The Taliban Cricket Club (15 page)

W
E CAUGHT A BUS
home, and I felt more confident beneath the layer of darkened skin and thickened eyebrows, believing I was now invisible among the men we passed. They didn't even glance at us.

But back at the house, in my room, I removed the turban and mourned for my hair. I had only snatched a glance in Noorzia's mirror, but now I could inspect it in private. She had left the central part, but on either side my hair lay flat and short, above my ears, exposing the sides of my head, which I had never seen before. At the back, I felt my skull and my bare nape. When I covered my face from my eyebrows down, I saw a boy's head sticking up. I carefully removed the beard and lay it on my desk tenderly, as I would a sleeping kitten. It even curled up like one. My face now had two shades, my darker makeup outlining the contours of the beard.

Still dressed as Babur, I made lunch, a pilau with
quorma,
naan, and a salad, and took it up to Mother and Dr. Hanifa.

They were playing cards.

We helped Mother sit up, and added more pillows for her back. She peered at me. “What happened to your hair?”

“Half your face looks darker—or is it the light?” Dr. Hanifa said.

“Noorzia cut it and put on darker makeup,” I said.

“Noorzia!” my mother said, instantly brightening. I served my mother her usual helping. “But you had such beautiful hair.” She sighed.

“It will grow back,” I answered. “Eventually.”

Book Two

The Team

A
FTER LUNCH
, P
ARWAAZE AND
Q
UBAD LED MY
other cousins into the
mardaana
. I waited on the stairs, the wings of the house, until Jahan signaled. I counted heads; there were seven. With Jahan, Parwaaze, and Qubad that made ten. They sat on the floor with slouched shoulders and bowed heads. They were family, my childhood friends, and now my teammates, young men with incipient beards and frowns between their eyes—I had to trust them. They looked up, curious, scared, hopeful, as I entered the room. Their eyes wandered, uncertain where to settle on me—face, feet, hands, turban, chest. Finally, settling for my eyes, I held them there. I didn't let a moment pass.

“You are here to learn cricket. I can only do that dressed as a man. I am risking my life only because of Jahan. I want you to win and take him out with you. If you tell the Talib what I am doing, I will get a bullet in my head.”

I began to pace slowly in front of them. “But remember, you are all implicated and you will be punished too, though not as severely as me, if we are caught. I don't have to tell you how the Talib will treat you, as you all know this regime. If any of you are afraid, tell me and leave now before any harm befalls you because of me.”

The room was silent. They knew of the cruelties and I saw them hesitate. One or two wavered enough to shift uneasily, as if wanting to rise and run away before they were harmed because of me. I waited.

I asked again, “Do any of you want to leave?”

The cousins began to look at each other to see if anyone was getting up. No one moved.

Parwaaze came to my side. “We have sworn to protect you and not tell anyone. If anyone does, it will be against our family honor.”

They all straightened slightly at the mention of the family.

Parwaaze continued, “They are all against you marrying the Talib and will do what they can to help you escape when the time comes.”

“Thank you—I will teach you, knowing your lives are in my hands just as my life is in your hands from now on.”

Each one met my eyes and held them as I asked them one last time if they were ready to join the team. I waited for each answer before moving to the next.

“Have you told your parents?” I asked them.

“I warned them not to,” Parwaaze said.

“We need you,” Atash said. “We have long planned to get out, and this is our chance. Why would we report you?”

“But can we win?” Namdar demanded from the back.

“Why not? You are as capable of this win as anyone else.” The others murmured in agreement.

“Do they play cricket in Australia?” Bilal wanted to know.

“Yes. They are the champions today.”

“Then they'll be happy to have us.” Daud smiled and it passed over all their faces.

“You are a brave woman, Rukhsana,” Royan said admiringly.

“We must get used to calling Rukhsana Babur,” Parwaaze corrected him quickly.

“You all swear you'll look after my sister?” Jahan demanded.

“We will,” they said.

“I will try my best to coach you until the day before the preliminary matches. But if it becomes too dangerous for me, I may leave earlier to join Shaheen and you'll have to teach each other. Now, I want to tell you why I love this game so much and I hope you will too as you master it.” I gave them the same passionate talk I had given the day before. They listened intently and their interest flickered a bit more brightly.

After I finished, Parwaaze took me aside. “I know we're a player short, but there won't be any problem finding one more.”

“Two more,” I said. “A team always has twelve, even thirteen players, in case of injuries and to carry drinks and towels onto the field. Who else do you have in mind?”

