by Howard Faber
“My father, Hassan, was killed by Taliban in Sharidure. He was lined up along with the other men and shot. My mother and sister were forced to watch. I already left for Iran, or I would have been killed, too.”
Colonel Elliot listened intently to Ali. He learned a lot in a short time about this village and especially about one of its sons.
***
As they walked to the “hotel” for the Taliban, following animal paths through the hills, Colonel Elliot, through Ahmroodeen the translator, told Ali about what an agreement between Sharidure and the Americans included. Now it was time for Ali to be surprised. A new school would be built, including all new books and desks for the children. The school would include a small hospital staffed initially by one of the Americans. The colonel introduced him to Ali. He knew enough to say in Farsi, “Hello, my name is Dr. Bettinga. I have with me medicine and other medical supplies. I will be taking care of the soldiers and your people.”
Immediately Ali thought of the doctors who lived in Sharidure when he was little. What were their names? Hagel. Yes, that was it, Dr. Hagel and Dr. Hagel. He reached down to his knee, so magically repaired by them. He used to carry a crutch. Now, he carried an automatic rifle. There used to be a hospital in Sharidure and he was beginning to think there would be one again. Perhaps, the hospital could be a separate building, maybe even stand where the old one that was smashed by the Taliban used to stand.
As they came closer to the corral where the Taliban were kept, Ali asked again what the colonel thought should be done with them. His answer surprised both Ali and the translator. “I think your idea is a good one. They need to know you can and will fight back if they return. They will be bound to respect you more than they did before. If we take them back to the Bagram Air Base we will have to take care of them. I doubt any of them are high ranking commanders, so any information we could get from them would be not very new or useful. I think we should stay out of sight and let you deal with them.”
Ali nodded his head in agreement. He motioned everyone to be silent and pointed to a position where the Americans could watch but not be seen. He gave the agreed on greeting for the villager on guard. He pointed to where the Americans were hiding and whispered some directions about what to do next, then rolled back the stones securing the Taliban in their little sleeping places. They crawled out and stood blinking in the daylight. He spoke only in Pushtu. He and the four villagers who came along held their rifles on the Taliban as Ali told them what was going to happen. “We will take you back to where you stopped the truck. If you do not try to escape or resist us, we will not harm you. If you do try to resist or escape, you will be shot.”
One of the men from Sharidure led the way back to the place where they captured the Taliban. The Americans followed at a distance, far enough away that the Taliban were not aware of their presence. When they got to that place on the road west of Sharidure, Ali told them to stop and asked if they knew how to get back home from there.
They said they did. The one who seemed to be their leader added, “We will be back to take over again like we did before. We know what’s best for you simple people. We know what you look like and we promise to come back to find you.”
Ali’s reply rang out in the sunlit afternoon. “This is our home. You do not belong here. We will fight for our home, just as you would fight for yours. We do not want your land or to tell you how to live. Go back to your homes and families. Leave us alone!”
The men from Sharidure watched as the Taliban headed down the road, west, away from Sharidure. When they were out of sight, Ali and his men headed east, back home, joined by the Americans.
Chapter Fifteen
Taliban Attack Sharidure
That night, it was Ali’s turn to be on guard from midnight until four a.m. As he left his warm home, he glanced back to see one of the other Sharidure men heading the other way to take his turn on guard. Ali climbed up the hill above town, stopping on the level area where the nomads used to set up their tents as they passed through. He looked down on the sleeping village, where he could see his home where Nafisa, Shireen his sister, and Shireen and Hassan, his children, were all asleep. He smiled, turned, and climbed higher to the place where he would relieve the man currently on guard. They exchanged silent signals that all was well. The other man disappeared down the hill toward town.
About an hour later, Ali thought he heard someone speaking. The quiet words were in Pushtu. He crawled silently toward the sounds. Now he could make out the words. “Should we put it in the school or the teahouse?”
“A second voice replied, “The school. It will kill more of them.”
The voices, it sounded like at least three, started down the hill towards Sharidure. Ali checked his rifle and picked out a path that would be steeper but get him close to where the voices were headed. The voices stopped. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. Then, he heard someone headed straight toward him and someone moving off to one side of him. They heard him and were splitting up to surround him. The approaching footsteps slowed, then stopped. Maybe they weren’t sure where he was or even if there was someone there. He decided to move toward a group of large boulders to his left. They would provide some protection. As he crept toward the boulders, he realized he had to alert the other guards and Colonel Elliot and the soldiers. He needed help. “If I fire my rifle, my friends will be alerted, but I will also give away my position.” His mind raced to come up with the best plan.
