The Taliban Cricket Club

by Timeri N. Murari

  I peered down at Delhi as the plane circled to land. I knew there was the “New” Delhi, built by the British, but the old ones, seven empires in all, still lay visible just below the surface. It was a huge city, flat as a table, flooding to the horizon and beyond. I caught glimpses of great tombs and mosques, broken fortress walls, glittering glass palaces, the round parliament house, garden homes, large swaths of parks, and wide avenues running from north to south and east to west, filled with traffic. Nearly seven million people lived below me, a third of Afghanistan’s total population. I believed I would never find my way around such a maze of streets, houses, monuments, and parks. The Yamuna, a silver rope twisting through the landscape, was wider even than the Kabul River.

  I instinctively searched for recent ruins, the blackened corpses of damaged buildings that my eyes had grown so accustomed to during the Russian occupation. But the city looked complacent and whole, smug in its sense of security in the evening light. The citizens lived their daily lives without the haunting specter of sudden death. I felt envious of such a peaceful existence.

  When the plane landed at Indira Gandhi Airport, my father, using his diplomatic passport, met me at the immigration desk. He was half a head taller than those around him, a handsome man, clean shaven, immaculate in a suit and tie befitting Afghanistan’s deputy ambassador to the Republic of India. I laughed and waved at him from my place in the queue. We hadn’t seen each other for nearly a year. When I crossed the barrier he swept me into his arms, and we both laughed with happiness. I loved him so much.

  “A good flight?”

  “Delayed two hours, as you know, sitting in the plane the whole time, waiting for the gunfire to die down. And my case is filled with plums, walnuts, dried fruits, pomegranates, as Padar-kalaan thinks India won’t have any of them.” I laughed as he hauled my case off the carousel. “I had no room for my clothes but Maadar-kalaan said I should buy them here so I will be in fashion when I go to university.”

  “That’s what your maadar wants to do. Any excuse to go shopping. You have only two days before classes start.”

  I was the first woman in our family to study in a foreign university, breaking a long family legacy at Kabul University. Father had done his master’s at Durham University in England and that had shaped his thinking.

  Shaheen, in his final year at Kabul University, was unhappy that I had chosen Delhi. He had written a note, in his precise handwriting.

  My dear Rukhsana,

  It will feel strange not having you living close by. I have to ask you: why not Kabul U? It is as good as Delhi, and I am surprised that you have decided to study journalism there. It is not a woman’s profession. I would have thought a subject more appropriate would be home science, geography, or, like your mother, English literature, with hopes of a secure position as a lecturer in Kabul U. I’ll soon graduate and begin work in my father’s business, which I look forward to very much in preparation for our life ahead. I will miss you.

  Affectionately,

  Shaheen

  Shaheen had once declared that the reason he was so drawn to me was the sense of mischief in my eyes. I remembered that until I was ten or eleven, we had grown in unison, and then he had outpaced me in height. He was nearly six feet as a teenager, a handsome young man but still a solemn one and careful with his life. An element of shyness had entered our lives along with adolescence, as we foresaw our future betrothal and remained respectful of each other. We no longer hugged or spoke but revealed our thoughts through our eyes and other features: a wink, a quick smile, a raised eyebrow, a twitch of the nose. We communicated like actors in silent movies. Though we did not see each other except at family ceremonies, he wanted me to remain within the confines of his city and my home, and not across mountains and borders. I had replied:

  Dear Shaheen,

  Thank you for your sweet letter. I thought it was understood that, as Padar is posted to Delhi, I wanted to be with my parents, since I missed them over the last few months of my final year in school. I did think of following Maadar into academia, even in English literature, as she taught me so much, but I couldn’t see myself as a professor of any sort. I had also considered studying law and following my padar-kalaan into practice. But to debate in a court of law intimidated me. I am not a good public speaker. In school, I enjoyed writing poetry, but I also enjoyed writing essays for homework and took great delight in research and discovering new facets of the assigned subject. And so, after discussing it with my parents, I decided on journalism, the fourth estate in governing, and thought I could contribute to other Afghans something of an understanding of our country.

  Affectionately,

  Rukhsana

  On the drive to our house, I watched the city streaming past the car, marveling at the width of the roads, the bright lights illuminating them, the houses, the cars, the buses. It was evening, yet the traffic hadn’t abated and the city was raucous with life. I was a villager arriving in a metropolis and everything was exciting, strange, exotic, and intimidating and threatening, all at the same time. By this time in Kabul, a menacing silence would be wrapping around the city and we would lock and bar our doors and windows to protect us from roaming gunmen searching for loot.

  I was excited to see my new home, a ground-floor apartment in New Friends Colony, and a half hour’s drive from the Afghan embassy on Shanti Path in Chanakyapuri. Mother and nine-year-old Jahan, showing off his Montessori school uniform, waited to embrace me. My room, next to Jahan’s, was sparsely furnished—a single bed, a cupboard, a table and chair for my studies—but I felt instantly comfortable in it even though the walls were bare. I would decorate it to my taste. Jahan showed me around with the assurance of a real estate agent, opening and closing the doors.

