We had been hearing stories for the past four days that people in the apartment blocks in Makroyan had been playing music during the night from their darkened windows on the upper floors, but we had not really believed them. Maybe the stories were true after all.
Soon after, we heard more music from another house along the street. Then from another. Then another. Then from our next-door neighbors whose daughters had climbed the ladder to come work in my factory. And then from our own courtyard, where someone had hooked up a cassette player to a car battery, as we had no electricity that night.
Everyone was pulling their speakers out of hiding and placing them in their windows. They were playing music as loudly they could. Any kind of music. Ahmad Zahir. Hangama and Ahmad Wali. Ustad Sarban. Lata Mangehkar. Mohammad Rafi. Jagjit Singh. Ustad Rahim Bakhsh. Ustad Beltoon. Ustad Doray Logari … It was overpowering, and it was spreading.
Below us in our courtyard, and in the streets, and in our neighbors’ courtyards, people were coming out of their houses, cheering, shouting, and just laughing in a way they had not dared to do for all these years. Now, with each note of music ringing through the darkness, a message came through that we could hardly believe: The Taliban are gone. The Taliban are gone!
All my sisters, my cousins, and our neighbors in the old fort rushed into the courtyard to find out what was going on. They went from one to the next asking questions for which no one had any answers.
I saw my father standing near the acacia tree watching them. From all that he had said since the bombing raids had started, I knew he was waiting to see what would happen next. Had these Americans come to help or to invade? He needed more than music to know that Afghanistan had been returned to us. He looked around for a few minutes, then quietly went back inside.
Malem-e-chaq’s sons started playing a recording of the traditional attan drumbeat. It cut through all the other music. By the light of a motorcycle that had stopped in the middle of the street behind the garden, we could see two dozen men and boys streaming toward the blasting rhythm. Some wore tight jeans or brightly colored T-shirts they had kept hidden since the Taliban had taken over. Others who had come out wearing shalwar kamiz quickly turned around and disappeared into their houses; a few minutes later they were back on the street dressed in Western-style clothes. One young man was in a suit and a necktie. Not even one had on a turban.
A couple of them raised their hands above their heads and gave a clap to signal that the attan had begun.
The shapeless mob quickly formed a circle to dance the first steps of the first attan I had seen in five years. It hardly lasted ten seconds, though, before all the men started laughing too hard to continue. They stood there shouting and hugging one another, amazed to find themselves dancing, even though that is how Afghans have been expressing their joy for hundreds of generations—until the Taliban. The beat continued booming down the street, and before long, the circle had reformed. Some began to make the measured, graceful steps—ever so slowly at first—while others cheered them on.
Tears had filled my mother’s eyes at the sound of the attan. She made no effort to hide them, and was smiling too much to care.
As the drumming grew more insistent, she rose up, untied her scarf, and opened the knot of her hair. She leaned back slightly and in the darkness shook her head from side to side. A breeze blew through her hair and lifted it a little. A bomb exploded not far from us, probably at the house of the Pimp of the King, where many Taliban had been living. In the bluish flash of the bomb’s light, I caught sight of my mother’s face. It was the first time in years that I had seen her with no scarf, just like in the old days. She looked so pretty.
I got up and stood next to her as we watched the men in the street below fling themselves into the accelerating pace of the attan, whipping their bare heads around as they spun. A part of me wanted to join them. I was nineteen years old and had never danced; I had always wanted to, even though I worried that I would look like a sheep if I tried. Another part of me, though, was like my father: I could not celebrate until I knew more about these people dropping bombs on my country.
My uncle stood up. He spread his arms wide like an eagle, as if he were going to start his own attan right there on the roof of that Fort of Nine Towers. But he only looked up at the sky in wonder.
As another explosion punctuated the pounding rhythm of the attan, I put my arm around my mother and thought about all she and my father had done to keep our family safe. I was taller than her now. I had reached the age when it was an Afghan son’s duty to take care of his parents. How could I ever do as much for them as they had done for us?
My mother reached around and hugged me as she rested her head on my shoulder. She sighed deeply. I pulled her closer as I thought about all the uncertainty of the coming days.
The men in the street had now been joined by a guy beating a deep-throated dol hanging around his neck. In sharp contrast to the others, he was wearing traditional Afghan clothes and a sparkling golden cap. The onlookers went into a frenzy as he strode inside the circle of dancers, beating in time with the drums from the speakers, adding to their urgency.
The attan reached the point when the drumming becomes so fast that the dancers generally start to drop out one by one, exhausted. But the faster the drums beat, the more furiously the men threw themselves into it, whirling first in one direction, then the other. On this night, no one was going to quit. In fact, others joined them.
I cheered for those men, though I knew they could not hear me. I shouted at them never to stop.
And they danced. They danced. They danced.
Epilogue: A Journey Still
My mother was right. The foreigners were more interested in their own politics than in our country. They chased the Taliban away, for a while. But they brought back the same factions who had claimed to be Mujahedin and who had destroyed our country.
Many of the foreigners who came here claiming to help us left very rich. We are waiting to see what they will build, besides their military bases.
