The Taliban Cricket Club (17 page)

“They won't want that.” Royan sighed. “They'll find some Talib goon to umpire.”

“In which case it's not cricket,” I insisted. “It's only cricket if we can trust the umpire to be honest. Cricket imposes the behavior of fair play, and justice for those who want to be cricketers. I've seen test matches where the batsman knows he's not out but he still has to accept the umpire's decision. He can't stand there and argue. He walks back to the pavilion.”

“Cricket will never take off here then.” Namdar laughed. “We don't trust anyone at all. And there is no justice.”

“That's the only way to play,” I snapped at him.

“We'll play the game the way Babur teaches us,” Parwaaze cut in. I had been watching him listening to the discussion, not wanting to choose sides, before finally coming down on mine. “I believe Babur: if we learn to play this game properly and have that discipline, then we will win. Now, let's watch and listen.”

I pressed play and Sachin walked out of the pavilion to the crease. As I described the action, my voice grew eager and loud. I imagined the thousands of people watching from the stands, and millions around the world on television. I knew from my playing days how lonely that walk to the crease was and the silence that accompanied it. “Now watch him. He's the best batsman in the world.”

“He's small,” Qubad said dismissively. The English players towered over the Indian.

“Height doesn't make you any better.”

“Why?” Parwaaze said, leaning forward to concentrate.

“You see how he's perfectly balanced at the crease. He has perfect footwork, great hands, and a great eye. See how he leans into the ball and at the last moment guides it exactly where he wants it to go. You must watch him again and again. He's known as the Little Master.”

When it was over, Parwaaze began the tape again, I made them repeat every fielding position, like children at school learning their lessons in a madrassa. I could see them imagining themselves on the field in that tape, bowling and hitting like the best in the world.

W
E GOT HOME AT
ten o'clock and I went straight to bed. I dreamed I was playing cricket with my college team again and the familiar faces floated in and out of the scenes running through my head. When I woke, I wished I was still there. My calendar was waiting and I drew a line through another day, shrinking the space even more. Seventeen days.

I followed Noorzia's advice. I was not going to be indifferent about my appearance. Although I did not rouge and powder my cheeks, or trace my lips with a pale red gloss, I took care with Babur's appearance. If I was to be a man, I at least wanted to be handsome. I fussed over my skin shade, eyebrows, and beard. I adjusted my spectacles and firmly rooted the turban on my head. By this simple transformation, I felt as if I had stepped out of my body and entered another one. I wore the same clothes, and, taking Noorzia's advice, strapped on my chest protector. It would grow uncomfortable over the course of the day, but even the most sensitive elbow would not know it hid my breasts.

Before we stepped out of the house for practice, we went up to the roof and scanned the road. There were a few passing cyclists, a vegetable vendor pushing his cart, two women with their
mahrams,
and scavenging goats. It looked normal. No one even glanced at the house.

“Why would Droon watch the house?” Jahan asked. “He has searched it and didn't find you. He knows we're all frightened of the Talib and that we wouldn't defy him, not while Mother and I are here as his hostages. She's not going anywhere. Don't forget, he threatened her too.”

“Just to be sure,” I said and kept watching.

“The dangerous time will be a day or two before Wahidi returns, and you're still not here. That's when it will be urgent for Droon to find you for his brother.”

“Then I better leave three or four days before. By then the team should be good enough. Just to be on the safe side, I'll start sleeping in the secret room.”

“It won't be comfortable.”

“I know that. Whatever happens, get on that field and play—it's your best chance.”

As we set out for the university, we heard the motorbike. Azlam passed us without a glance but I had the feeling he had seen and remembered us from the day before. He seemed to be hovering around our neighborhood.

“I saw Azlam,” Jahan told Parwaaze at the grounds.

“He wants to see how we're learning.” He looked grim. “We must beat his team, we must.”

I presented my gift to Qubad. He took it out and dangled it for everyone to see and examine, as if it were a work of art.

Parwaaze took it and slipped it over his pants, adjusted it, and walked around proudly. “Okay, now I will learn how to bat the ball.”

“We will need another one, maybe two more,” Jahan said. “There are two batsmen at the wicket, and a third one waiting to come in when one of them is out.”

