A Fort of Nine Towers (44 page)

The other man was skinny and half his age. He looked at me, as
we say, “as if I were his family’s enemy.” His dark brown eyes, tan skin, and black
shalwar kamiz
contrasted sharply with his white turban. He asked harder questions in a loud voice and acted disappointed when I answered them correctly. I wanted to ask him some questions, as well. I was sure he would not know the answers. But I did not.

Finally, they told me I could go home. Some of the prisoners who could not answer the questions stayed for two more weeks.

“Why did you imprison me?” I asked the older jailer as I was leaving the room. But it was the younger one who answered.

“Because you were not wearing a turban, and your hair was too long.”

“But it was not more than three inches,” I replied.

“You must keep your head shaved at all times, and wear a turban or a hat. We keep the violators at our prison, so they understand how serious their crimes are. It is our job,” the jailer said forcefully. “We are here to help you.”

When I came out of the prison, the sun’s glare blinded me for a few seconds. Slowly, slowly I opened my eyes and everything began to look normal.

I did not have any money to get a taxi to go home. I could hardly walk, because of my lack of energy, but I had no alternative. I knew my family would have been looking all over Kabul for me for the past two weeks I was in the prison. That forced me on. Somehow I managed to walk the two miles from the prison all the way home, stopping several times to rest. I was worried that people might somehow know that I had been a prisoner. Maybe they would ask me how I had hurt my shoulder, which still ached. But there was almost no one in the street to see me.

When I arrived home, I found my mother on a prayer rug facing toward Mecca and praying in a loud voice, “Oh God, keep my son in your peace. Save him from any dangers of the world. Wherever he is, give him the message that his mother is always waiting for him and tell him to come home …”

“Your prayer is accepted,” I said softly from behind her.

She turned around with an amazed look on her face. Unusual for her in the daytime, tears sparkled on her cheeks. A smile spread across her face, which revealed the wrinkles that now owned the corners of her eyes.

Later that day, my father brought his friend who was a champion wrestler to the room where I was trying to rest. He told me to stand up, and when I did, he grabbed my arm and forced my shoulder back into place. I screamed like somebody had thrown me into boiling water. By the time I finished howling, I realized that the pain in my shoulder was mostly gone.

The ache in my soul, however, was not so easily fixed. It is still there, as fresh as if these things had happened yesterday.

A Precious Jewel

I
was beginning to feel that I should take care of my family. My despair in prison had forced me to think about my life in a new way. I did not feel like a kid anymore. I was almost seventeen years old. “At seventeen, a Pashtun son should be a shoulder to his father.” This is what Grandfather used to tell me. In Afghanistan, even a sixteen-year-old is considered a grown man. But I did not know how to help.

My father had become so discouraged after the fire destroyed all his carpets that he quit the carpet business completely. He had kept his teaching job at Habibia High School during the fighting, though neither he nor any of the other teachers or the students could actually go there for about two years. Once things quieted, he was again riding his bicycle the five miles around the mountain every day to the school to teach his physics classes. Teachers, though, were paid very little. To keep us going, he also began buying and selling flour and cooking oil that came from Pakistan.

He worked very hard. For a while he disappeared from our life. We woke up in the morning and he would not be there. We went to sleep late at night and he would not have returned. When we did see him on Fridays, he seemed to be in agony. After breakfast, he would
ask my youngest sister to walk on his back and his legs to ease the pain in them. The rest of his Fridays were spent sleeping; we whispered when we talked and we tiptoed. He was too busy to pay attention to what we were doing. It was not like the old days, when he had made a schedule for me every day to do things in an organized way.

I felt that I was getting to be like a stray dog. I was trying to find a sense of peace for myself, trying to find someone who could guide me in the right direction, to the right path. I went to several mosques to listen for the invisible voice, but the mosques did not feel the same as before. It felt like I was being forced to say prayers the way the Taliban wanted. Talibanism: it was not the Islam that I knew from what I had read in the Koran or from what Grandfather had taught me.

I went to Grandfather to get his advice, but he was too busy thinking about how to get our house back, and he was very afraid, not knowing what to do. I had never seen Grandfather like that. He had always made me feel safe, but now I did not know how to make him feel safe. He told me not to be dependent on anyone else. The time had come when I should make up my own mind and be my own guide, he said. I was not so sure.

I started thinking about my carpet teacher, seeking her advice. I went to quiet places, trying to hear her.

Under the Taliban, the country grew increasingly poor, dismal, and isolated. The Taliban’s chief concern above all others was that men must respect the hours of prayers and women must be separated from the rest of society.

I frequently cursed my country for allowing ourselves to be ruled by our neighbors, by the English, by the factions, and now by these Talibs. Most Afghans had nothing but contempt for the Taliban, whom we considered illiterate peasant extremists. They had originated from the poorest and most backward parts of the country, where literacy hardly was known.

While the Taliban ruled, no one smiled. It was as if the Taliban
had stolen our smiles. Or maybe the people just forgot how, except when they went to the jewelry shops to buy gold for their daughters’ weddings. Afghans were still determined to give their daughters gold when they married, even if they could have no music at the wedding.

A jeweler friend who was a few years older than I had a shop near the Qala-e-Noborja in the Kart-e-Parwan neighborhood. We had met playing volleyball in a nearby park, and I spent a lot of time in his shop; it was one of the few places where I could hear laughter. His customers would spend an hour or more bargaining to get the cheapest price, and they made lots of funny jokes while they did so.

