A Far Away Home (18 page)

There was no attack that day, nor that night. Today was Saturday. Because of yesterday
being Jumah, the day of worship, there had been no school. Today, school would be
open. Ali watched the children, including his daughter Shireen and his son Hassan,
come with their usual noisy selves. He counted the pairs of shoes outside the classrooms
to see if there were students absent. Just one. Ali's wife Nafisa and his sister
Shireen joined the other teachers in starting the lessons. Everything seemed normal
and quiet. He could hear Nafisa teaching reading.

Lori • By Howard Faber

In the afternoon, a
truck approached from the west. That was the usual arrival time
for trucks from the west. Ali was on guard duty at that end of town. He approached
the truck.

He stepped up to the truck to ask whether the driver had picked up any passengers
on the road. He didn't recognize the driver. There were no passengers. Usually, there
were passengers in the cab and in the back with the load. “Did you see anyone outside
of town?”

“No.”

Ali thought the man looked nervous. “What are you carrying?”

“Wheat.”

The answers seemed very short. Something was wrong. The driver started toward town.
Ali yelled to stop, but the truck kept going. Ali ran and grabbed onto the back.
He pulled himself up onto the truck, crawled over the side of the truck, and moved
around to the passenger side of the cab. He flung the door open and jumped into the
cab. The driver saw him and swung his arm to try to hit him. Ali grabbed his arm
and pulled him. The truck slowed some but kept going. The driver pulled away and
leaned back toward the
steering wheel. Ali decided to help him, pivoting on the seat
and shoving the driver with both feet. The shove knocked the driver off balance and
against the door. Ali scooted closer and gave another shove with both feet. That
shove knocked the driver out of the door, and he tumbled down onto the road. Ali
quickly sat up and grabbed the steering wheel, keeping the truck on the road.

There had to be a bomb on this truck. The driver probably had a cell phone to detonate
it. He had to get the truck away from town or at least away from the school. He glanced
in the side mirror to see what happened to the driver, if he had a cell phone, and
was ready to blow up the truck. He saw him, but he was still on the ground, with
an American soldier wrestling with him.

Ali thought quickly about where to drive the truck. Where was he now? Just where
did the shops and homes start on main street. Where would there be no people? The
old airfield. There would be no one there. He turned onto the side road that led
to the old airfield. He didn't know what had happened now with the driver and the
American. He sped up the hill toward the place where he played and where
he landed
the plane. The truck growled onto the old, still smooth landing strip. He drove it
downhill toward the cliff overlooking the river valley, hoping for just a few seconds
more.

His mind was racing again. Should he stop the truck and run? He could. If the American
succeeded in controlling the bomber and prevented him from igniting the bomb, what
would happen to the bomb. It might still hurt someone. He had to drive the truck
off the cliff. The bomb would blow up as the truck crashed down in the valley. There
were no roads down there so no one would be hurt. He decided to aim the truck for
the cliff, stay in the truck until the last second, then jump out of the cab.

***

Back in Sharidure, the wrestling match was over. It turned out badly for the would-be
bomber. The American soldier who jumped him was an All-American wrestler from Nebraska.
He quickly pinned the man face first in the dirt. Two young men came running and
now sat on the back of the attacker, each pinning an arm behind his back. The soldier
radioed for help and Colonel Elliot came up in a Humvee.
The Talib looked very angry
but helpless. He was now tied with rope, still face down in the dirt. The soldier
quickly told Colonel Elliott about how this attacker tumbled down from a truck. “What
happened to the truck?”

“I'm not too sure. I was pretty busy at the time.” He said this with a wry smile.
“I heard it start toward town, but then the sound faded away.”

Ali slowed the truck, opened the cab door, and stepped sideways onto the side of
the cab. He kept one hand on the steering wheel to keep the truck aimed at the cliff.
When he took his foot off the gas pedal, the truck slowed quickly, and he thought
for a second it might stop before going off the cliff, but because the landing strip
was downhill, the truck kept going. He jumped off, landed on his feet, and watched
it crawl forward. The front wheels rolled off the cliff, and the whole truck followed,
bouncing once on the side of the cliff, then somersaulting into the air. Ali ran
to the cliff's edge to watch. When it hit the valley floor, there was a huge explosion
and fireball. Ali dropped to his knees and raised his hands.

When the people in Sharidure heard the huge explosion, they hurried toward the noise
and smoke. Colonel Elliot
drove his Humvee in that direction but had to slow down
to avoid hitting the people running toward the river. When they rounded the side
of the hill, they saw the burning truck. Everyone wondered if someone was in it,
and how it had gotten there, since there was no road. Colonel Elliot left two of
his soldiers there to find out as much as they could and to keep anyone from getting
too close to the burning wreck. He went back to town to look for Ali to tell him
about the Talib and the truck, but no one knew where Ali was.

Chapter Sixteen

A Time to Grow

Ali stayed at the edge of the cliff for a long time. He thought about his family
at the school, now safe. He thought of his father, working at his shop, teaching
him to be a carpenter, encouraging him to study. That seemed long ago. He thought
about his for-a-time home in Iran, about returning to Afghanistan, about his wife,
his sister. So many things, so many days. It was good to be home.

