“Sikander?” he asked. “You’re proposing to get married to Rabia, and that would certainly be a blessed match, but you haven’t discussed this with your parents. It doesn’t seem right that you’d take such a step without their approval.”
“I know, I know.” Assuming a worried look, Sikander directed extra attention to his gun, avoiding eye contact with his mentor. He paused for a moment before asking, “Brother Abdul Latif, if I’m making decisions about taking other lives in a time of war, shouldn’t I be allowed to make a decision about my own?”
“Hm!” Abdul Latif smiled. “Well, I’m not sure it’s that simple. I mean, I certainly understand what you’re saying, but are you simply reflecting the inconvenience of asking your parents or do you truly feel there’s no need? Wouldn’t you also be making a decision about their lives? Or are you so divorced from them that it doesn’t matter?”
“Brother Abdul Latif, I’m sure they respect my judgment. They’ve been supportive of what I’m doing here, so—”
“We still have supply runs between here and Peshawar. I can arrange for a letter to get to your parents if you wish. I can even arrange it so that they can get one back to you. Do you want me to do that, Sikander?”
Hesitantly, Sikander acknowledged that this was probably not a bad idea. He might have been wise beyond his years but hormones were hormones and it wasn’t easy to overcome the urge to proceed headlong toward a legitimate union with Rabia.
“W’Allahi!” proclaimed Abdul Latif. “I’ll arrange it then. The whole thing will probably take no more than a couple of weeks. Can you, um…wait that long?”
Sikander’s looked up, embarrassed, as the smirk on Abdul Latif’s face quickly spread into his signature grin.
A couple of days later, some men were about to leave for Peshawar to sell captured weapons and return with a variety of supplies. Sikander’s letter was already written. Along with inquiries as to everyone’s wellbeing, Sikander wrote about the family in Laghar Juy, his wish to marry Rabia, and his desire for his parents’ permission and blessings.
Less than two weeks later, the response came. Expectantly, Sikander read:
Dear Sikander Bettha,
Assalaamu ‘alaykum! We are all well here and our hopes and prayers are that Almighty Allah continues to deliver good health and protection to you.
We received your letter, which came to us from a Pakistan Army captain who said some Afghans that had come from the village where you are, had delivered it. He would not name the location but that doesn’t matter right now.
Sikander, we will not have the opportunity to talk to you in depth, but we are grateful to Allah for allowing this way of reaching you on this occasion. As your father, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that I unleashed my frustrations on you when I did. Please know that when you left, it upset us very much. We were so worried we called the police. It didn’t do much good and it seemed all our lives had come to an abrupt end. A few days later, however, at about the time we learned you were going to fight in the path of Allah, we found that our problems were becoming almost too easy to solve and before long we were given a large piece of business by the Pakistan Army. They even made advance payments, which greatly helped our situation, alhamdulillah!
That change in our fortunes has continued, by the grace of Allah, and we believe that your choice to fight fi-sabeelillah is the reason.
Looking up from the letter, Sikander smiled and shook his head, muttering “Junaid!” before continuing.
So you have found someone you want to marry. As Allah has seen fit to send you in his path to fight, we must believe that it is his will that you should meet such a girl. Sikander, we’re impressed with your commitment, and know you must be in the company of equally committed people who are willing to risk their lives fi-sabeelillah.
We trust completely in Almighty Allah and your mother and I give you our wholehearted blessings. As a token of this, we have put together some things and are sending them with the captain, who promised to send them along to you. We hope everyone will be pleased with our gifts.
Our prayers are with you, Sikander. Do what Allah guides you toward and do it with honesty. We pray you will be with us again and that we can also meet our new daughter-in-law very soon. We love you, bettha!
Allah Hafiz,
Your ever-loving father and mother
Sikander dropped the letter on his lap. He was elated. It was more than simply the permission he had received. The family’s situation had finally abated, and better fortune was now coming their way. He longed to be home.
