Chapter Twenty-Eight
We parked Shujah’s Volga at the bottom of a concrete road in Khair Khana. Under the blazing sun of mid-afternoon climbed up a hill you’d say had been drawn by a nursery student with fancy colours: the hill accommodated hundreds of detached and semi-detached houses: some mud and others concrete; some single-storeyed and others two- or three-storeyed; some with purple and others with blue-, brown- and yellow-coloured exteriors and doors.
We stopped three times for Mour to catch her breath and for me to wipe the beads of sweat from Mour’s forehead before arriving outside a two-storeyed mud house with a three-foot-tall wooden gate. Nazigul, in a head-to-toe black hijab, knocked. Shujah and I positioned ourselves in the shadows, alongside the wall.
Would the tiny house turn out to be the one that accommodated my future wife? Would Latifa emerge as the loving wife destined to fill my empty home? Would…
‘How on earth is she going to look after my son’s house if she can’t clean her own?’ Mour said, pointing towards a cigarette box, a few empty cans and a banana skin lying around.
‘Mour, hila kawom.’
Nazigul knocked again.
‘Surely they must know we’re here,’ Mour said and leaned against the wall. Her face had turned pale.
‘Perhaps they’re taking their time ensuring the house is in good order,’ Shujah said to Mour.
‘They must learn from Nazigul,’ Mour said. This morning, Mour called Nazigul a ‘true Pashtun’ for having good hygiene, and wished we found a jelai like her.
‘Never go wrong with praising a woman,’ Shujah said, gesturing with his head at Nazigul’s beaming face.
‘Anybody home?’ Mour raised her voice. ‘Knock harder, Nazigul. Or I’ll die from the sewage stench.’
‘Mour, hila kawom, keep it down.’ Mour behaved like she’d grown up in Switzerland.
Nazigul’s face flushed, asking for a few more minutes.
‘Make you look like Grandpa,’ Mour said, eyeing me up and down. She’d wanted everyone to put on their ‘full khastegari gear’. She wore a black jacket, a grey, calf-length dress, loose white trousers, a long shawl draped elegantly around her head and shoulders, and high-heeled shoes. Instead of a tie and suit, I wore my navy trousers, russet shirt and light brown brogues.
‘I’d put a padlock on the door of M&S if I had the power,’ Mour said.
‘What’s M&S?’ Shujah said.
‘A store standing for quality over fashion,’ I said.
‘Afghans won’t see you as modest; they assume you have no money to buy fashionable clothes,’ Mour said.
‘She’ll see Ahmad as he is,’ I said.
We heard footsteps from behind the closed gate, followed by the sound of a padlock being turned. Mour abandoned her leaning position and stood upright.
The gate parted to reveal the face of a 14- or 15-year-old jelai with a white headscarf and a black skirt. She said salaam, extending her head to steal a quick peek at me. She led us to the first floor and a square-shaped lounge almost twice the size of Shujah’s Volga, and left us.
‘Latifa would keep not only your home spotless, but also the household goods in new condition,’ Shujah whispered to Mour.
Indeed, like the giant 1980s Russian TV set on the wooden table, the two-seater black leather couches must have lived through both the Russian and the American invasions. You’d assume the owner treated the room like a museum where you could look but not touch.
Mour wondered when Latifa would show up.
The door opened, revealing a woman in a black skirt and jacket with a grey and white shawl around her shoulders and a black silk headscarf over her grey hair. We all stood up. She performed the usual right, left, right touching of cheeks with Mour and Nazigul, while with the non-mahram men she covered her right hand with her shawl and shook our hands. The tired-face woman sat on the leather armchair next to the door.
The women exchanged the usual pleasantries, which revealed that she whom Nazigul called Qandigul was my future mother-in-law – provided we liked her daughter and the family approved of our family and me. The jelai who answered the door earlier was her youngest daughter.
‘I take it he’s your husband?’ Qandigul pointed to Shujah in an old, faded suit with an open-necked, white shirt. ‘I didn’t recognise him.’ She nodded at me.
‘Mother-in-law will be your first patient. A high blood cholesterol level and high blood pressure,’ Shujah whispered, smelling of the alcohol-based aftershave.
I looked at my hands. Pretended I heard nothing.
‘Mour and Ahmad jan have come from London,’ Nazigul said. She sat next to Mour on the opposite two-seater couch. Everyone acted as if they spoke about me for the first time.
The same young jelai from earlier opened the door, peeped in to glance at me and dashed off, shouting, ‘I told you he’s the halek.’
