“
Curiosity took Baktash and me to an empty school a week ago. The mujahideen daily fired rockets at Kabul from the capital city’s outskirts, indiscriminately killing and injuring Kabulis. Fortunately, last week’s stinger missile hurt no one, but it created an enormous hole in the schoolyard’s garden and smashed almost all the glass, which the school had yet to install. Schools in Kabul lacked a heating system and they thankfully closed in winter. In mid-March the first few weeks of the academic year felt like you sat in a fridge. This year’s winter, coupled with the rocket’s effects, was worse. Cold air blew in through the missing window panes. My feet felt numb on the concrete floor, and even my T-shirt under my jacket stayed moist, thanks to Mullah Rahmat’s lengthy speech under the drizzle.
‘Still giggling,’ Baktash said.
‘I swear on Mour’s head I don’t know her.’ As a child I visited Mour and Agha’s birthplace in Surobi, an outlying district of Kabul. Husbands and wives met at night when the men returned from their headquarters, the saracha, to the bedrooms. Haleks and jelais went to separate schools, and jelais dropped out in year six. I preferred that tradition, but the stupid schools in Kabul put us all together, and today some foolish jelais from the right row peeked and sniggered. The shameless jelai threatened my reputation. I shifted my legs to the left to ensure my back was to the jelais.
‘The new mudir will bring real Islam and punish her kind,’ Wazir said, putting his notebook on the wooden desk with metal legs. Shirullah got the second-highest grades in the class and was meant to sit at the front desk next to me, but who’d dare to remove Wazir?
‘Inshallah,’ I said, ‘God willing’.
‘How can a jelai become a halek’s friend? She’s a lunatic,’ Wazir said, tapping his feet on the floor like many in the class.
‘I don’t see a problem with it,’ Baktash said.
‘We’re open with each other. Talk about men’s matters. Wrestle. Can she?’ I asked Baktash.
‘It’s forbiddenfor the Sunnis. The Hazaras don’t care because they’ve deviated,’ Wazir said.
‘The Hazaras are proper Muslims. I’m not sure about the Panjabis,’ Baktash said, searching in his schoolbag.
‘The Panjabis are brothers; Mongols aren’t.’
‘Please, stop the name-calling. We’re all Afghan brothers.’ I echoed our mosque’s mullah.
‘Consider what I told you,’ Wazir said to me, pointing with his eyes to Baktash behind me.
‘It’s a matter of motives. If your heart–’
‘It’s as sinful to mingle with a non-mahram woman as it is togamble or drink. Period,’ Wazir said about women who weren’t related to men in blood, cutting Baktash short.
‘A boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is one of the five vices Mour warned me against,’ I said.
‘Find yourself new friends.’
Baktash stopped searching. ‘I’m Ahmad’s friend.’
‘Ahmad doesn’t want a Shia friend. Tell him, Ahmad.’
‘Please, Wazir. I have a serious worry on my mind,’ I said.
Wazir’s insistence on throwing Baktash out of our circle troubled me. I’d known both of them since I knew myself. We opened our eyes to the world in the same block, learned our alphabets in the same class, and mastered kite-flying rules on the same site. Every year Baktash and I saved up for winters, bought strings and kites and flew them in the kite festival in the Makroryan playground. Wazir couldn’t afford to contribute, but he flew the kites as he was ‘good at cutting’ the opponents’ lines. Baktash or I held the spool. Baktash loved to fly, but Wazir refused to give him a chance. They often argued and exchanged names, and I thought that factored in Wazir hating Baktash. I was wrong. Wazir’s loathing for Baktash ran deeper.
Wazir’s uncle sent him books from Pakistan over the past two winters. Obsessed with them, Wazir shared with me their radical messages about the jihad, the holy war against the Red Empire, but never with Baktash. Wazir believed the ‘gullible’ and ‘untrustworthy’ Baktash might give Wazir away to the KHAD. Worse, Wazir’s Salafist books described Shias as those who caused ‘more serious damage’ to Islam than the kafirs, the unbelievers. The books turned a 15-year-old friendship into an enmity. Wazir suspected Baktash was a Shia due to his round face, flat but long nose and narrow eyes, and because Baktash refused to join us in the mosque; he waited outside until Wazir and I finished our prayers. Baktash, in turn, called Wazir ‘Panjabi’ due to his dark skin and thick, black hair, and because Wazir defended Pakistan – and taunted me with Shorawi, Russian, owing to my light brown hair and fair skin, when I provoked Baktash.
A month ago, after the Friday Prayer, I asked our mullah with a chest-length beard if Wazir’s books told the truth.
