‘Rasul never gave you any postcards, that’s a lie,’ says Mansur.
‘You will remember this room as a place where you had the chance to tell the truth,’ says the policeman. Jalaluddin swallows and cracks his knuckles and breathes a sigh of relief when the policeman continues to interrogate Mansur about when, where and how the whole thing happened. Behind the interrogator, through the window, can be seen one of the heights outside Kabul. Little houses cling to the mountainside. The paths zigzag down the mountain. Through the window the carpenter can see people, they look like little ants walking up and down. The houses have been constructed with materials cannibalised from what can be found in war-torn Kabul: some sheets of corrugated iron, a piece of sacking, some plastic, a few bricks, bits and pieces from ruins.
Suddenly the interrogator squats beside him. ‘I know that you have hungry children, and I know that you are not a criminal. I am giving you a last chance. Take it. If you tell me to whom you sold the cards I will let you go. If you don’t tell me I’ll give you several years in prison.’
Mansur is losing interest. This is the hundredth time the carpenter has been asked to admit who he sold the cards to. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he hasn’t sold them to anyone. Mansur looks at his watch and yawns.
Suddenly a name escapes Jalaluddin’s lips, so quietly as to be nearly inaudible.
Mansur leaps up.
The man whose name Jalaluddin muttered owns a kiosk in the market where he sells calendars, pens and cards; cards for religious festivals, weddings, engagements and birthdays - and postcards with motifs from Afghanistan. He had always bought these cards from Sultan’s bookshop, but he hadn’t been there for some time. Mansur remembers him well because he always complained about the prices.
It’s as if a cork has been unstopped; but Jalaluddin still trembles as he talks.
‘He came over to me one afternoon when I was leaving work. We talked and he asked me if I needed money. Of course I did. Then he asked me if I could fetch him some postcards. At first I refused, but then he told me about the money I would get for it. I thought about my children at home. I’m not able to feed the children on a carpenter’s salary. I thought about my wife who was starting to lose her teeth, she’s only thirty. I thought of all the reproachful looks I get at home because I’m not able to earn enough. I thought of the clothes and the shoes I could not afford to buy my children, the doctor we cannot afford, the awful food we have to eat. So I thought if only I took a few, as long as I was working in the bookshop, I could solve some of my problems. Sultan won’t notice. He has so many postcards and so much money. And then I took some cards.’
‘We’ll have to go there and safeguard the evidence,’ the policeman says. He gets up and orders the carpenter, Mansur and another policeman to come with him. They drive to the market and the postcard kiosk. A little boy is serving from behind the hatch.
‘Where is Mahmoud?’ the policeman asks. He is in plain clothes. Mahmoud is having lunch. The policeman shows the boy his identity card and says he wants to look at his postcards. The boy lets them in at the side of the kiosk, into a narrow area between the wall, the stack of wares and the counter. Mansur and a policeman tear the postcards from off the shelves; the ones Sultan has had printed are stuffed into a bag. They count several thousand. But which ones Mahmoud has bought lawfully and which ones he has bought from Jalaluddin it is hard to tell. They take the boy and the postcards to the police station.
A policeman is left behind to wait for Mahmoud. The kiosk is sealed. Mahmoud will not be selling any more thank-you cards today, or pictures of heroes and warriors either, for that matter.
When Mahmoud eventually arrives at the police station, still smelling of kebab, the interrogations start anew. Initially Mahmoud denies ever having set eyes on the carpenter. He says he has bought everything legally, from Sultan, from Yunus, from Eqbal, from Mansur. Then he changes tactics and says, yes, one day the carpenter did approach him, but he never bought anything.
The kiosk owner, too, must spend the night in detention. At last Mansur can get away. In the corridor the carpenter’s father, uncle, nephew and son are waiting. They approach him, reach after him and watch terror-stricken when he hurries away. He can’t bear it any more. Jalaluddin has confessed, Sultan will be pleased, the matter has been solved. Now that the theft and the resale have been proved, the criminal case can begin.
He remembers what the police interrogator had said: ‘This is your last chance. If you confess we will let you go and you can return to your family.’
