The Taliban Cricket Club

by Timeri N. Murari

  I nodded and swallowed, holding back the tears—it had been such a long day.

  “I wrote to him two weeks ago,” I said. “I don’t know what’s taking him so long to reply. He said he was starting a new job in a bank, so maybe that’s keeping him busy. I suppose it takes time for the papers to be prepared. I will write again.”

  “And this time ask him to send us the name of the smuggler who helped him. He must send enough to pay those expenses.”

  “How much will that be?”

  “I don’t know. But we must find one so you’ll be ready to leave.”

  Shaheen had left nearly one year ago. We were not officially engaged, as I had delayed the ceremony. But our families wanted this alliance and he believed in tradition. I had postponed our engagement three times, much to my family’s exasperation. First for work, and then to wait for my parents to return from Delhi. But I couldn’t do anything when Mother was diagnosed with cancer. Still, there was another, more desperate reason I never admitted even to myself—I was still in love with another.

  Before he’d left Kabul Shaheen sent a note and I passed it around to the rest of the family in silence. The handwriting was neat, even prim.

  Dear Rukhsana,

  Forgive me for this hurried note. I have just learned from my father that within the hour we will be leaving Kabul for good. If I had been told earlier, I would have come to see you and tell you that no matter how far we go, I will be waiting for you to join me in America. You must leave too, as soon as you can, to meet me, as it is now too dangerous to live in this country for people like us. I wait only to see you and then we will marry.

  Affectionately,

  Shaheen

  The note had taken me by surprise. Even if he’d had only an hour, he could have hurried over to say his good-byes. Probably, his father had stopped him in case he told me their secret plans to escape, and Shaheen was an obedient son. There were UN sanctions against international flights out of Afghanistan, apart from infrequent ones permitted to Dubai, China, and Karachi. To get on one of those the passenger needed an official clearance, and his family would not have been given permission to fly out of the country. The smuggler would have taken them by road into Pakistan, bribing border guards to let them through, and then helped them get their visas from the U.S. embassy.

  Without Shaheen’s help and sponsorship, I could find a way out of my country, but be denied entry into another. I would be destined to drift around the peripheries of those nations, like a lost soul seeking a final resting place. Whichever way I did it, it would cost money. Or I might not make it out of Afghanistan at all.

  Writing the Letter

  I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING STILL SMILING FROM a dream in which I was floating high above my mountain walls, looking down on their peaks, and then Jahan joined me and we held hands, laughing at the sensation of flying.

  Of course, when the time came, I would be very earthbound, with a smuggler, in the company of others fleeing our native land. I could be the lone woman and that made me afraid. I had heard that, apart from the bribe, the border guards would also demand a woman’s body for their quick use, and to refuse them was to be denied passage. I imagined the journey from what I had heard through whispers—an old Land Cruiser packed with people, traveling at night, hiding in houses during the day, fearing every moment that the smuggler would abandon us in unknown terrain, among hostile strangers. Worse. He would betray us, turn us over to the Taliban who would beat and then execute us for our crime.

  I dressed quickly to escape my thoughts and went down to make our breakfast. I took the tray upstairs and set it on the bed. Mother had a surprisingly good appetite and finished the pilau and all of her meat. I gave her the usual medications and she swallowed them obediently, making a face, then settled back to doze.

  “I’d better go to the market and shop,” Jahan said as I came downstairs.

  “Send Abdul.”

  “No, I need a walk. And some money.”

  We went into Father’s study where we kept our money. It was also the family library. The shutters were always closed, so the room was dark, and we always felt that we were entering a sacred place. It was a room of memories, and our shrine to him. We lit the lamp and the glow nudged the darkness to the corners of the room. The papers and files on Father’s desk were still in a neat stack. I loved the dark red rosewood desk, with its wide border of inlaid mother-of-pearl. There were three drawers on either side, with a wide drawer in the center. Father teased me that the desk also had a secret drawer and, though I searched and searched, I never discovered it. Jahan also searched when he was old enough, but the drawer was hidden in Father’s imagination. On a side table was Father’s prayer rug, a Cowdani. The center design was a geometric mihrab, the arched doorway to Mecca. Inside it, the weaver had woven an abstract tree of life; the knotting was so fine that the carpet could be crumpled like a piece of cloth. Its main colors were purple, shades of peach, and a mellow light green. Father had inherited the rug from his grandfather. Now, it was Jahan’s.