Qandigul’s forehead wrinkled; she stood up and closed the door.
‘What do you do in London?’
‘Just finished university.’
‘What did you study?’
‘Medicine.’
‘He’s a doctor,’ Mour chipped in, her eyes widening.
I wouldn’t forget the day I broke to Mour the news of a place at Durham Medical School. The sense of accomplishment within me equalled King Amanullah’s triumph over the British Empire. Mour planted a kiss on my head and I pecked her hands, grateful to Khudai for having given me Mour as a mother. Throughout that night she stayed up to perform nafl-prayers and read the Quran to thank Khudai for granting us one of her years-long wishes, while I watched The Godfather Part One for the third time.
‘He’s got a first-class degree. His thesis will be published in reputable medical journals.’
‘The department has only predicted a First,’ I said, dreading contradicting Mour and simultaneously wishing she didn’t show off.
Qandigul nodded, her hand letting go of the door handle. ‘You speak fluent Pashto. Nowadays, we need an interpreter for foreign Afghans.’
‘I grew up in Kabul,’ I said.
‘Have you not found work yet?’ Her intense gaze fixed on me.
‘I haven’t sought employment.’
‘Why not?’ Qandigul sat down.
‘Because I was planning to travel to Kabul soon after my studies… I didn’t want to start somewhere and have to ask for time off straight away,’ I said and took a deep breath, nervous of the fact that I embroiled myself in my khastegari as much as America involved itself in Afghan affairs, and both violated traditional Afghan values; something Mour had recently been warning me against.
The marriage process in Kabul required months, if not years. It took weeks for the elders of the two families to get to know each other and to discuss and agree on things like a walwar, bride price, gold jewellery, expenses of numerous ceremonies and other necessities; which we hoped the family didn’t ask for beyond our financial capacity. Once both families agreed on everything – an accord which at times proved as difficult as passing a UN resolution, since every paternal and maternal aka and tror had the power of veto – they’d fix a date for the namzadi, a small engagement party. It’d be at least another two weeks before we threw the shirini-khori. We’d wait for a month or so before the jelai’s family agreed to hold the wadah, followed a week later by the taqjami, wrapping up.
Mour and I had set off for Kabul the day after I sat my final exam, hoping to complete everything within a month. I anticipated, though, that we’d end up extending our stay in Kabul far beyond.
‘Plenty of jobs waiting for my son in England.’ Mour was exaggerating again.
‘I’ve got an unofficial job offer from a hospital,’ I interfered. The hospital was in Newcastle, where last year I undertook my clinical training as a student doctor.
‘Latifa jan would have a comfortable life in England,’ Mour added.
I looked down at my hands.
‘I thought they lived in London?’ Qandigul said, her gaze turning from Mour to Nazigul, with a blank look on her face.
‘London’s England,’ Mour said with stretched lips.
In our first months in England, Mour, too, referred to the UK as London, and the UK population as ‘London people’, so she should hardly have been surprised at Qandigul’s lack of knowledge.
Qandigul deepened her eyes into Nazigul’s, her forehead scrunching up.
‘I didn’t know they lived in a different country,’ Nazigul said, her voice visibly trembling.
‘London’s the capital city of England, as Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan,’ I said.
Qandigul raised her eyebrows. Mour nodded, and both colour and smile returned to Nazigul’s face.
‘We’ll invite you to England if Latifa jan becomes my daughter-in-law – even pay for your tickets. It’s a beautiful country worth visiting.’
I counted four black hardwood tables sitting against each other alongside the wall between the two windows.
‘Where’s Latifa jan?’ Mour asked.
‘It’s not the done thing for the halekto see the jelai. Nazigul and you may meet her, but not the men,’ Qandigul said.
‘But Ahmad and Latifa are marrying each other, not us,’ Mour said, her jaw dropped. ‘Tell Latifa jan my son doesn’t bite.’
I counted three squares in the Afghan rug.
‘Maybe they do things that way in the West. Here we haven’t forgotten our Pashtunwali,’ Qandigul said.
Mour’s face reddened. I didn’t remember anyone accusing Mour of being non-traditional, especially of a lesser Pashtun.
A female voice outside cursed those tossing banana peels on the ground. I glanced through a chink in the white curtains with hand-embroidered flowers and noticed with a sinking heart a woman in a burka on the ground, her legs pointing to the sky. Qandigul must’ve overheard Mour’s earlier comments because we sat in the room right above the main wooden gate, where, beside Shujah’s strong aftershave, I smelled the sewage stench.
