Born Under a Million Shadows Read online

  In the meantime—in between school, which had started again, and working at Pir Hederi’s shop—I stood at the doorway or sat on the floor of Georgie’s bedroom, watching the woman who had given me and my mother a new life get thinner and thinner until her pale face collapsed and her arms and legs became twigs under her clothes.

  Finally, when it looked like a small breeze might be enough to snap her in two, James fetched Dr. Hugo to our house, who seemed to be a friend of his and who he said could help, although I had my doubts. Tall and a little thin himself with dark hair that was short but somehow messy and eyes as blue as sky, Hugo arrived dressed in jeans and a big coat that wasn’t even white. I’d seen the health advertisements on television; I knew what doctors were supposed to look like. Hugo didn’t even come close. However, James and May seemed a lot happier when a little later he came back downstairs and revealed that he had given Georgie “something to help her sleep.” I would have preferred it if he had given her “something to help her eat,” but what did I know? I was just a kid.

  “She just needs time,” my mother said as we sat in the kitchen preparing chicken soup for Georgie. ‘She is very sad, and sadness doesn’t just disappear overnight. Georgie loved her baby very much because it offered her hope, and now she needs time to get used to the idea that her baby has gone and that her hope may have gone with it.”

  “What do you mean ‘hope’?” I asked, carefully ladling the hot soup into a bowl.

  My mother sighed, took the spoon from my fingers, and knelt down to take my face in her hands.

  “I suppose Georgie hoped that the baby would mean the father would be in her life forever, Fawad. It is the kind of hope that nests in the heart of a woman very much in love. I pray that when you are older, if you ever see this hope in the eyes of a woman close to you, you take the very best care of it that you can because this hope is the most precious thing and the greatest gift God can give to a man. It means you are truly loved, son.”

  Although we all knew who the father of Georgie’s baby was, we never talked about it in the house. It was as if the baby had been made by magic and taken by God, because it was wrong. There were rules to follow, and, although it doesn’t happen often in Afghanistan, if you break those rules you must be punished.

  And Georgie was being punished: she had lost her baby, she had lost her hope, and she had lost her appetite. I was convinced that very soon we would lose her too—our punishment for having guarded Georgie and Haji Khan’s secret.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Pir Hederi stopped loading the plastic bags on the counter to turn, almost, in my direction. “You speak less than a mute these days.”

  “It’s nothing,” I replied. “I’m just feeling quiet, that’s all.”

  “I may be blind, Fawad, but I’m not stupid,” he answered back. Then, moving to the doorway to hand me the bags of shopping, he slipped one hundred afs into the pocket of my coat. “Cheer up, boy. Here’s a bonus for all the delivery stuff.”

  “Great,” I joked. “All of two dollars. I’ll go right ahead and retire then.”

  “You ungrateful donkey!”

  Pir playfully reached out to hit me on the shoulder, but as I’d started getting onto my bike he punched me in the head instead—a hazard of the job, I guess, when you work for a blind man.

  It had been a long time since I’d made any kind of joke, and although it felt good to let the air of one into my brain, the guilt soon followed. I wondered how I could be such a bad friend to Georgie when I could return home at any time and find her stretched out on her bed, cold dead.

  Despite all of her ways, Georgie wasn’t an Afghan like me and my mother, and therefore she wasn’t as strong as us. Just this one death of a baby that didn’t even have a name could be the end of her. And I couldn’t speak of my fears to anyone outside our house because it would have been wrong in so many ways. Georgie wasn’t married, and she was going to have a baby. Women used to get stoned for that kind of behavior in my country; in some parts they still do. And it wouldn’t only be Haji Jawid calling her a whore for not taking care of her body and for having sex with a man before marriage. So I couldn’t explain my bad mood, and I couldn’t hide it. For once in my life, I sort of wished I was a girl because girls are experts at hiding things, and as they never speak straight you hardly ever know what they’re thinking.

  “Well, I’m glad you had such a good time,” Jamilla huffed one day after I accidentally told her about chasing Baba Gul’s goats with Mulallah. Despite her words, she didn’t look at all glad, and I realized something was up when she hardly spoke to me for the rest of the day. If I asked her a question, she would simply say, “Why don’t you go and ask Mulallah?”

  My mother was exactly the same. Even though I felt she was beginning to like Shir Ahmad because he was now reading books about computers and going to a special class in the afternoons, whenever I asked her about it she would say, “My only wish is for your happiness, Fawad,” which I knew wasn’t strictly true because she had started wearing makeup on her eyes and taking better care of her clothes, and I wasn’t really bothered by what she looked like.

  In fact, Georgie was the only woman I knew who seemed to talk real. After all, she had told me about her love for Haji Khan, and also that May was a lesbian. So to think she might just fade away into nothing was unbearable, especially as giving up smoking wasn’t really enough to get her out of Hell.

  Therefore, when I’d dropped off the last bag of shopping close to a house by the hospital and saw him standing there in the street—as clear as day, laughing with a fat man and surrounded by all of his guards—a hot redness colored my sight, and suddenly I was off my bike and on top of him.