  Most of all, I loved the lawn and garden in front of the house, with its line of mango and peepal trees against the front wall to protect us from the brutal sun. I wished I could grow high enough to caress these treetops and clapped my hands, delighted at the sight of so many birds in them. There were crows, parrots, mynahs, koels, and pigeons in this open aviary. High above, kites circled endlessly in ascending and descending spirals. From somewhere distant, I heard a strange call.

  “What is that?”

  “A peacock in the park,” Jahan boasted. “It’s very beautiful, a thousand colors, but it can’t fly far. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He led me out of our compound and down the street to the park a hundred meters away. At this time of the day, it was deserted and I looked around nervously and that made Jahan laugh.

  “It’s safe here.”

  He searched the trees until he saw the peacock. He was happy to hear my gasp on seeing it.

  “It really is the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen,” I said and, satisfied, Jahan led me back home.

  That night, I sat on my bed and found myself listening to the quiet, turning my head from side to side like a wary animal uneasy in its new surroundings. The quiet emptied my mind of thoughts. I knew I would soon learn to love it.

  In the morning, Father took me to Kalindi College, in East Patel Nagar, to help me register for classes. The college, with its pink sandstone walls, archways, and pillars, reminded me of a fortress. Girls and their parents besieged the administrative building, queuing at the different windows—B.A., B.Sc., B.Com. Father and I joined the line at the “Journalism” window where a woman behind it, like a booking clerk, checked my application, stamped it, and then took the check from Father for the first year’s fees. I found myself wondering if the walls would withstand rocket fire, and I felt infinitely older than the other girls milling about and meeting their professors. They seemed carelessly, blithely unaware of any danger, like children in a fairground.

  On my first day of classes, I felt as if I was at the center of a merry-go-round of bright colors and babbling voices, and for the first time I experienced a deep sense of isolation. Some girls knew each other from their school days, and hugged and laughed, chattering away. I w
anted to turn and run, but I also wanted someone to acknowledge that I was there among them, an Afghan girl starting in this college. I smiled at every girl I passed, hopeful that someone would see it as an invitation to friendship. Some returned them; the elder ones passed me as if I didn’t exist. At least in that sense, it didn’t matter where you were from—seniors were not interested in freshmen.

  I had English literature in the afternoon, and I sat in the second row, next to a girl who sprawled in her seat, drowsing in the heat. She wore faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. On the floor between us was a kit bag with a cricket bat handle sticking out. At last, seeing something so familiar, my whole face lit up, and she saw it. The girl was beautiful, with a straight profile, light brown skin, high cheekbones, and languid eyes. She had short hair, cut almost to a young man’s length. She returned a wide grin.

  “I saw you at registration,” she said. “You’re impossible to miss, you’re so tall—and you really are very fair.” Then she laughed at herself. “Isn’t that a typical Indian remark? We always talk about our color. Are you from Kashmir?”

  “Afghanistan.”

  “Cool, that’s really cool. From what I’ve read, it sounds like a scary place. I don’t know how you survive there.”

  “Just barely,” I said. It was the first time I ever heard a person use the word “cool”—I liked the sound of it. “You play cricket?”

  “Have to,” she said. “Father loves cricket and we had to learn it as kids. So I got quite good at it. You don’t play it in Afghanistan, do you?”

  “No, but I learned to play it a little.”

  “You did?” The girl straightened. “That’s awesome. We’re starting practice after this class. You have to join the team.”

  “I’ve never played with a team,” I said, panicked. “I just know a little bit of bowling and batting.”

  “That’s all you need to know.” She stuck out her hand. “Nargis.”

  “Rukhsana,” I said, taking the hand. “But I don’t have any clothes, and I have to go home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “New Friends Colony.”

  “No problem. I’ll drop you at home after practice. The shalwar is fine for the first day, and we’ll find shoes for you.” Her tone and voice made it impossible to disagree.

  After class, I trailed Nargis to the cricket field.

  And there, for the first time, I saw the pitch in the center of the grassy oval field. I wanted to run over and brush with my hand the closely mown surface, sixty-six feet in length and ten feet across, from every angle. For a batsman it was a long walk from the pavilion and seemed much longer back if he was caught out on the first ball. Off the field, in a corner, were four practice pitches, each one with netting on either side. Beside them, eight other girls were gathered around a slim, elderly man with a sad mustache and dressed in a faded blue tracksuit. He was studying his team glumly and turned when he heard us approach. His eyes settled on us appreciatively, as if we were contestants in a beauty contest and he had a couple of winners. One of the women, wearing a tracksuit that had seen better days, came to meet us; she was a little older than we were, with a square face and short-cut hair. She had a confident bounce in her step.

  “I’m Gayatri, the captain,” she said. “Have you come to try out for the team?”

  “Yes, I’m Nargis.”

  “Rukhsana,” I said.

  “Which are you better at? Batting or bowling?” she asked Nargis.

  “Bowling. Medium pace. But I can bat too, usually lower down the order.” Gayatri waited for me to reply too, but Nargis spoke up for me: “Rukhsana knows about cricket but hasn’t played with a team. She’s from Kabul.”