  Out of the gloom, the telephone shrieked once and I hurried to pick it up. “Salaam aleikum,” I shouted into the phone. I heard a voice, a woman’s I thought, lost in a snowstorm and I couldn’t decipher a word. “Salaam aleikum . . .”

  The phone died in my hand.

  “Who was it?”

  “Someone lost in the Hindu Kush,” I said, teasing at my lower lip.

  “Could it be Shaheen? Why don’t you try calling him?”

  I dialed his number and only heard the familiar long hum of the ether. I disconnected and hit redial, again and again. I had tried many times before. Either the phone never connected or else it rang and no one picked up. Shaheen had called two weeks back and we had shouted our “Hello, I’m fine, how are you?” He started to say, “I wanted to talk to you, Rukhsana . . .” But before we got further, the line disconnected. I waited for him to call again, and when he didn’t, I wrote him a letter asking him what he had wanted to tell me. Probably my travel plans.

  Once, the connection had lasted a full two minutes when my old friend Nargis called from Delhi. She was home on her vacation from Caltech, she was working on her doctorate, and she’d met a boy. I contributed little from my restricted life. And then the fatal disconnection before she could tell me what I really wanted to hear.

  I dropped the receiver. It had worked for years, but now, like an arbitrary censor, it would only allow a friend or a relative to slip through a few sentences before it was silenced again. Hearing from them in fragments made missing them worse. I moved away from the phone. On a side table was our collection of family photographs in silver frames.

  I picked up a photo of the four of us standing in Parki-Shahr-e-Naw, posed against rosebushes. Father had his arms around Jahan and me. I felt the grip of his strong hand on my left shoulder still, pulling me closer to him. Father and Jahan had smiles on their faces. Mother and I smiled too but you could not see our faces under the burkas. We were just two anonymous women in the company of men. How sad not to be able to see my own happiness, and my mother’s, in this memory of us together.

  IT WAS NOW NEARLY a year since my father and my grandparents died.

  Grandfather had finally determined that we should all leave the country, but he needed to say good-bye to his son, Uncle Koshan, in Mazar-e-Sharif. Father went with my grandparents but Mother had refused. There was friction between her and Koshan’s wife, Zabya. The sisters-in-law had always studiously avoided each other at any large family gathering.

  They left early in the morning, when the light was still gentle, and carried enough food to last them a week. Mother and I watched from the top balcony, while Jahan stood on the road, waving good-bye as the Nissan pulled away.

  Four days later, someone hammering on the gate, and urgently calling out, woke us early in the morning. We heard Abdul wake and shout to the person to stop the banging.

  An elderly man, disheveled from a long journey, his face fearful with bad new
s, waited on the steps for us.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he burst out in a long, rehearsed message. “Koshan sent me; I am Muneer, his servant.” He looked at Mother. “Your shauhar, Gulab, and his padar and maadar have died. Three days ago, we received the news that their motorcar hit a land mine and they were killed. My master, Koshan, tried to telephone for two days but he could not reach you. I was sent by bus.” He bowed low. “Forgive me.”

  For a long moment, we stood stiff and silent. I held tightly to Mother as she released a moan that became a scream of pain. I reached for Jahan, who stood at the door staring at the messenger, not yet believing him. I felt the emptying of my heart. We held on to each other and wept against each other’s shoulders, heaving in pain.

  “We will go to Mazar-e-Sharif for the funeral immediately,” Jahan finally said, taking charge.

  “It has been performed already,” the messenger replied, and it set us weeping again, realizing we wouldn’t even be allowed to see for a last time the faces of the family we loved. “It could not wait, as they had been dead already for two days. My master, Koshan, washed his father’s and brother’s bodies, and my mistress washed his mother’s. The mullah performed the prayers.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “They were not . . . whole. They are buried in the cemetery beside their ancestors. May peace be upon them.”

