that came from Pakistan. They have taken weapons from all these countries who are using Afghanistan as their playing field. They are everywhere. They are sick, and their only cure is death.”

  He had turned his face back to us now. “Please, go to your homes. I ask your forgiveness for all the bad things that have happened to you here.”

  He came close to me, sat on his heels before me, and patted my hair. “Give my best wishes to your grandfather,” he said quietly, then he kissed me on my cheek and left. His men followed.

  An old man who had been held with his sons walked first toward the staircase, and his sons followed him. Then the two women, then my father and me, and the others after us. In front of the silo gate, we all said very formal and cold goodbyes to one another. We knew we would feel shame if we ever saw one another again. We all went quickly in our different directions.

  My father and I headed for Qala-e-Noborja. My father was very weak. He could hardly walk. As we left the silo, he said, “The life of cruel people is short.” He said nothing else all the way home.

  * * *

  When my father opened the courtyard door, we heard the women crying. My father asked me what was wrong. He asked me in a way as if he thought I would know, as if I had been at home and not with him for the past two weeks. I just said, “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think someone died?” he asked with an exhausted voice.

  “I don’t know,” I said again.

  “But why are they crying? Something must be wrong!” my father said.

  “I hope not,” I said. Because all I was thinking about was eating something and washing all the mud from me that had turned us the color of dust. My sweater, my jeans had lost all their color. I wanted to sleep for a day, not listen to women’s weeping.

  We walked into the courtyard. I could hear my mother’s crying all the way from the room at the far end where we lived. There were other unfamiliar voices with her, voices raised in sorrow.

  Through the thicket of lilac bushes at the center of the courtyard and the fruit trees, I could see my uncles and cousins preparing lunch in one corner of the broad courtyard, with flames licking the big pots, and huge amounts of smoke rising around them.

  The courtyard was full of men. Even from across the courtyard I recognized most of them. They were our relatives. I could see other men I knew in one of the ground-floor rooms. A nice voice was reciting from the Holy Koran. All the men were facing away from us, listening to it.

  We went to those pots, and my father asked his brother through the curtain of thick smoke, “What is wrong? Who died?” I was standing next to my father and looking into those pots to see what was being cooked. One was full of meatballs. I grabbed one. It was very hot, and I could not hold it in my hand. It dropped on the ground and rolled on the earth. No one noticed. They were all busy.

  My uncle touched my father’s face. “Am I not dreaming? Are you here?”

  “I’m very tired and hungry. Can you give me something to eat?” I said.

  My uncle did not answer me. He walked away very slowly, backward, looking at us as he went as if he had not heard me. It was weird seeing my uncle acting like that. He looked frightened. He was still not sure that we were alive and not ghosts. My father followed him.

  My cousins circled around me, but none of them talked to me. I thought they wanted to tease me, and I did not have the energy to play now. Wakeel was taller than all of them, with pale skin that looked even whiter than usual. He touched my shoulder, fast, as if I were hot as fire, and said, “Is that you, or your ghost?”

  “What?” I narrowed my eyes.

  “We thought you and your dad had died. Your mother has been crying for you for two weeks.”

  This was not making sense to me.

  “We thought that you both had been killed. Grandfather invited all of our relatives to hold a funeral. All these people are here for you and your father, because you are dead.”

  “Please stop saying stupid things. I’m very hungry; I just want something to eat.”

  �
�We are not joking, Qais. This is all for you.” Jerk was standing next to him, nodding vigorously. “Look, there are your coffins. We were about to do the burial rituals after lunch,” he said. The coffins were made of wood, and they were covered with black cloth. One was about six feet long and the other one was four feet.

  “What is in it? It is definitely not me in there,” I said.

  “Things like your reel and a few kites, and some of your best marbles that you used to keep and never played with, and your school clothes and some of your notebooks and your diary. We put them there. Grandfather asked us to do it,” Wakeel said.