Mansur feels unwell. He rushes out. His thoughts are on Sultan’s last words before he left. ‘I have risked my life building up my business, I have been imprisoned, I have been beaten. I’ve worked my socks off to try and create something for Afghanistan and a bloody carpenter comes and tries to usurp my life’s work. He will be punished. Don’t be soft, Mansur, don’t you start to buckle.’
In a run-down mud hut in Deh Khudaidad a woman sits and gazes into the air. Her youngest children are crying; they have nothing to eat yet, and wait the return of their grandfather from town. Maybe he’ll have something with him. They rush at him when he enters the gate on his bicycle. But his hands are empty. The luggage carrier is empty too. They halt when they see his dark face. They are quiet for a moment before they start to cry and cling to him. ‘Where is daddy, when will daddy come back?’
My Mother Osama
Tajmir holds the Koran up in front of his forehead, kisses it and reads a random verse. He kisses the book again, sticks it in his pocket and gazes out of the window. The car is on its way out of Kabul. It is headed east, towards the restless borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there is still support for the Taliban and al-Qaida, and where, according to the Americans, terrorists are hiding out in the inaccessible mountain landscape. Here they comb the terrain, interrogate the local population, blow up caves, look for caches of weapons, find hiding places, and bomb and kill a few civilians, in their hunt for terrorists and the trophy they all dream of - Osama bin Laden.
This is the area where ‘Operation Anaconda’, the spring’s major offensive against al-Qaida, took place, when international Special Forces, under US command, fought hard battles against Osama’s remaining disciples in Afghanistan. Allegedly, several al-Qaida soldiers are still to be found in these border areas, areas where warlords have never recognised a central authority, but still rule according to tribal law. It is difficult for Americans and the central authorities to infiltrate villages that lie in the Pashtoon belt on either side of the border. Intelligence experts believe that if Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar are still alive and in Afghanistan, then this is where they are.
Tajmir is trying to find them. Or at least find someone who knows someone who has seen them, or thinks they have seen someone who resembled them. In contrast to his fellow traveller, Tajmir hopes they’ll find absolutely nothing. Tajmir hates danger. He hates travelling into the tribal areas, where trouble can erupt at any moment. In the back of the car are bulletproof waistcoats and helmets, ready for action.
‘What are you reading, Tajmir?’
‘The holy Koran.’
‘Yes, so I see, but anything special? I mean, like a “travel section” or something like that?’
‘No, I never look for anything in particular; I just open it at random. Just now I got to the bit about whoever obeys God and his messenger will be led into the gardens of paradise, where streams trickle, whereas whoever turns their back will be afflicted by painful punishment. I read the Koran when I am frightened or sad.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ says Bob and rests his head against the window. He sees Kabul’s filthy streets through squinting eyes. They drive into the morning sun and Bob closes his eyes against the glare.
Tajmir thinks about his assignment. He has been given the job of interpreter for a large American magazine. Previously, under the Taliban, he worked for a charity organisation. He was responsible for the distribut
ion of flour and rice to the poor. When the foreigners departed after September 11 he was left in sole charge. The Taliban blocked all his efforts. The distributions were halted and one day a bomb destroyed the distribution depot. Tajmir thanked God that he had stopped the deliveries. What might have been the outcome if the place had been full of women and children in the desperate food queue?
But it now feels like an eternity since he worked with the emergency relief. When the journalists streamed into Kabul the American magazine picked him up. They offered to pay in one day what he was normally paid in two weeks. He thought about his poor family, left the aid work and started to interpret, in an imaginative and artful English.
Tajmir is sole provider for his family, which, in the scale of Afghan families, is small. He lives with his mother, father, stepsister, wife and one-year-old Bahar in a small flat in Mikrorayon, close to Sultan and his family. His mother is Sultan’s elder sister, the sister who was married off to provide money for Sultan’s education.
Feroza was the strictest of mothers. From the time Tajmir was a little boy he was rarely allowed to play outside with the other children. He had to play, quietly and calmly, in the little room under Feroza’s observant eye. When he was older he was made to do schoolwork. He had to return from school immediately, was not allowed to go home with anyone or have anyone home to play. Tajmir never protested, it was never possible to argue with Feroza; because Feroza hit him and Feroza hit hard.