  He walked slowly back to the gate. Abdul had heard the news and he too wept as he let the man out.

  We closed the door, shutting out the world, shutting ourselves in to weep and mourn for our family. Mother could barely stand, and I helped her to her bed, where she collapsed and, keening, turned her face to the pillow on which her husband had once rested his head. Jahan and I sat with her, weeping too, clutching our mother, clutching each other as if had we let go, we too would vanish. We mourned for two days, barely speaking, too numb for anything beyond tears and cries of pain. All our female relations came to weep and condole with us. The men remained outside in the garden, where Jahan received them. On the third day after hearing the news, Jahan led them to the mosque, where he performed the funeral rites for our loved ones so that peace would be on them. Mother and the other women and I waited in a hall outside the mosque. On the first Friday after this, we remained at home to receive all our relatives to remember the dead and we served an elaborate lunch. For the three following days, Jahan recieved more than five hundred mourners who came to pay their respects to our grandfather and father.

  On the fortieth day, the whole family gathered in the house for the final prayers for the dead and served a huge feast.

  My tears had long since dried, and I couldn’t weep anymore when summer came, warm and dusty. Mother continued to grieve—she was weak, and the cancer, beaten back three years before with chemotherapy and radiation, returned. It had hidden in her body like a sniper waiting to ambush her. The pain had been mild at first, but Dr. Hanifa had taken Mother to the hospital anyway. But there was no oncologist there to verify Dr. Hanifa’s diagnosis or prescribe further treatment. Nor were there surgeons, or anesthesiologists, or cardiologists. Only a handful of nurses remained. The hospital had lost most of its staff, an exodus of healers gone across the borders to heal other lives. Mother would die soon, of a “natural” death.

  BEHIND FATHER’S DESK WAS an iron safe about twenty inches high and twenty across and deep enough to hold files and other precious belongings. The key was hidden behind Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I counted out enough Afghanis for Jahan’s shopping.

  “What do we need?” he asked.

  “Flour, onions, tomatoes, a chicken, and whatever vegetables are available for Maadar to make her quorma. And naan.” As I told him, I realized I desperately wanted to go with him to the bazaar, to immerse myself in its sounds and smells, the jostle of people, just to get out of the house. I would touch and smell each tomato to find the best ones, check that the naan was fresh and warm from the oven, haggle, through Jahan, over the price of a few ounces of meat and win the contest, to the shopkeeper’s resigned chagrin, look up and feel the sun warm my face.

  “And you,” Jahan said, “you must write that letter to Shaheen. Don’t worry about me or Maadar, just write it so that you are ready. There is no harm in that.”

  “And you come straight back. Don’t fool around, and be very careful.” He made his usual face and rolled his eyes when I tried to give him instructions. “I’m serious. You know Maadar and I will worry until you’re home. Anything can happen out there.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said with the nonchalance of a sixteen-year-old, and closed the door. There was always such a thud of finality in that sound, which frightened me.

  I stood by the door and watched him walk down the steps to the gate, exchange a few words with Abdul, and step out. He waved, without looking back, knowing I watched, pretending to be unafraid to reassure me that nothing would happen to him.

  I went to my room to compose the letter to Shaheen.

  My dear Shaheen,

  I paused. Could I simply say, “Please hurry up and send for me, as I want to leave the country”? I sat for half an hour trying to compose the letter—I wanted to be kind even though I was not in love. He was my future husband, alloted to me by our families, and I had to accept him. I would learn to live with him all my life, like a habit I couldn’t shake off.

  My dear Shaheen, I miss you very much. These are the loneliest days of my life and I wish you were near to comfort us. Mother was once such a support, but her illness has progressed and robbed her of her energy. Jahan is a wonderful brother but still a child, and the burden of being the head of a household at my age is sometimes too much for me.

  I heard Jahan return. The door made a much more welcoming sound now. Jahan came in and sat beside me, glancing at the computer screen of my laptop. The bag held a few vegetables, some scrappy pieces of chicken. He had also bought the anemic four-page Kabul Daily. The “news” stories were government announcements and the advertisements were government tenders for bids to repair our roads and small boxes for “burkas from the finest material.” Yasir’s report was on the back page. He had written Wahidi’s cricket announcement word for word, without a comment, and made no mention of the executions.

