Dancing in the Mosque

by Homeira Qaderi

  Madar believes that the mushrooms sprouting between sunset and sunrise are those women who are snatched away by Baba Ghor-ghori, the Roaring Papa Thunder. She says they are carried off to the sky at the close of the harvest season, when the autumn rains begin. There, hidden in the gathering clouds, Baba Ghor-ghori gnaws the flesh, but their chewed bones fall down to earth with the rain, burying themselves in the ground. And with every clap of thunder, they sprout again as mushrooms. I’ve always felt a special compassion for those tiny baby-girl mushrooms.

  I first heard the story of Baba Ghor-ghori on a wild autumn night when I was nine years old. On that night, the clouds were rumbling, too, and our house trembled after each sudden flash and crashing noise. I screamed in terror with every crack of thunder and cowered deeper into Madar’s arms.

  Mushtaq said, “Baba Ghor-ghori is angry again. He is picking up his saddlebag and is on his way down to the earth to take away the girls.”

  Then Mushtaq stood by the window and called out, “The worst girl on earth, the most spoiled girl on earth, who always eats my share of rice as well as hers, is here. Baba Ghor-ghori, come! Take her! Eat her! Chew on her bones all night long.”

  I poked my head out from Madar’s shawl and said, “You, Mushtaq, you are the worst. Baba Ghor-ghori will take you with him, too.”

  Mushtaq replied from under the blanket where he was hiding, “Baba Ghor-ghori is a man. He only takes girls. And he especially likes girls who have shining golden hair.”

  The thunder rumbled all night. And all night, Baba Ghor-ghori walked the streets of our city with his saddlebag over his shoulder. I asked Madar how many girls Baba Ghor-ghori had taken away with him. “You can find out from counting the mushrooms that will pop up out of the ground tomorrow morning, Homeira.”

  With every rainfall, Mushtaq swore that tonight was my turn. And the day following every rain he would go outside the house, searching in the alleys. He’d return, shouting, “I’ve found a thousand mushrooms! That means a thousand girls were taken last night by Baba Ghor-ghori. Next time, it’s your turn, Homeira!”

  All the girls in my motherland know that one day they will be thrown into Baba Ghor-ghori’s saddlebag and disappear.

  Now that I don’t have you, I feel like I’ve fallen in Baba Ghor-ghori’s saddlebag. In his dark and compressed saddlebag that doesn’t even allow me to breathe.

  My little one,

  I am sure you’ve grown big enough these days that you might venture outside to play soccer on a spring day. I want you to be careful and make sure you don’t step on those mushrooms. Maybe one of those is me. I don’t want to remain in this saddlebag forever. In one of these seasons, I will spring up from the ground.

  8

  Khoshhal

  The first young man I fell in love with was Khoshhal. It seems as if at this very moment, he is smiling at me from across this room. Khoshhal was a young Talib with a high forehead, dark kohl-lined eyes, and thick black eyebrows. He had a hawkish nose and pale lips that he kept pressed together, as if preventing them from smiling. A sparse beard struggled to take root on his boyish cheeks. His long curly hair hung down to his shoulders. It swung hypnotically when he paced back and forth at the checkpoint, keeping his head low as if he were embarrassed by his good looks. His assault rifle was always slung over his shoulder.

  The Taliban wore black clothes and black turbans. Khoshhal did as well, but with his youthful, handsome face, he looked like a boy. Khoshhal’s black turban was faded and covered in dust. That grimy black turban is one of my saddest memories.

  My attraction to Khoshhal started on the day he and the black-bearded Talib nearly caught me and my pupils dancing in the mosque. For it was Khoshhal, the young Talib, who interpreted in Dari Persian everything that his angry commander was yelling at me in Pashto. His calm presence lessened my fear. He didn’t yell, he wasn’t angry, in fact, he was smiling slightly. I think he knew exactly what was happening in that tent.

  Later, he told me that he had been reminded that day of the wedding of his neighbor’s daughter, which took place when he was a child. He told me he had danced from sunset until sunrise. And then he disarmed me with his sweet smile. He didn’t speak Dari very well, but he had a captivating way of pronouncing Persian words.

