Born Under a Million Shadows (34 page)

Yes, he was a good man, and I was pleased. He looked very handsome at the wedding banquet in his white suit and white shoes, and when he served my mother’s food to her, to show his respect, all the other women watched with smiles on their faces and nods of approval.

As well as me, my aunt, and Jamilla, Georgie and May sat in the marriage room, along with May’s woman-husband Geri. Out of all the Afghans at the wedding, only my mother and I knew of the baby hiding in May’s stomach, and before we left the house my mother begged the foreigners not to talk about it in public. If that news had got out, all of us might have been stoned to death, which wouldn’t have been a very good ending to my mother’s special day.

Despite having lived in the same compound as my mother for the best part of a year, James wasn’t allowed into the marriage room because he wasn’t a relative, and because he was a man. When I joined him he was sitting with Ismerai, Pir Hederi, and some friends of Shir Ahmad’s, looking lost because there was no one there to translate for him. Even though he had lived in Afghanistan for more than two years, James’s Dari hadn’t improved much from the few phrases he had learned when he first arrived, such as “Hello,” “How are you?” “Where’s the toilet?” and “Take me to your leader.” Mainly he got by with his hands flying wildly and the pocket dictionary he carried around with him.

I could only imagine how long it must have taken him to
mess with Pir Hederi’s head over the business of the sandwiches.

When I began to feel a little better—without the need to run around the restaurant half naked—Ismerai asked me to go and fetch Shir Ahmad and bring him to the men’s room. He had a gift for him, apparently. I did as I was told because Ismerai was an elder. I was also excited to see what the present would be. Georgie had already given my mother a mobile telephone so she could call Mina whenever she wanted to, which I thought was pretty damn brilliant of her. But I could hardly imagine what Ismerai and Haji Khan were bringing to the table.

Shir Ahmad muttered his apologies to the women for having to leave them, but I could tell he was secretly pleased because I think they were starting to do his head in. Slowly, I led him to where Ismerai was waiting. It took quite a bit of time because of all the handshaking he had to do on the way.

Once in the men’s room, Ismerai asked Shir Ahmad to sit down and presented him with a white envelope. “From Haji Sahib Khan,” he said. “He apologizes for not being here in person to celebrate your wedding with you, but he had to return to Shinwar to attend to some urgent business.”

Shir Ahmad accepted Ismerai’s words with some kind ones of his own and opened the envelope. Inside were about four or five pieces of official-looking paper.

My new father looked at Ismerai, confused. I looked at Ismerai, disappointed. I was expecting to see money.

“It’s a contract,” Ismerai explained.

“Oh, a contract,” we all said, continuing to stare at Ismerai.

Laughing, the old man took the papers off Shir Ahmad and slowly explained what they all meant. It turned out that Shir Ahmad and Haji Khan were now in business together—the joint owners of Kabul’s latest Internet café.

30

A
FTER THE WEDDING
party, my mother left with her husband to get our new house ready for the start of our new life, and the rest of us returned to Wazir Akbar Khan.

Back at the house, Georgie, James, and May opened a bottle of wine because apparently they were all “in need of a drink,” and one by one they tried to convince me to move into James’s room for the week.

“It won’t be so lonely for you,” explained Georgie, coming in from the kitchen carrying my tea.

“Your mother would want you to sleep there,” May tried.

“It will be fun!” cried James.

But I was having none of it. I wasn’t a child anymore, and my mother had only gone to another house; it wasn’t as if she’d nearly died or anything—not like the last time she’d left me alone with the foreigners. And besides, my mother had a TV in her room, and I was moving in there.

After getting a little cross with my friends and all their nagging, I picked up my kettle of tea and left them to their wine so I could settle myself in my mother’s room and finally get some peace. And as I arranged the cushions for the best view of the television, I felt pretty grown up about it.

“This is the life,” I said to myself, sipping at my drink and stretching out on my mother’s bed.

I plumped up the pillow and relaxed for the film that was about to begin.

Eight
hours later I was woken by the sound of Georgie calling me to breakfast. The television was silent because the electricity had gone off, and as my head caught up with my surroundings I realized I’d fallen asleep before I’d watched even five minutes of the movie, which annoyed me slightly because it seemed such a waste of my new freedom.

I climbed out of bed, washed myself, changed my clothes, and went into the big house for breakfast. Only Georgie was there, as May had already left for her office and James wouldn’t come out of his room for another three hours at least.

“Did you sleep well?” Georgie asked, pushing a plate of bread and honey in my direction.

“Yes, thank you. Did you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I poured myself a cup of sweet tea.

“So, did you enjoy the wedding party?” Georgie asked.

“Yes, it was pretty good. What about you?”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it was pretty good.”

We then continued eating in silence until Massoud turned up to take Georgie to her office and I jumped on my bike to go to school. Although it was always nice to spend time with Georgie, neither of us was really a “morning person.”

As
usual, I went to the shop after class to earn my money, such as it was, and to tease Jamilla before she went to school.

“I read yesterday that Shahrukh Khan got married to another man,” I told her.

“Where?” Jamilla asked. “In Fawad’s Special Newspaper of Lies?”

“No, in an Indian temple, of course.”

“Very funny,” she said, fixing her scarf before walking out the door.

“I thought so.” I laughed. “See you after school, Jamilla.”

