The Secret Sky: A Novel of Forbidden Love in Afghanistan

P
HILOMEL
B
OOKS

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Copyright © 2014 by Atia Abawi.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abawi, Atia.

The secret sky : a novel of forbidden love in Afghanistan / Atia Abawi. pages cm

Summary: Two teens from different ethnic groups in present-day Afghanistan must fight their culture, tradition, families, and the Taliban to stay together as they and another village boy relate the story of their forbidden love. 1. Hazaras—Afghanistan—Fiction. [1. Love—Fiction. 2. Ethnic relations—Fiction. 3. Family life—Afghanistan—Fiction. 4. Pushtuns—Afghanistan—Fiction. 5. Taliban—Fiction. 6. Afghanistan—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.A136Sec 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013026895

ISBN 978-0-698-15854-2

Edited by Jill Santopolo.

Dari alphabet provided by Abdul Wahid Abawi.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

To the people who taught me love in all its forms—my parents, Wahid and Mahnaz; my brother, Tawab; and the true love I was destined to find, Conor.

T
HIS IS LOV
E: TO FLY TOWARD A SE
CRET SKY, TO CAUSE A
HUNDRED VEILS TO FAL
L EACH MOMENT.
F
IRST
TO LET GO OF LIFE.
F
I
NALLY, TO TAKE A STEP
WITHOUT FEET.

—Jalal ad-Din Rumi

I was in my mother’s womb when my parents and two-year-old brother fled Afghanistan with only the money in their pockets and two suitcases. They left on a sweltering Kabul summer day during the Soviet War in a chilling and stressful escape that involved their plane being stopped on the tarmac and the communist police walking up and down the aisle for four hours before they could take off. The flight first took them to Moscow on their way to their destination, West Germany. I was born a month later, and we moved to the United States a year after that. I will always be grateful and in awe of my parents for having had the courage to leave everything they had ever known to try and give their children a better life.

As I grew up, my parents shared their memories of a land they so desperately wanted to see again. “When we return . . .” was the start of so many sentences throughout the 1980s. They even enrolled my brother and me in an Afghan school on Saturdays, believing we should know how to read and write at least one of the Afghan languages, as it would be useful upon our eventual return. They immersed our lives in the Afghan culture inside the home while allowing us to embrace our new culture outside of the home. My mother’s glowing descriptions of Afghanistan and its various ethnic groups made me envision the country as a virtual Candyland—different tribes of people dispersed through various parts of the country, making it a land of diverse beauty and kindness. It was not until I was older that I read about the ethnic divisions and bloody rivalries. I almost felt betrayed by the truth.

As the years went on and one war in Afghanistan turned into another, my brother and I no longer heard the words “when we return . . .” I could see the devastation in my parents’ eyes as they watched the news and saw the country they loved shatter into pieces night after night. It’s hard to witness your parents’ dreams fade away before your eyes. I would listen as their friends talked politics over endless cups of green tea with a sprinkle of cardamom about a situation they knew they were too far away from to have any effect on. This was a scene played in the homes of most in the Afghan Diaspora all over the world.

It was after the United States led an invasion in 2001 that the country became a topic of conversation again throughout the world, not just in Afghan homes. I went to Afghanistan for the first time in 2005 to shoot a documentary and hoped to see a country rebuilding. It was a museum of war relics, with Soviet tanks still lining the runway of Kabul Airport, disabled Afghan men and women maimed from the fighting and tales of horror from those who had survived the years of barbarism from one war to the next. I heard story after story of devastation and triumph. Although the people were exhausted, there was still hope that things would get better—“How could it get worse?” they said. During that five-week trip, I had the incredible opportunity to spend time in a small remote village in central Afghanistan, cut off from the rest of the country and governmental rule of law. It was a village that had survived through the efforts of its people, a mix of ethnic Pashtuns and ethnic Hazaras—a village similar to the one described in this book.

In 2008, I moved to Afghanistan full-time as an American television correspondent, first for CNN and then for NBC News, and immersed myself in the country and its people. I may be of Afghan origin, and I may speak the language, but in the end, I knew I was an outsider and my mission was to share the voices of those who didn’t have a way to connect with a world now involved in their story. In the more than four years I lived in Afghanistan, I experienced life in the most spectacular ways—and death in the most horrific. I learned quickly that Afghanistan is a land of contradictions. It holds unimaginable beauty and inconceivable ugliness. I’ve known good people who were needlessly killed and bad people who got away with the slaughter of so many. There were times my safety was put in jeopardy by people I did not know, and times when the threat came from those I knew all too well. I saw the best and worst in life on a daily basis.

But even through the despair and hardships Afghanistan has experienced during the years, I do believe it holds a magic that is hard to define. My heart broke a little during the nearly five years I lived there, listening to and witnessing all the suffering. But I strongly believe that God works in mysterious ways, and God granted me the greatest gift of all in Afghanistan—love. First, the love of a family who knew to flee in order to give me a better life and then the love of a husband I met while covering a heartbreaking war. And it is that love that has helped piece together the broken bits and make my heart whole again.

This novel was inspired by my time in Afghanistan. The cities and villages I’ve seen, the people I’ve met, and the hope many have for a brighter tomorrow. I’ve illustrated real-life experiences in Afghanistan to the best of my ability, hoping the reader will get a small glimpse into a beautiful and tragic world unseen by so many. Afghanistan is a large country with millions of people who have different thoughts and different beliefs, and many of their lives differ greatly from the ones depicted in this novel. But though this story is fiction, it’s influenced by real events and real people. I hope it touches your heart the way the people who inspired it touched mine.

Atia Abawi