“There was also this.” Interrupting his thoughts came the voice of Abdul Latif. Sikander wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. He turned around to see a large package lying on the floor. It was wrapped up and sealed with packing tape. Understanding what it was from the letter, Sikander felt he should give charge of it to Razya. He was, after all, still a guest at her house.
Razya’s role as the surrogate for Sikander’s mother was not lost on her. She accepted the task eagerly. Carefully opening the parcel, she laid the items out on her durree. There was a box of glass and gold bangles, a red embroidered silk lehenga skirt and bodice, four gold jewelry sets of different levels of expense, two pairs of ladies’ size seven shoes, three lengths of embroidered silk, a sherwani jacket, seven men’s qamees and shalwar combinations, a pair of decorated cream-colored khussas, and a man’s silver and gold ring. There were also three recent photographs of Sikander’s family.
To each item was taped a small piece of paper on which was written either a name or a relationship. Sikander was to receive the sherwani, the khussas, and a qamees and shalwar suit. The other qamees and shalwar suits were to be distributed to Abdul Latif, his sons, nephews, and Usman. The simpler jewelry sets were to go to Razya, Noor, and Hinna, along with the lengths of embroidered silk for conversion into qamees and shalwar suits for the women. Everything else was for Rabia.
Having determined the rightful recipient of each item, Razya tidily set it all aside to be delivered later. With Abdul Latif’s objection now happily addressed, the engagement could proceed unimpeded.
From Razya came a formal appeal to Ejaz as head of the household to ask for Rabia’s hand for Sikander. Equally formally, Ejaz agreed on condition of acceptance by his mother and Rabia herself. When he reported back that this was indeed the case, the engagement was sealed with exchanges of gifts. Rabia, finally, was to become Rabia Sikander Khan at some point in the not too distant future.
Excited at the prospect of becoming a bride, Rabia handled her new status well, especially as it had suddenly showered her with attention and gifts from Sikander’s evidently well-to-do and exotic parents. But along with the excitement, like an ever-present counterweight, came the anxiety of separation from the home that had been hers for all her seventeen years.
For the next few months, the women of the extended family busily made preparations for the wedding. Between them, Razya and Noor had negotiated the end of March 1988 as the ideal date. It would be after the worst of the winter and before Ramadhan, leaving plenty of time for celebrations before settling in for a month of fasting. Until then, everyone would be busy with planting and harvesting before winter was upon them.
While they were only engaged, Rabia and Sikander kept their proper distances from each other as any interaction now would be considered improper without at least another family member present, preferably either her mother or Razya. Their conversations became stiffer and less familiar. Sometimes, however, circumstances created situations when the two were alone and able to steal a conversation from under the nose of culture.
Less than a week after the engagement, Abdul Latif and Razya were in Anarbagh for the day to meet a cousin of Razya’s to organize embroidery work for some of the wedding clothes. Having let this fact slip from her mind, Noor sent Rabia to Razya’s house to borrow some flour. Sikander and Usman were seated on the floor engrossed in a rudimentary game of chess improvised from small, carved
pieces of wood and a checkerboard pattern on the durree. They had learned the game with Irfan and Saleem in Scotland. In their noiseless concentration, neither of them noticed Rabia come in through the open doorway, expecting to find Razya. She, likewise, failed to notice them.
Aunt Razya won’t mind me taking a few kilos of flour, she assured herself as she gingerly proceeded to fill the bag she had brought. As she turned to leave, out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Sikander and Usman. At the same time, the weight of the bag and her struggle with it betrayed her presence.
“Sikander,” she uttered.
Having already broken his concentration, Sikander stared at his fiancée holding the heavy sack. “Rabia? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I…needed to borrow some flour,” she answered, flicking a glance at the bag.
“I see,” said Sikander, wondering how to prolong the conversation. “I—” he paused and looked at Usman. Not waiting for a response, Usman swiftly acted on his own offer to withdraw to a different room.