  I don’t know what happened to me that day at the mosque. In the midst of my terror, I experienced a weird and strange new feeling. I was lost between fear and joy. I saw Khoshhal there for the first time and it took me a long while to comprehend my emotions. Every day, when I stood near the blackboard, I peeked through a gap in the curtains to the street outside the classroom where the Taliban checkpoint stood. I didn’t understand at first that my heart was beating for him.

  Dusk, when all the men went to the mosque for the evening prayers, was the time that I shared secretive minutes gossiping with Golchehrah, our neighbor’s daughter and one of my best friends. Her tyrant brother, Wahid, never allowed her out of the house. So as soon as the men heard the adhan and headed toward the mosque, I would lean a ladder against the courtyard wall between our two houses, climb up, and softly call her name. Golchehrah was always waiting for me in her courtyard at dusk. If I stood on tiptoe on the highest rung of our ladder, I could peek over the wall and see her. Golchehrah never dared to climb up herself because Wahid was heartless. He’d caught her once climbing on their ladder and beaten her so badly that she was unable to move for three days. For this, Golchehrah beseeched God that all of Wahid’s prayers would rebound against him and that he would burn in hell.

  That day, I ran to the ladder and called out to Golchehrah, bursting to tell her my secret. As usual, Golchehrah was sad and heavyhearted. She said, “God knows how long we are going to be imprisoned in our homes because of the cursed Taliban.”

  I interrupted Golchehrah’s lament. “Not all the Taliban are bad. You were imprisoned in your house by Wahid long before the Taliban came.”

  I saw her eyes widen in the lowering darkness. “Are you defending the Taliban?”

  “Not all of them,” I said.

  Golchehrah raised her eyebrows with a sense of surprise. “You are wrong, Homeira, the BBC says that the Taliban are what they are. There is no such thing as a good Talib, they are all evil dogs.”

  “How does the BBC know what goes on in a Talib’s heart?” I said.

  An understanding blossomed on Golchehrah’s face.

  She flashed me a smile. “Aha! And now you know what goes on in their hearts? Or maybe in just one special heart?”

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, understand?” I said.

  “Yes, commander.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her more. But with the first creak of the door opening, Golchehrah disappeared, like a rabbit diving into its hole. I giggled and cursed her brother, Wahid, in the same breath. Golchehrah and I both hated the evening prayers. They were far too short for us to gossip. The men seemed to return home again before they had even reached the mosque. I climbed down from the ladder, bursting with my secret.

  After that first day of dancing, I took extra precautions to keep my students and myself safe. I kept the entrance curtains closed on both sides of the mosque, and my burqa always within reach. The students were supposed to place their Qur’ans over their notepads whenever they saw any danger. And if the Taliban entered, no one was to say anything and I would do all the talking. We had come too close to disaster once and none of us wanted it to happen again.

  A week passed. As I recall, I was correcting Mastorah’s homework. The class was filled with the humming sound of the girls and boys chatting together while I reviewed their written lessons.

  Suddenly, Zarghuna whispered, “Moalem Sahib, Moalem Sahib, someone is striking the entrance curtain.”

  I turned toward the entrance. Someone was tapping against the heavy canvas slowly, once, twice . . . a third time. The fabric puffed inward with each soft blow. Zarghuna leaned forward toward the curtain and suddenly shouted, “Moalem Sah
ib! The Taliban! I swear to God it is the Taliban!”

  My legs went weak. I almost lost my balance! I quickly threw my burqa over my head. The children scrambled to tuck their notepads under their shirts and shawls. A few of the boys stuffed their notebooks into their baggy trousers. Mastorah threw her notebook on the ground and sat down cross-legged on it with her Qur’an opened on her lap. I pressed my lips together to prevent myself from laughing.

  Another louder tap struck the curtain. In the frightening silence within the tent, it sounded as loud as a rifle shot. Should I wait for the Taliban to come inside or hurry outside to confront them? My poor girls were huddling together, wing to wing, like little doves on a cold winter day.

