A Fort of Nine Towers (30 page)

A TV was on for as long as there was electricity, but nobody watched it. As soon as the electricity went off, the girls brought lanterns and lit them.

This continued until midnight, when they finally went to bed so they wouldn’t fall asleep on the loom, tying one knot after another and, as they said, “making a wall with knots of thin wool.” From the sounds we heard through the wall of my aunt’s house, they seemed to have feasts like this every night.

After a few months in Mazar, my father heard on the BBC that the leaders of the various factions were holding an assembly for peace. They said they would go to Mecca and take an oath together that they would not fight with one another anymore. My father said it was time for us to go to Kabul, to go home. We were all very happy, especially
me. I wanted to tell Grandfather and Wakeel and my other cousins about all we had done and seen.

Early the next morning I told my carpet teacher about our leaving. I delayed telling her until the last minute because I thought that my father might change his mind. When I went to see her, the car was already waiting outside for me. She looked at me for a few seconds. Quite unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears.

We could communicate now as if we could speak with our voices. She told me to use my mind skillfully, and I would be a brilliant carpet weaver and have a successful carpet business one day.

I kissed her hands in the custom of showing respect for a teacher, and she blessed the top of my head with a kiss. Then I said goodbye to her family, and she escorted me to the courtyard gate, where we said our goodbyes. I started missing her even as we were waving to each other.

I remembered one of Grandfather’s sayings, “Love makes the old feel young, and it makes the young feel like a child. If you separate the lover from his beloved, they both feel destroyed.”

I felt a little bit destroyed, but the destructions were inside me, and only I could feel them, nobody else. This was a time for rebuilding.

The fighting was over, and we would help Grandfather rebuild our house. We did not need to go to another country. We would fly kites again from the roof. We would all sit around one cloth for dinner. And Wakeel and I would never have to be separated again. It was a time for joy.

But at that moment, as I settled into the front seat and we headed toward Kabul, I felt a deep sense of emptiness that increased as mile after mile separated me from my teacher.

Caravan

O
nce again we were on the road, but for the last time. The sky was clear; the sun was bright. Winter had ended and quietly turned to spring while we had been distracted by our life in Mazar. Everything was turning green. The peach, almond, and apricot trees had clouds of pink blossoms filled with humming bees. The sparrows’
chuk-chuk
calls were everywhere.

We said little as the car moved away from Mazar. We were all lost in our own thoughts.

I was already thinking of when I might come back and see my carpet teacher again. Perhaps she would teach me how to dye the wool the way she did. Then I thought of my school, my classmates, my cousins, and all the things that I would tell them about, what I had seen and been through. And I wondered what they had been doing.

My father was probably thinking how he would start his life again with all his carpets gone and his gym in ruins. I had heard my mother tell her sister in Mazar that she missed going to her job. Maybe she was thinking about the bank, and whether she would find her job waiting for her when we got back. She had never quit. But like most people in Kabul, she had just stopped going when it became too dangerous to move around the city. That was nearly a year ago now.

No one talked, not even my littlest sister, whom we called “the
chatterbox.” And the crying machine was silent, too. The truth is, it had been a long time since he had been a crying machine, but somehow the name stuck to him even though he had a nice row of teeth now. That morning he was looking out the window and smiling at everything he saw.

Mazar was soon behind us. The road had bumps now. Holes were everywhere from the rockets, but the earth was damp from the spring rains, and in some places we could see grass where there was only desert the rest of the year.

Two hours later, we passed through Tashkurghan. The road goes around the village, on the side of the hill. We all looked down as we passed to see if we could spot the garden where I had stolen the pomegranates. We wondered what had happened to that kind family in the months since we had seen them, but we were too much in a hurry to return to our own home to stop and visit theirs.

For another hour or more we moved across the low, sandy hills of Samangan Province toward the Hindu Kush. Suddenly my father was shouting, “Hold on! Everybody hold on!”

My mother grabbed the little ones. “What’s wrong?”

“The brakes are not working. Something’s broken.”

He kept pumping the brake pedal, but the car kept moving at high speed.

“Relax, relax,” my mother said. “Let the car slow down on its own.”

A few minutes later the road leveled out, and the car began to slow down. My father eased it over to the side of the road, where it stopped. He let out a sigh of relief and jumped out and checked under the hood.

“The brake fluid box is empty,” my father said. “We can’t go anywhere without brakes, but they won’t work unless we find some brake fluid.”

My mother looked around at the empty land and asked in her usual practical way, “Where will you find brake fluid?”

“We should wait for a car to pass by, and I’ll borrow some. Just enough to take us to the next town,” my father said.

We waited on the roadside for two hours, but no car passed, only a group of Kuchi nomads who stirred up a huge cloud of dust as they drove their cattle across the unpaved road and moved on up the
hillside to pasture their herds. Every time we saw nomads, they reminded me of Grandfather. I have always thought that being a nomad is the best way to live, constantly moving from place to place, away from city troubles.

My father took his teacup from the dashboard and told us that he would be back in a few minutes, and then headed toward the Kuchis. We watched him as he went farther and farther off until he stood in front of a herd boy who was sitting on a big rock, blowing his flute. We watched as the herd boy got up from the rock, milked one of his sheep, and filled my father’s cup. My father came back with a cup of milk in his hand and a funny smile on his face.

“What are you going to do with a cup of milk? It is not enough for all of us,” my mother said.

