A Fort of Nine Towers (22 page)

She asked my father for a bottle of water from the trunk, washed my wound, and put some alcohol on it, which stung. Then she sat next to me in the driver’s seat while my father was out walking up and down the road, holding my little brother and breathing the fresh cool air.

“You didn’t buy those pomegranates, did you? I know there is no shop anywhere nearby.” She was looking into my eyes very intently. “So tell me what happened, and don’t make me ask you twice, and don’t disappoint me with your lies,” she said sternly.

Her eyes were fixed on my mouth until I finished.

“I’m afraid to let you out of my sight till we get home. Don’t do anything like this again,” she said, then she hugged me.

“Okay!” I said. I wanted to cry. I remembered being in our courtyard, helping Grandfather weeding, eating on one long tablecloth, making jokes with my cousins and aunts and watching TV together.
Those things seemed so far away. I sighed several times to ease the pain.

“What is the matter, Qais?” my mother asked. She was holding my head against her chest and rubbing my back. I could not force words out. There was a faint ringing in my ears, and I wanted a place to hide.

“Is it still hurting?” she said.

“Yes, Mother,” I said.

“Or is there something else that you haven’t told me yet?” she said.

“No, there is nothing. It just hurts and it is itching, and I’m very tired,” I said.

“Okay, then sleep as long as you want.” She tapped me on the back as if I were a baby. I fell asleep in her arms. But I knew that I was a thief, and that my sin was unforgivable.

The Garden of Hamza’s Father

I
woke up and was alone in the car. My parents, sisters, and brother were seated out on the ground having breakfast. They had cheese, butter, milk, yogurt, homemade jam, hot
naan
, and fresh tea. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was not dreaming, but it was real. Everybody’s mouth was full. My stomach was floating from hunger. I opened the door to join them. When I put my left foot on the ground, the pain was so sharp I felt as if a hot knife were ripping through me. My father came and helped me. I did not ask where all the food came from.

I was just happy to be seeing butter, jam, and milk after two weeks.

“A villager invited us to his house,” my mother said.

“A villager? Who is he?” I asked.

“Oh, I think you know him,” she said.

“I know him? How?” I said.

“Because last night you heard his voice calling his dogs,” she said.

I froze with fear and shame. “The man in the garden where I stole pomegranates?” I asked. My sisters looked at me sharply. They all said in one voice, “You stole pomegranates? You are a thief?” Then they started softly hissing, “Thief, thief, thief.”

“Not again!” I said.

“Shut up, girls! He did it for me. I told him to do it. If anyone says the word ‘thief,’ she will be spanked!” my father said.

“His son knocked on my window this morning,” my mother said, “while we were asleep in the car. He already had set this cloth here with all these things. He said that his father thought that we were modern nomads with our car.”

We all laughed at “modern nomads.”

“Do they know that I stole pomegranates from their garden last night?” I said.

“Yes, his son saw you,” she said.

“They will call me a thief,” I said. I felt shame rising in me.

“I don’t think a host calls his guest a thief,” she said.

“He may call you Mr. Thief,” my old sister said, and my other sisters hid their faces as they laughed, too. I sighed as I sat down to eat.

After we had finished, a boy my age crossed the road and said hello to us. Then he started collecting the dishes, stacking one plate on top of another. When he stood up, he invited us to go with him.

“My family is waiting for you,” he said very warmly.

The boy led us to the garden of the pomegranate trees and opened the gate. The garden was very large. It had two small one-story houses, one built along the northern wall, the second along the southern wall. There was a long tent in the middle made from some simple black cloth that was stretched over some poles and staked to the ground to make a place of shade. An old man appeared from one of the buildings and came toward us. He shook hands with my father. He greeted my mother and gave
salaams
to us. Then he asked me what was wrong with my leg.

“Your dog was hungry last night, so I let him have a chew on my leg,” I said, trying to make a joke to cover my shame.

He laughed and replied, “You should have knocked on my door. I would have given you more than five pomegranates.”

My father said to the old man, “It was my fault; I was afraid that no one would welcome us in this village, especially in the night. Since the fighting started, everyone is afraid of everyone else.”

“That is true, but now I know you, and we’re not strangers anymore. We are a family,” the old man said.

The dogs started barking. I jumped, but I could not see them.

The old man continued, “You are welcome to stay in my house for as long as you want. Those rooms over there are for guests.” He pointed to those along the south wall of the garden. “You have water, electricity, TV, and radio. I will send you some blankets. There are mattresses and pillows in the rooms already. If you want to eat with us, you’re most welcome.”

“You are very generous,” my mother said. “But we cannot be bothering your family with unexpected guests.” She smiled, and the old man smiled, too.

“Yes, you are right! You are unexpected guests, but unexpected guests are gifts from God. Our door is always open to them; they bring the charity of God with them,” the old man said. “I’ll send you some dishes, and you can cook your own food. Please use any of the herbs, vegetables, and fruits of this garden.”

“You are very kind,” my father said.

“This garden is not mine, it is God’s,” the old man replied. “He gave it to me for use by those who need it for as long as they want. In fact, He is the owner of everything, and whatever He gives us, it is with us for only a few days.”

His family came to greet us. He had four daughters and three sons. Among them was a woman who was much younger than he, almost the same age as his oldest daughter, and very pretty.

“Is she your wife?” my mother asked.

“Yes, she is my second wife. We married five years ago,” the old man said. His wife was very shy. She invited us to her house at the far end of the garden, and we followed her as my father began discussing politics with the old man and his sons. A few minutes later, he joined us and whispered to my mother that our host was a great man.

