No Good Men Among the Living

by Anand Gopal

  She flew down the ladder. This can’t be happening to me, she said to herself. What sins have I committed? Cracking the front gate open, she waited for a passing villager. Nothing. She retrieved a headscarf and wrapped it around her head and, in a moment of despair, darted out into the open. For the first time in ten years in Uruzgan she had left her house without permission, without her face protected. She felt naked.

  She ran toward the stream just as a couple of elderly women were coming from the opposite direction.

  “Stop, daughter! There are men there—you can’t go.”

  “I don’t care!” she sobbed. The two women tackled her and kept her back.

  “Are you crazy? They’ll kill you for wandering out there. Get back in your house. We’ll let you know what happened later.”

  “No!” she cried, trying to pull free, but she knew they were right. She crumpled to the ground, wailing. “Just tell me, are they gone? All of them? Is my family gone?”

  “No, daughter, everyone is fine,” one said, caressing Heela’s head. “Everyone is fine.”

  9

  The Far End of the Bazaar

  It was pitch-black when Heela awoke. The room spun. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out. Tiptoeing to the bedroom door, she could hear the two elderly women chatting in the hallway.

  “God should destroy Commander Zahir,” one said. “What problem did he have with these poor people? He’s ruined so many lives.”

  Heela tried to piece together the preceding few hours. She had been dragged back home by the two women, who then shoved her into the bedroom. She was told to get some rest, that they’d look after Nawid and Walid. Musqinyar and the boys would be okay, she had said to herself. After all, if something was wrong, wouldn’t someone tell her? She had then closed her eyes for just a moment, yet somehow hours had passed.

  A knock at the door. Heela rushed to open it, and she saw Shaysta standing there, unscathed.

  “Brother is injured, and the kids are a little bit injured,” he said. “I just want to make sure you are all right.”

  The questions tumbled out of her. “Who was it? How did it happen? What are their injuries?” He wouldn’t answer. “Where did they take him? There are no hospitals here. A hospital in Kandahar? If they need blood, I’ll give blood. Take me to the hospital—anything. I just want to see them.”

  He waved his hand. “This is enough. We’ll talk tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

  * * *

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Heela awoke to a loud knocking at the front gate. Walid, her youngest, sat up next to her. “Mama, I think Father has come.”

  “No!” she said. “They’re coming to get us. They are going to finish it.” She corralled the children and the women in the bedroom and locked the door. The knocking continued, on and off, for nearly twenty minutes, as Heela waited, clutching an ax. Eventually, the visitor went away.

  At first light, Heela heard Shaysta calling out from behind the front gate. She hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours, and the room lurched as she struggled to sit up. She fit herself into her burqa and made it to the gate, the boys behind her.

  “Your husband is here,” Shaysta said. “Come see him.”

  “How did he get here?” she asked. “What happened?”

  “This isn’t the time for questions.”

  “He’s back from the hospital? Where are Omaid and Jamshed?”

  Shaysta said nothing as he led them down a path toward the stream. A crowd had gathered ahead.

  “You must be exhausted,” she continued. “Last night was so—”

  She stopped in her tracks. Lying neatly on the dirt road, on a bed of flour sacs, was her husband’s body.

  “Mama, why are there so many holes in his shirt?” Walid asked.

  Heela stared. Then she dropped to the ground and started examining the body. “He must be in pain!” she said. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Don’t worry, I’m here.” She began unbuttoning his shirt to check for wounds.

  “Enough!” Shaysta snapped. “He’s no longer a mahrem!” Heela started sobbing uncontrollably.

  Shaysta bent over to her and whispered fiercely, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t cry so loudly—you’re a woman! Do you want people to hear your voice? Have you no shame?”

  But there was no stopping her. “I was just drowning,” she recalled years later. “I just kept crying. I couldn’t breathe. I held on to my two sons, thinking I had no one else in the world.”

  Shaysta and other men brought the corpse inside, where, according to local Islamic custom, it would need to be washed and interred as soon as possible. Heela felt somehow disembodied, as if she were watching the events unfolding in her own house from above. When Shaysta asked her for money for the funeral, she mechanically handed over almost everything she had. Relatives were foraging through her husband’s personal effects and taking what they wanted.

  At some point during the day, Shaysta approached with news that her two older boys were being treated by the Americans in one of their field hospitals. Then he said, “Your husband told me that no matter what happens, you shouldn’t cry. You need to be strong. It’s in God’s hands now.” She nodded. He continued, “You should always cover your face, do you understand? You should remember him and never, ever uncover your face outside. Okay?”

  She nodded again.

  She retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. She needed time to think, away from the guests, away from the living-room clamor. She wondered if her boys were awake in the hospital. What kind of care were they receiving? Doctors made mistakes all the time. In fact, she knew of a few cases where, because of the need to bury bodies quickly, they had mistakenly pronounced patients dead. Suddenly she thought of Musqinyar’s body.

  Returning to the living room, she saw men wrapping up her husband for removal. “No!” she screamed. She clasped his leg with all her might. As relatives struggled to pry her loose, she fell back, her head hitting squarely on a wooden shelf.

