A Fort of Nine Towers (45 page)

“Talk about what? About my blackened life?” she asked as a tear rolled down her cheek, then dripped onto the concrete floor.

I did not know what to say. I did not want her to cry. “Why don’t you marry someone who would look after you? You are a pretty woman; you can make a good wife,” I said. I did not know why I was saying this. I just wanted to make her feel good.

She sat on a chair in the corner. I was still standing. She motioned to me to get another chair and sit.

“Who is going to marry me?” she asked.

I did not know what to say.

She took a deep breath in and lowered her head. She was looking at her hands as she kept intertwining and releasing her fingers. “I was not born a prostitute, I was not born in a prostitute’s family either. I was born in a well-educated family, in a family of well-respected people.” She spoke very clearly, using good grammar and a high form of Dari that is not usually heard on the street.

“My father was a general in the Ministry of Interior Affairs; he was a man of honor, a man of respect, a man of pride. He was educated in Russia, and he was very serious about our educations. My mother was a teacher, like me. My brother was studying in the Medical Faculty, and my sister was studying social law at the University of Kabul.”

I was listening carefully to what she was saying, but still very conscious that she was a woman whom I might touch.

“I taught chemistry in the same school with my mother, who taught literature. I had graduated from the Pharmacy Faculty. I’m the oldest child of my parents. I was married six years ago, and I have two children.” The words were tumbling out.

“My husband had gone to my parents’ house to tell them the news of my newly born son. A rocket landed in my parents’ house and killed them all. In the end, there was nothing left for a burial. They were all turned into pieces and bits and mixed with the earth.

“I was living in a rental house with my two kids when the Taliban came. They closed the girls’ school, and did not let any women work outside of their houses, as you know. I had no money to pay my rent. So, I was kicked out of that house by the landlord. Now I’m living under a tent in Parwan-e-Seh.

“I don’t have any relatives from either side of my family in Kabul. They have all fled to foreign countries. I don’t have their addresses to ask them for help. After the Taliban closed my school, I started begging for a few months. But I never collected enough money to buy five
naan
. Most of the time, I went hungry. I put my kids to sleep with empty stomachs.”

I was becoming absorbed in her story, and forgetting about what had brought us together.

“About a year and a half ago I met another beggar, and she told me to sell myself. She said that there are a lot of customers for a body like mine. She also told me that prostitution is an art, not a black or shameful act. I cursed her and walked away from her. I continued my begging for another month, but I still couldn’t collect enough money, and my kids began to get skinny and sick. My daughter is the older one, and she is four years old; my son is three.

“One day while I was begging along the Kabul River in the jewelry shops there, a jeweler showed me a bundle of money. He said if I came to the back room, he would give me all of it. I told him that he was disgusting, and he laughed at me as I walked away.

“I thought about my kids, who were suffering from malaria. I went back to that shop and I went straight to the back room. He came and used me. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was there like a body without a soul, like a doll. I was used by a couple of his
friends, too. An hour later, I had the bundle of money, and I took my kids to a doctor.

“That night I cried the whole night without knowing why I was crying. I had not cried that much for my parents, my brother, my sister, or my husband when they died. The next day I didn’t go out. Whomever I looked at, I thought they knew the truth about me. I couldn’t even look at my own kids. I hated myself, and I wanted to kill myself. But I couldn’t do it. ‘Who would give my children the love of a mother?’ I thought.” She wiped her tears with her sleeves and looked at me.

“Why am I telling you all these things? You don’t know me, and I don’t know you,” she said, and started to sob softly with her head down.

“You have to tell them to someone, to feel light, to feel free. You can’t carry them all within you. You have to share them with someone,” I said. I was surprised at the words that were coming from my mouth. How did I know to say these things? I was using all the proper forms and grammar, as she was, though almost no one ever spoke that way anymore.

“You’re just a damn kid. You haven’t seen the cruel face of life,” she said, standing and covering her face with her
burqa
. She ran out of the shop without taking her money. My friend shouted at her to come back later for it.

I grabbed the bundle of money from the desk and caught up with her, walking slowly next to her. She did not see me because of the
burqa
, but I could hear that she was still crying quietly. The street was nearly empty. It was in the hot days of July. A few dogs were resting in the shade of walls, and little boys were carrying pots of yogurt with herbs toward their houses. She noticed me after a few moments; she stopped in the middle of the street and pulled up her
burqa
to look at me as I was standing in front of her. The hot sun was cooking my back. The little boys stared at her, because they had not seen any woman’s face on the street for two years, since the Taliban had come.

“Why do you care for me? Do you know me?” she asked me. Her voice shook. Her beautiful eyes were full of tears waiting to come out.

“No, I don’t know you, but I’m a human like you, and we should share the sorrows and the joys together,” I said.

“And how will you share my sorrows with me? It is not just me who needs someone to share her pain with. There are thousands of people like me who are even more desperate.”

I did not know what to say. She grabbed the money from me, pulled her veil down, and walked away without looking back, the dust blowing after her and settling on her blue
burqa
.

The Length of a Hair

M
y mother gave me some money and a list of what she and my sisters needed: trousers, skirts, shawls, scarves, and other small things.

After the arrival of the Taliban, they hardly went out. They did not like wearing the
burqa
. They could not see through those little holes. In fact, if they left the house, it was only to go to the wedding parties or funerals of close relatives. For those occasions, I hailed them a taxi, or I called a relative with a car who collected them from our gate and dropped them at another gate. While they were in the car, their heads were completely covered with shawls, even their faces, and they could not see which road they were on.

