by Sharon McKay
“The commander took care of me for many years. I became . . . I danced . . . I was a good boy. Last year, when I became too old for him, he sent me to training camp. There was little food, much prayer and exercise. My teachers did things . . . to make me worthy. Now I am strong. I can make jihad because I am a good Muslim. Islam will be victorious only if we are willing to die for it. Do you know that a foreigner’s bombs make black smoke, but when a martyr commits jihad the explosions are white? White is a holy color. Proof that God is on our side.”
“But Kabeer, suicide is against Islam. The Prophet, peace be upon Him, says—”
“Do not quote the Prophet’s words to me, you stupid girl.” Kabeer pulled a book from a pocket inside his robe. Its cover bore the image of two crossed swords and the Qur’an. “You see this?” He held up the little blue book. “It is the code of behavior for the Taliban. It will prove to all Afghans that we are good, that the Taliban care for the people. See?” Kabeer opened the book to a page. “It says that all fighters must do their best to avoid civilian deaths and injuries and damage to property. And it says that fighters should try not to cut off ears, noses, and lips as punishment for bad behavior.”
Tamanna looked down at the book. It was written in Pashto. The words he was speaking were not on the page. He could not read.
“My brother, you cannot fight and win against the kharijis. They are too strong, too powerful. I have seen them. Their big convoys are filled with tanks and many weapons . . .” Tamanna stopped.
Kabeer’s eyes darted down the path, then up into the mountains. “We do not have to win. We have to wait. The kharijis have no stomach for war and will soon leave our country and go back to the cesspool they call America.”
Tamanna leaned forward. “Please, Kabeer, we will run away and begin a new life.”
For a moment Kabeer looked confused, and then suddenly his black eyes narrowed and his nose flared as he pulled his mouth into a sneer. “Do you think I do not want to go to Heaven? Women do not have a full brain. If a woman takes one point of view, the other view is the right one. I am a Talib. I will always be with the Taliban, and I would never come with you. I will die for Allah, and my country. You will see. If you do not go home and do as you are told I will tell the commander and he will deal with you. He has four wives and so many daughters he does not count them, and he says that goats have more brains than women.” His voice rising, his face flushed, Kabeer shook his clenched fist in the air.
Tamanna stared at him, bewildered. She looked down the path, then lifted her hands as if to say, Hush, hush, but there was no way to quiet him. Kabeer too seemed to be looking down the path.
Kabeer leaped up and stood over her. “The infidels pollute our country. They are filth. Look at how they urinate—standing up! They eat and wash with the same hand. They are dirty and Godless. It is jihad to fight the infidels. You bring shame to our family but I will restore honor.” Twisting like a sapling in a great wind he turned and ran down the path.
“Kabeer, please, please. I am your sister. I love you!” She yelled as loudly as she dared. His shoulders were broad. He was tall and strong. He had been a kind child. He was a boy, just a boy, a lost boy. “Please, Brother.” Five years had passed since the night he was taken and now he was leaving again, and the pain was just as searing.
He stopped a little way down the path and turned back. “The infidels will pass this way soon. They will come in their great convoy of tanks and armored cars and vehicles. You will see how little it takes to destroy them.”
Tamanna watched him recede from view, growing smaller and smaller. This time he did not look back.
Yasmine had heard it all from her hiding place. She wanted to yell out, “You are an uneducated boy. They have brainwashed you. Your sister is your only hope and you have thrown her away.” As he stomped by, his feet sprayed pebbles in all directions. Yasmine lifted her hands to cover her face but in that instant she saw that his feet were lined with brown burn marks, a sign of torture.
Yasmine waited until she was sure he was far away, then gathered the blanket and bags, picked up the sandal that lay along the path, and crept over to Tamanna. “Come, Tamanna, we must keep going.” Yasmine reached down and touched her friend’s shoulder.
Tamanna’s head was in her hands, her shoulders heaving up and down. “I am not going with you.” Her sobs were uncontrollable, her face wet with tears.
Shocked, confused, Yasmine stared at her friend. “Tamanna, you are not thinking straight. You will be killed if you return to the village.” Yasmine could hardly believe the words she was uttering.