  Pulling aside the entrance curtain, I stepped halfway out. My heart stopped. A Talib was standing there, a long wooden staff in his hand. He was facing the river, with his back to the entrance to the tent. He wore a shawl, a cotton scarf, around his shoulders, covering his neck. I recognized from his profile that he was the young Talib from the week before.

  “Did you want something?” I asked. Startled, he started to turn toward my voice, then stopped.

  “Is that you, Moalem Sahib?” he asked, keeping his gaze on the river’s flowing water while he spoke over his shoulder. He raised his stick in the air as if to give his hands something to do.

  As much as some part of me had wanted to see him again, a terrible fear gripped my heart.

  I answered, “I am teaching how to recite the Qur’an here. That blackboard is to write the verses of the Qur’an on, for those children who don’t have one, so they all can see the verses. And I am always wearing my burqa inside the classroom, every day.”

  My words tumbled over one another in my rush to speak. He seemed to be listening very carefully to what I was saying, even though he refused to look at me.

  His shawl dropped from his shoulder and I caught sight of his rifle. Fear crawled up my ankles like a swarm of ants. My palms grew damp and sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades. I squeezed the corner of my burqa with my hand to steady myself. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We always leave the mosque before the adhan. All the girls, even the six-year-olds, are wearing hijabs. And the boys are sitting separately on the other side of the mosque, away from the girls.” My tongue felt thick in my mouth. My throat was as dry as dust. “I always wear a burqa,” I repeated.

  The young Talib turned and faced the curtain, still not willing to look directly at me. His eyes were lined with kohl. His hair had fallen from beneath his turban, covering his forehead.

  He stared at the curtain and asked in his lovely, halting accent, “Moalem Sahib, how can you stand being under your burqa for hours in this heat?”

  I took a step back and placed my hand on my heart. “I can! I swear I can! You can send someone to check whenever you want.” My voice was weak, the squeaking of a mouse. My heart shrank into a tight knot of fear.

  “It must be very hard,” he said. “Anyway, you could suffocate underneath that burqa.” I was shocked. Wasn’t he a Talib? “What are you really doing there in the mosque?” he asked, finally looking at me, although, in truth, all he could see was a black lump of cloth covering me completely from head to foot, with a mesh cloth hiding my eyes.

  “I am teaching the Qur’an,” I answered. My head reeled. I felt dizzy and leaned against the tent to steady myself. It was all over. His question wasn’t a question. He knew everything!

  The young man swung his stick slowly back and forth along the ground between us, kicking up puffs of dust. He glanced toward me again. “Yarghal, who is in your class, is from our people, from our town. I know that you are teaching literacy here, not the Qur’an.”

  I turned and glared at Yarghal. I should have known that sooner or later this loquacious jinni would betray our secret. Yarghal stared back at me, his face pale. A good thing he couldn’t see my wrathful eyes.

  I turned back to him, blocking his view of the frightened children. “What would you have me do? These kids will grow up and remain illiterate unless I teach them. They should be able to write at least their names. It’s a strange world out there. God knows where destiny will send them. They should be able to write a letter to their parents and loved ones. You know that every sentence of a letter is worth half a visit.”

  Khoshhal turned away. He was staring silently at the river as if contemplating when to begin beating me. Finally, still looking away, he began to speak in that soft, calm voice of his. “Do you think we, the Taliban, have no parents and loved ones? Do you think no one is seeking our company? That no one is expecting our visits?” Turning, he looked directly at me. “What about us? What about me?”

  He dropped his head and scraped angry furrows in the dust with the tip of his worn-out sandal.

  When he looked up again, he saw that I was staring at his rifle. In a flash, he pulled his shawl back over his shoulders, covering the barrel. With that single gesture, he revealed his innocence. My fear flew away, and I drank in his features: his long, thin face, his delicate hands, his boyish curls, and that sad, dusty black turban.

  Then he looked down at his toes poking out of his battered sandals and whispered, “Can I learn here, too? Because I, too, want to write a letter to my mother.”

