Chapter Twenty-Three
The middle-aged translator, who had a haircut like Raziq Khan, required a week. After doubling the money he asked for up-front, the man agreed to translate the diary on the spot.
Opposite my wobbly chair on the wall had been stuck a photo of the Shrine of Ali; beneath it read:
A local mullah in the 12th century dreams of the secret site where Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and the fourth caliph of Islam, is buried. The locals find the Shrine. Later the Blue Mosque is constructed on the site and the town of Mazar grows around it.
‘Shut the door and turn round the sign.’
I hesitatingly did and the sign now read ‘Closed’, not knowing why he wanted to shut the place. Pedestrians strolled up and down on the pavement in front of the shop, as small as Baz Muhammad’s shed. Above the pedway, a gigantic billboard featured General Dostum in military uniform.
‘Where’s Frishta now?’ the translator said, leaning on the enclosed glass table full of books, with a sign on the other side of the glass reading: ‘Translations and Interpreting Services’.
‘Kabul,’ I said. Moved my chair to by the glass window and sat closer to him. My eyes were locked on his writing hand while listening to his nose whistling. He continued to write the translation in small writing underneath each line. At times he paused, contemplated and shook his head. Twice wiped his eyes.
He stopped translating after some two hours. ‘Took longer than I expected. Had to pay really hard attention.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Are you Ahmad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wait.’ He took my notes out of the cashier and put them in the diary. ‘No charge for the true jelai of Afghanistan.’ He passed me over the diary.
‘Take it. You deserve it.’
‘Na,’ he pointed with his palm. ‘When you next see Frishta, tell her she has a brother in Mazar-e-Sharif who’d be proud to put her and the entire family up.’
‘Inshallah, peace will soon come to Kabul.’
‘Give this to Frishta as my gift for her answer to the Russian colonel.’ He performed what many others and I had executed before: stood straight and raised his right hand to his forehead, his eyes welling up.
I crossed by the side of the glass table and hugged him.
As I was leaving his shop, he told me that Frishta had written Dari in Russian script.
I touched the diary every second step in the ten-minute sprint between the translating shop and the Shrine of Ali. Never was I as excited about reading something as reading the diary. I sat on the grass among dozens of families with children who chilled about, snacking on shornakhud, salty chickpeas, ice creams or grapes with pleasantly smelling Uzbaki naans while the white pigeons flew around the half-lit Shrine. Read the translator’s neat handwriting with apprehension. Frishta wrote about women’s issues; their inferior status in Afghanistan; Baz Muhammad’s invalid wife; her efforts to persuade Roya to stand for herself; making peace between Sadaf and Roya; the ‘coward’ Rashid; the villainous Mullah Rahmat; books she started or finished reading; and Wazir and Baktash. She thought Baktash lacked courage. Disagreed with his criticism of religious principles. Worse, Baktash had got his father to dispatch the man with the long moustache to enlist Wazir. Frishta chastised him for the ‘cowardly’ act. She saw Wazir as a ‘courageous brother’ who possessed typical Afghan qualities, and he earned her ‘trust’ and ‘respect’.
She threw her shoe at a Russian ustad – and hit him in the face – when he, in a drunken state, told his students of having ‘touched’ an Afghan woman in a village in Kandahar. The college expelled Frishta from Moscow. I now ascertained why Raziq Khan’s eyes teared up on the day he introduced Frishta to us, and why the translator saluted earlier.
The Shrine became darker with the flicking of each page that offered nothing about me. I skimmed more pages but no mention of me. I felt betrayed.
A toddler screamed. The parents told him not to throw grapes on the white marble floor, on which Mazaris sauntered, enjoying the sight of the blue and turquoise Shrine as well as the spring breeze.
Hang on… How did the translator know my name? I remembered him writing on the other side of the notebook, too. Turned around the diary and found the description of our first encounter:
A separate section for my cousin, Ahmad.
Met my shy cousin this morning. How startled he was when I introduced him as my cousin. Wanted to kill me. Can’t wait to meet him tonight. He shall know I was right, ha, ha.
4:31pm, 8 March 1992
The next page read:
Wow, the staggering expression on his face as he opened the door, ha, ha… As if I was there to take his life. My Khudajan, how I stunned him when I changed his room’s disorderly layout. He was awkward tonight but will inshallah be a good cousin. Aka jan is so knowledgeable, so lovely. Tror jan upset me. She has no idea what’s good for Nazo and Zarghuna.
9:59pm, 8 March 1992
On another page, she recorded:
Today, we started mathematics. Thanks to aka jan, Ahmad agreed… but with a stupid condition.