“I don’t suppose Sister Razya would mind,” offered Sikander meaninglessly. It bought him a few seconds to come up with a more intelligent comment. Rabia’s rolling eyes declared her awareness of the fumbling obviousness of Sikander’s words. She remained, however, awaiting something meaningful.
“I…um, hope you liked the gifts that my family sent across,” he offered.
“Yes, they’re beautiful. I was surprised at the way the shoes—Sikander…how did you know my size?” The issue hadn’t registered with her previously.
“I didn’t. My mother probably guessed and expected that we’d let her know somehow if the shoes didn’t fit.” He shrugged. “What about the lehenga suit and the jewelry?”
“Just beautiful. I never saw anything like that lehenga. But I haven’t tried it on yet. It didn’t seem appropriate.”
“Oh?” asked Sikander, surprised.
Now Rabia wore the nervous smile. “Well. You know,” she shrugged. “It’s a wedding outfit, so I wouldn’t want to try it on just—”
“Actually, Rabia, it’s just for the engagement, I think.”
Rabia’s face lost some of its tension as she immersed herself in the warmth of Sikander’s spirit. She gave in to a smile but then, realizing that the awkwardness of the moment could become a problem she bid him salaam and began walking out.
Sikander was smitten. He was not in any doubt now about the pleasurable heartache reported by Ejaz and wondered how he would manage without his fiancée for so long. But he quickly checked himself from drifting off in the face of the more immediate need.
“Rabia, let me get that for you.” He hurried toward her and reached out his hand.
Rabia’s smile acquired an extra creasing of her eyes as she willingly handed him the bag. Stepping to one side, she gestured, with a ceremonious wave of her arm, for him to lead the way. To preserve decorum, Sikander took the bag within a dozen meters of Noor’s house, handed it to Rabia, and walked back to Razya’s place, turning his head once or twice to steal more glances of his fiancée’s departing form while he could.
Sikander’s feelings of lovesickness were partially assuaged whenever family gatherings took place, and even though he was only able to converse less intimately, just being able to see Rabia was satisfying. Sensibilities about avoiding an incident were serious, however, and the family had to maintain propriety in such matters or risk considerable loss of prestige in a scandal.
One thing Sikander could do, provided a senior member of the family was present, was to continue to teach Rabia common English words and phrases. She had always been an attentive pupil, but now she found a new sense of commitment to him. The idea of learning what he wanted to teach her, made her feel she would be a true partner in his life and that failing that, she might lose him. Perhaps it was her vivaciousness and dedication to building that life together. Perhaps it was even an anxiety of being without a husband, after witnessing her recently widowed mother undergo the anguish and torment of widowhood. A husband could be gone without warning in any number of ways. If playing her part to help the two of them prosper meant pleasing him by learning English, she would give it her all for that reason alone, quite aside from her own considerable appetite for the language.
With the harvesting season and poppy planting in October, Sikander was not challenged to be busy. During this time, he grew closer to Usman, who continued opening up to him. They loved to play chess and Usman had assembled an increasingly formidable repertoire of opening moves that often confounded Sikander. Inaccurately, Sikander put his elevated loss rate down to being distracted by thoughts of Rabia.
The winter of 1987 set in and unexpectedly turned out to be bloodier than in past years. Ordinarily, the season would see the fighting taken down several notches and the weather would allow the mujahideen to regroup, while preventing serious losses for the DRA and Soviet forces. However, that year, based on enemy losses during the spring and summer and the Soviets’ now stated aim of withdrawal, the mujahideen commanders, Hekmatyar, Khalis, Haqqani, and Massoud, were convinced that concerted pressure applied via ambushes would force the Soviets to exit their country once and for all. For the rank-and-file soldiers there was little left to fight and die for, so there was no question of provoking the mujahideen. But the focus of mujahideen efforts was to step up monitoring of troop movements in readiness for ambush. This meant fielding a continuous presence in some of the more strategic locations and men were rotated in and out of the cold mountain country for that purpose. With only occasional skirmishes, however, there was no meaningful impact on Soviet plans. Sikander remained undeployed out of concern for his groom-in-waiting status and the strong desire on everyone’s part to avoid exposing Rabia’s fiancé to unnecessary risk.