  We were living through terrible times. During those years, the Taliban forced many young girls to marry them. No one could refuse these fierce armed men, some of who were Arabs, Pakistanis, and Chechens, so daughters disappeared like smoke. This was the ugly face of religion and politics during that epoch. I was certain that Madar and Agha would have been horrified if they knew that I was thinking of teaching a Talib how to read and write.

  The attraction that I felt for the Talib rested heavily on my heart. In my city, he was the enemy. But still, I wondered: Is it the poor boy’s fault that he has never had any schooling? And since there is a school near his checkpoint, why shouldn’t he learn also? I certainly felt compassion—but it was a feeling beyond compassion that drew me to him.

  Two days later, I heard the same soft tapping on the mosque’s entrance curtain. It was early afternoon. I was reviewing my students’ homework. I put on my burqa and opened the tent flap. It was him. Pulling a sheet of paper from under his shawl, the expression on his face passed from shame and embarrassment to delight as swiftly as the shadows of clouds pass over the land. He blushed and then, finally, he smiled. Standing at arms’ length, he offered me his worksheet.

  “Talib Sahib,” I said. “What if your commander sees us?”

  “Moalem Sahib, my name is Khoshhal.”

  I was stunned he would let me know his first name.

  Khoshhal continued speaking. “The other day, when my commander heard clapping in the mosque, he grabbed his rifle leaning against the checkpoint wall and shouted, ‘They blaspheme! They sin in the holy mosque!’ He began to run toward the tent and I ran after him. When we neared the entrance, my commander started cursing and yelling ‘Ḥarām! Ḥarām!’ I chased after him, trying to calm him. ‘For the sake of God, they are only children,’ I said.”

  Khoshhal continued. “My commander entered the tent before I could stop him. I knew that you were scared; your voice from inside your burqa was like the squeaking of a tiny mouse. I saw that the children were all terrified. I didn’t translate all the awful things he said that day, all the horrible names that he called you. He was so angry. And in his rage, he was blind to the pens and notebooks that I saw, not so well hidden, Moalem Sahib. You must teach children to do better.

  “When we returned to the checkpoint my commander ordered me to keep an eye on you people. He said, ‘By God, if they are doing anything sinful, come and tell me. I swear by the Prophet that I will set them all on fire, everyone and everything, including that shameless woman.’”

  I gasped and stepped back toward the tent.

  Khoshhal placed his hand on his heart. “Now, if the commander discovers that I, too, am doing something unlawful, he will burn us together.”

  Ben
ding down, he placed the paper on the ground. I picked it up and, with trembling hands, I wrote out his first lesson. Was this to be the tinder that would consume us all—me, my students, and this poor young boy?

  Over the next several weeks, Khoshhal came daily to the mosque’s entrance to give me his homework. In that stifling tent, I waited breathlessly for the sound of his footsteps and his gentle tapping on the canvas. Placing his homework on the ground, he’d stand there gazing at the river, his face glowing with childish joy. I’d reach my arm through the curtain folds to retrieve his papers, stealing a glance at his handsome profile as he averted his blushing gaze.

  Like some of the refugee children, Khoshhal was from Ghor Province to the east of Herat. He was assigned to our city for the period of his enlistment. He didn’t dare befriend Heratis. And in any case, they ran away from him and the other Taliban.

  “People are right to fear you and run away,” I told him. “You destroyed our lives here.”

  Instead of becoming angry with me, Khoshhal nodded, saying, “Just a few years ago, our house was destroyed. I wasn’t yet a Talib back then. I was still a small child. My older brother became a mujahid and went off to fight the Russians. He never returned. They say that the Russians murdered my brother inside a mosque. They shot him down along with all the other men. I still have nightmares: that the mosque is full of blood and my brother is drowning in the blood. For this reason, I have not been inside any mosque for many years. Now, my commander forces us to go to this mosque to pray five times each day. It is a torment for me.”

  He turned, looking right at me. “The day you were dancing in the mosque, that was the only time since my brother’s death that I wasn’t afraid to set foot inside.”