“Can you make two like this?” Parwaaze asked Bilal, pointing to his crotch.

“Well . . . It will take a day or two. I'll have to soak and then shape the leather to fit over the . . . parts.”

“Make me a special one, I have more between my legs than any of you,” Namdar boasted, and clutched his crotch. “About twice the size.”

“Yes, make a special one for Namdar,” Qubad added. “I don't want to catch any of his diseases.”

“Okay, okay,” Bilal said. “But you each pay me for this. I'm not making these for free. My father finds out I'm stealing his precious leather and he'll fire me.”

Qubad looked away, and turned to Parwaaze. “Oh god, look who's c-coming.”

The Permit

W
E ALL TURNED, EXPECTING TO SEE
A
ZLAM
. Instead, a young man with a full beard stormed across the field. Parwaaze's brother. As he got closer, we could see his face was flushed with anger. The team shuffled away from Parwaaze as his brother approached.

Parwaaze groaned aloud. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to know what you're doing,” Hoshang burst out. “You should have told me.”

“We're just playing a game. Now that you've seen, you can go away.”

“What game?”

“Cricket,” Qubad answered wearily and turned to me with a smile. “Hoshang has n-nothing better to do than follow us around.”

“You shut up,” Hoshang snapped at Qubad.

“Oh yes, c-caliph, I will. Now leave.”

“Why cricket? Tell me, or I'll report you all.”

“We're not breaking any law,” Parwaaze said, exasperated. “It's a game—”

“I know that, I read the papers—”

“—and we just want to play in the matches. That's all. Now that you know, you can leave us.”

“And who is that?” Hoshang jutted his beard toward me. There was a resemblance to Parwaaze, but his mood was darker and he didn't have Parwaaze's sense of humor and mischief either.

“Babur,” Parwaaze said. He looked at me, then at the others. He had not told Hoshang about me and hesitated for a long moment before bursting out, “Babur is Rukhsana. She's teaching us.”

Hoshang looked puzzled, believing at first that Parwaaze was playing a joke. Then he took a few steps closer to study me and a slow recognition emerged in his eyes. They blinked rapidly, in panic, I think. We weren't close as children and we'd never known each other very well—but Parwaaze seemed to know what he was doing. Protectively, the others moved closer to me. We waited tensely.

“You all know?” He looked around. Heads nodded. “Does Padar know?”

“No,” Parwaaze said. “Unless you tell him.” Then, resigned, he said, “And everyone else. You'll get her killed, and us too.”

“Why would I do that?” Hoshang finally said. He laughed, and seemed to relax now that he had learned his brother's secret.

“We need another player,” I offered, “if you want to join.”

“Of course! So are we going to win or not?”

“Why else would we waste our time here? We have a full team now.”

We spent the days following our routine—warm-up exercises, then batting and bowling. They still had the awkwardness of beginners and I hoped as they became more confident they would acquire the style and grace the game demanded. Jahan, Parwaaze, Qubad, Atash, and Royan showed promise as batsmen. They had the footwork and the quick eye to pick up the speed and bounce of the ball. Omaid, Daud, Namdar, and Bilal bowled well, though when Namdar and Daud tried to bowl too fast, they lost control and fell over. Control would come with more practice. I taught Hoshang how to stand behind the wicket and stop the ball or catch it if it hit the edge of the bat. As the oldest, it gave him a sense of importance that he would be such an integral part of the game.

At the end of each day's session, I gave them fielding and catching practice, which none of them liked. They lined up thirty meters away, silhouetted against the low, dun-colored Asamayi hill, and I hit the ball along the ground until, one by one, they ran to field it and throw it back to Hoshang. By the end of the week, they moved with the easy spirit of young men.

“That was a four you let through your legs,” I shouted, as Sharma had shouted to us in practice in Delhi. “The batsmen are taking three runs because you're so slow . . . you must outrun the batsmen . . . pick up and throw . . . run faster . . . expect the ball in your direction . . . faster . . . faster . . .” Then I hit high balls and, at first, they dropped every catch. “You could have gotten a man out if you'd jumped for that catch . . . Catches win matches . . .”

