The Taliban Cricket Club

by Timeri N. Murari

  1. Marry Wahidi, if the plan doesn’t work, to save Jahan.

  2. Tell Veer.

  3. Commit suicide. Hundreds of Afghan women kill themselves to escape the purgatory of their lives.

  I removed my beard; I hated it now. It had become like a loathsome fungus on my face, sucking out my life, my identity, my very sex. I had put it on to amuse myself, and teach my cousins a game, and now it caged me. I had to escape it, one way or another.

  The Dropout

  I WOKE, WRETCHED WITH FEAR. IT HAD BEEN with me as I slept, dreaming now that Droon was killing Veer. He had to leave, at least then I’d know he too was safe and alive. I wanted to climb the stairs to Mother, lie beside her and ask her guidance. If only she could reach down from heaven and move us, like chess pieces, out of danger’s way.

  “Please, Maadar, look after us,” I prayed. “Take us all away to safety. I thought last night of giving myself to Wahidi to save Jahan. I don’t want to do that, it’s against your wishes, so please guide me in these days ahead.”

  I didn’t need to look in a mirror to note the dark circles under my eyes, but I tried to hide them with even darker makeup to match the rest of my face. The team assembled in the front hall had a funereal air. They were as immaculate as they could manage in their white shalwars, sneakers, and white pakols for their first match. I too was in white and feeling much worse, worrying that I would be picked out, even in a crowd. I would stay as close to my team as possible. Qubad had his arm in a sling.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  “Hurting.” He removed his arm from the sling, flexed it, and slipped it back in. “And I had d-dizzy spells too—”

  “Jahan told us we have a new player, Veer,” Parwaaze impatiently cut in.

  “Is he any good?” Namdar asked.

  “Will he win the match?” Daud wanted to know.

  “Can he get us out?” Atash demanded.

  “He’s a very good cricketer.” I did exaggerate a bit about Veer’s talent, never having seen him play. “He played for his university, but he can’t win these games all by himself. You too are good players, and I know how you are feeling. It’s in your faces. Don’t think of Droon at all because then you’ll try too hard and tense up. Stay calm. Just enjoy playing the game and you’ll win.”

  It was a warm day, with a clear blue sky and a slight breeze to cool us. When we went out, the police car slowly followed us up the road. We didn’t look back and, as usual, I remained in their center. They too were quiet and I didn’t want to waste any words until we reached the stadium. Veer would have to guide them once they were on the field, and I believed that he would have the talent and the ability to inspire them. We caught a taxi at Karte Seh Wat, and when we craned our heads back, we saw the police car trailing us.

  The first match was set to start at eleven and we reached the stadium by ten thirty to limber up and study the opposition. The stadium looked deserted when we stopped at the gate and got out. The police car pulled up behind and two bored-looking policemen climbed out to lean against it and light their cigarettes. They were poor men and I was certain they would accept a bribe to look the other way. There was also a battered olive green Jeep in the car park, and a tired-looking minibus parked beside it. It had a banner on its side that said AFGHAN STATE CRICKET TEAM. Veer, mopping his face with an old towel, hurried over to us trailed by his driver, Youseff, thickset and gray bearded. Veer was looking only for me among the youths; seeing me in the center he gave that beautiful, joyful smile. I returned it through the wretched beard. Jahan stepped between us before we could even formally shake hands.

  “Veer, I want you to meet the team.”

  With grave formality, Veer shook hands with each of them, touching his heart, as they also did when he let go, and I saw them eyeing him hopefully. They saw a tall man, supple still, with an easy smile and a balance in his movements that reassured them. He could play cricket; after all, he was an Indian and they all excelled at the game, like the Pakistanis.

  He finally shook mine, squeezing it, and I wanted to keep holding it and not let go. But there were watchers, and when I did let go, he placed his hand against his heart and held it there longer than he had for the boys.

  “I’ve been here since dawn, trying to get back into shape,” he said, dabbing his face again. “And I was waiting for you, desperate to see you.”