“But it is enough for our car to quench its thirst. This time, our car will drink milk,” my father said.

He poured the cup of milk into the brake fluid box, then he started the car. He drove a short distance and braked.

“Our problem is solved,” he shouted excitedly from his window. He put the car in reverse and backed up very fast to where we were standing, then hit the brakes. The car threw up a plume of dust.

We all climbed back in the car and headed for the town of Samangan up ahead, where we would get lunch. We went to a local restaurant in the heart of town with beautiful views on all sides. We ate kebabs and drank tea, then headed back to the car to continue our journey toward Kabul. I was still thinking about my carpet teacher, and the unexpected combinations of many bright colors that she used in her carpets, instead of only the deep reds and dark blues that most other Turkmen carpet weavers used.

My father tried to start the car, but it sounded broken. He checked the engine but could find no problem. He did not know very much about cars, anyway. Maybe the car did not like the taste of milk, I thought.

I asked the owner of the restaurant whether there was a mechanic shop around. He told me that there was one a quarter mile to the south.

My mother and my sisters went back inside the restaurant while my father and I pushed the car all the way to the mechanic shop. It was a small, shabby place with old tires and used spare parts all around.
There were more than fifty cars and trucks in a long line waiting to be fixed.

A guy whose face was completely blackened with oil shouted at us. “Hey, hey, hey, stop, stop! Where the hell are you putting that car?”

“Our car is broken,” my father said.

“Are you blind? Can’t you see these other cars and trucks?” the mechanic said.

“No, I’m not blind, I can see them, but what is that supposed to mean?” my father asked.

“It means your car will be fixed after I finish fixing these cars,” the mechanic said.

“You must be joking,” my father said.

“I don’t make jokes with my work, and I don’t have time for talking. Either park your car at the end of the line over there, and come back in two months, or get your car out of my sight,” the mechanic said. My father shifted from one foot to the other, as he did when he was about to enter a boxing ring. He looked directly at the mechanic and spoke softly and urgently.

“I’m with my wife and kids. We have been on the road for almost eight months. You have no idea what we have been through. Now we’re finally able to go home to Kabul. Please fix my car. It worked perfectly well until an hour ago. We don’t have any house here, and we don’t have relatives to stay with. I don’t have enough money to pay for a hotel for two months,” my father said.

“Look, I don’t know you. My job is to fix people’s cars. It doesn’t matter whose car I’m fixing. But I have to fix these cars first, then it is your turn. Some of them have been here for months. If I spend all day today fixing your Russian Volga, tomorrow my other customers will kick my ass,” the mechanic said.

“So I have to wait for two months for my car to be fixed?” my father said.

“Exactly,” the mechanic said.

“It is not possible,” my father said. His voice was tight in a way I had rarely heard it.

“Look, I understand your problem, but you should understand my problem, too. Most of these cars belong to warlords. If I don’t fix their
cars by exact dates, they’ll put their guns up my ass and shoot. I have a wife and kids, too, and they need me.”

“Is there any other mechanic around?” my father said.

“There were five in this town, but the bastards ran away because of this fucking civil war,” the mechanic said.

“If you’re the only mechanic in this town, you must be making a lot of money then,” my father said, trying to tell a joke and make the mechanic his friend.

“Oh, fuck the kind of money that comes with threats from warlords,” the mechanic said.

“Oh, this is very sad,” my father sighed.

“Yeah, it is really fucking sad,” the mechanic said. “Excuse my language, young man.” He pointed to me. I did not answer, and just smiled at him. I found it very entertaining the way he talked. I had not heard many people in Kabul talking that way.

“Can you just take a look at my car, and see if it is anything that I can fix?” my father asked.

“Yeah, let’s see,” the mechanic said, relenting a little.

The mechanic opened the hood, climbed up on top of the grille, and squatted over the engine block. He spent ten minutes probing the engine, checking dipsticks, pulling on belts.

“It needs a few days’ work,” he said as he climbed down. “So, in this case it has to wait its turn, and that’s going to be two months, at least.”

“What is the problem?” my father asked, very surprised.

“You used bad gasoline that was full of sand. Now the sand is all through the engine. I will have to open even the smallest parts to clean them,” the mechanic said.

My father sighed deeply, and with the mechanic’s help we pushed the car to the end of the line. As my father and I walked unhappily back to the restaurant, his face was once again drowned in worries; a cloud of sorrows surrounded him.

We rented a room above the restaurant and spent the night there. My father could not sleep at all. Every ten minutes I heard him sighing until I fell asleep. I woke up early in the morning and saw big brown bags under his eyes. He looked very tired as he gazed at the mountains through the window.

As we were eating breakfast my father said, “I have enough money to feed us for a week, and after that God knows what is next.”

“Let God take care of things. He can see us. He will help us, as always,” my mother said.

“Maybe you’re right, I should not worry so much,” my father said with a heavy sigh. But he remained deeply anxious.

After breakfast my father went to the mechanic’s shop to see whether he could find a solution. My mother and my sisters stayed in the second-floor room. But I wanted to get away from the smoke that filled the room from the restaurant below, where they cooked kebab from early in the morning until late at night. The restaurant always had customers.

I took one of my younger sisters and walked up the slope behind the restaurant. We sat on a large rock surrounded by mountain grass near the road. We had a sweeping view of the rounded hills that stretched for several miles until they became mountains in the distance. Everything was green in those early days of spring. I counted more than twenty shades of green and wondered how to capture them in a carpet.