‘My elder daughter saw her husband for the first time on the aina mosaf. It bestows purity.’
Qandigul wanted me to see Latifa no earlier than the aina mosaf when Latifa and I, as a bride and a groom veiled by a shawl, would ‘open the mirror to see one another in it’ and to read a few lines of the Quran.
Turning her accusing gaze to Nazigul, Qandigul continued. ‘We can excuse their ignorance because they’re “foreign Afghans”, but you should’ve known better. How come you’ve brought the halekto my house? What would my husband say if he saw a non-mahramhaleksitting in the lounge, waiting to see his daughter? You think we’re no better than pimps.’ Qandigul trembled.
Nazigul’s initial spontaneous smile had vanished. Shujah covered his left hand with the right, as if in prayer. Did he breathe? Woh, he glared at Nazigul. Everyone sat there as though we’d just buried a loved one. A man in his late fifties with a beard and a grey and black turban from the photo on the television peered at me.
‘The men must leave if you want to see my daughter,’ Qandigul said after an awkward silence.
Shujah and I made our way out, his dark brown face turning darker and his small eyes disappearing into the face.
‘She spoke of the Afghan culture and yet lacked melmastia,’ Shujah said as we stepped away from the house.
I put my finger on my lips and pointed upwards.
‘I bloody want her to hear.’
We stood before a mud wall a couple of houses away from Latifa’s.
‘Mour could’ve been more diplomatic.’
‘I’d break your Qandigul’s mouth if she was a man.’
‘Aka Shujah, we’re not a warlord.’ The mujahideen ruined our watan because of the tendency to use violence instead of logic.
‘You’re a guest.’
‘It doesn’t mean we have to smash her face.’
Shujah wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘If Qandigul is such a whore, how’s herdaughter meant to behave with such a role model? The second she arrives in England, she’ll kick Mour out, you watch,’ Shujah said about Latifa, whom I’d last night built a home with.
‘Let’s not sin by swearing at an honourable woman.’
‘I can’t for the life of me work out why they stayed to see the fatherless whore.’
‘Mour has waited a long time for this day. She wouldn’t miss out on the chance to see the first jelai,’ I said. Did I speak for myself? Qandigul’s insistence on tradition indicated the family’s decency. Only an honourable woman behaved like this. Losing it upset me, so did Shujah’s use of that particular swear word. Shujah excused himself into the secluded corner; his bladder was ‘exploding’.
A piece of straw poked against my back as I squatted against the wall.
‘Salaam alaikum, aka,’ two barefoot haleks, each carrying a bucket of water in their hands, said in unison, and I acknowledged their salaam. They put down the buckets and took deep breaths. The climate had roughened their dust-covered faces. Unsurprisingly, they were oblivious of the burning sun, which had forced me to put my hands above my eyes.
Thud, thud, thud sound came from overhead as if someone was splashing mud against the dirt wall.
‘Aka, bullets,’ one of the haleks screamed. They dropped face-down. I followed suit. Shujah shouted from the other side, ‘Come across.’ Using the sports teacher’s training from school, I pushed down on my chest like a snake and got to the haleks. Told them to get to the wall where we’d be invisible from the top of the hill, where the bullets came from.
‘I think I’ve been fired at.’
‘I heard the sounds,’ Shujah said, pushing against his chest to get alongside the wall.
‘Who wants to kill me?’ My heart raced as fast as the bullets.
‘Wrong time, wrong place.’ He leaned against the wall.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’ve been a victim of betting.’
‘Bet on human lives?’
‘Unfortunately. A punter’s just lost a bet.’
‘By missing me?’
‘Woh.’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘Thanks, Khudai, you’re safe.’
‘Who are these crazy punters?’
‘Thugs. Warlords. Militiamen. Their teenage sons.’
‘My Khudai. Does the government really exist here?’
The haleks whispered that their mothers waited for water. They got up.
‘Wait,’ I told them.
‘Don’t, it’s dangerous,’ Shujah said.
‘More so for them.’ I put my trust in You, Khudai. Please shield me from harm and bless me with Your protection.I sprinted to the buckets with a racing heart, picked them up and dashed back. Told the haleks to walk alongside the wall. They plodded up the hill, chatting away as if nothing had happened.
The gates creaked open; Mour and Nazigul came out. I shouted that they should get to the other side of the road by the wall. Pleaded with Shujah not to tell Mour about me having been turned into a betting horse. If only he listened.