  “You put in my reel, and my kites, and my marbles and my diary? What the hell are you thinking?” I said. I ran toward the coffins and opened the small one, and I saw all my stuff there. Wakeel wanted to take them out. I shouted at him, “Do not touch anything! Those things are mine!”

  “I’m not getting them for myself. I’m taking them out for you,” he said.

  “No. Leave them there,” I said.

  Wakeel looked at me strangely. “Do you want us to bury them, then?”

  “No, just leave them alone!”

  One of my other cousins said, “Maybe he wants to get buried with them.” All the rest started laughing.

  I opened the long coffin. Inside was my father’s favorite carpet, which he used to put on his bed. Now it was nicely spread inside the coffin. His physics books were piled in one corner, and his boxing gloves were next to them. There was also his suit, shoes, socks, and his favorite mug, which had a crack in it.

  “If my father sees all these things in this box, he will beat you all like his punching bag,” I said. My cousins were always a little bit afraid of my father, and this quieted them.

  “We did not do this,” Wakeel said. He was sounding very panicked. “Our uncles have put all your father’s things here. We were busy doing yours.”

  One of the other cousins looked offended and said, “We were just trying to give you a good funeral.”

  I did not usually talk to him, so I did not answer him.

  Jerk came up to me, looking very sad. “I’m very sorry for what I did to your kite string.” I could not understand what he was talking about, and I did not care. “Those times when they said you were cutting your own kite, I did that. I used a razor to cut halfway through your string, so that it would break when you put the kite in the air.”

  I suddenly understood, and felt anger rising. That miserable little Jerk. My hunger and exhaustion faded as I felt my fury growing. I pulled my arm back to swing at him, but I was so weak I knocked myself off balance and started falling backward. Jerk reached out to hug me. He was crying now. But I was already too far off balance when he embraced me to keep from falling, and I pulled him down on top of me. I did not have the strength to push him away. I would beat him up later.

  “Where were you for these two weeks, anyway?” Wakeel asked earnestly.

  “Why are you so dirty?” a girl cousin asked.

  “Please don’t tell us that you returned from your grave,” another said.

  Even though Wakeel was my best friend, I did not want to go through telling all that had happened to us. Instead, I looked for my father.

  My sisters came out of our rooms, drawn by all the noise. My older sister looked at me strangely, as if she were not sure whether I was actually me. Then, looking frightened, she quickly took my two little sisters’ hands and led them back inside.

  Then I saw my mother kissing my father and hugging him and crying and muttering something that I could not hear. She seemed to me like a kind of crazy woman I had seen in Indian movies. She and my father were surrounded by all our women relatives.

  I heard her ask somebody where I was.

  “I’m here, I’m okay.” I waved at her from where I was standing. I had thought about her many times when we were in the tunnel, wanting to tell her the things we were enduring. Sometimes I wondered whether I would be like Ahmad, who did not live to see his son in this world, and I would never see her again. Now she was running toward me, shouting.

  “Get away from those coffins!” She hugged me and kissed me more than a hundred times. My face was almost wet from her lips and tears. Or maybe they were my tears.

  My mother drew my father and me inside and led us to a corner of our room and sat us there. My mother was fluttering around us like a butterfly. She kept drying her eyes and her runny nose with her sleeves. She gave my father three pillows instead of one. She did not know whether to laugh or cry. I had never seen her like that before. She was not herself anymore.

  Relatives whom I usually saw only at wedding parties followed us in and crowded along the walls. My youngest aunt whispered into my father’s ear, “Ask your wife to sit next to you. She has been crying for two weeks. She’ll go crazy if you don’t help her control her feelings. She is in a state of shock. Do something.”

  Numbly, he asked my mother to sit next to him, though usually men and women do not sit together when there are visitors present. She sat next to my father for a few seconds, then jumped up again. “I have to prepare lunch for you two.”

  “No, no, we’re not hungry; I want you to sit next to me,” my father exclaimed.

  “I think Qais is hungry. You both look very thin,” my mother said.

