He did not want my mother and sisters sleeping in the rooms beneath the one that had burned, and so he made a shelter in the corner of the courtyard for them. All night, they kept waking up, hungry and cold, dreaming that there was another fire they had to put out.
* * *
The next night, my sisters were still afraid to move back into those rooms downstairs, though by then they were safe. Everything smelled of smoke, though, and was covered with dust.
We all slept in the shelter my father had made the previous night. We made a fire in front of it for light. It reminded me of those nights with the Kuchis when we ate and laughed and told stories with the sounds of the animals nearby in the darkness.
But we were not with the Kuchis anymore. Fire had a different meaning to us now. I was lying between my father and mother, and the sound of their breathing assured me of their sleep, though with my mother you could never tell. Sometimes she would wake in the middle of the night and stare into space with tears on her cheeks.
That night I had seen her crying again. I reached out and touched her on the shoulder and asked whether she was all right. She quickly turned her back without replying. She never sobbed or wailed or sniffed like an ordinary person. She cried when nobody could see or hear her, letting the tears empty out of her in a stream of silent sorrow.
The next day we moved back into the downstairs rooms, even though they still smelled smoky. My father was deeply depressed. He did not help us carry our things back in. He sat under the acacia tree where Wakeel’s body had lain, his head on his knees, sitting like that for hours. It was as if he were dead himself. My mother asked him to have lunch with us, but he did not eat or drink anything. His lips were dry, and brown bags had formed under his eyes.
Finally, around one o’clock in the morning he came in and lay next to my mother. He was cold and shivering. My mother covered him with her blanket and hugged him until he stopped shaking. The next day, he did not talk to anyone. He just sat next to the window, staring outside at one spot, not knowing what he was looking at. When my sisters and I talked, we whispered. When we walked, we tiptoed. And when we ate, we tried not to make any sound with our spoons and forks.
After a week, he began to ask for a few things, like a glass of water, or a cup of tea. My mother began to cook everything salty or oily, knowing that my father did not like this. He started fussing about the salt and oil. My mother shouted back at him not to complain. He left the room and went out. My mother smiled at us and said, “He’ll come back happy like before.” We did not know what she was talking about.
Three hours later my father came back with bags of fruit and a few kilos of beef. He had a sad smile on his face, like his own father’s. That night my mother cooked us good food, and my father began to make jokes. The noise of forks and spoons started again. We did not have to whisper or tiptoe anymore.
* * *
The factions had started fighting yet again, and again trapped us in one room like mice in a hole.
The rockets were raining all over Kabul City nonstop. Gulbuddin was firing his American rockets at the Panjshiris who lived in the area around our Fort of Nine Towers. Dostum, the Uzbek commander, was also sending his rockets against the Panjshiris, both to our area and to Makroyan. The Hazaras were sending rockets against the Panjshiris, who were also sending rockets to the Hazaras. Sayyaf fired rockets from the high mountains west of Kabul aimed at the Panjshiris and the Hazaras. Sometimes three thousand rockets fell on Kabul in one day. When the rockets stopped for a few minutes, it was unnaturally silent. But, in fact, there was never truly silence. The house was always talking to itself, the clicking of the clock in the next room, the periodic judder and whir of the refrigerator when we had electricity. From the bathroom the drip, drip, drip of water from the nozzle into a big pot full of water. Every now and then out on the road, there was the whoosh of a passing car or the rumble of a truck.
We listened for the sound of the releasing of the rocket, then its landing that shook the ground like an earthquake. In two months, twenty-nine rockets landed in that fort and its garden. The last of the nine towers still stood at the corner of the old fort, but it no longer made me feel safe. For more than a hundred years, the towers had protected the people inside. Not anymore. Not in this time of Shaitan.
One reason why Grandfather and the rest of the family had all moved to the solidly built blocks of Makroyan was that they thought it would be safer there. But they were as trapped in Makroyan as we were at the Qala-e-Noborja in Kart-e-Parwan. For weeks we had no idea what was happening to them. Were they still alive, dead, wounded? We had no phones; no one was in the street to carry a message. My father stopped listening to the BBC and the other news channels, because they made us even more anxious, telling us about the casualties and announcing the names of the injured in hospitals and the lack of blood for transfusions, or medicine, or doctors.
For whole days and weeks we sat at the corner of the room, murmuring our prayers and waiting for a rocket to kill us all together. One night when the noise of the exploding rockets was too loud to let me sleep, I climbed up on the roof of the old fort and sat near the one remaining tower. I watched one rocket after another fall on the flatland neighborhoods in front of me. Each time when a rocket whistled overhead, I was momentarily surprised that it had not killed me. But a part of me no longer cared. I simply presumed that one of them would soon land next to me, and that I would not live to see the morning.
* * *
Sometimes my father, mother, sisters, and I wrote letters to my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins. When there was ceasefire for a day or two, we sent those letters that we had written days or weeks ago with anybody in the neighborhood we could find who had to go to Makroyan for some reason. In the same day we might receive a bunch of letters from all of them, if one of my uncles could make the trip. Then the war would set in again, and we would not hear from each other for weeks.
