A Fort of Nine Towers (26 page)

Winter came unexpectedly early that year. Soon the bumpy roads disappeared under thick snow. Every morning my father had to shovel aside the snow at the bottom of the steps so I could go get our bread fresh from the baker’s clay ovens.

After a few days the entry to the cave was reduced to a narrow lane between two walls of snow. Our cheeks got red as we slid down the slope that led down from the bottom of the stairs to the road. In front of Buddha, our breaths became small clouds, and we laughed at the sight of them. We had never seen this much snow in Kabul.

When my father came back from shoveling or shopping, he had to shake the snow from his large felt coat. Under it, he was wearing a jacket with its fur turned inside out. Felt and fur coats were what everyone wore in Bamyan. I could not find anyone who did not have one. It was not like Kabul, where it snowed only for a day or two, and then warmed up. Here it snowed for weeks without any end. When it did not snow, it was sunny, freezing, and windy.

My mother was always making tea to keep us warm. On days when it was snowing too hard to go out, my father built a fire in a part of the cave that had no paintings, and we all sat around wrapped in our quilts while my mother told stories about all the Afghan kings and heroes. Amazingly, it seems that they had all spent time in our cave, or at least that is how my mother told it.

One day the snow was too deep for me to go to the bakery. My father went and brought back some extra flatbreads, so we would not have to go out again later. Since there were so many, I asked my mother whether I could bring one to my friend the monk. I never saw him eat, and sometimes I worried about him, since he was an old man and had no family to take care of him. She gave me a piece that had been on a hot stone by the fire and was still warm.

I went down the stairs to his cave and found him sitting near his own fire, though it was too small to make much heat. He wore only his light cotton clothes, with his shoulders wrapped in a white woolen
patu
, the long blanket that for most Afghan men is their only coat in winter. Yet he did not shiver. He was very happy to receive the bread, and offered me some tea that he had made from leaves that he had gathered from the valley.

We sat together for a long time. When he poured the tea into a very small bowl and passed it to me, his hands moved very precisely, very gracefully. It was only tea in the bowl, but the way he offered it made it seem like something far more valuable. I drank it very slowly,
to make it last, and looked at his face as I did. He spoke with his eyes more than with his mouth. I felt very happy to be with him, though I do not think I could have explained why if I had been asked.

I asked him to tell me about Buddha. For a long time, he said nothing. He just looked at the bowl of tea he was holding. Slowly, he shifted his gaze to me and spoke very softly.

“The earth will never be without flowers and trees,” he said. “For as one dies another comes to take its place, and it has been like this since the creation. Like a rosebud, the world and its affairs are closed up tight, waiting for a warm spring breeze. We must always be like the warm spring breeze, and open the buds of every kind of flower.”

The cave felt very warm, despite that small fire.

In the cave where we were living, though, everyone complained about being cold, especially at night. One day my father found someone selling mattresses that were filled with wool and he bought five of them. These were much better than the thin ones we had brought from Kabul. My mother stitched the new mattresses together, then sewed several of our quilts together, as well.

That night we all slept together. My mother and father lay in the middle with my little brother between them. I was next to my father, and my sisters next to my mother. We all clung to each other to stay warm.

Two and a half months had passed since we had come to Bamyan. We worried all the time about everybody, and worried even more because we had no way of getting news. We heard reports of fighting in Mazar and Kabul, so we knew it would not be safe to go there. We settled into our caves, where we had developed our routines. Every day included time with schoolbooks, with my mother teaching us reading and writing, and our father teaching us arithmetic.

My father became very friendly with many of the men in the town. He went with them to their mosque on Fridays, though they were Shi’a and we are Sunni. But a mosque is a mosque and anybody can pray there. People with good hearts can always rise above narrowness.

When they heard that he was a teacher, they asked him whether
he would teach their sons physics and chemistry when school opened again in the spring. My father told them that he was happy to help them.

We heard rumors about a terrible battle that had been fought somewhere north of Bamyan near a place called Doshi. We had driven through Doshi on our way to Bamyan. We did not want to believe it. It had been such a peaceful place.

“Mazari’s troops attacked Masoud’s troops and were defeated badly. Masoud’s troops are coming to Bamyan.” We heard this from men, women, kids, everyone. The people in Bamyan were afraid of Masoud. He was a Tajik from the Panjshir Valley. His soldiers had treated many Hazaras very cruelly. Mazari was a Hazara commander who had gained the reputation of a cruel warlord. His forces had clashed with Masoud’s in other places, such as our old neighborhood in Kabul, but so far there had been no fighting in Bamyan.

Though we are Pashtuns, we had been treated very well in Bamyan by everyone there. Whenever another one of the refugee families in the caves cooked something special, they sent some to share with us. We did the same for them. The shopkeepers in the main bazaar were all Hazaras. When I went to one of their shops to get something we needed, I told them that my father would pay them later that day or the next day. They did not mind.

It felt like our old neighborhood in Kabul, where everyone respected my father. Even now, when the divisive brutality of war was threatening to overtake us again, none of our neighbors ever failed in their hospitality even for a moment.

But there was a feeling in the air, a look of worry that settled into people’s eyes. There was only one topic of conversation anytime anyone met. My father and the other men would gather in shops, and in the caves, and in the mosque, sometimes listening to a radio with its poor reception because of the mountains, sometimes speculating what might or might not happen. If a newcomer came to Bamyan, everyone wanted to know what he knew, and then whatever he had said would be talked about for days after.