  “No, no, he is all right. We had a huge breakfast this morning and we’re still fully stuffed. Just come and sit next to me,” my father said.

  I smiled at her and pretended I was not starving.

  My father wanted me to make room for my mother, but she said, “No, no!” and squeezed herself between both of us. She started patting my hair and staring at my father without a word, as if she had not seen him for years.

  Kids were peeping through the windows and giggling. No one knew what to say. Maybe no one wanted to say anything, because it was the sweetest moment any of us had had in the time since the fighting had started.

  My mother broke the silence. She jumped up from between us and almost frightened me. She kneeled in front of my father with her back toward the others. She cried very loudly, “Is this really you or am I dreaming? Please tell me it is true!”

  My father leaned forward on his knees to embrace her. “Yes, this is me. I am here for you. I will never go anywhere. I’m fine, I am fine. It is okay now, it is okay.”

  I could hear the heavy breaths of my mother and my father as they clung to each other. My father was rubbing her back. My mother was shaking silently. Tears came from her eyes, though they were closed; my father’s, too.

  The men and women in the room were now laughing in low voices, but at the same time wiping their own eyes. Finally, my mother stood and asked me and my father to come with her to another room nearby that was empty. She seemed suddenly to be aware that everyone was watching the three of us, and she wanted to be alone with us. She turned to the others and said, “We will be back soon.” She ordered my uncles to prepare lunch for everyone. Now she seemed to be herself again.

  In the empty room she kissed me and my father over and over again. She never minded the dirt on our faces, or maybe she could not see it, or maybe she did not know what to do except to kiss us. She never asked me or my father what had happened to us during the past two weeks. Maybe she did not want to know. She was only happy to have us back.

  A few minutes later, we rejoined the others. Everyone was laughing and enjoying one another’s company; the funeral had turned into something like a wedding party. We spent the whole day singing and dancing, with my uncles playing flutes and drums, even though there were two coffins in the courtyard ready to be buried. Instead, we used them as benches for the guests. I was worried, though, that if the thin wood on the lid broke, my kites and reel would get smashed. Each time I looked at Jerk, I wanted to smash his face. “I’m not going to let him get away with what he did,” I told myself. “He made me look very stupid.”

  My sisters told me about the new novels they had read and the new movies they had watched. My little b
rother looked at me and smiled. My cousins told me about their past two weeks’ adventures and who won the bets on kite fighting with the neighbors. They showed me their money to make me feel jealous. They had no idea what had happened to me, and until now I have never told them, or anybody.

  PART TWO

  FLIGHT

  7

  The North

  By now we had been living in the Qala-e-Noborja for well over a year while the war in Kabul writhed around us. All this time, the front lines shifted like angry snakes. Today the Panjshiris would control one sector; tomorrow it was in the hands of the Hazaras; and the next day it would be held by Sayyaf, and a couple of days later, Gulbuddin, or Dostum. Rockets streaked over our heads, not caring where they landed.

  Almost every evening, there was more talk among my uncles and my father about leaving Kabul. The smuggler who was going to take us to Russia had heard that a funeral had been planned for my father. We had never given him any money. So he took somebody else. He did not know that we had come back from the dead. We never saw him again.

  * * *

  One morning at breakfast while my father was eating some yogurt, he very calmly told my sisters and me, “I have decided that we shall go to Mazar and stay with your mother’s sister for a while.” Mazar is up north, on the other side of the Hindu Kush mountains. We had gone there many times before the fighting had started. Once we had flown there in an airplane.

  I asked whether Wakeel was coming with us. My father said “No.” Then I asked if Grandfather was coming. He said “No.” I was stunned that we were going away and leaving them. I went to the other room and told Wakeel. He thought I was joking. He came with me to our room and saw my mother packing. He asked my father whether he was coming with us.

  “Not this time, Wakeel,” he said kindly. “We are not going on a picnic. We are heading to Mazar to spend some time with Qais’s aunt. My hope is that while we are there, I can find a way to take everybody out of Afghanistan. Then I will come back and get you guys.”