A Fort of Nine Towers (18 page)

Instantly, I knew his voice.

“Hey, Berar!” I shouted.

He looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“This is Qais,” I said.

He pointed a torch toward my face.

“Qais
jan
, what are you doing here?” There was surprise in his voice as he spoke to me, using the title “
jan
,” a sign of affection and respect.

“I didn’t come here by myself. My father and I were brought here. To work like slaves. Berar
jan
, I’m very, very thirsty, but I am not allowed to drink water at work time,” I said. “Please, can I have something to drink?”

“Whose order is that?” he asked me, as he knelt in front of me.

“This man’s,” I said wearily as I pointed at the commander.

“How do you expect people to work for you if you do not give them enough water? You don’t buy water, do you?” he said.

“No, sir,” the commander said, staring at his feet like a bad child.

“What is ‘No, sir’? Get the hell out of my sight! Bring some water, for God’s sake,” he shouted, and the commander hurried off.

Berar asked me for how long I had been working there. I said for maybe two weeks. Then he asked me what I had been eating. I told him. I also told him about the commander and his men having sex with the women in front of us, and about killing the men.

Berar put his hand on my mouth, closed his eyes, and said, “Stop, stop, it is enough.” He was silent for a moment and then he shouted, “Stop working, please!” He stood up, and the men stopped shoveling, wondering what was happening.

“I do not know why this man has been so cruel to all of you. And I do not know what to say to you now. There is a war. You know that. The people who are trying to kill us Hazaras all have guns that the Americans gave them. Maybe you know that, too. All we have is shovels. We need a tunnel to protect ourselves.

“I told him to use new people every day. I told him to get people from the street, and to give them good food, and make them work for one day, and at the end of the day let them go home. How can I apologize to you for all that he has done to you?” he asked. His face looked stricken.

“Please go to your homes, go to your families who are waiting for you,” he said softly. We dropped our shovels and buckets and headed silently toward the mouth of the tunnel.

For a second time, we had been rescued by somebody we had known in our old life, from the time before being Hazara and Pashtun
meant we were supposed to think of ourselves as enemies. Kabul was a small town then, and people like my grandfather and my father knew everybody, or so it seemed when we walked through the shopping district and many people greeted them by name: Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Jews, Hazaras, Sikhs, and Hindus—everybody.

We came out into the daylight and the air. The men were happy to stand straight again after so many days, but the two women were ashamed of how they looked and kept trying to cover themselves.

“Wait,” Berar announced. “There is one thing that must happen before you leave.” We froze in fear. Our minds were set on leaving. And now there was something else we had to do.

Berar told us to walk with him to the silo. He also called his commander to join us, along with two other Hazara men we had not yet seen.

The commander, who had been so ruthless, carried a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand. After a sip he belched.

Inside the yellow silo, we climbed a staircase all the way to the roof. It was about eight stories, but it felt much higher as we climbed one flight of steps after another. We could hardly make the climb, we were all so exhausted. Our fear increased with every step. We did not know what would happen next. I knew that Berar was my friend, but I did not know what he was doing. Even I was afraid.

When we stepped out of the stairwell onto the roof, it was very windy; it could have easily knocked any of us down, because we were so feeble. Everybody held on to somebody else. I held my father’s hand. The roof had a railing around the edge, but it did not look sturdy. The weather was very clear, and we could see for a great distance.

Berar was standing in the middle of the roof. He called us to come. We all surrounded him. His commander was standing near to him. Still sipping his Coca-Cola, and still burping. Suddenly, Berar turned around and kicked the commander in the stomach. Berar was very fast, like in the kung-fu movies. The commander fell to the ground and coiled like a snake.

He cried out, “Why?” He was rubbing his stomach. Berar did not answer. Then he nodded at the other two men. One man picked the
commander up on his shoulders, and in one fast move carried him over to the edge of the roof and tossed him off.

We were too shocked to know what was going on. We all listened to one long scream, and then a thud. There was fear in everybody’s faces. They thought he would toss all of us, one by one. But I did not believe Berar would do that, though he looked a lot taller and broader and stronger than the last time I had seen him.

Berar picked up the half-drunk bottle of Coca-Cola and flung it over the edge of the roof. “Now we are all happy!” he said.

But no one was. Not even Berar, who studied the ground far below, searching for words.

“This man was supposed to have been put to death in Pul-e-Charkhi prison, but he was freed when the Mujahedin overran it,” Berar told us. “In a war, every man is needed, so he was sent here. But wicked people like him bring shame to us Hazaras and to the Mujahedin. Some who were released from the prison are now seeking their private revenge in the name of Mujahed. Some of them joined the factions that came from Pakistan. They have taken weapons from all these countries who are using Afghanistan as their playing field. They are everywhere. They are sick, and their only cure is death.”

He had turned his face back to us now. “Please, go to your homes. I ask your forgiveness for all the bad things that have happened to you here.”

He came close to me, sat on his heels before me, and patted my hair. “Give my best wishes to your grandfather,” he said quietly, then he kissed me on my cheek and left. His men followed.

An old man who had been held with his sons walked first toward the staircase, and his sons followed him. Then the two women, then my father and me, and the others after us. In front of the silo gate, we all said very formal and cold goodbyes to one another. We knew we would feel shame if we ever saw one another again. We all went quickly in our different directions.

My father and I headed for Qala-e-Noborja. My father was very weak. He could hardly walk. As we left the silo, he said, “The life of cruel people is short.” He said nothing else all the way home.