K
ABUL
U
NIVERSITY WAS A
fifteen-minute walk away and, like children crossing a dangerous street, we looked both ways before we stepped out of the compound. The few pedestrians paid no attention to us. Parwaaze insisted on carrying the cricket bat and I distributed my pads, gloves, and ball to the others. I walked in the center of them, with Jahan beside me. I was part of this group of young men, learning to see the world with the same confidence that they possessed as their right. I copied their behavior, or tried to, the confident slouch as they moved, talking to each other, and the quick shy glances at the covered women passing us. And yet I felt detached from them, constantly aware of both my identity and the danger. I sensed their tension too as they protected me, not getting too close but always checking to see that I was still among them. And closing in when men approached, parting when they passed.

When I was gradually comfortable in their center, I studied them to work out their possible potential, drawing on the memory of our childhood days when we played together.

Parwaaze had good hand-eye coordination. He could start the batting.

Qubad, who swung a cricket bat like a golfer his club, would bat last, when we needed to make quick runs.

Namdar, handsome and stocky, looked as if he had the energy to be a fast bowler.

Bilal was slimmer and more observant, and I sensed suppleness in his movements as he walked quickly. I thought he could be the wicketkeeper.

Daud was smaller than the others and slower in his movements—I suspected he was lazy. Perhaps I could hide him far away from the batsman.

Nazir had a springy step when he moved around; he looked like a sprinter and he could have the footwork to bat with Parwaaze.

Atash was tall, slim, and had an easy grace. He had played football. I saw him as a fast bowler.

Omaid, the youngest at fourteen, walked in silence next to his brother, Royan. There was a blankness to his stare. His father and sister had been killed in front of his eyes by a rocket during the Talib attack four years ago, and his mind seemed to have gone since then. Omaid was a sweet-looking boy and I wanted to comfort him. Where could I fit him in?

Royan, like Omaid, had a very square face, one I could have drawn on graph paper with straight lines. He had the height and could be a good fast bowler.

Jahan would also bat, probably before Qubad.

They were a motley group, yes, but I could see promise in shaping them into a cricket team. But, in the way they shuffled along, I knew I would have to instill confidence in them too.

As we came to a crossroads, near the campus, we saw the religious police sitting in the back of a Land Cruiser. They were enjoying the warm sun on their faces. Our team hesitated. The leader signaled for us to approach. I felt tremors pass through the boys; even such a simple gesture had an air of menace to it. A few other pedestrians hurried past, heads averted, grateful they were not the ones summoned. These police didn't wear uniforms, their only badge of authority the guns and the electric cables they carried. They were young, not much older than Jahan, and they looked hungry and arrogant.

“Just let me do the talking,” Parwaaze whispered nervously.

It wasn't us but our strange baggage that had betrayed us.

“What are you carrying?” one demanded.

Parwaaze obeyed his own advice and avoided eye contact. He lowered his head.

“Here, sir, see, this is a cricket bat.” He removed it from the plastic scabbard. “We are going to play cricket.” He pointed to the pads Qubad carried and the gloves, with Atash. Casually, my cousins moved to shield me from the policemen's view.

Surprisingly, the bat brought smiles to the faces of the policemen, revealing the children behind the murderous masks.

“Cricket! I saw it played in Pakistan when I was a boy.”

The other, suddenly suspicious, asked Parwaaze, “But you're not Pakistani, are you?”

“No, sir,” said Parwaaze, “we just want to learn the game.”

“What e-else is there to do?” Qubad said.

“You will play the match?”

“Yes, that's why we're learning the game.”

“Go, and good luck!” They laughed mockingly and gestured with their guns.

“Don't hurry,” Parwaaze whispered. “Just walk at the usual pace. They'll be watching, I can feel their eyes on my back.”

“Are you okay?” Jahan asked me.

“Just very afraid,” I whispered. “I thought they were calling me out.”

“We're all afraid,” he said, taking my hand briefly.

“I'll pray for Babur's spirit to enter me and guide me,” I said, my heart finally returning to a normal pace.

We passed Malalai Hospital, where Jahan and I were born. It looked so tired and worn out, the walls stained dark from years of rain. Just as the university gates came into view, a motorbike roared past us. The rider glanced at us, then made a U-turn to stop beside Parwaaze. He didn't turn off the engine.

“Azlam,” Qubad whispered.