Aka jan and tror jan were in our house for the first time. Aka jan enjoyed himself; not sure of her. Do your best to avoid quarrelling with her – not for his stupid condition, but for padar jan and madar jan.
Must go to bed; already 10:04pm.
9 March 1992
I read more inserts. They were on what I said or did on a particular day and what she thought of it. She thought I gave my ‘100 per cent’ to ensure she got the highest grades, even in Science, and never gave up on her. Talked about how my Indian music and action movies grew on her, how she liked my ‘gentle Kabuli accent’, and how she loved it when I laughed at her mimicking ustads and no longer took myself ‘so seriously’. I likewise brought the ‘kid Frishta’ out in her.
A hand touched my shoulder, giving me a scare. A young jelai, holding a straw tray and an Istalifi-sufali pitcher, asked if I wanted warm bolanis with cold doogh. I shook my head. She rushed to a family of grandparents, children and grandchildren, each adult holding the hand of a child, all smiling, giggling and licking their ice creams. My eyes turned to the diary.I skipped a few pages and read something that made my hair stand on end:
What’s happening to me? Can’t get him off my mind. Don’t see him for a few hours, I miss him… like I’ve lost something. When he’s there, I feel I don’t want anything else but his company. I even enjoy action movies with him. Oh, Khuda jan, I’m losing control of my heart. Please forgive me. Need to concentrate on my studies. We’re the luckiest to have the opportunity of an education. Most of us right now get bombarded by Russian puppets’ jets.
10:31pm, 27 March 1992
We both suffered from the same disease, missed each other and denied our feelings. The only difference was she’d caught the disease weeks earlier. A man touched my shoulder, asking if I bought ‘natural, genuine Mazar-e-Sharif’s kohl kajal powder’.
I shook my head. In desperation, I read another passage about me:
Intelligent, honourable, dignified, sincere, Islamic… respectful of his elders. All the qualities a true Afghan man can have. Plus, he’s such an attentive listener and fun to be around. Say nothing about his appearance… his fair skin, brown-thick hair…thin body in baggy T-shirt tucked in jeans (especially with his jean jackets)… force you to look at him all day long. His soft skin and long eyelashes give him a perfect face. His lips, as red as the tulips of Mazar-e-Sharif, add to the perfection. Maybe Khuda jan has made him especially for me… that’s why He’s turned us into the best of friends. Please, Khudajan, forgive me for thinking about him in this way… My heart’s taken the better of me. Can’t I become both a good wife and a good servant to my dear Afghanistan?
9:38pm, 3 April 1992
It became clear she struggled as I read more and more. Her heart ached if she didn’t meet ‘her Ahmad’. She was cross with Khudaifor making this happen to her, ‘because it weakens my determination’ and ‘creates an obstacle to my commitments to my watan and sisters’.
Frishta also had a question about me:
Why can’t he understand that his pros and cons approach can turn him into a coward… a selfish one? He must learn to confront injustice even if it doesn’t concern him. Must stop fearing what others think. Stop sacrificing his life for his mother and do what he loves and is good at, history. He’s so hard-working, so committed. Will definitely become a prominent historian. Every kid wants to be a doctor. Afghanistan cries out for another Abdul Hai Habibi.
9:12pm,5 April 1992
A page later read:
His backward views on traditions are upsetting. He blindly follows his mother. How can he deny university to Nazo and Zarghuna? How can he take away their rights?
9:41pm, 6 April 1992
My eyes caught the word ‘murderer’ three pages later. A splashing sound followed by cold water drops hitting against my right cheek. A man with a four-wheeled cart full of carrots and a juicer on the other side of the fence surrounding the Shrine threw another pot of water on the grass. My attention shifted back to the notebook whose vinyl cover my hands grabbed as tightly as the mujahideen leaders held on to the Arg Palace.
I don’t know why I told him. Why do I want to share everything with him? Why would I drink poison from your hand? Your face dropped like I told you I was dying of a disease. I am sorry, Ahmad jan. But you must know your future wife is the daughter of a murderer. I told you lies; I do need your sympathy.
9:48pm, 15 April 1992
I searched for her comment on the night we had the argument over Shafih and found it:
His ingrained beliefs have blinded him to get a tease. Thanks, Khuda jan, I didn’t disclose my feelings for him – would’ve lost him forever. Never make such a prank, Frishta. Why did I return his notebooks? A stupid decision. But he hurt me. He knows I hate being bossed around. Would rather die husbandless than allow myself to be controlled. Worse, how did he dare to imagine I was such a jelai? Stop crying, Frishta.