Each evening, when Jahan and I returned home, we exchanged the same dialogue with Abdul. “Letters? Package?” and his reply was the same. One day, I prayed, he would hold out the package and I would dance into the house and out of the country. The phone too drew me like a magnet. But it remained uncooperative. Three, four, five days passed, and each time I crossed one off my calendar; I felt as if the lines were pushing me forward and I was helpless to stop them. How long would Shaheen's letter and money take to reach me? A week, I thought, and tried to unravel the knot in my stomach.

Just as I was preparing dinner, we heard a knock on the door. Jahan looked out through the window to see who it was before he opened it. Abdul stood beside a couple, waiting on the top step. I kept behind the door when Jahan opened it and exchanged greetings with the couple.

“I'm a good friend of Rukhsana's.” She had a young woman's voice. “And as I was passing your house I thought I must see her.”

“I told her that Rukhsana was in Mazar,” Abdul complained.

“She's not here,” Jahan said brusquely. “She's in Mazar helping with her cousin's big wedding.”

“But I spoke to her just yesterday on the street.”

“You couldn't have. If you give me your name I'll tell her you called when she returns.”

“If she doesn't want to see me, I won't give my name,” she said, now in a very hurt tone. “I was in school with her.”

“You can go to Mazar then.”

We watched the couple leave, followed by Abdul, grumbling at them.

“You recognize her voice?” Jahan asked as we hurried up the stairs to the top floor.

“No.”

We stood at the sides of the window and looked down to the street. The couple stood outside our gate, talking, and then looked at the house before hurrying toward Karte Seh Wat.

“You were right,” Jahan said, remembering our conversation from that morning. “She must be working for Wahidi and Droon.”

“Next time it won't be the same couple.” How long had they been watching the house? How had we missed them? I was going to be doubly cautious now. Rukhsana would never be seen in this house, even glimpsed through a window, until Babur crossed the border to safety.

It was the following afternoon when Parwaaze pointed and we saw Azlam sitting astride his motorbike, watching us. He had coasted to the side of a building and could have been there for an hour. When we noticed him, we heard his mocking laughter as he kick-started his motorbike and rode toward us. We retreated from the racket, bunching together, as he circled us, looking at our equipment. He stopped.

“Who's teaching you to play?” he shouted above the noise of his machine.

“No one,” Parwaaze said and reached into his
shalwar
pocket and pulled out the Marylebone Cricket Club book of rules that I had given him. “This is teaching us how to play.” He flipped through the pages. “It tells you how to bat, how to bowl, and how to move your fielders around . . .”

“Let me see.” Azlam reached for it, but Parwaaze held it out of his reach.

“Find your own book.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From the bookshop on Park Street.” Then he added maliciously, “It was the only copy.”

Azlam's eyes roved over us possessively and then settled on me. “If you're learning from the book, why is he instructing you all the time?”

“The book's in English and Babur reads it better than we do,” Parwaaze said without looking at me.

“Even if you found a c-copy all you can do is look at the drawings,” Qubad added, smiling at him without any humor.

Azlam gunned the bike. “My team will still win, even without the stupid book.” He laughed and raced away.

We waited until the sound of his bike had faded and started again. When the light began to wane, with nine days left, we set off homeward. I prayed with each step that the letter, the package, was waiting for us.

“Which of the two is younger?” I heard Parwaaze ask Qubad.

Two women approached us.

“The one on the left,” Qubad said. “She walks straighter. Maybe she is pretty.”

“Which one do you think, Babur?”

How could one tell? Did men make those remarks about the hidden me too, trying to guess my age, my looks, my shape? Of course, long ago, I noticed other women—the style of clothes, the colors, the patterns. Now I was expected to make a quick, male judgment on the women who could not be seen but only fantasized about.

“Qubad's right,” I whispered. “The one on the left.” Her ankles were neat and straight; the other woman had fatter ones, partially twisted by her weight.

“The younger one's looking at you.” Parwaaze laughed. “See the quick glance?”

“You've sharper eyes than I do,” I said. “I think she's looking at Jahan.”

“No, you,” Namdar insisted in a teasing voice.

“How can you tell a glance from behind the mesh?” I demanded. “She could be looking past you.”