He was quite tall, with a patchy beard, and he wore a blue
shalwar
and a black waistcoat. The tail end of his black turban fell over his left shoulder and halfway down his chest. He had a perpetual sneer on his face. I understood right away why Parwaaze and Qubad disliked him.

“Is that a cricket bat?” he asked loudly. “Let me see it.”

“No,” Parwaaze said. “Find your own.” Their exchange rang from the schoolyard.

“I have my team and we will win and go for training in Pakistan.” He picked at his beard's patches as he spoke.

“Who's teaching you?”

Azlam laughed. “No one. It's an easy game. You hit the ball and run. We don't need teaching for that.” He revved the engine. “I heard that in the preliminary matches each team will play ten overs and in the final it will be fifteen overs. I bet you don't know what an over is.”

“Six balls,” Parwaaze snapped. “Don't take all day to work out how many there are in ten overs.”

“Are you going to the university?”

“No, to the mountain.”

He revved his engine while we passed him and he seemed to be trying to remember our faces. I kept mine slightly averted, as if to talk to Jahan. Instead of continuing on his original way, Azlam rode back the way we had just come. When I looked in his direction, I saw him talking to the religious policemen. They seemed to be very friendly.

“I didn't know anyone wanted to know them,” I said to Qubad, who was also looking.

“They're the only ones who would want to know A-Azlam.”

The entrance gate to the campus hung on its hinges. No spirits had protected the house of learning founded in 1932. Most of the buildings were damaged, some were totally razed. They still held classes in those that remained whole. The few students were boys only, completing their final year. The Taliban had even permitted girls in their final year of study but only to complete their degrees, and then they sent them all home to waste their learning.

My cousins looked at the broken university with yearning, having had only a year of studies before the Talib won Kabul and dismissed them from classes. Now they dreamed of finishing their studies in another country.

We made our way to the eastern corner of the campus, away from the buildings. A drowsy silence greeted us. The city had fallen away. Dry leaves, brown and brittle, carpeted the dead lawns. The ground was flat enough for a cricket field and there was a footpath of hard earth that would be our pitch.

We dropped our gear—two cricket bats, one pair of pads, three cricket balls (one almost new), and a pair of batting gloves.

“We need wicket-keeping gloves. They have to be well padded to protect the fingers and the palms of the keeper. And pads.”

“Daud, can your father help us with these?” Parwaaze said to him. “Can you make big gloves?”

“We can make any size gloves at the shop.” He examined the pads. “These too.”

As I measured out the sixty-six feet for the wicket, Parwaaze confessed he had looked up the definition of cricket in an English dictionary.

“You know how it was defined?” he said. “A jumping insect. Then, second, cricket is a game of eleven players a side. That's all. Not very helpful.”

“You're just looking in the wrong book.” I took out a thin volume,
The Rules of Cricket,
published by the Marylebone Cricket Club. “There are forty-two rules with a long explanation for each one.”

He opened it warily and read aloud to the team, “ ‘Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this spirit causes injury to the game itself.' ”

I took it, opened the book to the appendix, and read, “ ‘There is no place for any act of violence on the field of play.' ” I returned it to Parwaaze.

“Cricket will never become popular here.” Bilal broke the astonished silence and managed a laugh. “How can we live without violence?”

Standing on our “pitch,” I faced my team of cousins who had never before played cricket, and I temporarily despaired. Where would I begin? The soul? The bat? The field? The positions? I picked up a ball and tossed it back and forth in my hands. “Let's start with a little fielding practice just to limber up. Parwaaze, you first.”

I tossed the ball, not too high, and within his reach to see how he would catch it. “Catching itself is a skill,” I said. “People open their hands like the jaws of a dog or a cat, vertically. To catch the ball in cricket, the hands should be horizontal and cupped to pouch it lovingly. With the wrong technique, the ball will come down as hard as a stone on your fingers.”

Of course, Parwaaze opened his hands vertically and the ball fell to the ground after bouncing out of his hands. He winced and glared at me as if I had done something wrong.

“Throw it up to me,” I said.

He tossed it up, impatient, and I caught it with cupped hands. “I know it seems an easy exercise to begin with, but catching a ball is very important in winning a game. And this is the way you catch it.” I tossed it for Qubad and he fumbled, trying to imitate my actions, but did hold it. We practiced catching for half an hour. After that, even though they were impatient to learn bowling and batting, I made them run up and down our pitch, which was how they would score runs. They ran with the gait of old men, unused to such physical exertion, and were quick to bend over, panting.