The clouds came and went, like the days that passed. He sat, looking out onto the
river and its valley. He turned to look back to the top of the airfield, to where
he had taken off and landed, remembering Dan and Reza, the two pilots, one American,
one Iranian. He stood and started walking back up the airstrip, back home, back to
where his mother made all of those meals, all of those clothes for him, encouraging
him, telling him not to mind those mean boys who teased him about his leg. He had
almost forgotten about his leg being bent for so long. Maybe there was a boy or girl
now in Sharidure who needed a doctor and a hospital like he did. The Americans had
a doctor with them.

As he started down the road from the airfield to town, he noticed a small figure
starting up the road from town. As they each kept walking, they got close enough
to recognize each other. “Baba (father), everyone is looking for you. Where have
you been?” It was Hassan, his son.

“I was at the old airfield, thinking about how I used to come here, how the little
plane used to land here. I was also thinking about another Hassan, your grandfather,
and how he used to make me toys at his shop.” They met on the little road, looked
at each other a moment, then turned and walked hand-in-hand back to their home.

Someone saw Ali and hurried to Colonel Elliot to tell him where he was. When the
American got to Ali's home, he asked Ali if he had found anything out about the third
intruder.

“Please come in and have some tea. I did find out something about him. But first,
please join me in my home.”
Ali enjoyed seeing the colonel so much in a hurry to
know. He also enjoyed knowing. He took his time but did start to tell about his encounter
with the Talib in the truck, about driving it off the cliff, and seeing it explode
below in the river valley. Hassan sat listening to the glorious story, seeing his
dad so calm, so strong. It was a scene he would never forget or stop telling about.

Later that day, the two men, Ali and the colonel, told the story to their men. Hassan
told it to his friends, who told it to their families. By evening, all of the people
of Sharidure knew how Ali and the “palwahn,” the American wrestler, saved their school
and village from the Taliban attack. Ali told them about the additional hero, another
Sharidure guard, who saved him from the second Talib up on the hill early that morning.
He was anxious to meet the American soldier who wrestled and pinned the Talib into
the dirt. They met early that afternoon. They shook hands and exchanged first names.
The wrestler's name was Tom, and became known as “Mister Tom.”

***

The next day Ali went to Colonel Elliot with a request.
“Could we build a hospital
like we used to have? I can show you where it could be built. It would be a great
help to us and to the other towns around us.”

“That's part of what we hoped to do. We can start as soon as you want. Let's get
Dr. Bettinga.”

Dr. Bettinga was excited, almost as much as Ali, who explained how Sharidure used
to have a hospital. He talked about both Doctors Hagel, about how he had an operation
there to straighten his knee, and about how the hospital was so evilly smashed by
the Taliban. They walked to where the hospital used to be. “How big was it? Did it
have an operating room?”

“I think there were twelve rooms for patients. There was an operating room which
had beautiful tile covering the walls, and a huge light balanced from the ceiling.
I remember looking up at it, as I was lying on the table.”

Ali went on to tell Dr. Bettinga about how many people would come in the summer to
get medical help. “Even the Maldar would stop above town and pitch their tents, while
they would get medical help from the Hagels. I was curious about them, but I didn't
go very close because I was afraid of
their big dogs.”

“How did the doctors get their medicine?”

“Some came by road from Kabul, and some came by plane, a small plane. The place I
drove the truck off the cliff was the airfield.” These were some good memories, but
Ali wanted to focus on getting a hospital for his town. “We could start work on our
hospital tomorrow.”

And tomorrow it was. The soldiers had cement and the men of Sharidure had the muscle.
One of the American soldiers was an engineer. Ali showed him the foundations of the
old hospital. The engineer thought they could still use those for the new one, and
there were plenty of large stones for the walls.

The day after that, a helicopter arrived with more supplies for the hospital. It
landed on the old airfield, where Colonel Elliot and Dr. Bettinga were waiting to
supervise the unloading. They invited Ali to ride with them. Hassan heard about the
helicopter coming and wanted to see it, and Ali was happy to have him so interested.
When the helicopter flew in, all the other children of Sharidure ran to the airfield
to see it. When it was unloaded, the pilot agreed to take Ali and
Colonel Elliot
up for a short ride. Hassan asked if he and his sister could go too. The pilot helped
the children buckle their seat belts, and it was a glorious ride.

Hassan and Shireen got a birds-eye view of their home. “Look, there's our house,
and there's the school!” Hassan shouted because of the engine noise.

“Everything looks so small. Where does that road go? Does it go to Bamiyan?” Shireen
knew about Bamiyan and the ancient Buddhas.

“Yes, Bamiyan is over there.” Ali pointed east. “We'll go to see the Buddhas, when
the road is safe.”

When they landed at the airfield, Colonel Elliot helped Shireen and Hassan down.
All the children cheered and secretly wished they too could go up in the helicopter.
Their hopes grew two sizes that day.

There were lots of changes that summer. The first one was the little room at the
airfield. It soon became two big rooms with windows, a sloping roof to keep snow
out in the winter, a radio, two stoves (one for each room), and a small radar. The
Sharidure airfield had a significant upgrade.

The hospital was next. It was finished in about a month,
complete with a pharmacy,
several examination rooms, a comfortable office, an x-ray room, twelve rooms for
hospitalized patients, and a modern, sparkling clean surgery, complete with an overhead
light like Ali remembered. Dr. Bettinga made sure that this was a hospital to be
proud of. He saw many patients each day and kept the pharmacy supplied with the necessary
medicine. The next month, they built an additional wing, designed for new mothers
and babies. Dr. Bettinga found a newly graduated Afghan doctor to help him. She specialized
in seeing the female patients. He was very busy seeing men and boys.