“You dream you did.” Royan spoke in a longing voice. “Once, when we passed on our streets, I caught the glances of beautiful girls, some not that beautiful, and we exchanged those glances and smiled to ourselves as went on our way. Kabul women were once bold and fashionable, now they are cowed and covered by the edicts of the Taliban. I miss them, they have become invisible.”

“That's your problem.” Qubad laughed. “You d-dream too much.”

“And you don't dream at all,” Atash mocked.

“This is why I sleep well.”

When we heard a woman's scream, we were a hundred yards from the hospital. At first, in the press of people, carts, and cars, I couldn't see who had cried out. Parwaaze pushed forward through a knot of men, clearing a path for us behind him. Across the street, a religious policeman was beating a woman with his cane. He was shouting, “Where is your permit to leave the house? Where is your
mahram's
letter?” The woman was screaming, weaving away from the blows. Then I saw that she clutched something in her arms, wrapped in a bright blue shawl embroidered with silvery stars. “My baby is ill, she is vomiting. I must get her to the hospital . . . emergency . . .” She clutched her baby as she twisted away from the policeman. He tried to grab her burka, but it slipped from his grasp. “Return to your home,” he shouted at the woman and swung his cane, striking her back. Stubbornly, she ducked in the crowd and ran with her precious burden toward the hospital. We watched, frozen, unable to move. The policeman unslung his machine gun, and the people fell to the ground. The woman was thirty yards away from the hospital now.

I knew what was going to happen and opened my mouth to scream. Jahan saw and clamped his hand quickly over my mouth.

The policeman aimed and fired a burst of terrible consecutive cracks, like sticks breaking, and the woman staggered, tumbled, and fell. She lay half on the pavement, half on the road. She still clutched the baby in her arms and, in the silence, we could hear its mewling. The policeman slung the weapon back onto his shoulder. He looked around—a young man, heavily bearded, smirking and threatening anyone who dared to block his passage as he swaggered away. People who had fallen to avoid the bullets rose slowly to their feet and kept their distance, afraid the religious policeman would return. They stared at the body with that impassive, stoic look of shock and fear. I looked at the body as if hoping she would stir, get to her feet, and keep running. The baby still mewled, and I pushed through to reach it and picked it up, cradling it to stop its crying. The team followed me to kneel by the woman. At one time, they would have stayed in the crowd. Qubad looked around, as if searching for her family, and I saw the tears glisten in his eyes. He, Atash, Namdar, and Royan lifted up the woman between them, walking in the direction she had run from, in search of her home. Then another woman screamed. She came stumbling out of a side street and reached up for the body, weeping and crying out. She was elderly, perhaps the dead woman's mother. An elderly man, his face scarred with sadness, took the baby from my arms. He spoke to the woman, and then he stoically carried the baby toward the hospital. Stumbling and crying, the woman led the way for the team to the house the dead woman had lived in.

“Oh god” was all I could whisper as Jahan pulled me away.

A
BDUL SAID
, “N
O LETTER,
no package.” And we passed him in silence, Jahan holding me.

When we were safe in the house, with the doors locked and barred, I screamed the scream that had been choking me on the hurried walk back to the house. Its ferocity frightened even me. I erupted with rage, hatred, and heartbreak at the injustice of my world and then I wept for the woman who had died. A shapeless tangle of clothing, like discarded laundry, on a public street.

“Someone should have stopped him,” I sobbed. “Someone. Are we all such cowards that we couldn't have stopped him from killing a woman? For what? She was trying to save her baby's life. What kind of crime is that?”

“She was a woman,” Jahan replied bleakly. “That was all.”

He reached out to comfort me and I pulled away, as if blaming him for not saving the woman. Accusing all men for their callous indifference to a woman's murder. He dropped his arm. I wanted to be held and comforted by a woman, by my mother, who could weep alongside me for this terrible crime against us all. But such a tragic story would break her heart.

“Rukhsana, I kept thinking of you lying in that street. If you had screamed, they would have known you were a woman and god knows what could have happened to you.”

I removed my turban, then carefully peeled off my beard. I scratched my head, touching the sweat that had dried from playing our harmless game of cricket, and rubbed life into my cheeks, smoothing away the prickly feel of the fine mesh.

“You can't blame the men for doing nothing,” Jahan continued. “What could we do? Stand between the policeman and the woman, and get ourselves shot?”