Baghlan Boy

by Michael Crowley

  Farood was hobbling back and forth from a Persian window in his bare feet. Jamal sat with his legs up on the seat-wide sill, looking outside at the fig tree overhanging the wall, and the rotten figs on the ground. Farood grinned at Misha.

  ‘He’s making progress, don’t you think? Soon he’ll be running past Buckingham Palace,’ said Jamal.

  ‘Any news on some shoes for him?’ asked Misha.

  Jamal shook his head. ‘Why don’t you see what you can do?’

  Farood could put his left foot flat on the floor but avoided putting any weight on his right. He picked up the pace.

  Jamal responded with an encouraging nod. He addressed Misha whilst looking out of the window. ‘What does your family do in Mazar?’

  ‘They pray for rain. Farming okra mostly. For as long as I can remember, I’ve worked on two farms. My father’s and the next farm. My father’s farm is dying and the other doesn’t pay enough, so I said goodbye.’

  ‘You’re a farmer boy,’ emphasised Jamal.

  ‘And I’d sell at the markets too.’

  ‘You know, I think I bought your okra once. It was rotten.’

  Farood laughed; Misha didn’t.

  ‘How did you make money in Baghlan?’ asked Misha.

  ‘Textile factory.’

  ‘That’s a good job.’

  ‘Yeah, it was a good job, for Baghlan.’

  Farood came to a halt. ‘I have an idea. You both give me one shoe each, then I’ll have two. After a while we can swap.’

  Misha made his way over to the office, asked the question about footwear again, returned and said nothing.

  Fourteen

  Shiraz, Iran

  As the nights became shorter Farood regained his strength. When darkness fell, he would close his eyes because everyone else did, but hunger always nudged him awake to watch the business of the building after dark. At home in their house and then the cave, he would lie awake gazing at embers or his brother. He remembered how Karam pushed him away one winter’s night when he tried to huddle up to him. You’re too old now, Spider. It was for men to huddle with women and children, not with each other. In a corner of the landing above, lighters were burning under foil and men were entering dream worlds. Farood had seen this before in Pol-e-Khomi, where old miners ravaged by labour and loneliness found peace with opium pipes. He noticed how one from the group moved back and forth to the Punjabi wrestler’s room. Silently, a shadow rose from the mattress nearby, and he watched as Misha tiptoed across the floor and climbed onto a window ledge, opened the smaller window at the top and rested his midriff over the frame.

  Farood sat up. ‘Misha… Misha.’

  Misha dropped head first, arms ahead of him, shadow crumpling into shadow. He returned to the fountain and stood on its edge, facing the wall. He was barely a foot off the ground, with another fifteen or so to go to the top of the wall. A demanding and risky standing jump. He squatted, took a breath, looked up. It couldn’t be done. He got down and paced the wall. Starlings were gathered on the high wire. There was no light on in the room behind the veranda above him. If he was going to get over the wall, he would have to do it in silence. He squeezed his hands, then his feet, into the crack between the gate and the wall, and began to climb, gripping the gate, one hand over the other. He felt his toes crushing one another inside his shoes, but, taking his time, he reached the top of the gate, where he stretched for the wall. There was only a slim margin, five centimetres or so, between the steel spikes, on top of the gate, enough for fingers but not a hand. The wall along the side was without spikes. He pushed down with his left arm so hard he thought his forearm would snap. It wouldn’t hold up the rest of him. He fell back into the yard.

  He scaled the gates to the top wall for the second time. He took two deep breaths and swung his feet to the right. Both insteps made it on the sidewall. Releasing his arms, he hung upside down, walking his palms upwards. He stood on the sidewall, the spikes of the front wall before him. He went to the spikes and peered beyond them. There was a car on his side of the street, but the pavement was wide. He could do this. It was only like jumping a ditch, with a harder fall. He pulled back his shoulders, pushed out his chest, held his arms out straight in front of him, then jumped over the spikes, the pavement and onto the roof of the white Paykan taxi which boomed like a drum as he bounced off it into the road. He lay there, face down, listening to the Alsatian barking behind the balcony doors.

  Sunrise. Greetings and prayers. The dog was in the yard taking a crap. The opium-takers were prostrate; Hassan was running along the balcony while his grandfather argued with his mother. Farood was walking back and forth across his mattress.

  ‘Where’s Misha?’ wondered Jamal out loud.

  ‘He’s gone. I saw him climbing out the window.’

  Jamal looked into the yard, then back at blasé Farood.

  ‘Maybe he’ll be back in a bit,’ ventured Farood.

  ‘Oh, really? Like he’ll just knock on the door. I’ve heard stories about illegals in Iran. He’ll be lucky if they don’t kill him out there.’

  ‘I called to him last night, but he didn’t answer.’

  ‘You should’ve woken me.’

  ‘You’re not his father.’

  ‘What do you think these agents will do to us when they find out he’s gone?’

  Farood shrugged. The agent and his dog were back. The Alsatian returned to Farood’s feet, trying to lick them as the boy tiptoed away.

  ‘Fifty dollars for new shoes,’ announced the agent.

  ‘We already told you, we had our money taken in Taftan.’