  “I knew you’d be here, and even if we can’t speak, I want to just look and look at you. You’ll know what I am thinking from my eyes, if not from my lips.”

  I would not think of anything else. These might be the last, most precious hours of my life. I wanted so much to be with him, forever. I couldn’t tell him now what I would have to do if our plan didn’t work. I would just vanish, a coward who couldn’t bear the pain of looking at his distraught face.

  He managed to slip in beside me and our hands touched and held as the team entered the grounds. The policemen shuffled along behind Youseff and us. Jahan moved to Veer’s other side.

  “Did your driver find someone to take the team?”

  “Yes. He has, but it’s going to be expensive. More money than I have on me, but I figure I can talk Youseff into giving me credit. The smuggler’s ready anytime. If we lose today, we’re all ready to move. Youseff will talk to the cops to sound them out. He’s an expert in bribery.”

  He pointedly looked at Youseff, who was drifting toward the two policemen. We saw him greet them courteously, offer them cigarettes, and settle down beside them. Apart from them, there were no Talib fighters with AK-47s, lounging against Cruisers, or religious police playing with those electric cables and caressing their guns. The quiet was innocently peaceful.

  There were three other teams already on the field. They stood, well separated, around the pitch. Standing apart from them were two official-looking men, one clutching a file, and in between them a tall khaareji. He wore a pale cream linen suit and an elegant straw hat a shade darker than his suit, a red-and-yellow-striped band around the brim. His tie was the same pattern as the hatband.

  “He’s a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club,” Veer muttered. “Not that anyone here will recognize that tie.”

  We moved to also stand near the pitch, keeping our distance from the others. I had thought there would be a few more teams. We had a fair sprinkling of spectators and we spotted our other cousins and friends, around fifteen to twenty of them, sitting together. The team waved and they returned the wave. The fans and supporters of the other teams were scattered around. I guessed that all in all we had a hundred or more spectators. If this had been a football match, the stadium would be packed; it was still the only other sport, and entertainment, permitted in this deprived country.

  One of the officials approached us first. He opened a file, plucked a pen from his top pocket, and was poised to write.

  “Your team name?”

  “Taliban Cricket Club,” Parwaaze announced.

  “Player names?” The official wrote our names, including Babur, without reacting to the team’s name. Parwaaze changed Veer’s name to Salar to blend in with the others.

  The official moved on to the others. The state team was the Afghan State Cricket Team. Without doubt, they were the smartest among us. They wore new white trousers, shirts buttoned to their wrists, white pakols on their heads, and new sneakers, while the others, like us, were in our white shalwars and ordinary shoes. Only some of us had sneakers.

  Azlam’s team was the Azlam Cricket Club and he was one player short. Deliberately, he removed the Rules of Cricket book from his pocket and waved it at Parwaaze. The fourth team was the Karta-i-Aryana Cricket Club, named after their suburb. They looked around them with uncertainty, as if not sure why they stood in the middle of a football field beside a bare strip of pitch.

  The official, a clerk in the ministry, an elderly man, addressed us, saying, “The man who has the keys to the dressing rooms hasn’t come today.” He pointed to the tunnel leading into the stadium’s interior. “He may
come tomorrow. Today, you change outside. I have noted your team names and the observer will pick which teams play against each other.” He looked down at his file. “Each side has ten overs.” He looked back to us, hoping we understood, even if he did not, that mysterious sentence. “In tomorrow’s final match each side has fifteen overs. The match starts at two P.M.”

  “Let’s look at this pitch,” Veer said to Parwaaze, and we moved together to stand beside it and pace its length.

  It was sixty-six feet long and ten feet wide, three new wickets were planted at both ends, and there were white chalk lines for the batting and bowling marks.

  “What do you think?” he asked me.

  “It will wear quickly since it’s not been rolled well,” I said and looked to Captain Parwaaze. “What will you do?”

