Chapter Nineteen
Everyone in the dimly lit basement shushed as the extended BBC Pashto Service broadcast the night news:
This is London. This is the Pashto programme.
Agha told mothers to keep their children’s noise down, asking my sisters, and even some adults, to stop flying paper airplanes. I knew the introductory words for the news by heart. Most Afghans did. The BBC had imprisoned Afghans since the Soviet invasion in 1979, and the news in Pashto and Farsi was the only two meals it served its inmates in 24 hours; all eyes and ears fixed on the radio as if it was updating us on the progress of a cure for a deadly pandemic.
After a 14-year-awaited victory, the mujahideen are fighting among themselves. Massoud and Dostum’s forces fight against Hekmatyar’s armed men. There are fire exchanges between Old Makroryan and New Makroryan, as well as Bala Hissar and areas surrounding Ziarat-i-Ashuqan-o-Arefan… The radio disappeared. Agha tapped it and extended the aerial, but there was no reception; his and the others’ faces were as frustrated as patients deprived of heart medication.
Bala Hissar accommodated the former seat of royal power that guarded the south-western approach to Kabul. Its citadel once opened to tourists to hike along its walls.
The two brothers and spiritual leaders, Ashuqan and Arefan, so the legend went, protected Kabul during the 12th century and brought prosperity to the city. Every Thursday, women visited the site to ask Khudai for help, but the two brothers couldn’t prevent the mujahideen from turning their tomb into a trench. Baktash was right all along: the turbaned mujahideen and the pakoled Mujahideen’s fighting did truncate Kabulis’ joyfulness.
‘Dostum has got air power. His participation will intensify the war. Kabul will be flattened out. Kabul will be flattened out,’ Mr Barmak said from the opposite corner of the basement, half of his face lit by the oil lamp, his daughters sitting on his lap.
Mr Barmak’s dishevelled hair and word repetition indicated he was more anxious than everyone else. Everyone knew him in Kabul as a ‘Communist’. If the mujahideen ever executed anyone from the block, he, Agha, Baktash’s father and Brigadier topped the list. We feared any moment the armed mujahideen could rush in, take them outside, shoot them in cold blood, and leave their bodies lying there. My chest tightened.
***
I CONSIDERED HOW and when to apologise to Frishta throughout the night in the musty basement where everyone, like the homeless in Shahr-e Naw, slept, snored and occasionally farted. Her possible reaction frightened me. She held her face in the opposite direction to the small window, lying on her right side. I didn’t know whether she was asleep or awake. Her presence, however, so close, was calming. If only I didn’t have the damn argument with Frishta, and she asked me to assess her with the exams. I knew she wouldn’t. If only Nowruz or Eid was around. I prayed to Khudai to bring Nowruz in Frishta and my relationship, a moment you forgot and also forgave each other’s mistakes and started the New Year with new hopes and new goals.
Knocking on the cellar door raised the adults’ heads. Our block representative whispered Agha’s name. He knocked again.
‘Gently, kids are asleep,’ Agha said.
Only Agha and Brigadier groped their way and exited. More whispers outside. Agha poked his head through the door and murmured ‘shovel’ to Mour.
‘Why do you need a shovel at 4 o’clock in the morning?’
‘Just tell me where the damn thing is.’ Agha turned impatient with the mujahideen victory – he never spoke to Mour rudely before.
‘Behind the bin in the kitchen.’
Agha withdrew his head and shut the door. Sounds of footsteps leaving the corridors. Please, Khudai, keep him safe.
Every parent had sneaked out to their apartment and got duvets, blankets and pillows. We managed to spend our first night in the cold basement with a damp stench. The first night Kabulis tasted war first hand. We’d seen it in other parts of Afghanistan on television or heard it from the radio, but never in our city.
Nazir from the adjacent corridor peered in, cupped his nose and giggled when his eyes caught mine. Please, Khudai, don’t make him call me a piss pants. He was two years older than me and wasn’t the sort to lose sleep over concerns for obro and ezat, which he demonstrated last year in the circumcision party of the fourth floor’s baby son, for which Afghan rugs were spread over the lawn before the block with cushions being laid on top of them. Men and young haleks reclined, smoking chillums, and four women dancers danced till early morning accompanied by tabla and harmonium duet music, which loudspeakers the size of our television amplified to the extent that attracted the kind of Nazirs and Shafihs from Bimaro and surrounding villages.