“I will go back to the old woman’s house. Ariana is often away. I will take care of the old woman and the boy.”
“Please, Tamanna, look at all that they have—boots, a stove, a horse! Ariana walks the hills like a man and is left alone. I think Ariana is a spy for the Taliban.”
Tamanna shook her head. “You do not know such a thing, not for sure. And if she is Taliban, what does it matter? They do not hurt her. Why are the kharijis good and the Taliban bad? Haven’t the kharijis killed our people just like the Taliban?” She paused to catch her breath, her voice low and edged in tears. “Kharijis do not help. They fight and innocents are killed. They pass by with their big trucks and tanks and then suicide bombers come out to destroy them. I do not know why the soldiers are here. Your father said that the Taliban attacked America. But I did not attack the great America. I do not know where this America is! Why are they in our country?” Her voice was ragged, and she drew in great gulps of air that sounded like sobs. Tears made tracks down her face.
“Tamanna, the Taliban have killed and murdered. They have gone against Islam. The foreign soldiers are here to stop them from regaining power. And was it not the Taliban that your mother was trying to protect your brother from? Tamanna, please!” Yasmine reached down and tried to hold her friend, but again Tamanna snapped back.
“I know this. But I also know that whenever the foreign soldiers are near, bad things happen to us. The Taliban made my brother the way he is, and now he is the enemy of the soldiers. They would kill him if they could. Why can they not see that he is a boy who has been hurt by the Taliban? I was too young to save my brother years ago. It is my fault. I could not save him then, but right or wrong, I cannot betray him now.”
Tamanna stood up and staggered down the path. They were on the crest of a precipice. Scrubby bushes were on one side and a sharp drop into a ravine was on the other.
“Please, stop. How can anything be your fault? You were a little girl. You could not protect him.” Yasmine ran after her, calling, pleading.
“I could have tried! But I know now that I cannot leave my country. If I did I would bring shame to my family.” Tamanna turned back. “The world you speak of scares me. Their clothes frighten me. What if a man in the West sits too close to me? What am I to do? In the bathhouse they say that the women in the West are divorced and live without family. I do not know how to live alone—without family.”
“Please, Tamanna, just come with me. I am your family. You will feel differently later.”
“I do not know what is right and what is wrong anymore. You do not understand what it is to be Afghan.” Tamanna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She was resolute.
“I am Afghan, just like you, and I know that we cannot fight the Taliban alone. We cannot fight men who would not let us go to school, who make us prisoners, who make people ignorant and then use ignorance to control us.”
The tears stopped. Tamanna stood as tall as her bad hip allowed. “You are the sister of my heart. I love you. But I will not go with you.” She turned and stumbled down the path.
Chapter 19
Pink Mist, White Smoke
Like buzzards, three small helicopters appeared suddenly from behind the hill. The first dipped. Khariji soldiers manning long, thin machine guns and wearing black helmets and menacing-looking masks bore down upon them. Tamanna looked up and shrieked. Sand
particles were whipped into a frenzy, pierced the skin, blinded eyes, and blocked out the sun. Tamanna spun in a circle and instantly lost her bearings. Her arms flailed about. Rocks rolled under her feet. And then, a piercing shriek as she slipped and plummeted down into the gorge.
The helicopters veered up and disappeared into the sun.
“TAMANNA!” Yasmine, many yards down the path, screamed and lurched forward, running to the edge of the precipice. All she saw of Tamanna were flashes of gray, then white. Yasmine plunged down the embankment after her. Twigs, thorns, bushes scraped her face, legs, and arms as she slipped, righted, rolled, then snatched a branch. The haversack caught and uncaught on branches, both a hindrance and a help. Her burka was shredded into strips.
“TAMANNA?” Holding on to a branch Yasmine stood and peered down into the ravine. More than halfway down the slope Tamanna’s body hung on a tree branch like a limp rag over a line. The strap of the food bag had prevented her from falling even farther—a small miracle. Again Yasmine slipped and slid down the mountain. Scratched and cut, she stopped at last and cupped Tamanna’s face in her hand.
Tamanna lifted her head and moaned. Blood was everywhere—her nose, her head, her cheeks, arms, legs.
