Wazir waited in the bright morning under the acacia tree on the lawn in front of Baktash’s corridor. Normally, Baktash joined me second, and Wazir last. Shirullah met us in the Market, and we dawdled to school. Why’s Wazir first today? I wondered.
‘It’s the time,’ Wazir said. Sunrays, coming through the trees, lightened his black hair.
I judged what he alluded to.
‘Tell the Shia to fuck off.’
‘He isn’t Shia. He’s Uzbek from Faryab.’
‘I don’t care. He is a hypocrite.’
‘He isn’t. He’s just lazy.’
‘He’s all. Shia. Hypocritical. Bloody cowardly.’
‘He had no choice; Rashid warned him to. Plus, he wanted to inform his father to save us.’ I told Wazir Baktash’s justifications a hundred times; deep down, I knew Baktash didn’t have the heart to fight Rashid, especially for Wazir and Frishta.
‘Could’ve chosen to stay, but didn’t. He’s fucking disloyal.’
‘He’s our friend.’
‘He’s not. We’re Pashtuns and he’s Hazara.’
‘We’re all brothers.’
‘What sort of a Pashtun are you?’
Baktash emerged from his corridor, his schoolbag touching the tree branches, which showed no sign of blooming.
‘We’ll discuss it later,’ I said, noticing khala Lailuma holding her little daughter’s hand by the portable guard booth, sauntering to the nursery.
‘Now.’
‘Wazir–’
‘Me or Baktash?’
‘Did you watch Arnold’s Terminator last night?’ Baktash said to me.
‘We are not friends anymore,’ I said. Those words felt like chewing rocks.
Baktash stayed numb.
‘I’ll punch you in the face if you follow us,’ Wazir said.
Baktash’s eyes fixated on me. ‘Really, Ahmad?’
‘Let’s go, Ahmad.’
‘You, too, Ahmad,’ Baktash said to me.
‘Come on, Ahmad. Shirullah’s waiting.’ Wazir marched off, passing Brigadier and Frishta getting into the Volga with its engine running. I followed Wazir. Baktash dried his eyes as I peeked back.
The television showed games of buzkashi, Afghanistan’s ancient traditional sport, on Nowruzes. Baktash attended one early this year when he travelled with his father to Mazar-e-Sharif for Mela-e-Gul-e-Surkh. Wrestlers rode horses, competing over a goat carcass, pulling it in opposite directions to place it in the hole, the goal. I felt like the headless goat between the two friends, more like the one getting pulled and pushed by Wazir in whichever direction he wished to throw me.
***
RAZIQ KHAN HIT a student on the foot with a wooden stick before the assembly. Shafih made no secret of loathing the school. According to his philosophy, we needed money, not education. The educated lived ‘in the pockets’ of the rich. He had another philosophy. What was the point in going to school? You became a doctor, an engineer or a pilot. What then? Ultimately, everybody died and turned into dust and thus ‘nothing’. Shafih was already nothing, and all he wanted was to enjoy life.
The pleasure had gone too far; the first day of the fifth week in school and Shafih hadn’t attended a single day. It was no surprise that the enjoyment subjected him to a public beating. Shafih confessed before the assembly – a confession he should’ve made last year, even the year before – that every day he buried his school rucksack in a carrier bag and went to the movies or played snooker. At home, he pretended how tired he felt because of ‘too much study’ at school. His mother spoiled him rotten. Everybody laughed at the last part of the confession. Raziq Khan warned it wasn’t a laughable matter, adding that anyone who followed Shafih’s footsteps would meet the same fate.
***
MINUTES LATER IN THE class, Shafih acted as if Raziq Khan had given him a medal for good behaviour. The halek had no shame. The ustad was late, and he, as always, flirted with jelais.
‘You didn’t return my mina letter last year,’ Laila, Sadaf’s best friend, said about her ‘love’ letter. They both sat on the desk, their legs swinging. Like Baktash, whose seat was empty thanks to his supposedly best friend’s news this morning, Laila coveted to join the film industry – be the next Adela Adim of Afghan cinema.