People said that Kunduz was peaceful. It was back across the Hindu Kush mountains, almost on Afghanistan’s northern border with
Tajikistan. My mother was born there, and we had lots of relatives there. Some of the other refugees had already decided to go there. My parents talked about whether we should try that ourselves.

With all our moves, I began to wonder whether Wakeel and Grandfather would ever find us. The day we had left Haji Noor Sher’s house, Wakeel had said that he would go to Mazar by himself and join us there. Had he gone? Was he there looking for me? Had something happened to him? There was no way of knowing. I had no information about him or Grandfather, only a great worry.

I became very sad and went to talk to my friend the monk. He had always answered my questions so wisely. I wanted to ask him why men always want to kill each other.

“Everyone has a purpose,” he replied. “Everyone has to be good at something to feel fully connected to this cruel world.”

I did not understand. “But they kill thousands of innocents,” I said.

“Warriors are born with certain skills. But still, the warrior has a mind, too, and knows the difference between bad and good. Those who kill the innocent are confused. They are men with damaged souls,” he said.

“Do you feel connected to this cruel world?” I asked.

“There is a time for being connected to this world,” he replied, speaking slowly and choosing his words very carefully, “and a time for not being connected.” We sat quietly for a few moments. We both knew that if Masoud’s forces reached Bamyan, they might kill him.

“Will you stay here if the warriors come, or will you go somewhere to save your life?” I asked.

“I will do what is best,” he said.

“You mean you have a place to hide?” I queried.

“Of course I do,” he said.

“Far from here?” I asked. “Is it in Afghanistan?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said.

“You will never leave this Buddha, will you?” I said knowingly.

“As a candlewick drowns in its own wax, and a moth flies around it till it dies, I want to drown in Buddha’s knowledge and die at his
feet. To tell you a hard truth, even the king when he is away from his home is like a beggar.”

“It is the last time I’m seeing you,” I told him. “We’re leaving here for Kunduz tomorrow.” I asked his permission to go and stood up. He also stood and laid his right hand on my head.

“Go well, tomorrow and always. Never hesitate to do good things. I’m sure you will be successful in your life,” he said. He shook hands with me as a gentle smile spread across his full, wrinkled face.

That night, we made a fire to light our cave as we organized our few belongings. The fire crackled in front of us, and from time to time a spark jumped out, as if trying to escape. I wished we could escape from Afghanistan like the spark from the fire, but there was no way out. All the paths were blocked; all the doors were slammed against us.

Early the next day we packed the car and prepared to leave Bamyan. It was snowing, and all the mountains were covered. It was very beautiful to see, but very cold. The Buddhas did not mind cold or heat. They had been standing there days and nights for centuries.

I bowed in front of our Buddha as I had seen those monks do and said my goodbyes. I felt sorry for leaving the Buddha there alone, especially after we had been made to feel so welcome living somewhere inside of him. But he did not mind, or maybe he did. But I could not see it. A few minutes later we were in the car heading toward Kunduz, all shivering from the cold.

I had always expected I would see our Buddha again. But the storm of ignorance that has been raging in Afghanistan for so many decades smashed him to bits before I could return. I once lived inside his head. Now he lives in mine.

Borderlands

A
fter about six hours of driving over the Hindu Kush once more, we made our first stop in a place that was in the middle of nowhere and surrounded on four sides by mountains. We could not see a track, or a road, or an animal footprint, or anybody to give us directions. We had not used any of the regular roads, since we did not know where the front line and its fighting was. We had followed several old dirt tracks that seemed to lead in the right direction and which we hoped were too small for the factions to use with their trucks full of guns. But now we were lost, and had no earthly idea where to go next.

Also, in these few hours, we had gone from winter to summer. Bamyan is very high in the mountains, and we were now nearly a mile below it. The weather had changed completely. The sun glowed orange, the sky was perfectly clear. We had left the snow behind and could see heat rising from flat stones.

A couple of hours before, we had packed away our fur and felt coats, and now we were in a desert, sweating. The water we had brought from Bamyan was long gone; we had expected to be in Kunduz by now and had not used it as sparingly as we should have. Our throats were dry, and we kept hoping that our route would go past a brook or a stream. But there were none.

My father parked the car under the shade of a mountain rock. Dragonflies hummed all around. He let the car engine cool for a while, then with a small pipe he took some water out of the radiator. It did not look very good, but it was the only thing we had to drink. Everyone wanted the first drink. There was not enough for all of us to have as much as we wanted. He gave us one sip only, not more, and in the end, there was nothing left for him.

We were desperate to find someone who might know the road to Kunduz, but there was no one, only the dragonflies, and we could not speak their language to ask them.

Finally, after an hour, when we were happy just to be out of the car, we saw a man on a mule making his way slowly down the side of the mountain. My father and I ran to him to ask him where, in fact, we were. If we knew that much, perhaps we could find our way.

“This place is called Nahreen,” he said from atop his mule. “And this mountain in front of us is called Mongol’s Mountain. If you continue driving to the north for four hours, you’ll get to a town called Shekamish, which belongs to Takhar Province, then after another four hours you will reach Khan Abad, which belongs to Kunduz Province, and then another two hours will get you to Kunduz City.”

The man told us that the roads were not good, but that came as no surprise after what we had driven over. He also warned us not to stop for anyone, “not even for little children, because they are all robbers and killers.”

We thanked the man and got everybody back into the car.