  “You bastard! You lying fucking bastard! You’re killing her!”

  My fists pounded at his chest and I felt his body tense at the blows, but he didn’t move, not one muscle, so I kicked and I beat him even harder, using all of my heart and all of my hate and letting it explode on top of him.

  “She’s dying, and you’re laughing!” I screamed. “You’re killing her, and you don’t even care, you ugly bastard whore-fucking camel cock! You’re killing her!”

  And I shoved myself away from him and ran.

  17

  IRAN FROM WAZIR Akbar Khan, stumbling through the chaos of people and cars, over the bridge covering the river, and into the dark of Old Makroyan. I didn’t know where I was running to until I arrived there, and it was the house of Spandi.

  “You did what?”

  “I beat up Haji Khan,” I repeated.

  Spandi was sitting on the steps of his block, fiddling with a mobile phone he had recently bought. It played a Bollywood love song when it rang, it had a camera fixed into it, and it was pretty impressive, but he put it down when I burst into his sight gulping for breath with tears covering my face.

  “You beat up Haji Khan, and you’ve still got your legs?”

  “Looks like it . . .”

  Spandi let out a soft whistle between his teeth.

  “Ho, that’s crazy. Why did you do it?”

  “Because he . . .” As I began to explain, the picture of what I was about to say came running into my head: Georgie on her bed, the baby dead on her skirt, the promises that lay broken all around her, and I knew I couldn’t betray her, not even to Spandi, who knew at least half the story. “Because he was joking with someone,” I stated finally, knowing how stupid it sounded even as I said it.

  “Shit,” replied my friend. “It must have been a hell of a bad joke.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I admitted.

  For the next three hours Spandi and I talked about the possibility of me being a dead man walking and whether my attack on his boss would be bad for Spandi’s business. We both agreed, with black hearts, that I should look for somewhere new to live and Spandi should find another job.

  “There are some empty flats around here that we could hide you in, and I can bring you food once or twice a day while I look for something mo
re permanent,” Spandi suggested, warming to the idea after his initial shock and despair at the thought of having to find a new can of herbs. “You’ll need a gun as well.”

  “I don’t know how to use a gun,” I said, frightened but excited by the thought.

  “How hard can it be? We’re Afghans; it probably comes more naturally than riding a bike.”

  “My bike!” I shouted, suddenly remembering I’d left it with its wheels spinning somewhere in Wazir as I launched my attack. “I forgot it when I ran off.”

  “Damn shame,” Spandi sympathized, patting me on the shoulder. “That was a fine bike.”

  “Maybe I should go back and look for it.”

  Spandi shrugged. “You’ll need wheels,” he admitted. “I should also say good-bye to my mother,” I added, thinking of her for the first time since I’d punched Haji Khan in public and imagining her sadness as the last of her children left her.

  “Haji Khan might be watching the house,” Spandi warned. “Maybe you should wait until it is dark . . . and we’ve got you a gun.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “I don’t know,” Spandi admitted. “I’ve never tried to get a gun before.”

  “No, I’ll have to risk it,” I decided, getting to my feet, my mother’s face now the only picture in my mind.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Spandi asked, which I thought was kind of him.

  “No,” I told him after thinking about it a short while. “I’ll move faster alone. Besides, Haji Khan might be looking for you too because you’re a friend of mine.”

  “Shit! I never thought of that.” Spandi got to his feet. “Do you think I should hide too?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It might be a good idea.”

  It was practically dark when I made my way back to Wazir Akbar Khan. Now that I was alone, my bravery had disappeared, so I walked home frightened to the point of one hundred percent scared—ducking into the shadows every time a Land Cruiser came into view, thinking one of them might belong to Haji Khan and imagining it pulling up close to me with its window rolled down so that someone could shoot me in the head.

  As I turned the corner into our street, the fear that had been itching at the surface of my skin took on the life of a giant when I saw his three Land Cruisers parked outside the house.

  I immediately spun on my feet to run away from the ambush and certain death—and straight into the legs of Ismerai.

  “Whay!” he grunted, grabbing me by the shoulders.

  “Get off me! Get off me!” I shouted, fighting at the massive hands now trying to hold me. “Help! He’s going to murder me!” I screamed, and a handful of people stopped what they were doing to watch Ismerai carry out his crime.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Ismerai barked in my ear. “Nobody’s trying to murder you!”

  “Yeah, not while everyone’s looking you’re not! Help! Murderer!”

  Ismerai shook my body roughly, making my eyes bounce sorely in my head and bringing me to a stop.

  “Listen to me! Listen to me, now!” he ordered. “We were worried about you, Fawad. All of us were, and that includes Haji Khan. He sent me to Pir Hederi’s shop to look for you.”

  “Yeah, to find me and kill me!” I interrupted, though with less strength than before as Ismerai’s words began to walk around my brain, looking for a place to stay.

  “Not to kill you, to bring you home. That’s all, Fawad. We just want you home.”

  I stopped struggling and looked hard into Ismerai’s eyes. They didn’t look like the eyes of a killer. They looked like the eyes of a man who liked to tell jokes and smoke hashish.