When my father opened the courtyard door, we heard the women crying. My father asked me what was wrong. He asked me in a way as if he thought I would know, as if I had been at home and not with him for the past two weeks. I just said, “I don’t know.”

“Do you think someone died?” he asked with an exhausted voice.

“I don’t know,” I said again.

“But why are they crying? Something must be wrong!” my father said.

“I hope not,” I said. Because all I was thinking about was eating something and washing all the mud from me that had turned us the color of dust. My sweater, my jeans had lost all their color. I wanted to sleep for a day, not listen to women’s weeping.

We walked into the courtyard. I could hear my mother’s crying all the way from the room at the far end where we lived. There were other unfamiliar voices with her, voices raised in sorrow.

Through the thicket of lilac bushes at the center of the courtyard and the fruit trees, I could see my uncles and cousins preparing lunch in one corner of the broad courtyard, with flames licking the big pots, and huge amounts of smoke rising around them.

The courtyard was full of men. Even from across the courtyard I recognized most of them. They were our relatives. I could see other men I knew in one of the ground-floor rooms. A nice voice was reciting from the Holy Koran. All the men were facing away from us, listening to it.

We went to those pots, and my father asked his brother through the curtain of thick smoke, “What is wrong? Who died?” I was standing next to my father and looking into those pots to see what was being cooked. One was full of meatballs. I grabbed one. It was very hot, and I could not hold it in my hand. It dropped on the ground and rolled on the earth. No one noticed. They were all busy.

My uncle touched my father’s face. “Am I not dreaming? Are you here?”

“I’m very tired and hungry. Can you give me something to eat?” I said.

My uncle did not answer me. He walked away very slowly, backward, looking at us as he went as if he had not heard me. It was weird seeing my uncle acting like that. He looked frightened. He was still not sure that we were alive and not ghosts. My father followed him.

My cousins circled around me, but none of them talked to me. I thought they wanted to tease me, and I did not have the energy to play now. Wakeel was taller than all of them, with pale skin that looked even whiter than usual. He touched my shoulder, fast, as if I were hot as fire, and said, “Is that you, or your ghost?”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes.

“We thought you and your dad had died. Your mother has been crying for you for two weeks.”

This was not making sense to me.

“We thought that you both had been killed. Grandfather invited all of our relatives to hold a funeral. All these people are here for you and your father, because you are dead.”

“Please stop saying stupid things. I’m very hungry; I just want something to eat.”

“We are not joking, Qais. This is all for you.” Jerk was standing next to him, nodding vigorously. “Look, there are your coffins. We were about to do the burial rituals after lunch,” he said. The coffins were made of wood, and they were covered with black cloth. One was about six feet long and the other one was four feet.

“What is in it? It is definitely not me in there,” I said.

“Things like your reel and a few kites, and some of your best marbles that you used to keep and never played with, and your school clothes and some of your notebooks and your diary. We put them there. Grandfather asked us to do it,” Wakeel said.

“You put in my reel, and my kites, and my marbles and my diary? What the hell are you thinking?” I said. I ran toward the coffins and opened the small one, and I saw all my stuff there. Wakeel wanted to take them out. I shouted at him, “Do not touch anything! Those things are mine!”

“I’m not getting them for myself. I’m taking them out for you,” he said.

“No. Leave them there,” I said.

Wakeel looked at me strangely. “Do you want us to bury them, then?”

“No, just leave them alone!”

One of my other cousins said, “Maybe he wants to get buried with them.” All the rest started laughing.

I opened the long coffin. Inside was my father’s favorite carpet, which he used to put on his bed. Now it was nicely spread inside the coffin. His physics books were piled in one corner, and his boxing gloves were next to them. There was also his suit, shoes, socks, and his favorite mug, which had a crack in it.

“If my father sees all these things in this box, he will beat you all like his punching bag,” I said. My cousins were always a little bit afraid of my father, and this quieted them.

“We did not do this,” Wakeel said. He was sounding very panicked. “Our uncles have put all your father’s things here. We were busy doing yours.”

One of the other cousins looked offended and said, “We were just trying to give you a good funeral.”

I did not usually talk to him, so I did not answer him.

Jerk came up to me, looking very sad. “I’m very sorry for what I did to your kite string.” I could not understand what he was talking about, and I did not care. “Those times when they said you were cutting your own kite, I did that. I used a razor to cut halfway through your string, so that it would break when you put the kite in the air.”

I suddenly understood, and felt anger rising. That miserable little Jerk. My hunger and exhaustion faded as I felt my fury growing. I pulled my arm back to swing at him, but I was so weak I knocked myself off balance and started falling backward. Jerk reached out to hug me. He was crying now. But I was already too far off balance when he embraced me to keep from falling, and I pulled him down on top of me. I did not have the strength to push him away. I would beat him up later.

“Where were you for these two weeks, anyway?” Wakeel asked earnestly.

“Why are you so dirty?” a girl cousin asked.

“Please don’t tell us that you returned from your grave,” another said.

Even though Wakeel was my best friend, I did not want to go through telling all that had happened to us. Instead, I looked for my father.

My sisters came out of our rooms, drawn by all the noise. My older sister looked at me strangely, as if she were not sure whether I was actually me. Then, looking frightened, she quickly took my two little sisters’ hands and led them back inside.

Then I saw my mother kissing my father and hugging him and crying and muttering something that I could not hear. She seemed to me like a kind of crazy woman I had seen in Indian movies. She and my father were surrounded by all our women relatives.