  ‘That’s bad. I will punish the thief. In the meantime, you can use the phone in my office. Get your family to put the money into my account.’

  Farood puddled on the spot. ‘Fifty dollars is too much,’ he said, shaking his head.

  *

  The winter sun climbed behind Misha. He had counted the turnings he passed from the jump and was already regretting making that decision. He should have fixed a landmark into his memory. He stopped and looked around him. Most of the buildings bore enormous pictures of a severe-looking Ayatollah Khomeini or a smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Noticing a fenced-off football pitch between two apartment blocks in the middle distance, he made straight for it. The pitch was deserted but still he stared. He had played some football, in the shreds of evenings after work, on a scrub field next to where he picked pistachios, but never on a football pitch. This, he decided, was something he would do whenever he reached where he was going. He would be there in the centre of the pitch, unpassable to opposition players.

  He returned to the main road feeling unnerved but also excited. He was soon walking along a boulevard of birch trees, sopping with golden leaves. The buildings had vanished and between the tightly packed trees were glimpses of a dewy field. This was his landmark. Traffic was building from a trickle to a heavy stream, most going in Misha’s direction. He decided that they, like him, must be heading for the city centre. He turned to walk backwards, threw out his thumb in the hope of free ride into town. The cars, far more modern and cleaner than anything he’d seen back home, ignored his appeal. Some drivers waved their refusal from behind their windscreens or out the window. So many empty seats he could be sitting on. At home, the first or second car would have stopped and taken him into Mazar. Hitching was how people got to work, but back home the people that stopped were also Turkmen, on their way to the Turkmen quarter to set up shop. It had been nearly a month since he’d left home. He knew himself that he smelled. And his clothes not fine or fashionable when he left, had been replaced by something shabbier. He turned his back on the unkind traffic but left his left arm hanging out like a scarecrow. He told himself that when he was driving to work, in a years’ time or so, if he ever came across anyone hitching, he would give them a lift. He would fill up his car if he had to.

  Ah
ead of him, he could see the avenue of trees discontinue to be replaced by shop fronts and workshops. Then the rear of a white car with rust on the wheel arches pulled over in front of him. Misha walked to the passenger window.

  A young man with fine features stooped out, shouting above the engine’s rattle in Dari. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  An obvious question but one that he couldn’t properly answer. ‘I have to buy some shoes for someone.’

  ‘Get in.’

  The car roared into a painfully slow momentum, other vehicles overtaking and hooting their annoyance.

  ‘I’m Misha.’ He held out his hand, but the driver didn’t take it. All his concentration was on the steering wheel.

  He flicked a glance at his passenger. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘From Afghanistan.’

  ‘A long way from home.’

  ‘I’m going to make a new home.’

  ‘There’s plenty of opportunities here in Iran.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They pulled up and both stared at the red traffic light.

  ‘If you like, I could meet you later, show you round Shiraz. I know some people taking on workers.’

  Misha looked away from the driver, at the much newer, cleaner car next to them, at the brightening sky.

  ‘I’m going to Greece,’ he said. ‘I’ll be leaving this evening. Are you on your way to work?’

  ‘To college. I’m a medical student.’

  He told the driver about Farood’s feet. But before he could ask about changing his American dollars, the driver bluntly recommended a brand of antiseptic cream and let him out opposite a shopping centre. In Mazar shopping centres were little more than a collection of small units and stalls selling carpets and food, but here was an air-conditioned palace. Not much was open yet, only the odd kiosk, so he window-shopped, loitering outside a jewellers for a while. At the head of the arcade, he came across a closed bank and sat down on the floor outside. He took off his left shoe and reached into the insole, pulling it up at the heel. Tucked into the hollow heel was a plastic wrap of American dollars. He unfolded two notes and put the rest back. He was still sitting on the ground when the staff arrived to unlock.

  The bank staff’s assumption was that he had been there all night and they seemed surprised, if not a little worried, when he followed them in. He went straight to the counter, but no one came to the other side to serve him. He was mindful of the time and imagined the morning food queue in the agent’s house. He wondered whether the agent, or the agent’s driver, would notice he wasn’t there. What would happen when they realised he wasn’t? He could see the bank staff talking to one another, probably about something they had watched on television.

  He banged the counter with his fist. ‘Miss! Miss! I’m in a hurry.’

  Still they didn’t come to him. He waved his money at them. The older of the two women came out. She looked at him briefly.

  He slid his American dollars under the glass. ‘Change, please.’

  She didn’t look at the money. ‘Passport.’

  There was a pause as Misha looked into the clerk’s stern eyes.

  ‘What?’

  She took a breath and said the word again, slowly and more loudly. ‘Passport.’

  ‘I just want money.’

  She shrugged her shoulders and returned to the back office.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ Misha thumped the counter harder.

  He knew that the Iranians and Americans didn’t exactly get on, but he wasn’t American and not to take their money seemed stupid.

