Thunder Over Kandahar

by Sharon McKay

  Nicolette, how did you know? With all my heart I thank you. It had been a long time since she had felt tears well up in her throat, in her eyes, and in her heart.

  “Do you know the story of Ulugh Beg?” asked the old man.

  Famia nodded. She had told his story many times to her students. “Prince Ulugh Beg built the world’s greatest observatory and catalogued thousands of stars.”

  “That is correct. What else did he do?” asked the man

  “He founded schools for both girls and boys. I remember . . . inscribed on the wall of the Ulugh Beg Madrassa were the words of the Prophet Muhammad: The seeking of knowledge is incumbent upon all Muslim men and Muslim women.” Famia looked into the old man’s eyes and smiled. “Peace be upon Him.”

  “Do you remember the person who told you this story?” The man leaned forward.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I was told that this might help you remember more.” The man placed a large, colorful book before her. Famia stared down at it. “Your name is Yasmine,” said the man gently. She heard a sharp intake of breath. In the corner of her eye she saw Mina reach out for Babrak’s hand.

  Yasmine, my name is Yasmine. Yes, that sounds right.

  Slowly, as if each page were precious, Famia thumbed the pages of the book. She laughed at the funny fellow in a green suit. “Babar,” she whispered. She felt a rush of confusion and then a feeling of complete calm. Doors in her mind began to open, some with a startling bang, others as if a mild wind were pushing against them.

  “My family . . .” In her mind’s eye they stood before her: Mother, Baba, Tamanna.

  “They are safe in England.”

  There was a picture in her head—a beautiful woman lying in a bed. Mother. “Is my mother free of pain?”

  “Yes. She walks with a cane, but she walks tall.”

  “Is my father alive?”

  “He is not well enough to travel, but he has taken up his old position as a professor at Oxford University.”

  “Tamanna?” The name rolled off her tongue as if it were there always, waiting to be spoken out loud.

  “She wants to be a doctor. She is a very quick student. Yasmine, your parents were told that you had been killed in an explosion. They took the news of your death very hard. I think your father almost lost the will to live, and your mother—she blamed herself for bringing you to Afghanistan in the first place. Now they wait for you to come home.” The man’s eyes were filled with love.

  She looked up into his eyes and saw her own. Mother, Baba, Tamanna, her family. There was so much that she could not recall, but the love she had for them, and they for her, engulfed her, surrounded her, and brought a peace she had not known for a long, long time.

  “Thank you, Grandfather. I look forward to seeing my parents and Tamanna. But Grandfather, my home is Afghanistan.”

  Postscript

  When the Future Comes to Pass

  Mother, Baba, and Tamanna left Afghanistan for Dubai, and then England, a month after they arrived at Kandahar Airfield (KAF). They were told that the suicide bomber had killed not only an interpreter and three soldiers but a young girl too, likely Yasmine’s traveling companion.

  Fearful that Tamanna might be sent back into the care of her uncle, and therefore certain death, Baba and Mother did not tell anyone that Tamanna was not their daughter. The birth certificate and the gold necklace around Tamanna’s neck convinced the authorities that she was indeed the missing British citizen. Yasmine’s eyes were reported to be green in her passport and Tamanna’s eyes were ebony brown, but no one said a word. Perhaps the authorities knew, perhaps not. Mother, Baba, and Tamanna mourned the death of Yasmine in silence.

  Mother underwent a grueling operation at KAF, followed by two more operations in England. After months of physical therapy, she was able to walk with a cane. In England she works tirelessly for an organization involved in building schools in Afghanistan. She completed a Ph.D. in Persian Literature, and is currently teaching at the university level. She plays bridge regularly with her friend Audrey Ashberry, and with her husband’s probing, has recently taken up the cello.

  Yasmine’s father lost the use of his left arm. The bullet that perforated his lung left him physically diminished. Nevertheless, he became a tenured professor at Oxford University in England and a visiting lecturer at Yale in the United States. His book, titled Interaction Between Islam and the Bible, is currently on the non-fiction bestseller list. He is also a published poet.

