Chapter Thirty-Six
Another reality grabbed my attention. As we drove outside of Kabul, I noticed my watan and my people had picked up the colour of dust: the giant mountains, the tunnels, the mud houses; the lone shops covered in piles of green and yellow melons as well as plastic bags of apples; the solitary mansions and supermarkets with photos of ice cream and fresh juice; the dried soil; the sporadic greenery; the advertisements for firms and hospitals on the mountains in blue, green, red and yellow colours; the faces who sold goods on both sides of the road oblivious of how close the traffic passed by; the kids who nonchalantly played around the burned-out Soviet tank in Naghlu; the oncoming vehicles; the air; and even the burning sun. The dust was such that careful drivers, unlike ours, had to turn their fog lights on. My white perahan tunban had turned grey like my waistcoat.
A deafening horn like the warlord from the other day. Our driver pulled over to let a Toyota Hilux overtake us. Half a dozen haleks clapped, sang and danced at its loading bay. A Sardar in a Panjabi turban and white perahan and tunban from the back seat said the haleks, sons to the powerful syndicate, travelled in their zero-miles cars to Darunta Dam to eat fresh fish in its restaurants, swim in the deep water, and stay the nights in its hotels. They acquired their whisky, Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker bottles from the thriving black market in Kabul and drank them on the way. There was no day when a traffic accident didn’t occur on this route. He pointed to kids washing cars, adding that they made $5 a day, if lucky. The children to the elite spent $300 on ‘a woman and whisky’ in a night. How could we expect peace and security in Afghanistan? he questioned.
‘We may see them provided the driver takes us in one piece, Sardar,’ Mour said, her left arm resting on the ledge of the coaster minibus window.
‘That won’t happen, sister. The earlier the driver reaches the destination, the more rewards he gets,’ Sardar said. ‘Drivers resort to hashish to enhance their performance.’
‘So, we pay with our lives for employers’ greed,’ I said.
‘Driver, please take it easy. We all have families,’ Mour raised her voice.
‘What will happen, will happen: it is Khudai’s will.’ He touched Khudai’s name dangling from his back mirror, kissed his hand, increased the volume of Naghma and Mangal, and carried on driving the minibus like a maniac. Thanks to Khudai, we were in one piece 40 minutes into our journey; only another 20 minutes to Surobi, inshallah.
‘Brother, thank you for earlier on,’ Sardar said to me after a silence.
‘It was my duty, Sardar.’
‘What happened to the ethics and morals we inherited from our elders?’ he asked and wiped his sweaty face with a handkerchief.
Earlier on, a passenger inappropriately touched his wife, and I lost it. I told him our ancestors used the title of nobility, ‘Sardar’, to refer to our Sikh and Hindu brothers. Everyone turned on the shameful man who sneaked away.
‘We used to buy fabric from sardars for Eids and Barats,’ I said to Sardar.
‘All is gone.’
‘The civil war?’
‘They attacked our temples, stoned our cremations, grabbed our land and harassed our women. There’s only so much we could tolerate. Ninety-nine per cent of our community have left their watan.’
‘I’m saddened and ashamed. I’m sorry,’ I said, asking in my heart for Khudai’s forgiveness for having caused my own share of harm.
‘We’ve lived here for centuries. We’re first Afghan and then Sikh.’
‘Of course.’
‘If we had businesses, we worked for them from dawn to dusk.’
‘Truly deserved.’
‘God willing, things will get better one day, and everyone will return to a better Afghanistan.’
‘God willing,’ his wife uttered under her breath.
Naghma and Mangal were muted. The transport in front of us pulled over, and our minibus followed suit.
‘They’ve popped up even here,’ the driver said and detoured onto a dirt track towards the mountain, tilting to one side and then another, chasing other minibuses and the dust storm they kicked up. Armed people on motorcycles with flapping white flags escorted us from behind.
‘The Taliban want to search the minibus,’ the driver announced as if we were taking a morning tea break.
Coldness chilled my spine.
‘Want your property?’ Shujah said and sneered. His face had turned dark.
Sardar had never heard of the Taliban having appeared here.
‘This’s a first,’ the driver said. Another man next to the driver agreed.
‘Countryman, are you Afghan?’ the driver asked, looking in the rear-view mirror.