I’d never seen such breathless interest and excitement among men than I witnessed from my room window that night. The whole crowd seemed to devour the dancers with their eyes. They followed and applauded every movement the dancers made. Nazir proved the most shameless of them all. A drunken Nazir danced with the young women, and at their request, even displayed his Taekwondo skills topped with breaking dance moves, to which he received clapping from the crowd. One of the dancers condescended to offer him a bowl of tea; Nazir took it with a profound obeisance and returned it in the same way, addressing her as ‘majesty’ and adding that she accepted him as a ‘slave’. The shameless Shafih likewise danced parde awalall night, and the following morning boasted in the class how the two got jiggy, jiggy with the female dancers in Nazir’s apartment. Wazir used to taunt Nazir with ‘jiggy, jiggy’ while Baktash and I laughed, but it was a relief he didn’t retaliate before the parents and children.
Desperate to know, I brought myself to ask him. He knelt and poked his head, allowing some light to come into the basement through the cellar door. Every adult face turned to Nazir, Frishta’s included. She sat up and leaned against the basement wall. Nazir’s face brightened, obviously enjoying the attention of so many curious people to what he was about to unfold.
‘Everyone’s so observed.’ He giggled, disregarding the fact that children slept, and some annoyingly chewed. He thankfully carried on. ‘The mujahideen from the checkpoint before the block break into Quraish saheb’s apartment.’ He peeked over his shoulder. ‘The thugs shoot dead the brother, father and stepmother. The daughter jumps off the fifth floor to save her obro and ezat.’
‘Tawba-tawba, Allah saves us from such cruelty,’ Mour said in a hushed tone, pulling the blanket over the sleeping Nazo and Zarghuna.
‘May Khudai turn our food into poison for them,’ another said.
‘They were meant to be Khudai’s angels. They’ll answer for their sin on Qiyamat Day,’ yet another said from the corner under the tiny basement window.
‘They were thieves disguised as Mujahideen,’ Nazir said, crouching, his white Adidas as clean as the cellar door.
The combination of turbans and pakols at the outpost suggested something fishy about the checkpoint. I knew the jelai. Someone else among this eager audience knew her better. She’d helped the victim gain confidence. To my surprise, Frishta, hands placed around her legs, and whose thighs touched her chest, revealed no emotions at all for her best friend, Roya.
Somebody said the ‘thugs’ gaped at Roya when she hung clothes on the balcony yesterday afternoon.
Mahjan enquired about Roya’s fate. Heads turned to Nazir, who gave a dismissive gesture.
‘A dead branch penetrated her stomach: her body hung from it.’
A spontaneous ‘Oh’ came out from the listeners’ mouths.
‘No one’s alive from the family. Her brother had just become engaged,’ Nazir said.
‘She was Frishta’s best friend. What a lovely jelai,’ Mahjan said. She covered herself and her son in a blanket with a portrait of a leopard on it.
‘She’ll go straight to Janat. She won’t be answering questions on Qiyamat Day,’ Mour said.
At last, Nazir had to join the others, where he belonged: to dig graves under the same tree behind the block. He pleaded with us to say nothing to our parents, who intended to keep the story secret as ‘women unnecessarily get scared’.
Mour rested her hand on the blanket over Nazo and Zarghuna, begging Khudai to save her daughters. Tears trickled from Mahjan’s eyes, too. She told Frishta to come under the blanket. Mr Barmak was calming his wife down. Now I understood why Brigadier broke into tears. Guns weren’t as dangerous as losing the obro and ezat. I got even more worried for Frishta and my sisters.
The mujahideen had released all prisoners from the Pul-e-Charkhi owing to their National Pardon policy. Thousands of thieves, murderers and rapists loitered on the streets of Kabul. How could we distinguish between the mujahideen and criminals? It was a question many asked.
The mujahideen looked after the female hostages like ‘sisters’ and safely handed them over to the British in the First Anglo-Afghan War. I remembered in Surobi men giving up their way to female villagers and making their journey hundreds of metres longer. Your enemy didn’t touch you if you had your women with you. All out of respect for the honour of women, something our history was proud of. This damn war in Kabul even challenged that notion. It disgusted me. Unless they pass my dead body, I’d allow no thug to touch a woman from this basement.
Moments later, Frishta, covered in a warm blanket, wrote in a notebook – a black one. As always, she faced away.