  Tamanna received the best medical care available at KAF. However, she had to wait until reaching England for her hip replacement operation.

  Before leaving Afghanistan, efforts were made to get a coded message to Tamanna’s mother that her daughter was alive and well. They do not know if the message was received. Later they heard that her mother died shortly after Tamanna left Afghanistan. The source of this information is suspect and the cause of her death remains unknown.

  With a great deal of tutoring, Tamanna completed an undergraduate degree in science and immediately enrolled in medicine. She hopes to become a pediatrician.

  Tamanna struggled for many years with guilt. She continues to mourn the death of her brother Kabeer, not the young man he became, but the boy who was stolen and so badly abused.

  One night, fellow Oxford University students took her out to hear a stand-up comic who was a woman and a Muslim. “That was the night I learned to laugh,” she later said. She has not yet married and says proudly that she may yet end up as what the British call an old maid. Tamanna shares a small cottage with two other graduate students a few doors down from Yasmine’s parents’ home in Oxford.

  She hopes to spend part of her medical training in a clinic in Kandahar City. She is happy and unafraid.

  After her meeting with Grandfather in Quetta, Yasmine returned with him to England for an extended stay. She sat in on Baba’s lectures at the university and nearly burst with pride. She spent days with her mother in some of England’s finest gardens. She and Tamanna attended plays by Mr. Shakespeare, and sat up night after night and wondered at the miracle of it all. “Did it all really happen? Is this us? Are we really here?” they asked each other over and over.

  Yasmine took advanced teaching courses and received her degree and teaching diploma in a record three years.

  In an English rose garden, on a warm summer evening, Yasmine told her parents of her plans to return home, to Afghanistan. They were alarmed.

  “Baba, did you not feel the call to return to our home?” Yasmine placed her hand over his. “If we who have the most to offer leave, what hope is there for our country?” In truth, Baba felt pride in his daughter’s love of their country.

  Mother tried to reason with Yasmine. “It is too dangerous,” she said.

  “But Mother, did you not once return? Am I doing anything different?”

  “Understand, Daughter, we lost you once. It was a pain I will never forget or fully recover from. And your life here, in England or in any part of the West, will be free. You may choose your destiny.” Mother’s voice dissolved into a faint sigh.

  “But Mother, that is exactly what I am doing,” whispered Yasmine.

  With tears in her eyes, Mother nodded and said a prayer: “Du’a, du’a, du’a. Everything begins and ends with du’a. It is only by His Generosity that I have been blessed with such a wonderful daughter. Go with the blessing of Allah.”

  Nicolette married in Paris and became the mother of twin girls named Famia and Yasmine. She plans to return to nursing when the girls are in school.

  Before returning to Afghanistan, Yasmine visited Paris and drank chocolat with Nicolette and played with the twins. She and Nicolette toured the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, cruised the Seine, ate crème brûlée in a sidewalk café, and stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

  Yasmine has never entirely regained her memory. To this day she remembers nothing of Tamanna’s fall down the mountain or the explosion. Oddly, she does remember
Dan-Danny and the women soldiers in the FOB. With Nicolette’s help, Yasmine found the e-mail address of Dan-Danny on the Internet.

  Directly after the explosion, Dan-Danny suffered blindness and an acute loss of hearing. Both afflictions were temporary, although he was out of action for six months. It would be months before he realized that Yasmine had changed places with Tamanna. Seeing no breach in security, he kept the realization to himself. Dan-Danny signed up for a second tour of duty and, upon request, was reassigned to the same FOB. He sought out the driver who had been given the task of driving Yasmine to KAF. The driver suffered a broken nose. Tamanna’s Uncle Zaman was also the recipient of Dan-Danny’s flying fists. Called upon to explain his actions to his superiors, Dan-Danny apologized for losing his temper but smiled as he left HQ. Dan-Danny also told Yasmine that all the soldiers who had been so kind to her and her parents had returned home safely.