“I’m here. Hush. I’m here,” whispered Yasmine. Softly, her hands barely touching skin, she felt Tamanna’s arms and legs. They didn’t appear to be broken, but it was hard to tell. An awful animal sound gurgled up from Tamanna’s throat. Struggling, her arm circling Tamanna, Yasmine lifted her up and off the branch, then laid her on the steep, rocky slope. Tamanna’s chest rattled as if filled with broken glass.
“We are not far from the road. Look, a walking stick, see?” She picked a stick up from the ground. It was too thick and too tall but there was nothing else within reach. “Can you stand? Please try. See, the road is not far. Lean on me. Please, Tamanna, don’t give up.”
“I will help.”
Yasmine looked up and stifled a scream. Kabeer loomed over them both. His shadow was eerie and fearsome. Instinctively, Yasmine covered Tamanna with her body.
“Go away. You are Taliban. You would hurt your sister. I heard you,” she hissed.
Kabeer look confused for a moment. “My commander was listening.”
Was he telling the truth? How was she to judge? “Where is your commander now? Why has he let us go?” Yasmine stood up and looked him in the eyes. It was a challenge.
“You are not important to him. There is a buzkashi game, all the tribes are gathering. I will meet him there. He trusts me.” He stared at her with glassy eyes.
Yasmine tried to sort it out. Ariana had talked about such a game. That at least was true, but . . .
“You cannot lift her alone.” Without waiting, Kabeer reached down and pulled his sister to her feet. Tamanna cried out.
“Stop, you are hurting her.”
Yasmine stood on the opposite side of Tamanna and pulled the girl’s arm across her shoulder. Kabeer did the same. Tamanna’s head lolled back and forth. She was neither asleep nor awake. Her toes dragged in the dust. Her scarf had fallen away revealing hair as black as ink. Kabeer and Yasmine did not speak. The only sounds coming from their lips were the huffing and puffing from the strain of carrying Tamanna’s weight.
They came to the road. After the quiet of the hills, the sound and activity around them was bewildering at first. Cars and multicolored trucks nudged bikes, women in burkas, and small children clutching jugs, all competing for space on the road. A water buffalo waddled along guided by small boys waving big sticks. The helicopters, like giant insects, flew directly towards them. And the dust rose up in the distance. A convoy was approaching. Women and children, men on bicycles, trucks and cars scattered in different directions. The vehicles pulled off the road. Within a minute the road was clear of all local traffic. Should she tell Kabeer that kharijis would help a person who had been injured by the war? That she herself was a khariji? She looked over at him. He had said he was Taliban but he did not look Taliban. He did not wear a fat turban or have surma circling his eyes. Nor did he carry a gun. Wait, where was his gun? He looked like a boy, any boy. She needed to think, she needed time to sort it all out.
Together, Kabeer and Yasmine lowered Tamanna to the ground. Yasmine tucked the haversack up close, winding the strap around Tamanna’s hand. A woman in a burka clicked her tongue and hissed at Tamanna. Yasmine pulled off her hijab and tied it under Tamanna’s chin. Kabeer looked away. Still, they did not speak. The lead tank was in sight. It appeared on the horizon as huge as a prehistoric, unstoppable monster. Yasmine fumbled for the catch on her necklace. Her hands were rough and the tips of her fingers cut. There, the necklace fell off in her hand. It flashed in the light. Yasmine knelt down and clipped the necklace around Tamanna’s neck.
“Listen to me, Tamanna. If the soldiers speak to you, say nothing.” Tamanna could only moan in response.
Yasmine looked over at Kabeer. He did not meet her gaze. She looked back down the road. The dust rose like smoke and caught the light of the sun, so that the trucks seemed to bend and shimmer as they barreled towards them. Time stilled. In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All Praise is due to God alone, the Sustainer of all the worlds, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate, Master of Judgment Day . . . Yasmine’s hair was uncovered and she was not ashamed. The roar around her was like thunder but inside there was silence. No fear. Nothing. Her fate was in the hands of Allah. Yasmine stepped out onto the road.
“Yasmine!” Suddenly waking, Tamanna looked up and cried out.