For many years we were hoping that they might help us construct water systems so we do not have to carry water in buckets from public pumps, or sewer systems so we can get rid of the stink and diseases of the open ditches we now have. We finally got electricity, but it comes from other countries, even though we could make our own if we had some help rebuilding our hydroelectric dams.
* * *
When I see how much money has been wasted by the foreigners, I think of my grandfather. One day, as he was settling himself with a pot of green tea on the long cushion next to the window, he said to me, “Let me tell you a story.”
I was becoming a teenager by then, and was finding stories of my own. But I always had time to spend with Grandfather. I sat down beside him and looked into his old yet unwrinkled face.
“Mullah Nasruddin used to live in a village not far from here.” I knew that was not true, of course. Mullah Nasruddin lives in folk tales throughout the Muslim world, but Grandfather always claimed he was our neighbor. I smiled at Grandfather as he put an arm around me and drew me close to him.
“Every morning, he rode his donkey out to a place where no one ever goes. Why would they? God had made it to show people the true meaning of a wasteland.
“After a while, his neighbor Ali Khan became very curious as to why the old man went back to that same spot day after day, but was too respectful to ask directly. He sent one of his sons to ask if there was anything he could do to make Mullah Nasruddin’s life better.
“Mullah Nasruddin was delighted to see Ali Khan’s son, and offered him a piece of hard candy that had bits of lint on it from where it had stuck to the inside of his pocket. The boy politely declined. Then, Mullah Nasruddin asked him, ‘Why are you alone? Where are the others?’
“Ali Khan’s son asked Mullah Nasruddin, ‘Whom are you expecting?’
“‘Well,’ he said. ‘Someday something good might happen here. And if it does, a large crowd will gather,
and since I am here first,’ he declared with his famous smile, ‘I will have a good view of everything! Until then, I am waiting.’”
Grandfather raised a cup of tea to his lips, while I chuckled. Though I was too old for Mullah Nasruddin stories, and too young to understand how much wisdom has been distilled in them, I laughed, because I loved being with my grandfather. Now, however, these many years later, I finally understand it. If something good comes from all the foreign money in Afghanistan, like Mullah Nasruddin I will have a good view of it. Until that time, though, every day I am waiting, and waiting, and waiting.
* * *
When the Americans came, they needed interpreters. In six months, I taught myself enough English that I could work for them and earn dollars. They were desperate for anybody who could help them and were not concerned about proper grammar. I started listening to the BBC in English and watching American movies to practice the language even when I was not with the Americans. I was never shy about making mistakes when I spoke or wrote, and was always grateful when somebody pointed out my errors.
My first job was with American soldiers. I learned many interesting words from them. Later, when I was working with the United Nations, I discovered that I could not use these words in the office. A few times I did, and I saw shocked and puzzled faces.
Now that I could speak some English, I revived our family’s carpet-selling business with my father. I never tried to restart my factory, at least not in the way that I had it. I had given away my looms and did not want to take them back, since many of my weavers had no other way of earning money. The flood of foreigners into Kabul created a large, new market for all the carpets that people had been making in their homes for years and now wanted to sell. I did not need to make my own carpets to have a business. Since I spoke English, I could sell other people’s carpets to the foreigners. This gave me the chance to meet people from many countries.
The Americans are always very friendly. They buy a lot of carpets and pay me the price I ask. They always want to know everything they can about the carpets: where they were made, who made them, what the meaning of the pattern is. They have invited me to their embassy several times to make presentations on Afghan carpets. “Carpet makers are poets,” I tell them. “And the carpets are like poems.” I try to teach them how to read their verses.
The French come, look at carpets, throw them around in all directions, point out all their flaws, then do not want to pay what they are worth. They bargain for hours for even a small discount. Some of them have become my good friends, though, and bring me dark chocolate from France. Twice I went to France for short visits, and they invited me to their houses. They cooked meals for me that were so good that I had to wonder whether anything else I had eaten all my life could really be called food. I admire how they value their history, their traditions, and their old buildings in a way that Afghans do not.
The Italians are always loud. Before they look at carpets, they ask for a cup of tea. Then we talk for a long time about many things. Finally, we start discussing carpets while they go through the piles. They ask for more tea and start to bargain and make jokes. This can go on for hours. Suddenly, they pay the full price and leave in a hurry, because they are late for something. They are very much like Afghans, always friendly, dressing nicely, eating big meals, one minute laughing and the next minute shouting. When I went to Italy I saw all these things and I told myself, “I am at home.”
When I had a chance to visit England, I was treated very well by everyone I met there. The countryside in England is so beautiful that I felt I was in paradise. But many of the English people I knew in Kabul lived up to the old reputation the English have in Afghanistan.
A skinny Englishman with a bony face rented part of the Qala-e-Noborja. He cut down all the large, old trees and the lilac bushes in the courtyard, even the towering acacia tree under which we laid Wakeel’s body. He said they were in the wrong places.