‘She’s worse than Osama bin Laden,’ Tajmir tells Bob when he has to make excuses for turning up late or having to break off early. His new American friends hear terrible tales about ‘Osama’. They imagine some sort of a shrew hidden beneath the burka. But when they met her, while visiting Tajmir, they saw a smiling little woman with searching, squinting eyes. A large gold medallion, inscribed with the Islamic creed, hung around her neck. She bought that with Tajmir’s first American salary. Feroza knows exactly how much he earns, and he hands everything over to her. She gives him a bit of pocket money in return. Tajmir shows them all the marks on the walls where she has thrown shoes or other objects at him. He laughs now; the tyrant Feroza has become a funny story.
Feroza’s burning wish was that Tajmir would grow into something important. Every time she had some spare cash she would enter him for a course: English classes, extra maths classes, computer courses. The illiterate woman, who was forced to marry to provide her family with money, was going to turn into an honoured and respected mother through her son.
Tajmir saw little of his father. He was a kindly and rather timid man and suffered from bad health. In the good old days he travelled as a salesman to India and Pakistan. Sometimes he would return with money, sometimes not.
Feroza might beat Tajmir but she never touched her husband, in spite of there being no doubt as to who was the stronger of the two. Over the years Feroza had grown into a buxom woman, round as a little ball, thick glasses balanced on the tip of her nose or hanging round her neck. Her husband, on the other hand, was grey and emaciated, weak and brittle like a dry branch. As the husband crumbled away Feroza took over the role of head of the family.
Feroza never had any more sons, but she never let go her hope of having more children. After having given up on becoming a mother again she went to one of Kabul’s orphanages. Here she found Kheshmesh. Her family had left her outside the orphanage, wrapped up in a dirty pillowcase. Feroza adopted her and brought her up as Tajmir’s sister. While Tajmir is the spitting image of Feroza - the same round face, the large stomach, the rolling gait - Kheshmesh is different.
Kheshmesh is a tense and unruly little girl, thin as a rake. Her skin is a lot darker than that of the other family members. Kheshmesh has a wild look about her, as though life inside her head is far more exciting than the real world. At family reunions, to Feroza’s despair, Kheshmesh runs around like a frisky filly. Whilst Tajmir always obeyed his mother’s wishes when he was a little boy, Kheshmesh is always getting dirty, always tousled, full of scrapes and cuts. But when she is in a quiet mood no one can be more devoted than Kheshmesh. No one gives their mother such tender kisses or strong hugs. Wherever Feroza goes, Kheshmesh is not far behind - like a skinny little shadow in the wake of her buxom mother.
Like all children, Kheshmesh quickly learnt about the Taliban. Once Kheshmesh and a friend were beaten up by a Taleb in the stairwell. They had been playing with his son who had fallen and hurt himself badly. The father had grabbed them both and beaten them with a stick. They never again played with the little boy. The Taliban were those people who never let her go to school with the boys in Mikrorayon, they were the people who forbade singing or clapping, stopped people dancing. The Taliban were those people who prevented her from playing outside with her dolls. Dolls and furry toy animals were banned because they portrayed living creatures. When the religious police searched people’s homes, smashed up the televisions and cassette players, they might well confiscate children’s toys if they found them. They tore off arms or heads, or crunched them underfoot, in front of the eyes of stunned children.
When Feroza told Kheshmesh that the Taliban had fled, the first thing she did was to take her favourite doll outside and show her the world. Tajmir got rid of his beard. Feroza sneaked out a dusty cassette player and wriggled around the flat singing: ‘Now we’ll make up for five lost years.’
Feroza never had any more children to look after. No sooner had she adopted Kheshmesh than the civil war started and she fled to Pakistan with Sultan’s family. When she returned from the refugee existence, it was time to find a wife for Tajmir, not to look for abandoned baby girls in the hospital.