  * * *

  Hours later, after dusk, she awoke with an excruciating headache. The house had grown quiet, as everyone had left save for one of the elderly women, Musqinyar’s aunt. Heela ruminated on the days ahead. She had never heard of a woman living alone in Uruzgan, or even in Kabul. It simply did not happen. Here, widows were expected to marry their brothers-in-law. She shuddered at the thought of marrying Shaysta, or even spending time with him, or with anyone at all. But where could she go? Her parents had fled the country and she’d lost contact with them ages ago.

  Single women were a radioactive commodity. She’d heard stories about women who had run away from home and been locked up on charges of prostitution—even in Hamid Karzai’s relatively cosmopolitan Kabul. There was just no getting around it: you needed a man’s sponsorship.

  Lying in bed, she tried to force sleep to come. How would she support herself? There would be no more election work, no more sewing centers. It all seemed so ridiculous now, so reckless. Musqinyar would never have taken that elections job if she hadn’t pushed for work for herself. How could she have been so selfish?

  At least God had spared the children. Would Zahir come for them, too? She went out and gathered the two remaining boys and the auntie and brought them into the bedroom. Then she dragged a heavy chest in front of the door, put her husband’s gun nearby, and waited. It took more than an hour for them all to doze off.

  Sometime after midnight, Heela awoke to see the children and aunt sitting up in ashen silence. She could hear thuds. Footsteps. She looked up. Someone is on the roof, she thought. The old lady fingered prayer beads and muttered Koranic verses. Walid looked at Heela, his eyes pooling, and she grabbed him and covered his mouth.

  The four watched the ceiling for a long time. At one point Walid had to go to the bathroom, but she could not bring herself to open the door, so he relieved himself in a small dinner bowl.

  Only with the sunrise did the noises cease. Heela sent out the boys to plead with Musqi
nyar’s male relatives to come spend the night. Upon news of a death, villagers were usually gracious beyond their means. Women contributed food and looked after children, men helped out in the fields, families donated money and clothing. But Heela was quickly realizing that her case was different. People were avoiding the house as if it had fallen victim to the evil eye. Spending the night seemed to be out of the question. Heela wondered if they all knew something she didn’t.

  Later that afternoon, a contingent of Captain Brosnan’s soldiers visited, bringing news: Jamshed was convalescing seventy miles away, at the base in Tirin Kot, but Omaid, in critical condition, had been flown to Kandahar Airfield.

  One of the Americans promised that they would solve the crime. “We have reason to believe that one of the following men may have been responsible,” he said, and proceeded to list the names of top Taliban figures. “We’re working with Police Chief Zahir,” he assured her. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your husband?”

  Heela was stunned. Police Chief Zahir killed my husband! she wanted to scream. But the Americans were supporting Zahir. How could she say anything? She would be arrested, of that much she was sure.

  “I don’t know who did this,” she said.

  * * *

  That evening, Heela fell asleep at sunset. Around three in the morning, she and the aunt roused themselves to prepare the midnight meal ahead of the day’s fast. As they passed the kitchen window, they heard the crackle of what sounded like a walkie-talkie. The women stared at each other, then circled back to the bedroom. They blocked the door with a crate and sat listening.

  At first light, Heela ventured into the kitchen and looked into the yard. Nothing. Had she been hallucinating? But they had both heard it.

  She woke the children and tried to go about her day. In all her years, she could not remember feeling so exhausted. The toll was apparent in her reddish eyes and hoarse voice, and the aunt worried that she was falling sick. She encouraged Heela to break her fast, but she refused. She didn’t feel much like eating anyway.

  In the afternoon, Shaysta showed up to inquire about her husband’s land. Under tribal law, a woman did not enjoy property rights, and he was eager to relieve her of the family’s acre of good soil. Under Islamic law, however, property in such cases belonged entirely to the woman.

  That afternoon, a mullah arrived to inform her that she could choose between tribal and Islamic law. As Shaysta looked on, she announced that she was choosing the latter.

  Retreating to the bedroom, Heela opened the drawer and fingered Musqinyar’s salwar kameez. She looked at his watch, his prayer beads, his photographs. It took thousands of tiny acts to nurture a life. She thought of the women who had bathed and fed him as a child, the men who had taught him. All this labor, all the struggle that was required from so many for a person to become himself, and to what end? It struck her now as absurd. What was the point? she thought to herself.

  But what choice did anyone have? Her thoughts turned to the children, to the future they had plucked from them when she and Musqinyar fled Kabul. Pointless or not, she had a duty to see that even in their consignment to this wretched place they would survive the best they could. And it was clear that there was only one course open to her: surrender. She’d capitulate to Shaysta, become one of his wives, and at least have someone to care for the children.

  But the thought nauseated her.

  It was then that she first contemplated suicide. In the village, the favored method was throwing yourself down a well. It was an honorable end, and she could think of no better way to ensure that her children would be taken in, that her family would be spoken well of. Shaysta would raise them as his own, and they would grow up in a better world.

  That evening, the first stage of her submission commenced. Shaysta returned, demanding that she agree to hand over half of all future harvests from Musqinyar’s land. He had even drawn up a contract. Heela signed the papers. Shaysta promised to return the following day. He told her, “We have other matters to discuss.”