10:39pm, 17 April 1992
I skipped to her thoughts on the school incident:
Have this terrible feeling the ugly mudir punished you for getting to me… I’ll never forget the look on your face until the day I die. Why did I not act earlier…? Was I scared of the ugly beast…? How would I know you’d… come on… he must’ve stood for himself. Fight his own fights. Please, Khuda jan, help my Ahmad; this can destroy him. I’ll find out who’s written the mina letter. I’ll clear your name. I promise you, Ahmad jan.
7:22pm, 24 April 1992
Mullah Rahmat’s jumping from the bottom of the register to the top justified Frishta’s suspicion. A scream: a child behind me throwing a tantrum, stomping his feet. The parents’ soothing strategy – that they couldn’t buy any more seeds to feed the pigeons as it was dark and all the pigeons rested – proved as ineffective as Benon Sevan’s plan to end the Afghanistan war.
In the next pages she recorded her conversations with Shafih, who told on Jawad. Frishta suspected it was Jawad’s handwriting, but the actual engineer was Shafih, though he continuously swore to Frishta that he had nothing to do with the letter and had no knowledge of Grease being Frishta’s favourite film. He blamed my cowardly heart. Frishta warned him never to call me a coward because I loathed the word. He asked Frishta if she was in mina with me: ‘I’ll sacrifice my life for Ahmad’ was her reply.
In the last conversation Shafih revealed his ‘true mina’ and readiness to marry her. Frishta’s heart had no place for a ‘pervert’, giving him one more day to profess the truth voluntarily in the edara, or she’d get him sent to his boss, Rashid. That day never came as she was absent from school, an absence caused by the very person she tried to protect.
After the pages on Shafih, she jotted down that it had been the second night she hadn’t met Ahmad, and she missed me. She begged Khudaito look after me. After meeting me, she’d put down:
I’d lay my life before him, yet he thinks… If only he burned me alive but hadn’t accused me of an accomplice. What’s been happening to him lately? – he’s never been like this before. Where is my logical, reasonable, supportive Ahmad? Where’s this sick… arghh?… Don’t explode. Please stop crying, Frishta, and sleep.
11:49pm, 26 April 1992
Frishta’s search in my eyes and her abrupt leaving without goodbye now made sense. Following her the next day, accusing her again, naming her harami, and stealing the diary… Damn Satan. If only I had the power to change the past, I’d have cut my tongue off rather than pronounce the word. I loathed myself for it.
The Maghrib azan, call to prayer,brought me back to a fully lit Blue Mosque, as bright as a Kabuli day. Stars had filled the sky: time to go home. Instead of joining the worshippers walking in hundreds towards the mosque, my eyes went back to the diary. Flicked a page and came across a long passage in which I noticed the word ‘khastegari’. It read:
It is 1:12am and I can’t sleep. Why am I thinking of the day tror jan and aka jan (Khudajan, I’ll tell them who I am and You’ll help change their minds to accept a ‘harami’ as a daughter-in-law) accompanied by their kinfolk come khastegari? Padar jan and madar jan hand them a lump of sugar buried in chocolates and sugar-coated almonds. I’m in my room, waiting. Stop it, Frishta. Oh, Khuda jan, what am I supposed to do with my heart? To Hell with everything else, let’s just dream, Frishta.
I overhear tror jan and other women singing and drumming the dayereh with jingles. I pop out and see you standing on your balcony, not as Ahmad but as my fiancés. Forever. Why does my heart skip a beat when I think of you as a fiancée? That’s mina, jelai. Yes, I love you. Love you more than anything, anyone.
It’s our shirini-khori, a bigger engagement party. I’ve got the traditional Afghani dress on with a golden necklace, and Ahmad is in a black perahan tunban. Jelais and haleks go round and round in a circle to the beat, clapping, turning, twisting and snapping heads side to side. They ask us to join them. We both aren’t good attan dancers. I wobble in my long dress. He catches me. Everyone claps.
Our khinanight, the night of henna, arrives. Zarghuna and Nazo, along with another five jelais dressed in traditional Afghani clothes, come through the door, holding a silver tray with candles and assortments of fresh flowers with little henna containers, dancing and turning to the throne of bride and groom. Tror jan places a teaspoonful of henna onto my palm and shields it with a triangular cloth made of shiny fabric. Madar jan puts the henna on Ahmad’s palm and covers it with the same fabric. Tror jan tries to open my hand but fails. She must now give me an expensive gift. I decline any present – she’s already gifted me a rare diamond.