I had kept those trees alive during the worst years of drought by carrying water twice every day in buckets strapped to my bicycle from the only place that had water, a pump more than a mile away up and over the hill by the Polytechnic.
This Englishman also decided he wanted more rooms at the Qala-e-Noborja. So, two very poor Afghan families who had lived for more than thirty years in their houses just beyond the courtyard were forced to leave. One of them was the Hazara family whose daughters had climbed over the wall to work in my factory. When they left, they had to sell their cow, whose milk gave them their only income. That meant that their daughters had to leave their schools and go find work.
My grandfather and his friends are somewhere nodding at one another knowingly about all that. Please, God, put some mercy in that Englishman’s heart, and lead him to the right path.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Afghanistan that we had dreamed about during all those years of bombs, whips, and stonings still has not returned to us. After we held our first presidential elections in 2004, we were very hopeful. For a couple of years, a lot of Afghans came back from the foreign countries where they had fled and started businesses. Some put up tall, modern buildings in Kabul and other provinces. There was a real feeling that finally Afghanistan was ours again.
But then things changed. Not everything, we soon learned, is the fault of the foreigners.
I went to the Ministry of Commerce to register my carpet business. I knew the special adviser to the minister. With her help, I finished all the necessary paperwork there within an hour. Then I had to take my papers to the Ministry of Finance, to the Ministry of Justice, and to police headquarters for more processing.
In all these places, I had to get stamps from many people, even though no one could tell me what the stamps were for. Every single person from whom I sought a stamp demanded a bribe. They did not ask directly for money, of course. They said, “Please, may I have some candy.” I gave them a few afghanis, and they did what needed to be done.
As the day wore on, my money was nearly finished, and I was disgusted. I went out to a street vendor and used what money I had left to buy a bag of hard candy, the kind we put in our mouths when we drink tea. After that, whenever anybody asked me for candy, I gave them a piece from my pocket. They glared at me with one eyebrow up, one down. I acted stupid and smiled at them, as if I did not know what “candy” meant.
One said, “I don’t want this. Give me real candy.”
“This is real candy, and it is very good,” I said, trying to sound innocent as I took out the bag and showed it to him. “Look, it comes all the way from Poland. And the ingredients are all healthy and organic. They used honey instead of sugar, and real milk. It tastes delicious!” Then I ate one, and yum-yummed.
“Idiot! I want money,” he said sharply.
“Money? For what?” I asked, trying to sound surprised.
“For processing your papers,” he said, somewhere between a shout and a whisper.
“But that is a bribe,” I replied with my eyes wide with amazement. “And a bribe is a sin! In Islam it is forbidden! Are you trying to make us both sinners?”
“Are you stupid?” He looked at me in disbelief.
“Nobody has ever called me stupid before!” Then, more kindly, I added, “I’m just trying to explain to you the basic principles of Islam.”
Soon he decided not to waste any more time on me, knowing he could get a bribe from the next person. He processed my papers and pressed the bell on the desk. A guard came bustling in and was told, “Get this psychopath out of here!”
“I’m not a psychopath! I’m not a sinner, either. I’m not a bribe taker, or angry all the time. Now, tell me who is a psychopath?” Then I walked out, smiling, without waiting to hear the answer.
* * *
More than ten years have passed since that night on the roof when we saw the first American bombs. From time to time, I think about some of the people—good and bad—whom I had known during the worst years, and I wonder what has become of them.
>
I have never seen Berar again, though I have looked for him in many places. If he is dead, please, God, keep his soul at peace. If he is alive, I pray to God to make us meet again one day.
The garden where Grandfather and I saw the skulls now has three houses covering the place where the fountain was.
Sometimes when I am riding in a taxi, the driver might take a shortcut on a street where a horrific memory comes back to life. I lean forward and ask him please to go another way, as being there reminds me of something from the war that I want to forget. Every driver understands this, and they always turn around and find another route.
I never again saw the young teacher who was forced to sell herself. I hope she earned enough money to go to another country and start a new life. I will always think of her with deep respect, despite the circumstances in which we met.
I have never seen the family in Tashkurghan from whom I stole the five pomegranates. Maybe they are living in America by now. I heard the garden was in ruins until five years ago, when somebody replanted it. I went there once, but the people living there said they had never heard of Hamza or his family. I wonder how Hamza can be happy anywhere else.
Sometimes our Kuchi cousins call my father when they are passing near Kabul with their sheep and camels in late spring, heading from their winter homes in Jalalabad to the central highlands. They are still Kuchis, but they all have cell phones now.
Omar Khan, once a herd boy with a flute, is now in Germany. He became a car mechanic. He is running a garage with another Afghan who was born there. He speaks German fluently. He has not returned to Afghanistan in the years since he left. He is waiting for the German government to give him a German passport, so he can travel to Afghanistan to visit his family.
Aaron Khan is living in Greece. He became a tailor. He got married to a pretty Greek woman. His parents are unhappy with him for marrying a Greek, because a Kuchi should marry another Kuchi and produce more Kuchis. They are not in touch with him, but know about him through Omar Khan.
A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story Page 39