‘Busy with exams,’ Shafih said, standing opposite them, his back to the blackboard.
‘Shut up, you never open a book,’ Sadaf said.
‘My feelings for you haven’t changed,’ Laila said.
‘Something’s happening to me, too,’ Sadaf said and giggled. Rashid was gone, so she looked for another halek. A few shameless jelais like her gave the entire neighbourhood a bad reputation.
‘Sadaffff,’ Laila said.
‘I can’t help it, he looks like a model.’
No idea why jelais found the ugly face ‘like a model’.
‘Who’s this new jelai?’ Shafih pointed with his eyes to the back of the jelais’ row.
‘She’s not the type,’ Laila said.
‘No one can resist Shafih,’ Sadaf said, giggling. ‘Chief, can you resist Shafih?’ Sadaf asked in a raised voice from Frishta, who leaned on the desk, like me filling in the registry, except I’d completed it minutes earlier.
Frishta and Sadaf had been friends after Rashid’s departure. According to Frishta, Sadaf’s father and stepmother starved Sadaf, her sisters and their mother if they disobeyed household orders. Sadaf’s father had married another woman because Sadaf’s mother couldn’t give him a son. Frishta had warned the father to ‘stop being unfair’. Otherwise, she’d involve Brigadier and his guards from the KHAD. Apparently, the warning had eased life for Sadaf and the sisters.
‘Salaam, this’s Frishta.’ She stood before Shafih, her left hip parallel to my desk. Why did she move from her place for a bad halek?
‘Shafih. You’re beautiful.’
They shook hands.
‘Frishta. You, too, are handsome.’
An ohhh sound from the jelais blocked the students’ noise of talking to one another in the corridor.
‘I don’t agree with what happened this morning,’ Frishta said.
‘I’m glad they caught me, or else I wouldn’t have met you.’
‘Frishta, don’t believe him. He’s yet to return my mina letter from last year.’
‘Do you believe in mina at first sight?’ Shafih asked Frishta.
Frishta’s lips stretched. The art ustad knocked on the door, followed by chairs and desks scraping the floor. Wazir returned with a sweaty face from an arm-wrestling match at the back.
Frishta shouldn’t have smiled but put him in his place. I planned to fill her in with Shafih’s colourful character in the evening, but I had no clue she’d drop the mother of all bombs.
***
FRISHTA CLASHED WITH MOUR over why my mother kept Nazo away from Frishta, as though Frishta suffered from tuberculosis. Mahjan scolded her daughter for showing disrespect to Mour. Tears rolled down Frishta’s face when Mahjan opined how Brigadier’s upbringing had cost Frishta manners. Frishta dashed out of the lounge. I followed her into my room filled with jasmine scent. She sat on the mattress, leaning against the wall, her left hand touching my bed. I abstained from criticising her for arguing with Mour, something she’d been doing her best to avoid. Frishta’s accusation of Mour’s treatment of her wasn’t an exaggeration.
I passed her a pillow. She threw it away against the bookcase. Threw the bag when I asked her to crack on with the exam revision. The bag bashed against the table, and the alarm clock dropped onto the rug. She burst into tears.
‘I think tror jan has gauged Mour’s plan to stop our classes. She just wants you to be careful,’ I said, sitting on the mattress by her feet. Last week Mour told Agha to end the evening teas as they ‘affected’ her children’s studies and manners.
‘I miss my mother.’
‘Tror jan’s talking in the lounge,’ I said, overhearing Mahjan and Mour chatting over the Voice of America news.
‘She’s not my real mother.’
‘Is this a new drama?’
Frishta pulled up her white tunban.
‘For Khudai’s sake, what’re you doing?’ My heartbeat rose. Ever since I’d known Frishta, a headscarf was wrapped around her head and neck. A loose kameez and a loose tunban covered her hands to the wrists and legs to the ankles. She dressed like a ‘grandmother’, as Nazo once said.
‘Frostbite. The cowards abandoned me in the freezing cold.’
