Born Under a Million Shadows (24 page)

Because of the riots the government ordered everyone to stay in their houses after ten at night. This was called a “curfew,”
said James, and it was the first time Kabul had seen one for four years. Personally, I was quite glad no one was allowed out because it kept all my foreign friends at home, which I thought might be useful if the police came to raid the place looking for me.

“It’s getting bloody tense out there,” James told Georgie one evening as they sat in the warm night air eating the chickpeas and potatoes my mother had prepared for us all. “You can almost taste the hate growing, on both sides.”

“It will pass,” said Georgie, who didn’t sound too convinced of her words.

“Will it?” James asked her. “The Afghans aren’t exactly renowned for their tolerance of occupying forces.”

“We’re not occupying!” Georgie almost shouted. “Nobody thinks that.”

“Not yet they don’t,” James said seriously. “But it only takes a couple of fuck-ups for that dynamic to change.”

I said nothing, mainly because I didn’t want the adults to move their conversation inside the house, where I wouldn’t be able to hear if James was going to betray me to Georgie, but I knew he was right. In the newspaper reports over the past two weeks I’d read of fighting between the international soldiers and the Taliban. The week before the American truck had done murder through mechanical failure, about thirty Afghans had been killed by bombs dropped from airplanes, a family in Kunar had died the same way, and roadside bombs and suicide attacks were causing death and misery everywhere.

Maybe May and Georgie were right when they first came home after the riots. Maybe this was “the end.”

20

“Y
OU KNOW, HAJI
Khan really is very handsome,” remarked Jamilla in the singsong voice she sometimes used to annoy me, “like something out of a storybook.”

“He’s okay,” I admitted.

“If you go for that good-looking rich-as-a-king kind of thing,” agreed Spandi.

“Oh yes,” added Pir Hederi, “he’s a heartbreaker all right.”

“How can you even know that?”

My hands flew up in amazement at the old man’s gift of apparently knowing everything about anything even when he could see nothing.

“I can smell it.” Pir laughed. “He smells like a man women would die for . . . and men too for that matter.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“Gross,” agreed Spandi.

“I’d marry him,” admitted Jamilla.

“Would you now?”

Spandi jumped down from the counter and moved over to her.

“Well, he’s a bit old and all that, but if no one else asked me I would.”

“Don’t worry, Jamilla, I don’t think you’ll be short of offers,” Spandi told her as he helped her down from the chair she’d been standing on to wipe the rows of cans on the shelves.
“You’re a star that shines in the darkest sky, girl. You’ll have men falling at your feet in a couple of years.”

“Really? You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Oh, here we go,” grumbled Pir as Jamilla giggled and corrected the scarf to cover the bruise her father had freshly planted on her face. “Stop it, both of you. I’ll have none of that romancing in my shop.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Don’t be such a child!” Jamilla told me, laughing.

“No, really, I think I’m going to be sick,” I insisted.

And I was, right on top of Dog’s tail.

I’d
been feeling hot and sweaty all day and a devil had been sitting in my head playing the tabla drums for the best part of two hours when Haji Khan suddenly walked into Pir’s shop saying he wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes. All of us immediately stopped what we were doing—not that we were doing that much in the first place—and we followed him with our eyes. Anyone who happened to be watching us must have thought we were guarding the shop from Kabul’s best-dressed shoplifter.

I knew he was lying, of course—about the cigarettes; he had men who brought in boxes of them from Europe. I’d never seen him smoke the Chinese horse shit that everyone else did here.

“So, is everything okay?” Haji Khan asked as we watched him, and as Pir practically spun himself into a woman around him, inviting him for tea, offering him biscuits, and even telling him “it’s nothing” when he tried to pay for his Seven Stars, which was the first time I’d ever heard those words fall out of his cracked lips.

I nodded in answer to Haji Khan’s question, knowing he was after more but refusing to give it.

“No problems,” he tried again, “at the house?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Yes, that’s very good. So, everyone’s okay then?”

I nodded.

“So, nobody was affected by the riots?”

I shrugged and shook my head again.

“And James? His work is going well? And May?”

“She’s fine!” I suddenly blurted out, feeling embarrassed about the whole discussion that was taking place, which was being watched and listened to with great interest by my friends because I hadn’t yet told them that Georgie had cleaned out Haji Khan from her life. I could see they were a little confused about what was going on. Big men don’t often come into small shops for no reason.

“Good, good,” Haji Khan repeated, looking huge and lost in the cramped space of Pir’s shop. “I just wanted to, well, you know . . .”

“Yes,” I said, “I know.”

And Haji Khan nodded and left, leaving the Seven Stars pack on the counter behind him.

“It’s
probably just something he’s eaten.” Dr Hugo stroked the top of my head to feel the heat of it before placing two fingers on the side of my neck to look for God knows what. “Plenty of water and some rest,” he added, leaning back on our cushions and picking up his tea.