  “Afghans don’t play cricket,” the coach, Sharma, snorted. He had a surprisingly deep voice for a thin man and he smoked incessantly. “They don’t even know the game.”

  “We’ll give you a tryout,” Gayatri said, rolling her eyes at her coach.

  “I’m a slow bowler and spin off-breaks pretty well,” I said firmly. “But I haven’t had much batting practice.”

  Gayatri then introduced us to the other girls. They stepped forward, shook hands, and told me their names—Lakshmi, Hemala, Padmini—all strange to my ears, and I repeated each name to myself, hoping I would say it correctly. At least Masooda was familiar—I knew one from home. Gayatri then tossed me a ball. I polished the red leather, faded and pitted, with a little stitching coming apart. I flexed my right arm, winding it around like a windmill to loosen my muscles, and felt all eyes on me as I walked to the bowling crease. Gayatri, wearing pads, took her stance at the batting crease.

  “Just relax,” Nargis whispered, jogging up alongside. “I want you on the team with me.”

  “You’re sure you’ll be chosen?”

  “I’m an old pro,” Nargis said, grinning. “I captained my school team.”

  My first two balls were wide, and bounced only halfway down the pitch, but now I was determined to join this team too and not disappoint Nargis. I couldn’t believe that I finally had a chance to play for a cricket team and I couldn’t let this chance slip away. My days of lonely practice were rewarded. My third and fourth balls were straighter, my fifth bounced just at the right spot and turned slightly. I knew the secret of a good bowler was in the rhythm of the run-up and delivery. As I kept bowling, I found that rhythm, a five-pace slow run, a turn of the body, the right arm arcing up and releasing the ball at the top of the arc, and then the follow-through.

  “Flight it more,” Sharma said. I learned later that he had played for Punjab state and once nearly made the Indian test team. He was still bitter about it, and being reduced to coaching women did not help his attitude.

  It was my turn to bat then. “Bat straight, Rukhsana, your foot nearer the pitch of the ball, your head must remain still,” he shouted, and I was immediately flustered. But then I concentrated on his instructions and found another rhythm here too. If Sharma was critical, he was also quick to encourage. “That’s better, play the line of the ball, keep the bat straight, and follow through.”

  “No one will believe I have an Afghan girl on the team,” Sharma said grudgingly after practice. Nargis elbowed me playfully in the ribs.

  When Nargis and I got in her car, I realized that afternoon had become evening. “You’ll have to explain to my mother where we’ve been,” I said in a panic.

  “No problem,” Nargis said. “You have a curfew?”

  “She’s nervous about what might happen to me in the big city.”

  “She’s right, you know. As a journalist you’ll have to get out alone, interview real bastards,” Nargis said as she drove recklessly in her battered Maruti 8, overtaking other cars with a blast of her horn as if it would magically clear a gap in the traffic. She glanced at me. “Any boyfriend back home?”

  “Yes. We are supposed to marry one day. He introduced me to cricket, actually.”

  “You sure sound enthusiastic.” Nargis laughed.

  “And you?” I said, ignoring her.

  “Nope. Let’s see what the big bad city has to offer. Yours is arranged from the sound of it.”

  “Yes, parents pushing us together.”

  “I’ve already said, ‘No way, Mom. I’ll screw up my life on my own.’ ”

  BACK IN OUR BASEMENT in Kabul, Jahan turned the pages of the album and stopped at a picture of eleven women, all in our whites, laughing and posing after having won the intercollegiate cricket trophy. There was Sharmila, Lakshmi, Nargis, Aruna, Gayatri . . . and I was in the center, standing in the back row. The photographs had a faint purple sheen; even as memories fade, so do the bright colors of the images captured with a click. There was another photograph of me alone, padded up, gloves on, leaning nonchalantly against my bat as if I was a professional cricketer. I wondered where all those young women were now. Did they wonder what had happened to me? They would be in mid-career in Delhi, New York, Paris, and Mumbai. Lakshmi and Gayatri had corresponded with me for a w
hile after college. I knew about Gayatri’s job with Citibank and her marriage. I knew Lakshmi had gone to Harvard for her M.B.A., while Nargis, at Caltech, was working on a doctorate in geology. They would have photographs too, buried deep under the business of their lives, while mine were easily brought to light, little else of note having happened since those faraway days.

  The Way We Were

  “CLOSE IT,” I TOLD JAHAN. BUT HE KEPT TURNING the pages of my photo album. Me, with a gang of us, five girls and one man.

  “Who’s the man next to you? He’s smiling at you.”

  I peered at the photograph. The man, half a head taller than me, casual, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, a camera hanging from his neck, was smiling.

  I flushed and ached at seeing him. Where was he now? “I think his name’s . . . Veer? . . . Yes, it’s Veer . . . and he’s the brother of”—I stabbed a finger at the girl standing next to him to deflect his attention—“Nargis. We all hung out together. We went to movies, sat around cafes having coffees, went to cricket matches, had a few classes together.

  “Come on, Jahan, let’s go. Our cousins will be here soon.”

  But Jahan turned more pages, studying each photograph, paying no attention to me.

  AT THE END OF the cricket season, Nargis invited the team to her house for dinner.