  “The Dari and Pashtu papers have exactly the same wording,” Jahan said. “I saw Parwaaze and he’d read it too. Some others who saw the story told him they were going to learn cricket to get a free trip to Pakistan. And probably, like us, apply for visas to the U.S. or Australia or England, and fly away, if they have the money. Some just want to learn the game and play for Afghanistan. Parwaaze wants to start today, and not waste any time. Where’s the bat and ball?”

  “In the basement.”

  The stairs led to a landing and then a U-turn down to the basement. Below them was a dark well. We turned right in the corridor and opened the last door, into a back room. In the dusty, gloomy room, we sneezed as we waded through the detritus of our lives. It was crammed with suitcases, cartons, broken chairs and tables. Jahan hauled out an old bat from behind some discarded lamps. It was dusty but in good enough condition. There were also two balls, almost black with use but still with a good shape.

  “What else do we need?”

  “Pads,” I said. “And gloves—they’re in my trunk.” I had hoped that one day, years from now, far away from the ache I still felt at the thought of my time there, I would be able to unpack the trunk. I hoped as I aged that I could take out those old possessions and memorabilia, and tell my children stories about them. I would touch them, and friends and places would spring alive, like beautiful flowers, from dusty corners of my mind.

  He looked around and saw it pushed to a far corner. I looked at the metal trunk, wishing suddenly I had never brought it from Delhi. It was too early for that journey back, and now too late to regret that other life.

  I had left Delhi three years and four months ago, but seeing the trunk, it suddenly felt as if it were just yesterday. I hadn’t realized that teaching the g
ame would rekindle so many memories and feelings. They were intertwined and inseparable. What lay buried in the trunk now were the memories of my days of freedom, the joy of being in love. Even the stale and musty air inside it would remind me of what I had lost, forever. And there was no one to blame except myself.

  I followed as Jahan dragged the trunk into the dim cellar corridor, breathless from the sense of loss. “It’s locked and I’ve lost the key,” I said desperately, and turned away from the trunk, hoping at that moment that it would vanish. “We don’t need it, Jahan. We can improvise. I can draw what pads look like and get them made . . .”

  “I know where it is,” he said, not registering my distress, and hurried upstairs.

  The Basement

  JAHAN RETURNED, SMILING TRIUMPHANTLY, KNELT by the trunk, inserted the key, and with a quick twist unlocked it. The lid yawned open like the jaws of a beast waiting to devour me, and I could almost smell the sultry breath of Delhi exhale in relief.

  My past was in layers, like an archaeological strata of secrets. On top were books, and the articles I had written as a foreign intern with the Hindustan Times. A patina of fine dust covered them and Jahan impatiently brushed it away. Below were other artifacts—photo albums, letters from friends, postcards of places I’d visited, even movie theater tickets. There were also VHS tapes of films I had wanted to watch again, in French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, that I could not bear to give up even though owning them was against the law. Next was my music—I didn’t even want to see what I had enjoyed listening to while I worked at my desk at home in Delhi. Jahan exhumed the photo albums with their shiny red covers. He flipped one open and stopped to look at the photo of us at our house in Delhi, a happy family. We ached at seeing Father and Mother smiling, his arm around her shoulders.

  AT SEVENTEEN, SEVEN YEARS ago, in 1993, I flew to Delhi. Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the United National Front, was our president, the Russians had retreated five years earlier, and there was a new army called the Taliban rising out of Kandahar. I was traveling alone, coiled tight with excitement. I flew over the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush, their peaks as savage as incisors, and deep, dark valleys that filled the horizon as far as I could see. I could not imagine how tiny man could have discovered the narrow passages through such a wall of ice and black rock. Below was a thousand years of history. My nose was pressed to the window, and I was imagining camel caravans, loaded with silks and spices, and medieval armies shuttling back and forth between Kabul and Delhi with pendulum regularity along the fabled Grand Trunk Road. Like Kabul, commerce and blood nourished Delhi’s foundations.