‘Woh,’ I found myself snap.
‘Foreign Afghan?’
I hesitated but found myself nodding.
‘Do you work for the government?’ the driver asked.
‘Na.’
Sardar told me not to get scared then, adding that the Taliban were fairer than the mujahideen.
‘They look for fresh faces. Don’t sit next to tror. Move to another chair. Put your head on your hands and pretend you’re asleep–’
‘Eyes on the road,’ a nervous passenger cut the driver short.
‘I’m a dutiful Muslim. Harmed no one. Why do I have to hide?’
‘Please, do as they say,’ Mour pleaded and coughed out the dust drifting in through the windows.
‘Mour, nothing will change death if it’s written in my fate.’
‘Do it for me, I beg you.’
The driver agreed with Mour.
Sardar gave up his seat and moved right to the back, suggesting I move away from the door and sit next to him, as his navy turban often attracted more attention.
I carried out the instruction but wouldn’t pretend to sleep. Part of me reasoned I’d been a dutiful Muslim and worked with no government, so shouldn’t fear the Taliban. The other part was convinced the Taliban wouldn’t spare a foreign Afghan. Against my will, the fearful part had overwhelmed my heart. It beat like a drum. I tried to breathe quietly. Overheard Mour pleading with Khudai how untimely He’d taken her husband and daughters away and if He’d save me from the Taliban.
After a ten-minute drive that lingered as if for ten years, the minibus stopped in between bare hills. A deathly hush filled the minibus, apart from my heart’s loud thumps. The door opened with a hissing sound. A bearded figure with a white turban and thick kohl-rimmed eyes stepped in, followed by another wearing a white headband saying the Shahada. I couldn’t dare to look at them, so cast my eyes down.
‘Any hypocrites?’ the turbaned Taliban asked in a rough voice.
‘Everyone’s poor and helpless, Talib brother,’ the driver said in a calm voice.
‘Where are you going?’ It was the rough voice.
‘Jalalabad.’
‘What’s your job?’
‘Shopkeeper. I’ve been to Kabul to do some shopping.’ His voice visibly trembled.
‘Where’s the shopping?’
‘My son brings it tomorrow.’
‘A lie,’ yelled the rough voice, towering over him. The Taliban’s intelligence revealed he worked for the Afghan National Army in Laghman.
The driver said the interrogatee did own a store.
A slap hit the driver’s face.
The Talib behind at the back dragged the self-proclaimed shopkeeper off the minibus. Quietness followed as the Talib’s eyes inspected around. In the Name of Khudai, with His name nothing can cause harm in the earth nor in the heavens, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. I recited the dua.
Shujah’s finger pointed at me. ‘Spy,’ the scum whispered.
My heart sank. The Talib’s forehead wrinkled and teq, teq, teq lumbered towards me.
‘He’s ill,’ Sardar said.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ The smell of reshqa, a green plant, assailed my nostrils as he towered over me.
‘Talib zoya, my son’s very ill.’ Mour disobeyed the driver’s early instruction.
His hand touched my hair and pulled it back.
‘You aren’t Afghan,’ the Talib said in a dismayed tone.
‘I am Afghan.’
‘Alhamdulillah,he’s Pashtun like you, zoya. An Ahmadzai Pashtun. A proper Afghan,’ Mour said.
‘Am I an improper Afghan, then?’ the reshqa-smelling Talib said. His forehead wrinkled as he sniffed and covered his nose with his hand. The eyes averted from me to the person behind him. ‘Aren’t you scared of Allah to wear perfume?’
My heart plummeted. Mour had just got herself into trouble.
‘Where’s your burka?’
‘Zoya, I’m an old woman. I don’t need it.’
‘Both son and mother, out,’ he said.
‘Mullah saheb, he’s a man of dignity. Let him go,’ Sardar said.
A slap banged against his cheek; his turban loosened. ‘Try to defend anyone again, and I’ll give you such a beating as to make you poo in your tunban.’
The Talib who stood by the door waved his Kalashnikov at me.
Shall I do it or shall I not? I thought, as I reached Shujah’s seat. My body tilted to the side; my right hand swung back and bashed Shujah’s face, and I felt both the softness of Shujah’s nose and the hardness of the bone. A Kalashnikov stock hit against my left shoulder. Mour screamed ‘Na’. Hands grabbed my shoulders and threw me out.