I put my head to one side and looked at him. I’d only heard him doctoring twice, once with Georgie and now with me, and it seemed to me that as far as he was concerned all anyone ever needed was a bit of rest. I seriously wanted to hear what he’d say if someone’s leg got blown off.

“Yes, you’re probably right,” agreed Georgie.

I rolled my eyes.

“What was that look for?”

“What look?” I asked, feeling my cheeks grow even hotter because she wasn’t meant to see it.

“That look!” Georgie rolled her eyes around her head.

“Oh, that look,” I admitted, rolling my eyes again.

“Yes, that look,” she said, copying me.

“Nothing.”

“Boys!” She laughed, pulling me into her arms, which were getting softer now she was eating again.

“Women!” I mimicked.

“Are you two always like this?” interrupted Dr. Hugo as he dipped one of our biscuits into his cup. It broke off before it reached his mouth, and fell onto his trousers.

“Nice,” said Georgie, rolling her eyes.

Dr. Hugo
had been coming to our house quite a lot lately, even during the curfew, because the government had given him a special password to stop him from getting shot at police checkpoints.

I still wasn’t sure how good a doctor he was, but I was sure he would be good for Georgie if she let him. He was a bit messy, that was for sure, but he had a good heart. He told me he cried the other day when he had to cut off a woman’s arm after her husband shot her during an argument. And though Georgie and I hadn’t spoken about him, I guess she liked Dr. Hugo at least a little bit because all the makeup was back on her face. She didn’t touch him or stroke his knee or talk with her eyes like she did with Haji Khan, but she smiled when he was near and disappeared when he phoned, which was quite a lot compared to what she was used to.

But then there were the other times, when Georgie’s phone
rang and she just let it play its tune. We all pretended not to notice because we guessed it was Haji Khan reaching out for her voice and it was up to her if she chose to hide it or not. However, if she was truly over him, I knew in my heart she would just tell him.

“I think Dr. Hugo wants to make Georgie his girlfriend,” I told my mother as we sat watching the
Tulsi
soap opera that came from India. Tulsi was a young bride who had married into a rich family, and everybody seemed to spend most of their time trying to ruin one another, or crying.

“I think you’re right,” my mother replied as the program finished in another explosion of tears and sad music.

“And do you think she will let him?”

“I don’t know, but I think she deserves to be happy.”

“Like Tulsi?”

“Yes, like Tulsi.”

“But Tulsi’s never happy.”

“It’s only television, Fawad. It’s not real.”

“I know that! I’m not stupid!”

“Don’t act it, then.”

I looked at my mother, who was now reaching for some sewing she’d stored underneath one of the long cushions. Sometimes it was really quite difficult to have a normal conversation with her because she didn’t listen that well. I wondered whether this had anything to do with her being uneducated.

“All I’m saying is I’m not sure Georgie can love Dr. Hugo as much as she loved Haji Khan, and I don’t know whether she ever will.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A feeling . . .”

My mother raised one eyebrow and looked at me, straight in the eye.

“Okay, okay. I caught Dr. Hugo trying to kiss her the other night, but she hid her lips from him and he ended up kissing her ear.”

“Fawad! I really wish you wouldn’t keep spying on people. It’s not nice.”

“I wasn’t spying; I just happened to be there!”

Of course, that was a lie, because it’s hard to be in a place by accident when it’s close to midnight and you should be in your bed, but my mother let it pass.

“Well, it’s early days,” she replied. “Georgie may still love Haji Khan, but things change—people change. They just need a little time.”

“Time’s all good and well,” I said, getting to my feet because I was a little mad with all this talk of rest and time and sleeping and everything else adults throw at you when they don’t have any proper answers. “The trouble is, Mother, Georgie hasn’t got a lot of time left, and she’ll have to pick someone to make her happy soon because she’s not getting any younger. And neither are you, come to think of it.”

“I beg your pardon?” My mother looked up, surprised.

“I’m just saying, that’s all.”

“Saying what exactly?”

“Look, there’s a man outside these gates”—I pointed my finger at the window to make it clear exactly which gates I meant—“and he’s learning computering and trying to better himself, and I don’t think it’s because he wants to be the most big-brained guard in Wazir Akbar Khan, do you?”

“Now look here, young man—”

“No! You look here! Do you people ever stop to think about me? To think about how I feel? Do you ever wonder why my eyes are always half closed in the morning? It’s because I’m up all night worrying about who’s going to take care of all the damn women in this house!”

“Don’t use that language with me!”

“Language! Language! Who cares? It’s only words. Actions count more than words. If I’m not worrying about you and who will make you happy when I grow up and get married, then I’m worrying about Georgie, whose head is with one man and whose heart is living with another, and if it’s not Georgie, it’s May, who hasn’t got a chance in hell of marrying anyone unless she unlesbianizes. I mean! Do any of you have even the faintest idea of the kind of stress I am under?”

And with that I stormed out of the room, leaving my mother still as stone, her mouth hanging open, for once empty of anything to say.

21