  He headed out of the shopping centre to the market stalls on a street that was gathering a cast: vendors constructing stalls, unloading vans full to the brim. He walked up and down, acquiring suspicion here and there. He remembered his uncle’s stall in Mazar, the times he and his father had delivered baskets of okra, nuts and mulberries from the farm. The two brothers argued every time they met, about the prices and about the produce, and every time his father would curse his uncle all the way back home. Once, his father had called his uncle a thief, and he and his father ended up coming back home with all the stock, with the baskets full. After that, his father rented his own stall at the market, and Misha began work there.

  Shiraz’s market was slow to assemble, but around a corner he could already see a stall that would eclipse all others. A man was building tier upon tier of shoes, watches, biscuits, lighters, textiles; everything the shopping arcade had. The stall was still under construction, the man still adding things with a pole on a pair of steps. It was a mystery how the thing didn’t collapse under the weight. Misha called up to him, pointing to a pair of trainers that would fit Farood, more or less. Misha gave the man the ten-dollar bill, and just as he was tucking the trainers into his jacket pockets, someone’s grip clamped his arm above the elbow.

  ‘Show me some ID.’ It was a policeman, short and stocky, testing the seams of a black uniform.

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘But you have American dollars.’

  The officer nodded to a second taller policeman behind him who reached into a pouch for handcuffs. Misha knew that what happened in the next few seconds would make all the difference to the rest of his life. He looked at the cuffs, then at the face of the shorter policeman and swung his forehead into it. He felt the policeman’s front teeth on the frontal bone of his head and was on his toes sprinting between stalls before the policeman’s backside was on the pavement. A whistle blew behind him and someone shouted, ‘Stop that illegal!’ Misha made turn after turn until the crowds were gone and his lungs were empty. He was bent double, facing the ground. He was lost, but he didn’t feel like asking anyone the way. He straightened up and faced the high rise in front of him; he leaned back and fixed his eyes on the very top.

  From the foyer of the top floor, he could see the market and beyond, the boulevard of birch trees leading out of the south of the city, a police car circling a roundabout. Back on the ground, he stayed clear of the boulevard – walking in the scrubby fields the other side of the trees. Within an hour he was looking at the gates to the agent’s house from the outside. He could climb them for sure, but again, there were the spikes to deal with. He recalled the fig tree in the yard next door. If he could get to that, he could get back into the yard. He decided to wait for the cover of darkness or the arrival of a better idea.

  Inside the compound Jamal watched Farood limp his way upstairs, barefoot, to the waiting Hassan.

  The agent, on the way to the front door with his dog, paused at the scene. ‘You can move on tomorrow. Leave him here with us. I’ll look after him.’

  Hassan and Farood played draughts in the Hazara’s room. The mother was darning the grandfather’s socks while the old man lay on a mattress facing the ceiling, his eyes half closed.

  Outside Misha was sitting on the kerb thinking about his father. He would have been working in his poly-tunnels today, harvesting late peppers. If there was cotton left to pick on his neighbour’s farm, then he would most probably be helping him. He envied the people driving past him, people who didn’t have to look in an irrigation ditch to see if they could get through the winter, envied and despised them. There was still no sign of activity at the house next door. It too had gates, but they may as well have been climbing frames.

  Then a chocolate brown people carrier with darkened windows sped around the corner and stopped at the gates of the agent’s house. It was the same vehicle that had brought him here two days ago. The gates began to slowly part. Misha got to his feet, took a few steps into the road. He couldn’t very well walk in beside the car without saying something to the driver, and anyway, what would he say? The driver would be bound to report him to the agent in charge. The car wheeled in. The gates paused – its arms wide open. Misha recognised the driver as he got out of the car, hitching up hi
s trousers and shouting at his passengers to stay where they were. He then turned towards the door and Misha made for the narrowing gap, turning himself sideways, stooping down and crawling under the car. When the new arrivals were let out, he tagged along at the rear, peeling off to the Baghlan boys’ corner as soon as he was in the building.

  He enjoyed the telling of his story: the death-defying leap out of the yard, the journey into town with the doctor who offered him a job, stealing the trainers, fighting two policemen with his bare hands – and his narrow escape. As Misha reached into his jacket pockets, he found just one solitary trainer. Farood laughed.

  Jamal broke in. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘Of course. Aren’t you listening to me?’

  ‘I’m listening and I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s all true.’

  ‘I mean, I can’t believe you were followed by the police. Did they follow you here?’

  ‘I lost them a long time ago.’

  The story was ruined.

  ‘Misha, Shiraz, what’s it like?’ asked Farood.

  ‘Rich,’ said Misha, slapping his knee. ‘Very rich. The richest man in Shiraz could buy the whole of Baghlan.’

  Farood smiled, holding his one shoe. He put it on and soon after ran to the front of the food queue.

  Jamal told Misha what the agent had said about leaving the next day. ‘I’m not going, though. They’ll turn him into a slave if we leave him here. You go on ahead if you want. We’ll probably catch up with you somewhere else.’

  ‘I don’t want to go on ahead. Why would I want to do that? I’ve just been out there risking my neck to get him shoes. All we need now is one shoe.’

  Whilst eating, Farood observed the cigarette boy on his rounds again. He had watched him emerging from the office each day, then returning after the round for a talk with the agent. and every day he came to their corner under the stairs.