At least two dozen long-bearded Taliban in perahan tunbans and waistcoats or combat jackets covered with scarves guarded outside, their motorcycles and two pick-up trucks parked around. A stout figure darted like an ape and hit me on the shoulder with the gunstock. He ordered me to hold my hands behind me and kneel next to three men they’d dragged from the other coaster minibuses at the front, adding that I’d pay for gangstering. To my horror they dragged Mour out and instructed her to do the same, facing the opposite side. Turbaned Taliban’s muzzle brakes poked against the back of my head and the other two men.
The stout Talib towered over me, covering the burning sun. I read the Shahada written in blood on his headband, tied up around a maroon Sindhi hat. ‘Your name, her name, and the nature of your relationship? Quickly, without thinking,’ he said, spraying my face with spit.
‘Ahmad. Bibi Karima. My mother.’
The stout Talib, who looked and dribbled like an ape, hobbled to Mour and repeated the same question.
‘What sort of Islam is this to disrespect an elderly woman?’ I overheard Mour say.
‘We’ll punish you for being with a non-mahram man if you don’t answer,’ the dribbler said.
‘She’s my mother, for Khudai’s sake. How can you imagine that?’ His sick suspicion turned my stomach.
Thankfully, I overheard Mour’s answers, and they matched mine.
Like a moving cinema, everyone watched from the three minibuses as the Taliban implemented Sharia law in between the outskirts of light brown hills full of indentations like acne scars.
‘Whisper the answers: names of the woman’s brothers and sisters, and where they live.’
‘You’re sick.’
‘Cooperate, or we’ll publicly lash you both for the sin of–’
‘My mother has no brother and sister,’ I said, cutting him short of pronouncing the repulsive sin’s name.
The dribbler hobbled back to Mour, whose answers I couldn’t overhear. Mour pleaded that the dirty ground burned her knees. The stony heart disregarded her and instead accused Mour of being a hypocrite.
Mour pleaded she wasn’t ahypocrite but a practising Muslim.
‘Don’t tell me you’re Muslim. Because of women like you, Allah’s been punishing us all. You’ve polluted our society.’
‘Mullah saheb, please fear Khudai. She’s your mother’s age. She can’t take all this; she’ll have a stroke. I swear to Khudaishe’s my mother.’ I’d seen every possible misery and Mour’s humiliation was the last thing Khudai had in stock for me.
A foot struck my back and I landed on my chest, my face hitting against the trainer of a Talib. ‘Keep quiet. We’re investigating.’ The dribbler’s voice. He ordered someone from the minibus to search Mour. The reshqa-smelling Talib pulled my shoulders back and ordered me to place my hands on the back of my head.
A widow had two choices in Afghanistan: either stay husbandless, or remarry someone from her immediate family, preferably a brother-in-law. Mour was 45 when Agha vanished, and she had the choice to remarry. She never uttered a single word about another spouse, however. It was too vulgar a subject. It’d have dishonoured Agha, her parents and even her son. I remembered Agha saying, ‘If Mour remained a thousand nights among men, I’m certain she’d stay as chaste as she’s ever been.’ Shujah often told me on Skype how Mour was an inspiration for other Afghan women for the way she’d conducted herself after Agha’s passing away. Ironically, the dribbler today accused her of polluting society.
‘You act like a child being forced to do homework. I’ll have another woman search you – we’d lash you for perverting Allah’s Sharia law if she found anything,’ the dribbler said.
‘Na, it’s nothing,’ Mour cried.
‘Take it out?’ the dribbler said.
‘Don’t please,’ Mour shouted.
I peeped back with a sinking heart. A woman in a blue burka pulled something from Mour’s pocket and shoved my mother to the ground. Mour’s shawl came off. I pleaded for mercy. The dribbler ordered the woman to put the shawl back on as he grabbed a black leather holder and A4-size papers in a plastic cover. These are the last moments of my life, I thought. The dribbler flicked the pages. Looked at me and then the photo. Shouted ‘Master’. A Talib stood by the dribbler.
I put my trust in You, Khudai. Once You protect, no one will overcome Mour and me.
‘It’s an English passport,’ said the literate Talib.