I hated shopping for them, but what could I do? I was the only one available; with my father always working, they had no one else. We left the crying machine with a neighbor. My little brother had, in fact, become a joking machine. Everything he said was funny, and he made everyone laugh. He was the sweetest kid and knew how to keep us entertained.

I took my shopping bag and headed to the main bazaar in midafternoon. On my way there, I was stopped by a Talib in front of the high-rising Ministry of Communication. He wore the usual long,
white turban and long, black
shalwar kamiz
. But he had a pair of scissors in his hand instead of a gun or a whip.

He asked me to take off my shirt. I thought he was joking. Nobody in my life had ever asked me to take off my shirt in the middle of the road.

“What do you want to do with my shirt?” I asked him in Pashto.

“I have nothing to do with your shirt. I want to see your armpits,” he said.

“Why?! Look, look, there is nothing in my armpits. No hashish, no opium. I’m an athlete. I don’t use drugs. You see I have muscles,” I said as I raised my arms and flexed them.

“I need to see how long the hairs of your armpits are. They shouldn’t be longer than one inch,” he said insistently, and commanded me to take off my shirt.

“What does the hair of my armpits have to do with you?” I wanted to ask. But I had been to the Taliban prison once and did not want to go back again. I pulled off my
kamiz
in the middle of the road. The passersby on either side of the road watched me from the corners of their eyes, but they kept moving and kept their silence.

The Talib pulled out a hair from my left armpit and measured it. It was a tiny bit longer than one inch. He frowned and told me that I was in big trouble. I pleaded with him to measure a different one. He pulled out another hair from my right armpit and measured it. That one was just less than one inch.

“Some of the hairs are long, and some of them are short. When was the last time you shaved under your arms?” he asked.

“Two, three weeks ago,” I answered as I was putting my shirt back on.

“Give me an exact date,” he shouted, frowning.

“I don’t remember,” I said. In fact, I had never shaved my armpits at all.

“I want to see your penis and testicles,” he said matter-of-factly as he stared between my legs.

“What? Why?” I asked. Panic was replacing my anger.

“Because I said so,” he calmly replied.

“You know they look the same as yours,” I said very seriously to mask my fear. I did not want to take off my trousers in the middle of the road for a stupid and illiterate villager who called himself a Talib.

“This is your last chance. If you don’t show me your penis and testicles, you’ll be in prison in ten minutes, and I’ll see them there,” he warned.

“Oh God! What the hell is wrong with this man? Please God, help me!” I screamed inside myself.

“Why don’t you show me yours first,” I challenged, playing for time until I could think more calmly what to do.

“Do you have an interest in my penis? It is quite big, and there is a lot of semen in my testicles,” he said with a totally different tone. “My boy loves it, but he is not as white as you.” He suddenly smiled a warmly engaging smile, even though he was a Taliban, and they hated any sign of happiness.

Now I understood why he had stopped me. We had heard rumors that the Taliban who had been fighting on the front lines against the Mujahedin would go to the prison during the night so they could relax by raping young boys who had been imprisoned for no crime.

This man wanted to use me every night with his frontline friends until they got bored with me and found someone new, or younger, or with whiter skin. I had seen some of those frontline Taliban, as we called them, a few days before in the park near the Qala-e-Noborja. They had long, dirty hair and untrimmed beards. They were full of lice since they did not wash for months, despite what the Holy Koran told them about cleanliness. The worst ones were from the tribal lands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, or from Chechnya or some of the Arabic countries such as Yemen and Syria. They had no interest in Afghanistan. They just wanted to kill people.

I could not let such a thing happen to me, to my life. I would bring shame to myself and to my family, even if it was done by force.

I did not know what to say, but I knew that I had to get away from this man any way I could. I opened my trousers and, very self-consciously, lowered them to my knees. Passersby stared at me. I glared back at them.

The Talib sat on his knees and pulled out two hairs, one which
he called “the hair of your penis forehead” and another one from my testicles. Then he asked me to tie up my trousers. He measured them both with a ruler. I was looking closely at his hands, which were trembling. Both hairs were curly; I could not even guess how long they were. The one from “the forehead of my penis” was nearly two inches, and the one from my testicles was one and a half inches.

“Boy, you are in big trouble. I will have to sentence you to one month in prison,” he said, a devilish sneer growing as the corners of his eyes narrowed.

He gripped my right arm tightly and pulled me toward his car, which was parked at the roadside. Another Talib, who was lounging in the driver’s seat, stood up and opened the door. They pushed me into the back. Then my captor went off and stopped another young man who was hardly more than a boy.

As I sat in the backseat, the Talib in the driver’s seat was holding the steering wheel and listening to one of those Taliban songs without music. The singer was mixing verses of Persian love poems with some random Urdu words. Only the singer himself knew what he was singing about.

We both watched as the Talib examined the armpits of the boy he had stopped. The boy was younger than I, and paler, and very handsome. They loved white-skinned boys.

I was determined to escape.

Not far from me, in front of the Ministry of Communications, I saw a group of builders who had been working nearby, constructing the largest mosque in Kabul. They had finished their work for the day and were heading home. As they came alongside our car, I opened my door, jumped out and shouted very loudly, “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb under the Taliban car!”