Those were the worst days of my life. Yet there was something sweet about them. Whenever I wrote letters, I was very careful to use the right words in the right places. I expected the same careful attention to detail from those who answered my letters. In those days when most people were worried about staying alive, I was focused on how to write a beautiful letter and express my feelings accurately about everything, and in precise chronological order. I was only just finding my way into my teenage years, but with life so fragile, the schooling I might have had, or the sports I might have played, or the work I might have done meant nothing.
* * *
After two months of constant war all over Kabul, once again we had a ceasefire for a few weeks. Grandfather came to our house and spent those days with us. I was so happy to sit next to him, and to put my head on his lap and listen to his breathing when he was reading or eating or talking to others.
The night before he returned to Makroyan, he talked with my father and mother late into the night, long after the rest of us went to sleep. After he left, I went to sit under the acacia tree feeling a deep loneliness. A short while later, my father came and sat down next to me.
“We made a decision last night while you were asleep.” My father paused, and then continued with a deep sigh. “Now while we are having this ceasefire, you and I are going to Pakistan. We’ll rent a house there, and then come back for the others. We’ll stay there until Kabul gets peaceful again.”
“Isn’t it going to be hard to live in a strange country?” I asked.
“We will all die if we stay here. At least we will survive in Pakistan. I’m sure you’ll get used to it soon. You’ll find good friends, and you will go to school again, I promise you,” my father said. He had a kindly half smile. That made me feel like this was really going to happen.
I asked when we would go.
“Tomorrow,” he said. He put his arm around me and let me fall against his strong chest.
16
The Dog
The next day around five o’clock in the morning, we sa
id goodbye to my mother, brother, and sisters. By six o’clock, I was on the seat next to my father in an old minibus full of people. Some of the people were sitting on the floor on bags of clothes.
I had a glass of black tea in my hands and was slowly sipping it to wake me up. I enjoyed looking at the mountains and thinking about nature after the months trapped inside the fort. Now Kabul was behind us, and we were heading toward the Khyber Pass. I had heard about the Khyber Pass from my history teacher in school, as I had about the Buddhas in Bamyan, but I had never seen it. I was excited that soon I would be passing through it.
The minibus was quiet, except for the sound of the engine, and the occasional coughing or sneezing of some of the passengers. Some were having a nap. Some were looking out the windows as we twisted our way down the sides of mountains where Kabul was nestled. Sometimes the driver had to slow down because of large holes in the road. Mostly, though, he drove fast despite the steepness of the mountains.
Just as we were approaching the small town of Sarobi and almost out of the mountains, the driver hit the brakes, and my tea spilled all over my clothes. I felt the warmth of it spreading across my lap. The other passengers shouted at the driver to be careful. The driver turned around in his seat and put his index finger on his lips and hushed us for silence. The bus doors opened, and a man followed by two bodyguards stepped inside our bus.
They eyed us coldly. There was nothing even close to a welcoming smile and no Afghan hospitality in their eyes. We were all quiet as they scanned us, one by one.
The old man who was sitting in the seat in front of us turned around and whispered to my father that the man’s name was Commander Zardad.
Commander Zardad had badly pitted cheeks and the thickest black eyebrows I had ever seen over big, dark, sunken eyes, so black that they demanded full attention. He weighed only about one hundred fifty pounds, all of it bunched tightly into a black leather jacket and shalwar kamiz. He selected several men and women from our minibus, including my father, and led them off the bus, then told the driver to continue his journey to Pakistan. The panicked driver started the engine. I jumped off before he could drive away.
Zardad looked me in the eye and said, “You are not invited.”
“You have my father, and I want to stay with him,” I said.
“Then you must come,” he said, and slapped me on my shoulder gently like an old friend.
We walked for ten minutes up the side of the steep mountain to get to his camp. He had more than two hundred men, all armed and resting under the shade of their tents. Some of them were drinking tea, some of them were asleep, and some of them were just staring at us.
We were led into a large tent that was open on one side and told to sit down. None of us did. We stood there frozen. Inside the tent, several corpses were laid out on the ground. They were naked and looked like they had been badly bitten all over.
One was a girl who looked to be in her early twenties. She was petite with yellow hair that streamed all around her head. She had a pretty face and a slender body with long legs. Her shoulders were narrow, hardly more than a dozen inches across. Her breasts were small, but they looked almost like they had been shredded. There were bite marks up and down her arms and legs, especially around her thighs.
A dead man next to her looked like a statue that had been cut from white stone, as if all his blood had been drained. Like the girl, he seemed more like an American or a European than an Afghan. He was very muscular. But he, too, had been bitten all over. His throat had been slashed, and so had his wrists and thighs and ankles. I could see no bruises on his hands; he had not been able to land any punches on his attackers. There was a cold, desperate horror frozen on his face. His mouth and eyes were wide open.
