Times of War Collection (30 page)

remember there was lots of shouting. “Filthy thief! Lousy beggar! Stop him! Stop him!” I tried to run away. But before I could escape, someone grabbed me. He kept hitting me, and would not let go of me.

Mother came to my rescue, to protect me, but a crowd gathered and then suddenly the police were there. Mother told them it was her who stole the apple, not me. So they arrested Mother, instead of me, and took her off to prison. They beat her there. She still has the marks on her back. She was gone for nearly a week.

They tortured her.

When she came back she just lay on the mattress beside Grandmother, and they cried together for days. She turned her face away from me, and would not speak to me. I wondered if she would ever speak to me again.

It wasn't long after this that the dog first came to our cave – a dog just like your dog in that photo you showed me.

But when I saw her that first evening, she was thin and dirty and covered in sores. I was just crouching over the fire warming myself, when I looked up and saw her sitting there, staring at me. She wasn't like any dog I had seen before – small, with short legs and long ears, and nut-brown eyes.

I shouted at her to go away – you understand, we do not have dogs inside our homes in Afghanistan. Dogs have to live outside with the other animals. Of course, I have lived here a long time now, and I know that in England it is different. Some people here like dogs better than they like children. Actually, I think if I was a dog, they would not shut me up in here like this.

So anyway, I threw a stone at this dog to shoo her away. But she stayed right where she was, and would not move. She just sat there.

I saw then that she was shivering. You could see her hipbones sticking out – she was that thin. She had sores all over her, and you could tell she was starving. So instead of throwing another stone at her, I threw her a piece of stale bread. She snapped it up at once, chewed on it, swallowed it, and then licked her lips, waiting for more.

I chucked her another piece. Then, before I knew it, she had come right into the cave, and was lying down there beside me, close to the fire, making herself at home, as if she belonged there. I noticed then that there was a wound on her leg, like she'd been in a dog-fight or something. She kept worrying at it, and licking it.

Mother and Grandmother were both fast asleep. I knew they'd chase the dog out as soon as they saw her there. But I liked her with me. I wanted her to stay. She had kind eyes, friendly eyes. I knew she wouldn't hurt me. So I lay down and slept beside her.

Early the next morning, she followed me down to the stream when I went to fetch the water. She was limping badly all the way. She let me bathe her leg and clean her wound. Then I told her she had to go, and clapped my hands at her to try to drive her away. I knew that anyone seeing her might well throw stones at her – like I had after all – and I didn't want that. But all the way back up the hill, she would not leave my side. Sure enough, as soon as we were spotted, a whole bunch of kids came running down the track and chased her off. They threw stones at her, and shouted at her, “Dirty dog, dirty foreign dog!”

I tried all I could to stop them, but they wouldn't listen. I don't blame them now. After all, she did look different, not like the kind of dog any of us might have seen before. She scampered off and disappeared. I thought that was the last I'd ever see of her.

But that evening she turned up again at the mouth of the cave. I discovered then that she liked tripe, however rotten it was. You know tripe? It's a sort of meat, from the stomach lining of a cow – it was the only meat we could ever afford in Bamiyan. Anyway, there were a few rotten bits still left, so I threw her those.

But then later on, when the dog crept in to be by the fire again, Mother and Grandmother woke up and saw what was going on. They became very angry with me, saying all dogs were unclean, and that she shouldn't be allowed in. So I picked her up and put her down just outside the cave, where she sat and watched us, until Mother and Grandmother had gone to bed. She seemed to know it was safe to come in then, because when I lay down, she was right there beside me again.

or weeks and weeks that's how it went on.

Somehow the dog just seemed to know that when I was alone, or when they were fast asleep, it was all right for her to come inside the cave. And she knew when to keep her distance too. She'd be sitting there in the mouth of the cave when I woke every morning, and she'd come with me down to the stream. She'd have a good long drink, and wait for me to bathe the wound in her leg. Then, so long as there was no one else about, she would come with me when I went off with the donkey to gather sticks for the fire.

But there were some days, particularly when my friends were around a lot, that I'd hardly see her at all, just an occasional glimpse of her in the distance, watching me. I'd miss her then, but it was good to know she was still around. And sooner or later every evening she'd be there again at the mouth of the cave, waiting for her food, waiting for Mother and Grandmother to fall asleep. Then in she'd come, and she'd lie down beside me, her face so close to the fire that I thought she'd burn her whiskers.

One morning, I woke up early and found the dog was not there. And then I saw why. Grandmother was already awake. She was sitting up on the mattress, with Mother still lying down beside her, and I could see Mother was upset, almost in tears. I thought they'd had another quarrel maybe, or that Mother's back was hurting her again.

But I soon learned what this was all about. They had talked about it often enough before, about the idea of Mother and me leaving Bamiyan, and going to England on our own, without Grandmother. She was far too old to come with us, she said. Grandmother would sometimes read out Uncle Mir's postcards from England. I had never even met Uncle Mir – he is Mother's older brother – but I felt as if I had. I knew his story. He had left Bamiyan long before I was born.

Everyone in the caves knew about Uncle Mir, how he had gone off as a young man to find a job in Kabul, that he had met and married an English nurse, a girl called Mina, and then gone off with her to live in England. He had never come back, but he wrote often to Grandmother. Uncle Mir was her only son, so all his letters and postcards were very precious to her.