The fact that the intruders split up could work to his advantage. He decided to attack one of them, move, then wait to find another one. As he crawled toward where he last heard footsteps, the moon went behind some clouds. As it disappeared, he saw the turbaned, bearded outline of a man standing next to a boulder. This was not someone from Sharidure.
He crept closer, got to his feet, crouched, them leapt at the figure. The collision sent both men to the ground. The whoosh of air from the surprised intruder’s lungs changed to a groan, then a shout. No doubt his fellow intruders would be on their way. Ali scrambled to his feet, found the trigger on his rifle, and fired. The sound of the shot echoed on the hillside, and was followed by a scream of pain. Ali quickly moved away, found a large rock, and waited. Below in his town, the flickering light of kerosene lanterns appeared. The sound of the shot had been heard and help would be on the way.
“Go ahead, and carry out our mission. I’ll take care of this Hazara dog.” Ali heard this and shivered. He had to try to get the bomber, before he could place the bomb in Sharidure. He moved to his left. That was a good move because a burst of bullets splattered the rock where he had been sitting. He couldn’t tell where the shots came from, so he kept moving, heading toward another group of boulders. More shots were fired, and these kicked up dust behind him. They came from his left. He dove behind a rock. More rounds bounced off the rock in front of him.
“Hurry up.” The other guards must be getting closer.
They were. A burst of rounds came from behind him toward where his attacker was. Now, the odds were getting better, but he had to be careful about hitting or being hit by his own friends. Then there was another burst of bullets, this time from the Taliban attacker toward the second Sharidure guard. Ali had seen exactly where those rounds came from, and as it turned out, so had the third Sharidure guard. There was another
burst of bullets, followed by a scream, then some wild firing into the air. The attacker was hit. The three Sharidure men closed in. They moved in cautiously and found their attacker slumped against a rock, his rifle on the ground, mumbling, wheezing. He was no longer a danger to them or to Sharidure.
***
By now there were many men and boys from Sharidure up above town where Ali intercepted the would-be attackers. The townspeople were curious about who they were. The word Taliban was the most common answer. Colonel Elliot and several of his men arrived just after the Sharidure guards. His men quickly carried the two wounded attackers away. Neither could walk. One was unconscious.
“Were there more?” Colonel Elliot and Ahmroodeen walked with Ali back down to town.
“There were at least three. I didn’t see the other one, but I heard three voices.” Ali did not add what he heard the last two say, about carrying out their mission and placing it in the school. It was beginning to get light.
“I’ll have my men search this hill. Could your men search the village?”
Ali nodded in agreement. His men knew the village, and the Americans didn’t. The men from Sharidure also knew the people, who belonged and who didn’t.
After about an hour, the American soldiers returned from searching the hills above town. No one had been found. When they came back to town, Colonel Elliot came to talk to Ali. No one had yet been found in town who didn’t belong. It was then that Ali told Colonel Elliot about the plans he overheard. It was decided that an ongoing shift of guards would be at the school. It would be the beginning of a joint defense plan for the people of Sharidure and the Americans. Neither Ali nor Colonel Elliot believed the third attacker had left.
There was no attack that day, nor that night. Today was Saturday. Because of yesterday being Jumah, the day of worship, there had been no school. Today, school would be open. Ali watched the children, including his daughter Shireen and his son Hassan, come with their usual noisy selves. He counted the pairs of shoes outside the classrooms to see if there were students absent. Just one. Ali’s wife Nafisa and his sister Shireen joined the other teachers in starting the lessons. Everything seemed normal and quiet. He could hear Nafisa teaching reading.
Lori • By Howard Faber
In the afternoon, a truck approached from the west. That was the usual arrival time for trucks from the west. Ali was on guard duty at that end of town. He approached the truck.
He stepped up to the truck to ask whether the driver had picked up any passengers on the road. He didn’t recognize the driver. There were no passengers. Usually, there were passengers in the cab and in the back with the load. “Did you see anyone outside of town?”
“No.”
Ali thought the man looked nervous. “What are you carrying?”
“Wheat.”
The answers seemed very short. Something was wrong. The driver started toward town. Ali yelled to stop, but the truck kept going. Ali ran and grabbed onto the back. He pulled himself up onto the truck, crawled over the side of the truck, and moved around to the passenger side of the cab. He flung the door open and jumped into the cab. The driver saw him and swung his arm to try to hit him. Ali grabbed his arm and pulled him. The truck slowed some but kept going. The driver pulled away and leaned back toward the steering wheel. Ali decided to help him, pivoting on the seat and shoving the driver with both feet. The shove knocked the driver off balance and against the door. Ali scooted closer and gave another shove with both feet. That shove knocked the driver out of the door, and he tumbled down onto the road. Ali quickly sat up and grabbed the steering wheel, keeping the truck on the road.