Later, after we had had our first hot baths since leaving Kabul, we ate a magnificent lunch with them in an area shaded by almond trees. It seemed as if we had known one another for years. The old man told us to call him uncle and call his wife aunty. We talked about our lives. My father told them how he and Grandfather had lost their six thousand carpets, and now he had nothing except his family and a car.

“God gave them to you, and He took them back,” the old man said.

“I’m a boxer. I can beat any man. Afghanistan has sent me to Russia and all those Central Asian places for matches. But how do I fight against madness like this?” my father said with a heavy sigh; I could tell he was thinking about his boxing victories in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

“The good times and bad times are both the same, like spring and autumn of life. Neither of them last forever.” The old man had a gentle smile on his face, but when he talked he was a very serious man. “The problem for our country is where we are located and the neighbors we have. Our stupid politicians let them interfere in our affairs.”

After lunch he showed us the guest rooms. When we passed the tent in the middle of the garden, the two big dogs jumped out of it and frightened us. My little sisters hid behind my mother. Strong chains were fastened to thick collars around their necks, but they were jumping with so much force, I was afraid they would break free.

“These dogs are good for security, especially during the night. They will tear anyone apart who tries to get in this property,” the old man said.

“Do they have names?” my father asked.

“Yes, the white one is Shir [Lion], and the gray one is Palang [Tiger]. Shir doesn’t harm anyone unless someone attacks him or tries to hurt him. He is a fighting dog and has never lost a game. But Palang is very cruel; he likes to wound people.”

“Palang bit my leg,” I said.

“Don’t worry, my son; he’ll be your best friend soon,” the old man said, then he called one of his sons to bring him the leftovers from lunch. He gave them to me to feed them to the dogs. I threw the leftovers to them. First they tried to leap at me, but soon they were busy eating.

The guest rooms were nicely painted. A beautiful red carpet with big motifs lay in the middle of the largest room, and mattresses stretched along all the walls; they were covered with long, narrow carpets. A small TV with a video player was in the corner.

“Perhaps you’ll let my eldest son take your kids out and show them around,” the old man suggested. We heard a big engine start
with a roar behind us. His son, who was about Wakeel’s age, was seated on a large tractor and invited us to get on it with him.

“How is my airplane? It makes a lot of noise, doesn’t it?” he said as we climbed up to the platform behind the seat, and he put his foot on the gas.

“Yes, and it has bigger tires than other airplanes,” I said.

“Do you like this place?” He shouted into my ear over the big noise of the engine.

“I don’t know yet. You have to show me around, then I can tell,” I said as we drove out of the garden onto the main road.

The sky was churning with dark and white clouds. The sun was lost among them and seemed ready to drop like a stone. The wind ruffled the surface of the wheat fields.

On both sides of the road as far as I could see, the fields were yellow and ready for harvest. The farmers were working with their scythes, holding a bunch of wheat stalks in one hand and cutting them with a smooth sweep of the other. Others were collecting pomegranates and almonds in sacks that drooped behind them on their backs. Their hands moved deftly through the branches.

I asked the old man’s son whether he had ever traveled out of his village.

“No, and I don’t want to. I love my village. I can find all that I need here. People respect my father, and me because I’m his oldest son,” he said.

He pulled over and told his sister to take my sisters to the riverside, where she could introduce them to the other village girls. This was a branch of the same river along which we had camped, but there was no sign of the flood that had nearly carried us all away only a day earlier.

“All the girls from the village go there every day in the afternoon to fetch water for dinner. The village boys meet at the mosque,” the old man’s son said.

“Can we go to the river, too?” I asked. “I want to go swimming.”

He laughed. “Don’t ever try to go to the riverside at this time of day. If you are seen, someone will shoot you. Sometimes the girls take baths there.”

“Are the girls carrying guns?” I asked.

“No, no. One of their fathers or brothers will shoot you.”

“You have snipers here, like in Kabul?”

“No, but we have hunters, and they are everywhere. If one of them sees any boy or man going to the riverside at this time of the day, he will shoot.”

“What about strangers? They don’t know this rule,” I said.

“You’re not a stranger anymore. My father already announced in the mosque this morning that he wanted to host you guys for as long as you want to stay.”

“You mean, all the villagers know about what I did last night?” I asked with a renewed sense of shame rolling over me.

“That is why all the villagers agreed to let us help you. They said that you guys had nothing to eat and nowhere to go,” the old man’s son said.

“They will call me a thief,” I said despondently.

“No! They are not so stupid and rude to call their guest a thief.” My mother had said the same thing. I was very relieved to hear this.

He showed me his hunting place nearby. He had some wooden ducks in a pool of water he had dug where the land began its rise to become a mountain. A narrow stream of water flowed down from the mountain’s springs into the pool. Each time the wind rippled the surface, the wooden ducks bobbed as if they were real.

“When the birds are crossing over our village, they see my wooden ducks and think it is safe to land. When they land here to play or drink water, I catch them. I will teach you how to shoot,” he promised.

“Have you ever seen Kabul?” I asked.

“No, I don’t want to. It is a horrible place. Every trouble starts from there, and it spreads all over Afghanistan. I wish Kabul did not exist. I belong here. Everything that makes me happy is here.”

He started reciting an old poem:

“ ‘There is no room left in my heart for anything but the beautiful faces of my village girls. You have to know, how you will see her face
with the light of the sun and the moon reflecting in her eyes. Wait and hope with all your vain fancies and dreams to see her face on a cloudy dark night.’ ”