‘These books have destroyed Afghanistan. Throw them away. We’re all Muslim brothers and have lived in this country for centuries. We all believe in Khudai and the beloved Prophet, peace be upon him. We all are meant to encourage a feeling of mutual love and respect, not hatred. Understood?’
Woh, yes, mullah saheb, sir, I remembered replying.
‘Khudai has created this world for living; live in it and let others live. Understood?’
‘Woh, mullah saheb.’
‘Go and give love to your friend,’ he said, stroking his beard.
I already adored the clean-hearted Baktash like a brother, but Wazir said the mullah was ‘aligned’ with the government, and he considered changing mosque. Baktash wasn’t Shia. Even if he was, we all were ‘Muslim brothers’. I reckoned his leniency towards religious commitments didn’t stem from un-religiousness or ‘reading’ his father’s collection of books by Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I often reasoned with Wazir that I hadn’t seen Baktash opening those books or talking about Communist ideas. Baktash wasn’t a hypocrite. The lack of commitment derived from laziness. His Taekwondo instructor complained of Baktash’s lack of gym attendance. Our teachers scolded him for missing schooldays. His mother told him off for copying my assignments. They all knew Baktash loved to ‘chill out’, especially with me. He loved movies. We borrowed videocassette tapes from shops in the Makroryan Market and watched them. His ambition was to become an action hero like Bruce Lee. He even played a part in a film as a child artist, and his father promised to make him a star once he finished Honar-haayi-Ziba, Afghanistan’s Drama School, at Kabul University. He’d rather practise his dancing skills and Hindi in case he got an offer like another Afghan actor, Hashmat Khan, from Bollywood, than do his homework or learn a religious dua, prayer. Wazir hated the idea of Baktash becoming an actor – another reason Wazir would invoke to finish with Baktash. I likewise disapproved of him becoming an actor; he could choose a career from hundreds of respectable professions. We loved movies but hated the profession; this was hypocrisy, he’d respond, adding with a smile that I’d be over the moon when he got me to meet Amitabh Bachchan in person once he made it in Indian cinema.
‘Stand up,’ I said as there was a knock at the wooden door. Every student stood up in respect. Raziq Khan, the Dari-language ustad, teacher, Mahbuba jan, and to my horror, the crazyjelaiwalked in. Had she reported me to Raziq Khan? Please save my honour, Khudai.
Raziq Khan gestured us to sit down, and we did.
Mahbuba janput her bag on the desk with a chair before the blackboard and stood by the front window. She praised the left row for having shifted closer to the middle one, ours, to avoid the rain that came through the glassless windows, adding that at least their row got a better scent of the acacias in the school gardens once they blossomed.
First things first, Raziq Khan said: he planned to go nowhere and the school would be administered the same way as before. Mullah Rahmat had imposed himself as a mudir without ‘the Minister of Education’s order’ and he was ‘gone’. Raziq Khan wanted no more discussion about the ‘imposter’.
Everyone cheered, except Wazir and me. Most students liked the cool Raziq Khan because he acted like he was one of us. In fact, if the middle-aged Khan dyed his grey hair black like his moustache, and wore jeans with a T-shirt, the thin man would easily pass himself off as one of the stylish students.
‘Of equal importance is’ – Raziq Khan added and nodded at the crazy jelai – ‘that you’re a brave jelai. You can do it.’ He walked to Mahbuba jan and gently pushed her away from the rain-splashed window recess. Both stood with their heads turned to the crazy jelai.
The crazy jelai stood before the desk with a red nose and cheeks. Her eyes roved and she waved at me when her gaze caught mine. I quickly averted my eyes to the world map poster hanging on the right side of the blackboard. Titters from the jelais’ side. She had no shame. My heart pounded against my chest.
‘Salaam alaikum,’ she greeted us with the two Arabic words meaning ‘peace be upon you’. ‘My name’s Frishta and I’m thrilled to be your new classmate.’
The words ‘new classmate’ raised my heartbeat. The smiley face ruined the first day of year nine and, I feared, would turn the entire academic year into hell.
‘This’s a school, not a wedding hall,’ Sadaf said, sitting parallel to Wazir and me on the right row.
A burst of laughter and cackle subdued the sounds of blowing on hands and tapping feet.
‘These are our traditional clothes. Malalai Anna wore them to the Maiwand War,’ the crazy jelai said, her face blushing.
‘We’re not at war,’ Sadaf said.
‘Wake up,’ the crazy jelai said.
‘We don’t want a villager in our class.’
Laughter, chuckles and cackles. Even Roya’s mouth stretched. The jelai school gangster, Sadaf, would turn the school into prison for the crazy jelai and hopefully compel her to leave our class.