There had to be a bomb on this truck. The driver probably had a cell phone to detonate it. He had to get the truck away from town or at least away from the school. He glanced in the side mirror to see what happened to the driver, if he had a cell phone, and was ready to blow up the truck. He saw him, but he was still on the ground, with an American soldier wrestling with him.
Ali thought quickly about where to drive the truck. Where was he now? Just where did the shops and homes start on main street. Where would there be no people? The old airfield. There would be no one there. He turned onto the side road that led to the old airfield. He didn’t know what had happened now with the driver and the American. He sped up the hill toward the place where he played and where he landed the plane. The truck growled onto the old, still smooth landing strip. He drove it downhill toward the cliff overlooking the river valley, hoping for just a few seconds more.
His mind was racing again. Should he stop the truck and run? He could. If the American succeeded in controlling the bomber and prevented him from igniting the bomb, what would happen to the bomb. It might still hurt someone. He had to drive the truck off the cliff. The bomb would blow up as the truck crashed down in the valley. There were no roads down there so no one would be hurt. He decided to aim the truck for the cliff, stay in the truck until the last second, then jump out of the cab.
***
Back in Sharidure, the wrestling match was over. It turned out badly for the would-be bomber. The American soldier who jumped him was an All-American wrestler from Nebraska. He quickly pinned the man face first in the dirt. Two young men came running and now sat on the back of the attacker, each pinning an arm behind his back. The soldier radioed for help and Colonel Elliot came up in a Humvee. The Talib looked very angry but helpless. He was now tied with rope, still face down in the dirt. The soldier quickly told Colonel Elliott about how this attacker tumbled down from a truck. “What happened to the truck?”
“I’m not too sure. I was pretty busy at the time.” He said this with a wry smile. “I heard it start toward town, but then the sound faded away.”
Ali slowed the truck, opened the cab door, and stepped sideways onto the side of the cab. He kept one hand on the steering wheel to keep the truck aimed at the cliff. When he took his foot off the gas pedal, the truck slowed quickly, and he thought for a second it might stop before going off the cliff, but because the landing strip was downhill, the truck kept going. He jumped off, landed on his feet, and watched it crawl forward. The front wheels rolled off the cliff, and the whole truck followed, bouncing once on the side of the cliff, then somersaulting into the air. Ali ran to the cliff’s edge to watch. When it hit the valley floor, there was a huge explosion and fireball. Ali dropped to his knees and raised his hands.
When the people in Sharidure heard the huge explosion, they hurried toward the noise and smoke. Colonel Elliot drove his Humvee in that direction but had to slow down to avoid hitting the people running toward the river. When they rounded the side of the hill, they saw the burning truck. Everyone wondered if someone was in it, and how it had gotten there, since there was no road. Colonel Elliot left two of his soldiers there to find out as much as they could and to keep anyone from getting too close to the burning wreck. He went back to town to look for Ali to tell him about the Talib and the truck, but no one knew where Ali was.
Chapter Sixteen
A Time to Grow
Ali stayed at the edge of the cliff for a long time. He thought about his family at the school, now safe. He thought of his father, working at his shop, teaching him to be a carpenter, encouraging him to study. That seemed long ago. He thought about his for-a-time home in Iran, about returni
ng to Afghanistan, about his wife, his sister. So many things, so many days. It was good to be home.
The clouds came and went, like the days that passed. He sat, looking out onto the river and its valley. He turned to look back to the top of the airfield, to where he had taken off and landed, remembering Dan and Reza, the two pilots, one American, one Iranian. He stood and started walking back up the airstrip, back home, back to where his mother made all of those meals, all of those clothes for him, encouraging him, telling him not to mind those mean boys who teased him about his leg. He had almost forgotten about his leg being bent for so long. Maybe there was a boy or girl now in Sharidure who needed a doctor and a hospital like he did. The Americans had a doctor with them.
As he started down the road from the airfield to town, he noticed a small figure starting up the road from town. As they each kept walking, they got close enough to recognize each other. “Baba (father), everyone is looking for you. Where have you been?” It was Hassan, his son.
“I was at the old airfield, thinking about how I used to come here, how the little plane used to land here. I was also thinking about another Hassan, your grandfather, and how he used to make me toys at his shop.” They met on the little road, looked at each other a moment, then turned and walked hand-in-hand back to their home.
Someone saw Ali and hurried to Colonel Elliot to tell him where he was. When the American got to Ali’s home, he asked Ali if he had found anything out about the third intruder.