‘It’s my passport; it’s got nothing to do with my mother. She lives with my aka in Kabul. Please let her go,’ I shouted, loud enough that Mour overheard me, but Shujah hopefully didn’t. I knew it belonged to me; the Home Office had never issued Mour a British passport. Passing the Life in the UK Test for Mour was like climbing the Hindu Kush Mountains.
All hell broke loose. A kick in my stomach, followed by a series of punches and a solid gunstock strike. The hills turned black and white with flashes of colour. My ears sounded like I was going through an echoing tube. A blackout.
***
A FUZZY SKY, as blue as the woman’s burka who pulled out the documents from Mour’s pocket, peered down. A blurry vision spoke over me, drops of spit landing on my face. He told me he knew I lived in England and Mour was my mother because they saw Mour’s birth certificate. I recognised the voice. He’d just struck me with the back of an AK-47.
The Indefinite Leave to Remain visa stamped in Mour’s passport would’ve easily given Mour away, but, to my relief, Mour had brought her birth certificate as proof of identity. Shujah had sent the birth certificate from Kabul, which the Afghan Embassy in London required to issue Mour with the passport.
‘Are you a spy?’
‘I live in England, but I’m not a spy.’
‘You’re lying. Your beard indicates you are.’
I repeated I was not a spy and pleaded that they should let Mour go. ‘She’s ill – her heart can’t take all this.’
‘We will. After Sharia law is implemented,’ he said and made a movement with his right palm. The burning sun stung into my face as he rose. We were turned around to face the minibuses, all four of us kneeling.
‘Those women who disregard the Islamic hijab and wear make-up or high heels will receive the same punishment,’ he said to the frightened passengers on the minibuses in the middle of the Khudai-forsaken hills.
He took a lash from a Talib standing by and flogged Mour with a whipping sound.
‘Na, fear Khudai,’ I said and rose to my feet. Four Taliban grabbed my arms.
Another lash and Mour let out a sigh of anguish.
‘I beg of you to let her go. She can’t take this. For the sake of Khudai.’
She dropped to the ground on the third whip. The dribbler ordered the woman in the blue burka to pick my mother up.
Mour heaved a sigh of anguish as he whipped her again.
‘Khudai, damn you all. KHUDAI, DAMN YOU ALL.’ The Taliban crushed me to the ground, holding my face against the burning soil, and dirt entered my mouth.
Every lash felt like the thorns from the scattered wild shrubs on the hills penetrating my flesh. But I could do nothing except close my eyes and pray to Khudai to give Mour strength. Pleading and begging were what we ordinary Afghans could do.
I remembered Mour calling me to watch how the Taliban was executing a woman in the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul. I refused to watch; I’d already had my share of misery in Afghanistan. Mour defended the Taliban’s action for cleansing society of immoral behaviour. Little Mour knew years later she’d be in a similar spotlight.
Mour was on the ground by the final lashes. The searing heat like a burning clay oven single-handedly sufficed to drain your energy.
The woman in the blue burka with two female passengers dragged Mour’s motionless body like a sack of turnips onto the minibus. The hands were let loose on the back of my head.
‘Let other Muslims learn this will be their fate if they join the security forces of the kafir Karzai Government,’ the dribbler said to the audience on the dusty minibuses. Their fear-stricken faces looked as if the Taliban were about to push their Bowie knives into their stomachs and take their intestines out.
A deth sound of AK-47. I flinched. Next to me, the man’s body swung to the left and hit the ground, kicking up dust. More gunshots and the remaining two men dropped down, joining the first one. Blood covered the dirt ground. The dribbler tore up a fake hundred-dollar note and put a piece on the head of each body.
Was I in Moscow, walking to the market on a freezing winter morning? Did my body freeze on the snow? I closed my eyes and declared my Shahada, There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. My body shivered with cold, thinking a bullet would smash my skull any moment now for spying for England – a country the Taliban saw as one of the occupying forces in Afghanistan. Worse, the British Empire had invaded three times my watan and stole Afghanistan’s Pashtun territories on the other side of the Durand Line. I wholeheartedly accept if this is what You want, Khudai. But please look after Mour. Without me, she has no one but You.
Hands picked me up and threw me onto the loading bay of a pick-up. To my astonishment, the dribbler ordered the minibuses to move off and the turbaned Taliban to blindfold my eyes.