“Whatever,” she replied, in English, making the sign that James had taught me and that I had taught her.

As she walked out the door, I suddenly noticed she was starting to get taller than me, which didn’t please me one bit. I’d scratched a mark on my bedroom door when I first moved into the foreigners’ house, and I didn’t seem to be getting any higher. It was starting to play on my mind, so much so that I’d recently got to wondering whether I’d end up like Haji Khan’s midget man. Even Jahid had commented on my height when I saw him at the wedding.

“Hey, runt,” he’d greeted me.

I ignored him, obviously, because in God’s great plan for us all he hadn’t come off too well either. But it was still annoying.

“How old are you now?” Pir Hederi asked when I mentioned it in the shop.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe ten, maybe eleven.”

“Oh, well then, boy, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Come back to me when you’re maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and you’re still no higher than an ailing calf.”

“I’m not likely to be here when I’m twenty-five or twenty-six, am I?”

“Where the hell else are you likely to be?”

“Well . . .” I stopped to think about it, and realized I had no idea. “Somewhere else,” I said eventually, now even more disturbed by the thought that I might end up as a man-midget working in Pir Hederi’s shop for the rest of my life.

“Look, if you’re seriously worried, my advice is to get your mother to boil up a chicken in hot water, throw in some chickpeas and a spoon of scorpion juice, and take a glass of the water every morning when you wake up.”

“We’re not allowed to eat even chicken these days because of the bird flu, never mind scorpions,” I told him.

“In that case, you’re screwed,” was all he said.

“You
have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Georgie told me when I returned home later that afternoon to drink tea with her in the garden. “Girls mature faster than boys—that’s a fact. In a couple of years you’ll catch up with Jamilla, and then you’ll overtake her. And really, Fawad, you’re far too clever to end your days in Pir Hederi’s shop, so calm down.”

“Do you really think I’m clever?” I asked.

Georgie laughed. “Fawad, you’re the most intelligent boy I’ve ever met! You are . . . what is the phrase in Dari? I don’t know. In English we would say that you’re ‘bright as a button,’ meaning you’re amazingly clever and lively for your age. Honestly, I’ve met adults who haven’t got the sense you were born with. You are a very special little boy who will one day grow up to be a very special man. And you’re also very handsome.”

“Wow, I’m pretty good then, aren’t I?” I laughed.

“You sure are, Fawad.”

As I looked at Georgie, her lovely face sweating in the summer sun, I suddenly felt a cloud of sadness come over me. Things were changing so fast, and they would probably never be the same again: May was moving back to her country to have her French baby; I was moving to Kart-e Seh to begin my new life; James was worried about who was going to cook for him now my mother was gone, and why Rachel didn’t want to marry him; and Georgie—well, nobody knew what Georgie was up to.

“Are you going to leave Afghanistan?” I asked, watching her carefully.

“Who told you that?” she asked back, surprise making her voice grow high.

“Dr. Hugo told me before he got beaten up by Haji Khan.”

“He what? Khalid did what?”

My heart stopped. I’d gone and done it again.

“It was only because he loves you,” I added quickly. “And really it was all Dr. Hugo’s fault because he was trying to make him ‘back off,’ and Haji Khan said that you were in his teeth and he called Dr. Hugo a motherfucker and then he got really angry. But he didn’t kill Dr. Hugo or anything, even though he told his guards that he was going to rip his throat out.”

Georgie stared at me over her sunglasses.

“I’m in his teeth, am I?” she asked finally.

“Well, that’s what he said.”

“How romantic,” she replied, but she spoke the words in a flat way like it wasn’t romantic at all.

“So, are you leaving Afghanistan?”

Georgie shrugged. “Right now, I don’t know, and that’s the honest truth. Maybe it will become clearer on Friday when I go to Shinwar.”

“You’re going to see Haji Khan?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t, but I guessed she was about to give Haji Khan his answer.

“Can I come with you?” I asked.

“Well . . . I don’t know. I’ve got a few things to sort out.”

“Please, Georgie. What if you do leave? This might be the last chance I get to see Mulallah.”

“To be honest, Fawad, I’m not sure I’ll have time to visit Mulallah and her family.”

“Okay then, Haji Khan.”

My friend looked at me through her glasses.

“I don’t know . . .”

“Please, Georgie. I’ll be ever so good, and I won’t make any trouble, and I’ll play by myself when you need to speak to Haji Khan and—”

“Okay, okay, you can come!”

“Great!”

“But only if your mother agrees.”

Using Georgie’s phone, I immediately called my mother to ask if I could go to Shinwar for the Friday holiday. She agreed, as I knew she would, because when it came to a choice between Shinwar and leaving me in a house with James and a pregnant lesbian, Shinwar would win every time.

“Don’t forget your prayers, and be good!” she yelled in my ear.

“I won’t, and I will,” I promised, making a note in my head to show her how to speak properly into a phone when I next saw her. She was shouting so loud I could have heard her in Tajikistan.

As
with our other journeys, it was Zalmai who arrived at the house to drive us to Shinwar, but this time Ismerai came with us and we were taken in a Toyota pickup with a guard in the front and two more outside in the back.

“Expecting trouble, are we?” Georgie asked when she saw our escort.

“No, not really,” Ismerai replied. “Haji just wants to take precautions with you both, seeing as you are such special guests.”