Category: Afghan History

Chapter Twenty-Six ‘Ahmad, pay attention,’ Mour said. ‘Seat belt,’ a Turkish air stewardess said. ‘Sorry, miles away.’ Traumatic memories rippled through me and I hadn’t even set foot on its soil. I pulled out the strap from underneath Mour and pushed it into the buckle. ‘Don’t forget why we named you Ahmad,’ Mour said.…

Chapter Twenty-Five My sisters flailed their hands, screaming ‘Mour’. ‘Please save my daughters!’ Mour cried above the deafening outboard motor noise. She banged her head against a man to the right; her headscarf had slipped to her shoulders. The man wouldn’t release his grabbing of Mour’s arms. Another asylum seeker held the man’s belt…

Chapter Twenty-Four For weeks, my only companions were insomnia, nightmares and regrets. I mulled over my response in the past few days leading to our departure from Kabul and wondered if I could’ve done anything to stop Frishta’s death from happening. If only I told her I loved her. She would’ve been with us.…

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…

Chapter Twenty-Two ‘Zoya, wake up. We’re going,’ Mour’s voice said. ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘We’re leaving.’ ‘I’m not coming.’ ‘Ahmad, it’s 3pm. We’re leaving now.’ Agha’s voice again. I rubbed my eyes and opened them to see a sack by Agha’s legs next to the burning lamb. I realised and jumped to my feet, hitting…

Chapter Twenty-One Baktash and his father’s killings shocked everyone. Shukria, who worried more about Afghanistan losing its identity than her losing her life, supposed ‘high-profile Communists’ who stayed put at their addresses, or rather in the basements of their flat, would meet the same fates as Baktash’s father and Mr Barmak, because the mujahideen…

Chapter Twenty I throw a surprise party for my wife’s promotion as King Zahir Shah’s Advisor for Women’s Affairs. Frishta thanks her ‘supportive husband’, me, in her speech, and everyone claps, including Wazir and Baktash, alongside their wives. Our two sons and a daughter play with Wazir and Baktash’s kids. We picnic in the…

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…

Chapter Eighteen I excitedly told Agha and Mour how the pakoled mujahideen came across as friendly, and how the worries about the mujahideen were unfounded. Agha, with a smouldering cigarette in his hand, hung on my words but made no comment. Mour passed me a plate of scalding ashak, pasta dumplings filled with leeks…

Chapter Seventeen Agha reassured Mour not to worry because the mujahideen had promised not to harm the pro-Communists, as he took off his right sock in the hallway. It was midday and Agha had just returned home; he’d been away overnight to officially hand over power to Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, the head of the mujahideen…