She was always taking them out and looking at them. They had been brought over to her from time to time by Uncle Mir's friends when they were visiting from England, and she'd kept them hidden in her mattress with all her other precious things. She loved to show me the postcards, of red buses, or of red-coated soldiers marching, of bridges over the river in London. There was one that she read to us, over and over again. I remember almost every word of it. Whenever she read it, it started an argument.

“One day,” Grandmother would read out, “you must all come to England. You can live in our house. Mina and I have plenty of room for everyone. There is no war here, no fighting. My taxi business is good now. I have money I could send. I could help you to come.”

And Mother would always argue. “I don't care about Mir and his postcards. And anyway, haven't I told you and told you? I'm not going anywhere without you. When your legs are better, God willing, then maybe.”

“If you wait for my legs to get better, you will never go,” Grandmother would argue back. “I am your mother. But your father would say the same if he was still with us. I am only asking you to do what I say, because it is what he would say. I am old. I have had my time. I know this. I feel it inside me. These legs will never walk again like they did. You and Aman must go. There is nothing for you in the place except hunger and cold and danger. You know what will happen if you stay. You know the police will come again. Go to England, to Mir. You will be safe there. He will look after you. There you will be far from danger, far from the police. Listen to what Mir is telling us. There, the police will not put you in prison and beat you. There, you will not have to live in a cave like an animal.”

Mother often tried to interrupt her, and Grandmother hated that. One day, I remember, she became really angry, as angry as I had ever seen her.

“You should have some respect for your old mother,” she cried. “You expect Aman to do as you say, don't you? Don't you? Well, now you must do as I say. I tell you, I will be in God's hands soon enough. I do not need you to stay. God will look after me, as he will look after you on your journey to England.”

She reached in under her dress, and brought out an envelope, which she emptied out on to the blanket beside her. I had never seen so much money in all my life. “Last week, Mir's friend came again with another card, and this time with some money too, enough, he says, to get you out of Afghanistan, through Iran, and Turkey, and all the way to England. And on the outside of the envelope here, he has written the phone numbers of people he says you must contact, in Kabul, in Teheran, in Istanbul. They will help you. And you must take these too.”

She was taking off her necklace, pulling the rings from her fingers. “Take these, and I shall give you also all the jewels I have been keeping for you all this time. Sell them well in Kabul, and they will help to buy you your freedom. They will take you away from all this fear and ignorance. It is fear and ignorance that kills people in their hearts, that makes them cruel. Take Father's donkey too. It's what he would have wanted. You can sell him when you do not need him any more. Do not argue with me. Take them, take the envelope and the money, take the jewels, take my beloved grandson, and just go. And God willing, you will get to England safely.”

In the end, Grandmother managed to persuade Mother that we should at least speak to Uncle Mir on the phone. So the next time we went into town, to the market, we phoned him from the public phone. Mother let me talk to him when she had finished. In my ear, Uncle Mir sounded very close by, I remember that. He talked to me in a very friendly way, as if he had known me all my life. Best of all, he told me he supported Manchester United, and that was my team. And he had even seen Ryan Giggs, and my best hero too, David Beckham! He said he'd take me to a match, and that he'd let us stay with him and Mina as long as we needed to, until we could find a place of our own. After I talked to him, I was so excited. All I wanted to do was to go to England, go right away.

After the phone call Mother stopped to buy some flour in the market, and I walked on. When I turned round after a while, to see if she was coming, I saw one of the stallholders was shouting at her, waving his hands angrily. I thought it was an argument about money, that maybe she'd been short-changed. They were always doing that in the market.

But it wasn't that.

She caught me up and hurried me away. I could see the fear in her eyes. “Don't look round, Aman,” she said. “I know this man. He is Taliban. He is very dangerous.”

“Taliban?” I said. “Are they still here?” I thought the Taliban had been defeated long ago by the Americans, and driven into the mountains. I couldn't understand what she was saying.

“The Taliban, they are still here, Aman,” she said, and she could not stop herself from crying now. “They are everywhere, in the police, in the army, like wolves in sheep's clothing. Everyone knows who they are, and everyone is too frightened to speak. That man in the market, he was one of those who came to the cave and took your father away, and killed him.”

I turned around to look. I wanted to run back and tell him face to face he was a killer. I wanted to look him in the eye and accuse him. I wanted to show him I was not afraid. “Don't look,” Mother said, dragging me on. “Don't do anything, Aman, please. You'll only make it worse.”

She waited till we were safely out of town before telling me more. “He was cheating me in the market,” she said, “and when I argued, he told me that if I do not leave the valley, he will tell his brother, and he will have me taken to prison again. And I know his brother only too well. He was the policeman who put me in prison before. He was the one who beat me, and tortured me. It wasn't because of the apple you stole, Aman. It was so that I would not tell anyone about what his brother had done to your father, so that I would not say he was Taliban. What can I do? I cannot leave Grandmother. She cannot look after herself. What can I do?” I held her hand to try to comfort her, but she cried all the way home. I kept telling her it would be all right, that I would look after her.

That night I heard Mother and Grandmother whispering to each other in the cave, and crying together too. When they finally went to sleep, the dog crept into the cave and lay down beside me. I buried my face in her fur and held her tight. “It will be all right, won't it?” I said to her.

But I knew it wasn't going to be. I knew something terrible was going to happen. I could feel it.