Yasmine did not respond. She stood between life and death and felt at peace. The encroaching convoy growled like a herd of beasts as it came hurling towards her.
“YASMINE!” Despite a pain that ricocheted in her chest, Tamanna lurched forward and screamed.
Yasmine closed her eyes. When next she opened them she was looking down the barrel of a large gun.
A soldier high up in the turret of the tank took aim. He was yelling but his words were lost in a cacophony of sound. Yasmine lifted her hands. Her sleeves fell back revealing bare arms. She was not holding a detonator. But that would not fully satisfy a soldier.
“Move off the road!” The soldier waved his hands. “Terp, where’s the terp?” he screamed into a mouthpiece. Three soldiers scrambled out of a vehicle behind the tank and took up positions, pointing their guns in different directions. The soldier high up in the turret kept hollering, “Get me a terp. I need a terp. I got a kid up here blocking the road.”
“Please,” Yasmine called out. How to prove to them that she was not a threat? And then, “Babar the Elephant,” she yelled as she clapped her hands together over her head and fell to her knees.
“Jeeze, say that again?” yelled the soldier.
“Please, sir,” Yasmine screamed, “Babar the Elephant. His mother was killed by hunters. He went to Paris.”
“Someone want to tell me what this kid is talking about?” The soldier was yelling at someone inside the tank.
“Hey, my kid has that book. Lieutenant, no Taliban kid knows about Babar the Elephant. I think she’s trying to tell you that she’s not Taliban.” It was quieter now. The sound of the tank’s engine seemed to ratchet down.
The Lieutenant hollered into a mouthpiece, “I’ve got a girl up here talking about an elephant and she speaks English like the Queen of England.”
Yasmine turned. An Afghan man came running down the line of trucks towards her, his shalwar kameez flapping in the wind. He was waving his arms in the air. “Who are you? What do you want?” He spoke first in Dari and then in Pashto. Vehicle doors opened down the line. More soldiers scrambled out of their trucks and tanks. Two ran up a hill and stood under a tree, guns ready. The helicopters overhead were scanning the gullies and ravines.
A little white dog with short stubby legs leaped out from the back of a truck. “Miracle, check,” a soldier called to the dog while slapping his hand against his leg. The dog trotted over to Yasmine and sni
ffed.
A female soldier wearing full battle gear with a large red cross sewn onto the shoulder of her uniform came running towards her. “Keep those hands up, kid.”
Yasmine looked over at Tamanna. Kabeer was gone. She looked up towards the mountain, then to the desert. He had vanished. She had been wrong. He was a good brother after all.
While the dog sniffed her bag, the khariji soldier patted Yasmine down, just as Brenda had at the FOB. “She’s clean,” the soldier yelled over her shoulder.
Another soldier was bending down over Tamanna. “Clean here, too,” he yelled.
The soldier in the turret, listening on his headset, looked confused for a moment, then yelled, “Are you the missing British kid?” As he climbed out of his turret he spoke first to Yasmine and, without waiting for a reply, spoke to the female soldier. “I just talked to KAF. It seems that there was a British citizen, a girl, sent in a rented car from a FOB to KAF more than two weeks ago. The kid never turned up. Bloody media got wind of it and now half the UN Forces are looking for her.” He stopped, turned, and said, “Either of you girls named Yasmine?”
Yasmine stood still. The soldiers would care for a wounded girl, but what about after they treated her? Would they send Tamanna back to her uncle? “That is Yasmine. She is British. Here are the papers and her passport, too.” Yasmine pointed to Tamanna.
“Yeah? Then why do you speak like a Brit?” The soldier put his hands on his hips.
Yasmine paused. “She taught me to speak English.”
A young soldier holding a cell phone yelled, “Hey, Captain, HQ says to identify her by a gold necklace.”
“Sir, this kid is wearing a gold necklace,” said the soldier leaning down over Tamanna. He rooted around in the haversack, then held up papers. “Got papers, diplomas and stuff. Look, one is from Radcliffe. That’s kinda like Harvard, right?”
“Yes, Private, nice little country school. Get that girl on a stretcher and let’s get out of here, ladies and gentlemen,” yelled the Captain.