Some other bodies that lay near them were covered with white sheets that had bloodstains all over them.
“You see these people?” Zardad said. “They avoided giving me their money, and in the end they lost their lives as well as their money. If you guys love your lives, give me your money, and you are free to go.”
My father took out all his money from his pockets and gave it to Commander Zardad.
“Where is your house?” Zardad asked.
“In Kabul,” my father replied without emotion.
“Why are you going to Pakistan?”
“To see if we can live there,” my father said.
“You don’t have a wife and more kids?” Zardad asked.
“Yes,” my father said.
“Why are they not with you?”
“I couldn’t take them with me to Pakistan now. I have no house for them there. After I find a place, I will go back for them,” my father explained matter-of-factly.
“You must be a rich man. Let’s make a deal. I let your son go home and bring more money, then you’re free to go. Does it sound good?” Zardad asked, his big eyebrows raised up.
“We don’t have much money. Just enough for us to live on for a while. If I give it all to you, how will I feed my kids?” my father asked.
“Don’t answer me with a question,” Zardad shot back.
My father lowered his head and said nothing.
Zardad shouted out, “Dog!” I looked around, expecting to see one of his men come with the kind of dog that was used for fighting. I looked at the corpses with their bite marks and became very frightened. Why did Zardad want a dog?
A man entered the tent. He had big teeth, like long, yellow fangs. He laughed when he saw us.
Zardad rasped an order. “Tie him.”
Two of his men grabbed my father from behind while another one pulled off his kamiz shirt, then his shalwar trousers. They tied his hands and feet with chains to a large frame made from thick wooden beams. They pulled his wrists upward to the top corners of the frame. His feet were spread apart and chained to the bottom. He looked like one of the carpets I had seen him stretch so many times.
When my father could not move anymore and all eyes were fixed on him, Zardad ordered the man he called Dog to start. Dog opened his mouth wide and sank his teeth into one of my father’s biceps.
My father cried out in pain and shouted that he did not have any money. This time Zardad ordered the man to hang by his teeth from my father’s other arm. He closed his jaws on my father again and raised his feet from the ground as he had been told. My father was screaming now, and turning redder and redder.
I watched in disbelief. I had seen so many things since the fighting had begun, and so much cruelty, but I had never imagined anything as unspeakably strange as this.
The fanged man continued biting my father all over: his arms, shoulders, thighs, chest, underarms, neck, and buttocks. My father continued shouting while Zardad sat casually on a chair, twenty feet away, watching him and sipping his tea. He showed no emotion despite my father’s piercing yells.
I could hardly even breathe. I understood that I was watching my father die, and my mind raced as I thought, “How can I take the responsibility for my family? I’m only thirteen years old.”
And then the shouting grew quieter, as my father began to lose strength. His eyes closed. His body hung limply in the chains. His wounds were bleeding badly.
Zardad finally ordered two other men to release him. They undid the chains, and my father collapsed on the ground. They grabbed him by his wrists and dragged him thirty feet across the gravel, scraping the skin off his back as they went. He lay there, not moving, just moaning.
Then the two guys came and grabbed me. They pulled off my clothes except for my undershorts and a thin chain around my neck with a picture of Mecca hanging from it. They fastened the chains that they had used on my father around my wrists and ankles. Strangely, as they pulled the chains tight, cutting into my skin, I felt a sense of relief. I had cheated death so many times since the war had started. Today it would all end.
The man with the fangs slowly walked toward me. His mouth was outlined with my father’s blood, but his skin was deathly pale, as if he had no blood of his
own in his veins. When he walked, he seemed like he hardly had enough energy to propel himself.
When he bit me the first time, it was like a saw or a sharp piece of metal was sinking into my arms. The pain was so powerful that the light started instantly going from my eyes, and everything around me got darker and darker. I shouted louder than I ever have.
“Don’t touch him,” my father shouted hoarsely. He tried to stand. Two men ran over and held him back. Dried blood covered his whole body, except for his face. “Come and do it to me!”
“No, your son has fresher blood and tender skin,” the man whispered so softly that I hardly heard him. “You’ve got old blood. This is more fun with your son.” Then he bit me on my left leg. This time it was worse than before. Then on my shoulder, and on my back. I could do nothing but howl.
One of Zardad’s soldiers stepped forward. “Please stop for a while, sir. Give them a break.” The soldier spoke in Pashto.
“I’m not taking orders from you. You’re taking orders from me,” Zardad snapped back. Until now he had spoken only in Dari. He did not even look at the soldier. He was still staring at me.
“Yes, sir, I know it, but I just want to have a couple of hours of sleep and these bastards keep screaming and waking me up,” the soldier said.
“Hey, I’m having a good time. Don’t fuck with me,” Zardad said.
My father forced himself up from the ground. “What kind of a Pashtun are you?” he spat hoarsely at Zardad, speaking in Pashto.
“Are you Pashtun?” Zardad asked in amazement.
“Of course I am,” my father said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper.
A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story Page 27