  “Try to bat first,” he said, and checked with Veer, who nodded.

  “The ball will bounce badly.”

  The Englishman too came to inspect the pitch with the other official by his side, a younger man, neatly dressed in a blue shalwar, a black waistcoat, and a black turban. The Englishman looked at ease in these surroundings, as only one of an imperial race, whose blood had soaked this land more than a century ago, could. His confidence seemed to announce that he knew us from our past history and belonged here. He crouched and poked a knowledgeable finger into the pitch and looked back at his companion.

  “It’s going to break up,” he also pronounced. “We must send you one of our experts to help you lay a proper pitch. You’ll have to dig this up, then lay down gravel, then layers of clay, and sow good grass to bind it. I’m sure we can provide that too. And lots of water until the grass has grown, then mown to its correct length, and . . .”

  His companion nodded to each word and murmured, “Yes, yes,” as if he understood what the man was talking about, and looked doubtful that this would ever happen.

  The Englishman stood and looked at us as we edged nearer. “My name is Phillip Markwick and I’ve been sent by the International Cricket Council as an observer. We at the ICC are delighted that your government has applied for an associate membership. We will do everything possible to encourage cricket here, and we welcome every new nation that wants to learn this splendid game into the growing family of cricket-playing countries. Cricket today is played in more than eighty-nine countries, even in the United States of America.” He stopped to turn to his companion. “Do they understand English?”

  The other official looked across and saw mostly blank faces. “No.”

  “Pity, I thought they would have,” Markwick complained. “They do in India and Pakistan. Now please translate what I am saying.” Markwick turned back to us and began again. “My name is . . .”

  The translation was hesitant and the interpreter stumbled from the start over Markwick’s name and many more words, finally giving us just the gist of the speech.

  “As you all know,” Markwick continued when the interpreter stopped. “Your country is known as the graveyard of empires.” He laughed and drew smiles from the teams, though not all understood since the translator waited. “My great-grandfather is here in one of your graveyards, the British Cemetery in Kabul. A tribesman assassinated him in 1867. So, as you see, my family, among many other English ones, does have a long relationship with Afghanistan.”

  “I knew he’d say that,” I whispered to Veer.

  “Well, I won’t keep you from the game any longer.” Markwick went among us, shaking all our hands, murmuring his “good lucks.” “I’ll leave the ministry person to schedule the play.” He returned to his interpreter and we overheard him say, “I must visit my great-grandfather’s grave before I leave the country.”

  “It will be arranged for you tomorrow, sir.”

  The elderly official had written down the team names on strips of paper, folded them neatly, and jumbled them in his cupped palms. He approached Markwick and made his offering. Markwick picked out a slip, opened it, frowned, and passed it to his interpreter. It was written in Pashtu.

  “The Afghan State Cricket Team will play the first match against . . .”

  He waited for Markwick to draw another slip, and we held our breaths. We didn’t want to play them in the preliminary nor did the other two teams.

  I didn’t believe the state team would be better, except for their ringer. Through the grapevine we knew his name was Wasim Khan, a nephew of their coach, Imran, and he played for his college in Rawalpindi. He stood, relaxed, a cricket ball in his hand, looking over the opposition with a satisfied air.

  They were no competition for him, until he scanned us. He passed over Veer, and then returned to settle on him. Veer sensed someone watching and turned to see Wasim; a smile lifted both their mouths as they recognized each other’s nationalities and knew it would be another historical confrontation in this game between India and Pakistan. We would be spectators in their conflict.

  Markwick was pulling out another slip and passing it on.

  “ . . . the Karta-i-Aryana Cricket Club,” the official announced. “These two teams will play first. The Taliban Cricket Club will play the Azlam Cricket Club following this match.”

  “Now we can see how the Afghan state team plays,” Veer said to Parwaaze, who was still smiling in relief that we had to play his old nemesis Azlam.

  “We must beat Azlam,” he insisted. “We must thrash him.”