  * * *

  After sundown, Heela, the two boys, and Musqinyar’s aunt once again barricaded themselves in the bedroom. It was the sixth night since the murder, and Heela knew that she’d have to make a decision soon. As she lay turning in bed, the dog started to bark. She pressed her ear to the window. Voices. She slowly opened the shutters, and the undeniable smell of cigarette smoke wafted in. The voices grew louder. Someone coughed. The two children were now clinging to her.

  The old woman broke down. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I just can’t do this anymore. You are brave. So, so brave. It’s just too dangerous here. I’m sorry, I have to leave in the morning.”

  Heela said nothing. She sat looking at the wall for a long time. So this was it, the final turn, the last in a series of ineluctable steps by which the world would abandon her, leave her to the mercies of criminals through no fault of her own.

  And then, for the first time since losing her husband, a new emotion welled up: anger.

  She hated the woman.

  She hated Shaysta. The very sight of him.

  She hated her neighbors, the village, her relatives, everyone. She was alone in the world but for her children.

  And something within her turned. She didn’t know what it was but felt it growing inside. It was not the old tug; that was gone. This was a new feeling, one she hadn’t felt before, something akin to private rage, but not quite. She couldn’t give her children away. She couldn’t let Zahir do this to them. She thought back to her parents’ home in Kabul, with its musty tea smell, and her first days at the university, and all the times she had stolen away with Musqinyar. She thought about the civil war: so many had perished, so many lives ruined. But not hers. She recalled her miscarriage, and her flight to Uruzgan, and the Taliban.

  At every step, she had survived. And at that moment, sometime past midnight on October 27, 2004, she decided that she would survive this, too.

  Escape was the only option. But where? Peeking out the window she saw the outlines of fat mountains, sitting rudely against the night sky. She looked back at her red-eyed, hollow-cheeked aunt, and immediately felt sorry for getting angry with her. No, she wouldn’t get angry—she would get out. And to do that, she needed every last bit of help she could find.

  It took an hour for the cigarette smoke to dissipate and the voices to disappear. Then, turning to the old woman, Heela said, “We have to go somewhere, now.”

  “Where?”

  Heela pointed into the blackness. “Out there.”

  The old woman looked at Heela as if she had gone mad. But Heela fitted on her burqa and led the children outside. The aunt scrambled after them into the frigid night. As Heela stood there, in the darkness, she realized that she had not the slightest clue what to do next.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the old woman repeated. “Are you crazy?”

  “Just trust me,” Heela replied. She knew that to get around outside, she’d need a mahrem. But who? How? She stood thinking, and then whispered, “Follow me.” She led the group along a donkey trail heading to Shaysta’s house. She rapped on the door, and when Shaysta appeared, blinking off sleep, she revealed her face. He gaped at her.

  “Are you crazy? What are you doing here?”

  “I have money for you,” Heela replied.

  “What?”

  “I have money for you. Don’t ask. It’s an emergency. Follow me.”

  “You’ve really lost your mind. This is unbelievable.”

  But she moved on, heading back toward her house with the children in tow. He was forced to follow. Asking them to wait outside, she headed for the bedroom, where she took what remaining money she had, stuffed it into a small change purse, and tucked it underneath her burqa. She gathered her property documents and her faded voter registration card and stuffed them into the purse as well. Then she grabbed her husband’s Kalashnikov, switched off the safety, and slung it over her shoulder, also under her burqa. Just befor
e leaving, she took a copy of the Holy Koran. This she placed in a small burlap bag that she hung around her neck. It rested close to her heart.

  Reappearing outside, she said quietly but firmly, “We need to go to my husband’s pharmacy.”

  “Now?” Shaysta asked. “Are you sick? Are you losing your mind? What if someone sees a woman walking around at this time?”

  “I have money there. My husband’s money. I’ll give it to you. Just take me there.”

  Shaysta stood thinking. “Okay, let’s go. But quickly, before sunrise.”

  They walked toward the stream in the darkness. A full moon hung in the sky. No one spoke. When she stepped onto the footbridge, it creaked, and the old woman and the children jumped.

  At the clearing on the opposite bank, Nawid said, “Mama, this is where they found father.” Heela stopped. She felt an overwhelming urge to crumble right there. She peered through her netted eye covering, so desperately wanting to see, to understand.

  “Go, go, woman!” Shaysta whispered. “Are you crazy? Let’s go!”

  As they passed the aunt’s house, the old lady asked her grown son to join them for more protection. The group then proceeded along a narrow trail. Heela focused on Shaysta’s sandaled feet ahead of her, just as she used to do with Musqinyar.

  Passing the last house of the village, they emerged into the open country. The gravel road heading to the bazaar stretched out before them. From here, it would be a good hour’s walk.

  Shaysta stopped and stared ahead into the darkness. “There’s a police checkpoint along this road sometimes. We can’t go any further. Let’s go home.”

  “No!” Heela said. “I can’t. There’s money—I promise.” She was whispering loudly. “I promise in God’s name.”

  She added, “We get it now or someone else might get there first.”