‘Shut your ugly face,’ Sadaf said to Roya.
Roya’s face turned as pale as the three pieces of chalk on the blackboard’s nook behind the crazy jelai.
‘Quiet, everyone. Is this how you treat your new classmate?’ Raziq eyed everyone, Sadaf a little more, but couldn’t name her because she was Rashid’s girlfriend.
‘Carry on, Frishta.’
‘Just returned from Moscow, where I took a one-year course in the Russian language.’
‘Ooh?’
Titters.
‘Sadaf?… Please,’ Raziq Khan said over the sound of muffled clapping from the adjacent classroom.
‘Before that, I studied in a school in Kunduz… Now I’m back in my dear Afghanistan…’ She looked at Raziq Khan, who nodded. He averted his eyes to the mini-Kabul River getting built by his feet and said something in Russian.
The crazy jelai spoke back in Russian.
Raziq Khan’s jaw dropped. ‘Would you?’
The crazy jelai touched pieces of soaked mud scattered on the floor and held up her palm. ‘I won’t change this mud for the entire Soviet Union, let alone Moscow.’
Mahbuba jan flinched. Raziq Khan wondered and uttered a sentence in Russian.
The crazy jelai went on and on speaking equally in Russian, and we shivered in the cold.
‘Very proud to have you in my school,’ Raziq Khan said. He poked his face out of the wooden window frame, to let the rain wash his skin, inhaled and exhaled the scent of bloomless acacia trees, and wiped his face with a handkerchief. Did he dry tears or drops of rain? Mahbuba jan, like many students, had a blank expression. Raziq Khan turned to us and motioned with his hands. We clapped.
‘I’ll make an exception in your case and let you sit in year nine. But you must pass year eight where you left your studies for Moscow.’
‘Thank you.’ Her face brightened.
‘Remember, in effect, you’ll be studying two years simultaneously before you pass the year eight exams.’
‘I’ve been revising over the winter holidays. Inshallah, I’ll be OK.’
‘Ask your ustads if you need help,’ Raziq Khan said, eyeing Mahbuba janfor confirmation, who was in her own little world but quickly checked in to say an enthusiastic ‘Of course.’
‘Do you know any student who has year eight notes?’ Mahbuba jan asked.
She pointed to me. ‘Ahmad’s my cousin.’
Eyes turned towards me, including those of Wazir. My lips remained sealed; her accusation exhausted all my energy.
‘Excellent. You’re related to a student who is at the top of his class,’ Raziq Khan said.
‘Of all year eight classes,’ Mahbuba jan chipped in.
‘I know, he’s a bright young man like his father,’ Raziq Khan said, hands in his moist coat pockets.
I had got the top grades throughout all year eight classes, but I’d never help the liar.
‘I don’t know her.’ I found the courage.
‘Ahmad, I don’t want to hear a complaint from Frishta,’ Raziq Khan said.
***
FOR THE FIRST TIME I ever remembered, I didn’t go on the 15-minute break. Roya must feel every day like a prisoner in the lonely class, I wondered. Roya’s loneliness was her comfort zone, and the crazy jelai earlier on tried to remove her from it. No wonder Roya mumbled a no, perhaps wondering whether the crazy jelai, like the rest of the students, Sadaf in particular, mocked her. Maybe it was nine-year-long students’ intimidation, or perhaps her stepmother’s alleged cruelty, which had turned her into a Roya who hardly spoke. Never went to the blackboard to figure out a formula. No teaching went into her head, no matter how many times an ustad repeated it. In the end, I supposed, the school let her stay on just to get away, even for a short time, from the oppression of her stepmother. But the school cared less about students’ bullying.
My heart fell as the crazy jelai dashed in. ‘Roya, you’re coming with me to the canteen. No more excuses.’
Talking to Roya even embarrassed other jelais, but the crazy jelai seemingly picked her as a friend. The crazy jelai leaned over the wooden desk and withdrew a notebook, her hair fully covered in a wet headscarf. She wore the hijab but broke the Islamic rule of abstaining from lies. How dare the notorious liar make me her cousin? My classmates might think she was mygirlfriend.
‘Why did you lie?’ I heard myself say, my heart beating faster.
She jotted down something in her notebook.
‘I’m talking to you.’
She put her pen into a pencil case, placed the pencil case and the notebook into a leather bag, pushed the desk with a qeghgh sound, and walked in my direction. ‘Friends?’ she extended her right hand, towering over me. A mixture of roses and jasmine entered my nostrils.
My heart kept pounding. What if someone caught me talking to her? It’d only prove her accusation correct.
‘I’ve asked you a question.’