  “Honestly, son. Nobody is angry with you. We’re worried, that’s all. It’s been a shock for all of us.”

  I looked at him again, searching his face for any signs of a trap. “Okay,” I said finally, deciding he was probably telling the truth. Still, a boy can’t be too careful, and as he took me by the hand I turned to the people still hanging around us and shouted, “If I’m dead tomorrow, he did it!”

  “For the love of God,” Ismerai hissed, pulling me away.

  And I let him drag me home.

  As we walked past the guards, one of whom saluted as I approached, and through the gate of the house, the first thing I saw was my bike leaning against the wall. Haji Khan must have brought it with him after I ran away from Wazir.

  The second thing I saw was the worried face of my mother.

  Ismerai let her hug me and whisper a few words that melted together in a dozen ways to say “Don’t worry, son.” He then asked her to bring us some tea and led me away into the garden.

  There was no sign of Haji Khan, but as his uncle was here as well as his army of guards, I guessed he must be upstairs with Georgie, no doubt planting more false promises into her already broken head.

  Inviting me to sit first, Ismerai settled into the seat opposite me and lit up one of his cigarettes. His face looked sadder and older than I remembered, his eyes becoming slowly pinched by time and heavy lines.

  “He does love her, Fawad.”

  Ismerai looked at me as he spoke, but I said nothing because I didn’t believe him.

  “I know you probably don’t believe me right now,” he continued, “but it’s true. I’ve known Haji Khan for most of my life. We played as children, we fought as men, and we’ve both known and understood love.”

  “Then why does he never phone her, Ismerai?” I could hear the sound of tears breaking in my voice as worry, and relief at not being killed, tugged at the bottom of my throat. “Why does he make her so unhappy that her baby died and she can’t eat anymore? Why?”

  Ismerai sighed, releasing the smoke from between his lips, as my mother arrived with the tea. After saying his thanks, he waited for her to walk away before answering. “You know our culture, son. This is not the West, where men and women live their lives as one person. We live in a society of men, where the women wait indoors and look after the family. The men aren’t used to answering to women, and they’re certainly not used to checking in with them either. And though Haji is a freethinker and he knows the ways of the West, he is still an Afghan man. And he is too old to change that part of him now, even if he wanted to, even for a woman like Georgie. And even though Georgie is like a member of our family and she knows our ways as good as anyone, she is still a foreigner and her heart and her expectations remain from her own country.”

  “But she tries so hard . . . ,” I said, feeling the need to defend her.

  “I know she does, son. We all realize Georgie makes sacrifices for Haji, and her respect for him makes her the person she is and the person we love. But although we know she stays inside the house more than other foreigners and she takes care of herself more than other Western women who drink and party here like it is Europe, she is still a world away from us and always will be. Every time Haji spends evenings with Georgie, every time she comes to his house, he takes a risk. He also commits a terrible sin that rests heavy in his heart for days after. The fact is that people talk, Fawad, and when you’re a man whose standing in the community is as important as Haji’s, talk is dangerous. It is not something that can be easily ignored. Power is a difficult balance of wealth, honor, and respect. If you lose just one of these elements, you risk losing it all.”

  “So he’s scared of losing his power and his money, then? That’s what you’re saying. That’s how much Haji Khan loves Georgie?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Ismerai corrected, taking up his tea and blowing hard, which isn’t really allowed in Islam because of the germs. “Haji loves Georgie. But what can he really give her? And what can she give him? No, what they should have done a long time ago is give each other up, but they were too scared or too stubborn to let go, and now both of them are trapped in a world where they have no future. They can’t walk forward and they can’t walk back, so they stand still, holding on to each other with no place to go.”

  “But why do they hav
e no future if they love each other?”

  “What kind of future do you think they could seriously have? Marriage? Here in Afghanistan?” Ismerai laughed harshly and relit the cigarette that had died in his fingers.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It’s impossible, you know that, Fawad. They are too different, and both of them are far too strong to change for the other. Haji once described Georgie as a bird, a bright, beautiful bird whose very song brings a smile to your face and happiness to your heart. Would you have him cage that bird within our customs and traditions? Do you imagine, even if she converted to Islam, that Georgie could live as the wife of a high Pashtun man, locked behind the walls of her home, unable to go out, unable to see her male friends, unable to work? It would kill her. You know that.”

  “They could move . . . ,” I offered, silently admitting that Ismerai was right and that if she did marry Haji Khan in Afghanistan he would probably be forced to shoot her within a week for bringing dishonor on the family.

  “Where should they move to?” Ismerai asked. “Europe?”

  I shrugged and nodded.

  “And can you see Haji being able to live that life, away from the country he has fought for, that he has lost family for and whose soil is as much a part of him as his skin and bones? If he left to live with a foreign woman, how could he ever return and still keep the respect he and his family have earned over all these terrible years? He would have to live in virtual exile, and that would destroy him.

  “The fact is, Fawad, Haji and Georgie are two people who fell in love at the wrong time and in the wrong place. The question they must now ask themselves is what do they do next?”