My friend knew how to make his customers feel happy. That way they would spend more money and buy things they did not need.

One day I was sitting next to one of his assistants, who was polishing an old necklace with hot water and sawdust. He dipped the necklace in boiling water for a minute, then he rubbed it hard with a toothbrush and put it in sawdust. Half an hour later, he took it out and polished it with a kind of soft brush until the gold gleamed like it was brand-new. I was getting interested in becoming a jeweler. This, I decided, was how I was going to help my family.

That day nobody came to buy anything. My friend was bored. He kept yawning and gazing at the busy road, frowning at the frowning faces of the people who were walking past the shop. He was deep in his thoughts. The only sound was the whooshing of the Taliban cars, running up and down the road recklessly.

A woman with a dirty
burqa
entered the shop and raised her hand to my friend. She was a beggar and was asking for money. Her hand was dirty like her
burqa
, and her brown skirt was full of tiny little burned holes. I thought she was some kind of drug addict.

My friend was still staring outside with his elbows on top of his desk and hands under his chin. The woman gently pulled on my friend’s sleeve as a way of asking him to give her a few small afghanis. My friend looked at the woman, took a few afghanis out of his pocket, and gave them to her. She got the money and stuffed it into her pocket, then she raised her left hand. Her left hand was clean with long nails and they were polished red. She had a beautiful hand.

On her palm was written, “I am available, and my price is 10,000 afs.” This was about fifty dollars.

“Can I see your face?” my friend excitedly asked.

She looked outside to make sure there were no Taliban nearby, then she pulled up her
burqa
for a second and covered her face again quickly.

“Let’s go to the back room,” he said to her.

My friend had a small storage room at the end of his shop.

They were there for almost fifteen minutes. My friend came out with sweat on his forehead and a look of contentment. He told me to go in, that it was my turn. He would pay for me if I did not have money.

I did not know what to say. I had never had sex before. My mind was screaming at me to go and experience these feelings that were filling my dreams. But my heart was whispering to me not to do it.

I remembered the woman whom I had seen stoned to death in the stadium, because her husband complained to the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice that his neighbor had had relations with her. Indeed, the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice had stoned the woman and the neighbor both.

I thought that if the Taliban captured me, they would stone me to death in public. That would be not only a severe death, but very shameful to my family.

“What are you waiting for? Go in! She is waiting for you,” my friend said as his assistants snickered quietly. “She’s fantastic.” I looked at him, and then at his assistants. They were not more than eight or ten years old. Their coolness assured me they had seen my friend with other women before.

“Do you want to go in, or should I dismiss her?” my friend asked with an annoyed tone.

I did not know what to say. Then without knowing what I was doing, I walked toward the back room.

She appeared to be in her midtwenties. She wore a red bra and panties. She stood straight and relaxed, like the letter
alef
, with her back against the wall. Her skin was soft, and faintly glossy.

I did not know what to say or what to do. She smiled at me and asked, “Do you have any experience?”

I did not answer her. In fact, I did not know what to say. I was frozen there. My eyes stared at her, and my mouth was paralyzed. It was the first time in my life that I had seen a beautiful woman nearly naked, waiting for me to have her, and she was right in front of me, asking me a question that I was unable to answer.

“I said, do you have any experience?” she asked again, and her tone was a little more serious.

“No,” I said.

“It is okay. I’ll help you,” she said.

“How?” I asked, as I stood there staring at her perfect legs. I felt like I was in an oven, and sweat began to form on my forehead and on my back. My heart was beating fast and seemed to be in my throat.

She slid down and slowly crept toward me on her knees on the bare concrete floor. Now I could see her breasts. I trembled. She grabbed the bottom of my
shalwar kamiz
and tried to pull me toward her.

I stepped back, suddenly afraid to touch her, or to let her touch me. I felt like I was a deer being attacked by a lioness. At the same time, I was trying to look brave, and not to show my fear. Deep inside me, I wanted to let her do whatever she wanted to me. I ached to learn the feeling of being with a woman, and to feel her body against mine.

“It is okay. You don’t have to do anything. I know it is your first time. But trust me, it’ll feel great,” she said.

I stepped back a few more steps. Now my back was on the cold wall. She was standing again, very close to me. Her breasts were touching my chest. I could feel her warmth, smell her perfume. We both stared into each other’s eyes as if we were trying to find something there. Her breath brushed my face. My heart started to beat faster, even faster than before. My legs began to shake. It was as if she were sending electric current into me, and my body was too weak to receive it. I could feel that I was getting redder every second, as all the blood came to my face.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Maybe you should do it with someone your age,” she whispered kindly. She understood my shyness.

She stepped back and turned toward her clothes. Now her back was turned to me. She put on her trousers first, then her shirt and skirt. I wanted to hug her from the back and kiss her entire body, and hold her in my arms. But I did not have the courage. I was filled with confusion.

Now she put her
burqa
on her head, and, with the veil still up so I could see her brown, almond-shaped eyes, she turned around and walked toward me. She stood before me, but not as close as before, and said with great sadness, “I’m not doing this for the joy of it. I’m doing this because I have to. Selling myself is the only possible way I have to earn any money.” Her eyes began to fill.

“Can we talk for a minute?” I asked her. I did not want her to leave.