‘Pull them down, please.’ My hair stood as my eyes caught her lower legs. The skin had blackened with white patches in between as if burned.
She covered her legs.
‘Who are the cowards?’ I said and tried to recover.
‘My biological father and his murderous mother.’
‘Why did they do that?’
‘The cowards strangled my mother to death and threw me on the snow.’
‘Na. Why?’
‘For giving birth to a third jelai.’
‘Khudai. But that wasn’t your mother’s fault.’
‘It was. She didn’t defend herself.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘The coward was hanged, and the godless bitch rotted in prison from tuberculosis.’
‘Sisters?’
‘Grabbed into marriage by the cowards’ cousins. Free meat.’ She burst into fresh tears.
‘I’m sorry, Frishta.’ I felt dizzy, as if Frishta had bashed my head with the wardrobe standing opposite me.
‘Are your sisters OK?’
‘The Russians buried them under the rubble when they bombed the village.’ She broke down.
‘Khudai, na. I’m sorry, Frishta. I’m really sorry.’ The concussion confounded me. I didn’t know how to soothe her, apart from apologising.
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Padar jan arrested the cowards.’ Tears came down her cheeks. ‘Padar jan and madar jan told me that they loved me more than Safi, but they wanted me to learn the truth from them.’
‘Safi is also…’
She shook her head. ‘12 years after my adoption, madar jan got pregnant with him.’
I wouldn’t even have guessed if she hadn’t told me, I said; Brigadier and Mahjan were caring parents.
‘The minute I was born, I became a liability.’
‘You’re not a liability, Frishta. You’re an asset. Everyone loves you.’
She tilted her head and gazed at the brown chandelier, its yellow glow pouring over her face, the eyes tearing up. ‘How hurtful it must have been for her.’
‘Don’t think about it.’
‘The murderers wouldn’t have been able to strangle her if she dared to stand for herself.’
‘She’ll inshallah be in Janat.’
‘I see in every woman my mother. That’s why I lose it when I see us being treated like a piece of shit.’
I let her speak.
‘I can’t see them suffer.’
‘I understand.’
‘I don’t want you sisters to be my mother.’
‘Don’t worry, Mour lives for her children.’
‘We’re seen as a burden. First, dependent on fathers. Then husbands. Finally, sons. We must end this dependency. I want your sisters to stand on their own two feet.’
‘I understand.’
She wiped her eyes with her white headscarf.
‘Do you think I’m rude?’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘You are not unless people don’t know you well.’ I decided against telling her to keep her outbursts in check, though I had previously reminded her of Agha’s trick to see herself as a nursery teacher when arguing her point.
She considered something and nodded.
Nazo, in the hallway, instructed Zarghuna and Safi to roll the marbles to the last square on the rug; whoever delivered the marble into the square won the game.
‘Frishta, count me in as a father, mother, brother, sister. I won’t say no if you ask for my flesh.’
‘Best friend?’
I froze, feeling the heat in my jeans from the mattress.
She burst into laughter. I joined her. ‘You’re the trusted person in my life. That’s why I told you all this.’
‘I’ll do my best to help you pass your examinations, inshallah.’
‘I am sorry about burdening you with–’
‘Good you shared it with me.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it again.’
‘Sure.’ Nazo cheered. Zarghuna told her to keep it quiet as Agha and Brigadier listened to the news.
‘Don’t feel sorry for me. Khuda jan has given me angels as parents instead.’
I asked her to stand by the window, close her eyes and let the fresh air blow against her face. I waited until she followed the steps and then took Mullah Nasruddin from my desk and read.
Mullah was busy hammering down, trying to break the lock of a bank.
A passer-by asked, What are you doing, sir?
Playing the tambur, Mullah replied.
Can’t hear the noise.
You shall hear it tomorrow.
Frishta’s closed eyes facing the starless sky widened, and her lips stretched.
That moonless evening, my heart ached for Frishta. I doubted if my sisters and I were Agha and Mour’s children. I doubted if any parents were real.
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