Like everything else in Tajmir’s life, finding a wife was also his mother’s prerogative. Tajmir was in love with a girl he met at English classes in Pakistan. They were sort of sweethearts, although they never held hands or kissed. They were hardly ever alone, but nevertheless, they were sweethearts, and they wrote each other notes and love letters. Tajmir never dared tell Feroza about this girl, but he dreamt of marrying her. She was a relative of Massoud, the war hero, and Tajmir knew his mother might fear all the problems that could involve. But regardless of who might be its object, Tajmir would never dare confide in his mother about his crush. He had been educated not to ask for anything, he never talked to Feroza about his feelings. He felt his subservience showed respect.
‘I have found the girl I want you to marry,’ Feroza said one day.
‘Oh,’ said Tajmir. His throat tightened, but not a word of protest escaped him. He knew he would have to write a letter to his pie-in-the-sky sweetheart and tell her it was all over.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘She is your second cousin, Khadija. You haven’t seen her since you were small. She is clever and hard-working and from a good family.’
Tajmir merely nodded. Two months later he met Khadija for the first time, at the engagement party. They sat beside each other during the whole party without exchanging a word. I could love her, he thought.
Khadija looks like a Parisian jazz-singer from the twenties. She has black, wavy hair, parted on the side, cut straight across the shoulders, white powdered skin and always wears black eye make-up and red lipstick. Her cheeks are narrow and her lips wide, and she might have been posing for art photographers all her life. But according to Afghan standards she is not very pretty; she is too thin, too narrow. The ideal Afghan woman is round: round cheeks, round hips, round tummy.
‘Now I love her,’ Tajmir says. They are approaching Gardes, and Tajmir has given Bob, the American journalist, his entire life story.
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘What a story. So you really love your wife now? What about the other girl?’
Tajmir hasn’t a clue what has happened to the other girl. He never even thinks of her. Now he lives for his own little family. A year ago he and Khadija had a baby girl.
‘Khadija was terrified of having a daughter,’ he tells Bob. ‘Khadija is always frightened of something and this time it was about havin
g a daughter. I told her and everyone else that I wanted a daughter. That above all I wanted a daughter. So that if we did have a daughter no one would say, how sad, because after all that is what I had wished for, and if we got a boy no one would say anything because then everyone would be pleased no matter what.’
‘Hm,’ says Bob and tries to understand the logic of it all.
‘Now Khadija is worried she won’t conceive again, because we are trying but nothing’s happening. So I keep on telling her that one child is enough, one child is fine. In the West many people have only one child. So if we never have any more, everyone will say we didn’t want any more, and if we have some more then everyone will be pleased no matter what.’
‘Hm.’
They stop in Gardes to buy something to eat. They buy a carton of ‘hi-lite’ cigarettes at ten pence a pack, a kilo of cucumbers, twenty eggs and some bread. They are peeling the cucumbers and cracking the eggs when Bob suddenly calls out: ‘Stop!’
By the roadside about thirty men sit in a circle. Kalashnikovs lie on the ground in front of them and ammunition belts are strapped over their chests.
‘That’s Padsha Khan’s men,’ Bob cries. ‘Stop the car.’
Bob grabs Tajmir and walks over to the men. Padsha Khan is sitting in the midst of them: the greatest warlord of the eastern provinces and one of Hamid Karzai’s most vociferous opponents.
When the Taliban fled, Padsha Khan was appointed Governor of Paktia Province, known as one of Afghanistan’s most unruly regions. As Governor of an area where there is still support for the al-Qaida network, Padsha Khan became an important man to American intelligence. They were dependent on co-operation on the ground and one warlord was no better nor worse than any other. Padsha Khan’s task was to ferret out Taliban and al-Qaida soldiers. His remit was then to inform the Americans. To this end he was supplied with a satellite telephone, which he used frequently. He kept on phoning and telling the Americans about al-Qaida movements in the area. And the Americans used firepower - on a village here and a village there, on tribal chiefs en route to attend Karzai’s inaugural ceremony, on a few wedding parties, a bunch of men in a house, and on America’s own allies. None of them were connected to al-Qaida but they had one thing in common - they were enemies of Padsha Khan. The local protests against the headstrong Governor, who suddenly had B52s and F16 fighter planes at his disposal to settle local tribal scores, increased to such an extent that Karzai saw no other solution but to remove him.