  Markwick waited for the two playing captains to stand in front of him, and then took a coin out of his pocket.

  “Call,” he said, ready to toss it, and waited for the interpreter to explain this little ritual to start the match.

  The Afghan State Cricket Team won the toss and decided to bat first.

  “Who’ll be the umpire with me?” Markwick asked no one in particular but from his tone demanded an answer.

  The Afghan team coach, in his tracksuit, stepped forward, and the two men walked out to the pitch to await the start of play. We expected, in the spirit of the game, the coach would be impartial in his judgments.

  Wasim and his teammates strode out, impressive in their clothes and equipment. We settled in the lowest stand, Veer next to me, our knees touching, to watch the match.

  “I still can’t believe you’re beside me,” he whispered.

  “I always was, even when we were apart.”

  His presence, and a sense of foreboding, distracted me.

  Our plans might not work and we will all be caught, including Veer.

  I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. Here was the simple pleasure of watching a game of cricket with Veer once more, and secretly wishing I was playing too.

  The Karta team was in shambles, trying to set their fielders in the right positions, changing their minds even before they bowled the first ball. It didn’t even bounce and Wasim took a step forward and hit it into the stands.

  “Oh, good shot,” Markwick said and clapped; though he was supposed to be the neutral umpire, he wanted to encourage the players. In cricket it was the normal, courteous way of showing a spectator’s appreciation. He was the only one to do it in the stadium but didn’t appear to notice the silence. He did it whenever he thought a player needed praise.

  Those in the stands shouted, “Khub, khub,” and waved their arms to show their approval. I thought that in a packed stadium in a football match there would be an unnerving hush after someone scored a goal. Apart from shouts of “Khub, gol” and a lot of hand waving and sad sighs from the losing fans, the matches were watched in silence.

  We had to get Jahan out, the cops must take the bribe.

  Wasim hit the other five balls in the over too. But the other batsman wasn’t so confident, and trying to imitate Wasim hit a catch and was out, much to the delight of the fielding side.

  “Wasim’s good,” Namdar said, looking dejected as once more Wasim hit the ball with ease.

  “That’s because the bowling’s bad,” I said to cheer him up. “We have Veer, and Omaid is going to be our secret weapon.”

  The
ten overs passed quickly. Sadly, the Karta team couldn’t check the runs, and the Afghan team, Wasim mostly, scored seventy-five runs. It didn’t take Wasim long to run through the Karta batting with his bowling, even if only two overs by the rules, he took six wickets. They were out for fifteen runs.

  “He bowls a very good line,” Veer said. “Straight at the wicket.”

  Parwaaze and Azlam looked belligerently at each other when Markwick tossed the coin. Azlam called and won and, taking his cue from the Afghan side, decided to bat first. But before he left, he slid the Rules of Cricket book out of his shalwar and held it out like a gift to Markwick. Droon had given him our confiscated book.

  “Please . . . please,” he said, fawning, half in obeisance.

  “The Rules of Cricket, published by my club.” Markwick was delighted and took it.

  Azlam spoke to the interpreter. “I want him to sign the book for me. I will treasure it all my life with his name in it.”

  “He’s an expert in bribery too,” Veer said sardonically.

  “Of course I will,” Markwick said when he was told, and signed it with a flourish, saying to Azlam, “With the best wishes from the MCC to Azlam.”

  I remained close by Qubad, sitting on the grass, as our team went to field. Wasim stood a few feet away, waiting to see Veer play. Parwaaze consulted with Veer in placing his fielders. They had decided to have Namdar bowl first.

  I cannot leave Jahan behind here, they will kill or imprison him.

  Azlam and his partner went in. In the way he prepared himself, it was obvious Azlam had not read the cricket book. Just possessing it, and depriving Parwaaze of it, was his only strategy. He held the bat like a club; he was going to hit the ball as hard as he could. Namdar ran up to bowl and Azlam did connect; though the ball didn’t reach the stands, they made two runs.