It’s our wadah, the wedding ceremony. Stop it, Frishta… No, to hell with it. I’m in green clothes with a golden crown and Ahmad in a suit. Nowhere but in Kabul Hotel, no one but Farhad Darya sings walk slowly my light of night go slowly. Everyone inside the hall stands up with smiles on their faces as we make our entrance. Padar jan holds the Quran over our heads. We take our place at the throne because we’re the King and Queen of the night. In front of us stands the decorative table with candles and flowers. The sound of Casio keyboard and tabla resonate in the air, and a mass of jelais and haleks spin around, shimmy and twirl on the dance floor.
A mullah and two witnesses ask Ahmad and me if we accept each other as wife and husband. I accepted him, I accept him and I will accept him as my husband, I reply. Ahmad jan says the same words. The nikah is complete. We’re officially wife and husband. Darya’s bring henna and place it on their hands fills the hall. I get into a white dress, and Ahmad into a dashing, dark blue suit. Guests one by one take pictures with us and then join the dance on the floor.
Veiled by a decorative shawl, the husband and wife open the mirror to see each other in it, recite verses of the Quran, and pray. I ask for eternal peace for Afghanistan, where my husband and I live a happy life alongside my countrymen and women. The King and Queen of the night then cut the two-tier cake, exchange glasses of home-made sherbet and spoons of malida, my favourite dessert. He smiles and puts some in my mouth. Cake and malida get distributed among the guests. Darya sings, congratulations, I gave you my heart, now I leave it to Khuda jan.
The peak of the hours of enjoyment comes as Darya plays fast-beat songs, and the dance floor fills up with people who dance and attan till the end of the ceremony at dawn.
Safi jan ties a green cloth around my waist to prepare me for my new home.
We arrive at Ahmad’s flat. I won’t come out of the wedding car until I receive a promise of a property. The property I demand from tror jan is to accept me as her daughter-in-law. She plants a kiss on my head, and I kiss her hands. I step on the ground but won’t allow a sheep to be sacrificed under my foot. Want to stay at my husband’s home forever, so I hammer the biggest nail into the doorway and step into my new home.
I wake up the following morning and see Ahmad’s face lying on the pillow opposite me. Plant a kiss on his cheek. No, two. No, more. Thousands. Millions. Stop it, Frishta, time to go to bed. I can’t, dream, jelai. Dream more.
We have a son and two daughters, Malalai, Nahid and Amanullah. I feed Amanullah, and Ahmad plays with Malalai and Nahid. Stop it, Frishta. It’s too late.
1:39am, 27 April 1992
We both lived in the opposite apartments, both on the same side rooms, both deeply in mina with each other, both denied it to each other and both daydreamed about each other in which both wanted three children, with the only difference being I fathered two sons and a daughter, while she mothered two daughters and a son. If only I had revealed my feelings, she could’ve been here with me in Mazar-e-Sharif. I’d never have left Kabul without Frishta. If only Frishta had told me. After all, she was courageous. She defended everyone else’s rights but failed to reveal her feelings for me. Everyone feared when it came to losing something dear to them. Even Frishta.
But we were where we were. I decided to take a bus tomorrow to Kabul and tell Frishta, louder than the mujahideen’s guns’ sound, ‘Will you marry me?’ Nobody could stop me, not even my parents or tradition. We’d stay in Kabul in Khair Khana or, if she wanted, return to Mazar-e-Sharif.
***
MOUR AND AGHA to my relief paid no attention to my lateness. Mour’s eyes were puffed up. Our host, Agha’s friend, a pro-Communist Parchami who worked for Dostum, and had Dostum and Babrak Karmal’s faces painted across the wall of the vast lounge we sat in, told Agha that what had happened was the wish of Khudai. A woman in a long headscarf echoed her husband. I thought some other pro-Communist comrades had been killed, or Mour worried about her house getting looted. But then Agha dried his tears with a white tissue. I’d never seen Agha crying over losing a comrade or the flat. What had happened?
‘I wish they’d left with us,’ Agha said, his left hand resting on the black leather sofa. Farhad Darya sang on the television at a low volume.
My heart sank. ‘Who?’
‘Brigadier and his family have been martyred, zoya,’ Mour said, breaking into fresh tears.
‘Frishta, too?’
‘Woh, a rocket struck in the tablecloth as they sat at dinner,’ Agha confirmed.
‘Their flesh spattered across the walls. Tawba-tawba,’ Mour said and burst again into tears.
Frishta wasn’t dead; it was a bad dream. She hadn’t worn the green dress yet. Cut the wedding cake. Hit the nail. Why did Mour scream? Why did Agha shake me? Did he ask me to move my eyes? Why did Mour want me to talk? Had something happened to someone? What was Frishta’s connection to all this? Darya sang, You want to come to Kabul jan, love? You know about me? I’m dying from your parting, You want to come and see me, love?
Blackout.