The wooden canteen – big enough to accommodate the salesman and a few jars of spicy simyan or a home-made snack, chickpeas, biscuits and lollipop – often took up half of our break owing to its location in the far corner of the schoolyard, and its lengthy queues. Today was no exception, but Baktash’s stories of Mazar-e-Sharif absorbed us, or rather me; Wazir ignored him.
Like tens of thousands from all over the country travelling every Nowruz, Baktash took a trip with his father to Mazar-e-Sharif a few days ago to celebrate the Red Flower Festival. Baktash participated in Jahenda Bala, the banner-raising ceremony in the central park around the Blue Mosque in Rowze-e-Sharif, and even ‘touched’ the Jahenda itself.
He conversed about how red tulips covered Mazar-e-Sharif’s hills and green plains when Frishta and Roya muttered a salaam and joined the line behind us. Baktash pointed with his eyes to the back and raised his eyebrows. I whispered to ignore them. The salesman gave a lollipop to a jelai, and we took a step closer.
‘It’s a good omen to touch the Jahenda, right?’ I asked Baktash, walking on the spot.
‘Woh, they say–’
‘You’re a sinner. Celebrating Nowruz is haram,’ Wazir cut Baktash short, making Nowruz ‘forbidden’. There’s going to be another argument, I thought with a sinking heart.
‘What’s wrong with celebrating the arrival of spring?’ Baktash asked, shrugging.
We celebrated Nowruz for thousands of years; it was news to me.
‘Anycelebration imitating the age of Jahili is haram,’ Wazir said, hands in his black jacket pockets. In Wazir’s Salafi books, Jahili referred to the time of ‘darkness’, the period before the Prophet, peace be upon him, lived, and no one practised Islam.
‘It’s a tradition. We celebrate it for fun,’ Baktash said.
The salesman served a pack of three biscuits to a jelai, and we stepped forward on the wet concrete.
‘Shias don’t care about sins, anyway. They follow Iran.’
‘At least we don’t follow Wahhabism.’
‘Please calm down,’ I said. Agha had a point about Wazir. Did he mean celebrating birthdays, Mother’s Day, or National Independence Day was also forbidden? I asked him.
‘Eids are our main celebrations, the rest–’
‘Excuse me, there’s the back of the line.’ Frishta’s voice interrupted Wazir’s sentence.
‘Where I stand, the line starts from there.’ I overheard an Indian movie quote and knew without looking who the voice belonged to. I turned around and stopped on-the-spot walking. Rashid towered over Frishta, hands in his pockets. He wore a headband on his forehead, his blue shirt under the khaki jacket knotted at the front, with a jackknife and a nunchaku tucked on the right hip: an exact copy of the gangster, Raja, from the Indian movie, Mashaal, shown last winter on television.
‘Frishta?’
‘Yes.’ Frishta’s eyes flicked from Rashid to his three friends behind him. Their eyes riveted on Frishta.
‘You’re so really hot.’
‘You’re so really ugly.’
Baktash tittered, drawing Rashid’s penetrating eyes onto himself. Thanks, Khudai, his eyes travelled back to Frishta. Frishta had no knowledge of him so told the truth; Rashid’s nose resembled a turnip. But you couldn’t miss the paleness on Roya’s face, as white as the walls behind her.
‘What was it?’ Rashid asked his friends.
‘A side throw,’ they said in unison.
Baktash peeped at me. His nose and cheeks had gone red.
‘You want to side throw me, beautiful jelai?’
‘She’s my sister, Rashid. Leave her alone,’ Wazir said. I bet it was the first warning Rashid received from a student, and I dreaded the consequences.
He took a few steps, stood opposite us with an overwhelming smell of hashish, and looked everyone in the eye – into Wazir’s a little longer. ‘See you at rukhsati.’Rukhsati was the end of the school day. ‘I’ll see if these fags can save you,’ Rashid said to Frishta, pointing to us. He and his entourage stalked off, but the sinking feeling in my chest wouldn’t go away.
Wazir was famous for his ‘two-kilo punch’, the force of which had knocked a few students unconscious. You called him an unofficial school gangster, but he was nowhere near as infamous as Rashid. Any student who dared to fight the school gangster was left with a scar – not on their faces or stomachs, but on their buttocks. Rashid stabbed his opponents in the bum so they couldn’t show their wounds to the doctor.
Not just students but also ustads feared Rashid. He doubled up as a secret KHAD agent. Rashid’s tip-offs had landed several ustads in the brutal KHAD prisons. The KHAD arrested, tortured and executed without a trial thousands over the years; a few more ustads could easily add to the number. This year was his third year in year nine. Ustads strove to see the back of him. But he wouldn’t attend exams. Everyone knew he missed them to stay in our co-ed school to prey on more jelais; for year ten, he had to join an all-male upper school.
Rashid disappeared into the frontline for months and then reappeared. I reckoned he came after Frishta to avenge Sadaf, who’d been missing since yesterday, but sounded like he fell for Frishta. Bad sign for any jelai if Rashid chose her as prey. Last year a jelai dropped out once she found the school was powerless to stop Rashid from harassing her. Mullah Rahmat was mad at people like him.
A halek elbowed me and sprinted, but the ball caught him and he was out in toop danda, Afghan cricket, causing the opposing players to scream. Scores of other haleks and jelais circled around the school building, chatting, giggling and even playing while snacking on simyan, chickpeas and biscuits. But we stood frozen like the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The queue in front of us had moved miles away.
‘I’ll knock him out,’ Wazir said.
‘Why did you get involved?’ I said to Wazir.
‘Don’t chicken out.’
It wasn’t cowardice to have a knife in your bottom – it was pure stupidity to fight the notorious gangster. Baktash and I dreaded year nine in case Rashid became our classmate. Today he challenged us to a duel, thanks to Frishta, who’d vanished like the Russian cinema in Makroryan.
According to Baktash’s book on Chinese face reading, a person with an aquiline nose discarded an approach to ease a situation if faced with difficulty. Wazir unquestionably made things much more complicated for us today. Wazir acted on his impulses and considered no consequences. Threw his punch and cared less if it fractured a nose or knocked teeth out. Didn’t give a damn about his face getting smashed up or legs broken, or if the victims came back the following day with a dozen friends. Above all, he didn’t stress about parents’ reaction.
I was in awe of his bravery. My heart beat fast and dropped into my stomach, my hands and legs trembled, and sweat covered my body the moment my brain sensed a threat of violence. Then something took over and immobilised me. I’d fail the Pashtunwali test without a doubt if it was founded on courage alone.
Wazir would pass with flying colours every single tenet of the code of honour. My best friend lived by Pashtunwali. He called Frishta a sister, his naamus or pride. His ezat obliged him to defend Frishta’s sexual integrity and chastity at all costs. Failure put his loyalty in question. Cut a true Afghan’s arm but don’t call him disloyal, Wazir often said. The loyal Wazir would play on his life but not allow the shameful outcome of chickening out of a fight. I also knew I accepted a knife in my buttock but wouldn’t be disloyal to him. To me, he was a brother I never had.
We missed out on our break’s favourite snack, simyan and chickpeas. Our uncertain fate spoiled everyone’s appetite.
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