‘When are you lending me the notes?’
‘Never.’
‘You are. Tonight. At your house.’ She gave me a broad smile, her black and white coat reflecting the dim light from the window.
The words ‘your house’ made me numb.
Sadaf entered with her loyal friends, all three as tall as their boss’s shoulders. She threw a closed umbrella towards her table, but missed and it hit the damp floor, splashing water around. ‘Pick it up,’ Sadaf said to Roya.
‘Roya, let’s go. We’ve got five minutes left,’ the crazyjelaisaid.
Roya’s face lost colour, her body frozen.
The crazy jelai lifted the purple umbrella with water dripping and placed it on Sadaf’s desk.
‘She’s crazy, and so’s her choice of friendship,’ Sadaf said. Her friends cackled.
‘Come on, Roya,’ the crazy jelai said.
‘Sit down, stupid.’
‘Her name is Roya.’
‘And yours is fatty potato.’
Sadaf’s friends snickered. A student, pretending to be a motorbike, rode in and out, making a vroom-pt-ptta sound.
‘Why are you hurting your sisters?’
‘You told me to wake up: we’re at war.’
‘You’re not my enemy.’
‘Scared?’
‘Not of my sister.’
‘Say sorry.’
The crazy jelai took a step closer to Roya. ‘Let’s go.’
Roya shivered. ‘I don’t want to go. She’ll hurt me.’
Two jelais poked their heads in and said, ‘Hi cutie.’ They sprinted off, yelling and giggling in the corridor. I’d warned them of a complaint to ustads and even their parents, but the stupid jelais wouldn’t stop.
‘She won’t. She’s our sister.’
‘Stop fucking calling me sister,’ Sadaf said to the crazy jelai.
‘She’s going to hurt me,’ Roya broke into tears, covering her ears with her hands.
‘Show me,’ the crazy jelai said and checked Roya’s cauliflower ears like the famed wrestler, Khalifa Nizam.
‘Has Sadaf done this?’
Roya wept, her body shivering.
‘Speak to me?’
‘Yes, I have. Will do it again if she disobeys.’
‘Is it better to remain quiet and wait to be stomped upon, or stand up for yourself and get stomped upon?’ the crazy jelai asked Roya.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Sadaf yelled and rushed towards her victims.
Roya screamed.
The crazy jelai blocked her leg and slipped her body in between. Sadaf went into the air and landed on her back with a banging sound. The crazy jelai let her hands off Sadaf’s armpit and shoulder. Sadaf’s legs gave way as she rose, and her body moved to one side before her friends steadied it and then sat her on the chair.
An aah sound. ‘What have you done to her?’ a friend asked, pointing to a goose egg on Sadaf’s forehead.
‘It’s called a side throw,’ the crazy jelai said. She took Roya’s hand, touched the black, red and green Afghan flag stuck to the left of the blackboard, and kissed the hand, and then both raced out. Roya’s face was as pale as Sadaf’s goose egg.
Baktash sauntered in and moaned about Wazir and Shirullah ignoring him, wanting me to go out. I didn’t have the energy to stand on my feet, let alone venture out. Baktash shook his head and placed his umbrella in the bag.
‘Ooh, what happened?’
‘The crazy jelai.’
‘Really? Punched her?’
‘No, a side throw.’
‘A side throw? It isn’t Taekwondo.’
‘What time is it?’
‘10:13,’ Baktash said.
Today’s break felt like a year. Wazir and Shirullah’s eyes widened as they entered, wanting to know what had happened to Sadaf. Baktash told them – I was glad Baktash made an effort to keep our group unity and held no grudges against Wazir.
‘She’s just threatened to tell lies to my parents.’
‘You may have done something.’
‘Baktash, how many times do I have to swear I don’t know her?’
‘She’s blackmailing you,’ Wazir said.
‘Why?’
‘Your brain,’ Wazir added.
‘I think she fancies you,’ Baktash said.
‘She’s stayed in Moscow by herself – she’s dirty,’ Wazir said.
‘Please, Khudai, save me from her. Mour will kill me.’ My voice broke. The school bell clanged.
‘Lend her nothing. We’ll tell Mour she lies,’ Wazir said.
‘Rashid’ll get her. She’s beaten up her girlfriend,’ Baktash said.
‘I heard he’s back,’ Shirullah said.
‘What if they put him in our class?’ Baktash said.
We looked at one another.
The grey sky from the windows roared. Lightning. Rainstorm. Cold. Something was wrong about this year. My heart had sunk in my chest. Maybe Mullah Rahmat was right and Khudai was angry with us Kabulis for our disobedience. I prayed for His mercy.
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