March finally came. Preparations for the wedding had been at an almost frenzied level for over a month. Sikander’s needs as groom were well handled by Abdul Latif and his family, including his now close friend Usman, while Noor and Hinna made their demands on Ejaz and Saleem to perform whatever errands the women declared necessary for a perfect wedding.
The wedding proceeded with much ceremony. Abdul Latif’s family was the surrogate for the groom’s and as he was a jirga elder In Laghar Juy, that counted for something. The gifts from Sikander’s parents were put to use adorning the family members. Although disappointed by the absence of his own family, Sikander understood that it was simply circumstance.
For her part, Rabia—always an avid consumer of new experiences—could not have been more enthralled. In truth, her pleasure didn’t simply stem from being the very beautiful focus of attention. That was, of course, a given. It was something else and it was true for everyone else, too. A wedding was a consummately optimistic act. With all the progress that had been made against the Soviet occupation, a new dawn seemed finally to be breaking. A new era of optimism was being ushered in and people were willing to reflect its promise of a positive impact on their lives. The wedding underscored these sentiments, evoking in everyone a sense of joy that reached far beyond the confines of the ceremony.
But for Rabia and Sikander it was simply love. The wedding having taken place, they could now freely express that love in all the beautiful ways that Allah had enabled.
Chapter 10
Home
LIKE AN EXCEPTIONALLY thoughtful wedding present, the best gift of all came from Switzerland. On April 14, 1988, less than a month after the wedding and a few days before Ramadhan, with the United States and the Soviet Union as guarantors, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed the Geneva Accords. All parties accepted several provisions, but chief among them was a Soviet timetable for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan to begin the following month and end on February 15, 1989.
Everyone was overjoyed at the news, filled with expectations of a new norm for the country—one that might recall the more peaceful days of King Mohammed Zahir Shah’s Afghanistan. What would unfold was clear to no one, but it surely had to be better than
the last nine years. With this in mind, Sikander and Rabia determined that it was time to make a move.
Custom dictated that the bride move in with the groom’s family. For Rabia this was barely a challenge. It was only fifty meters from her mother’s place, which was in any case, increasingly bearing the hallmarks of Hinna’s gentle hand. Now, going home meant returning to Razya’s place and visiting meant going to see her mother, brothers, and sister-in-law.
Obviously, however, this arrangement was just a substitute for the one that lay over the mountains back in Hayatabad. The war was essentially won and Russia’s puppet, Najibullah, would no doubt be toppled soon, so there was no better opportunity for Sikander and Rabia to establish their life where it belonged—in Peshawar.
On the morning of April 15, in celebration of the announcement of the coming end of the Soviet occupation—news of which had taken barely a day to reach the villages—Razya invited Noor’s family for breakfast. Abdul Majeed and Abdul Rahman couldn’t join them. They were away on a mine-clearing mission near the village of Hindrani, a few kilometers from Laghar Juy and were spending the night there.
In splendor, Hinna and Rabia laid out breakfast of halwa, pooree, and spiced chickpeas on the durree, before sitting beside their husbands.
“Brother Abdul Latif,” began Sikander, “I’ve been thinking that with the Russians leaving we can consider living a different way now, one that reflects that the war is over, and that we’ve turned our backs on that brutal life.”
“Very well put, Sikander. Our warrior poet!” Abdul Latif remarked.
“I’ve decided it’s time to go back to Pakistan with Rabia as soon as possible,” continued Sikander. While he still had time before his pronouncement could fully register with everyone, he launched immediately into his rationale. “It’s been nearly two years since I left home and I really want to see my parents and brother and sister. Rabia needs to be introduced to them, too. They haven’t even seen her picture.”
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