  After receiving her undergraduate degree and teaching diploma in England, Yasmine returned first to Quetta, Pakistan. She met and married Atal, Babrak’s younger brother, also a teacher. Like his brother, he is kind and smart, can cook, and is a teacher. Yasmine and Atal now run a school in Kandahar City. They are in constant danger, not from the Taliban, but from those afraid of change.

  Yasmine and Atal have three children. Their oldest daughter, Mina, now eight years old, lives with her Aunt Tamanna in Oxford, England, and visits her grandparents on her way home from school almost every day. She will take her Common Entrance exams next year, with plans to go to a local prep school the following year. During summer break she stays with her Aunt Nicolette in France. She is brave, smart, and funny. She hopes to return to Afghanistan one day and build bridges. She says that her two little brothers are pests.

  The strangest story, and one that cannot entirely be explained, belongs to Noor. During the period when both Yasmine and Tamanna were studying in England, Noor suddenly appeared at Babrak and Mina’s door in Quetta. How did he find them? How did he know that Yasmine lived there, when much of the time Yasmine did not even know her true name? These questions have never been answered, but there are many such mysteries in Afghanistan.

  Obedient to the very old tribal codes of Pashtunwali, which require one to give shelter to a traveler, Babrak invited the young man in. Tall, broad-shouldered, now with a short beard, Noor handed Babrak a large, carefully wrapped package. “The people of my village thought that Yasmine’s parents were spies. They raided the house and took all they could. I rescued the Qur’an,” he said.

  With his hands cupped around a glass of green tea, Noor said that the kharijis had rebuilt the school in his village of Bazaar-E-Panjwayi. There he had learned to read. He had read the very Qur’an that he was just now returning. “I did not understand that it is Allah’s own command that both men and women receive an education,” Noor said simply and humbly.

  “And so you did not rescue the Qur’an, the Qur’an rescued you.” Babrak smiled.

  Sheepishly, Noor grinned and nodded.

  “I shall see that Yasmine and her family receive this.” Carefully and respectfully, Babrak took the covered Qur’an in both hands and put it high on a shelf.

  A polite young man would never ask about the welfare of a girl, and so when Noor, stumbling and sputtering, mentioned Tamanna’s name, Babrak was surprised but offered Tamanna’s news freely. “We know of Tamanna only through Yasmine, but we hear that she does well in her studies and wants to be a doctor who cares for children.”

  Noor nodded. “That is as it should be.” He left the next day in the direction of India. No one has heard from him since.

  As for the country of Afghanistan, it is Baba’s and Mother’s conviction, and remains Tamanna’s and Yasmine’s hope, that with new insight into the workings of the society, the United Nations will begin to listen to the people. Only then will it be understood that this culture has served many well for thousands of years, has often flourished, and will not change on the timetable imposed by the West.

  With Allah’s blessing, peace will come to Afghanistan.

  There came a day when Yasmine and Tamanna sat in the courtyard of Yasmine and Atal’s home in Kandahar. Yasmine had spent the day teaching in her new school and Tamanna working as a visiting physician in a medical clinic. Exhausted but content, the two friends looked up at stars as bright as twinkling jewels. They sat together in the comfort that sisters share, sure of their love and loyalty for each other, their shared history, and trust in the future. Floating in the air was the murmur of Atal’s voice as he read sleepy children a bedtime story.

  “Do you remember the first English word you learned?” asked Yasmine.

  “Ketchup,” said Tamanna. They both burst into laughter, and in that moment they were girls again, kicking a ball between the two posts Baba had hammered into the hard ground of the courtyard, eyes filling with tears as Mother told stores of bravery and heroism, and giggling behind open palms as Baba recited poetry. The hard times, the fear, the heartbreak and loss would never be forgotten, but love for each other, family, and their country would triumph.

  List of Terms

  This is not a glossary, but it provides some brief definitions to help with the text. In many instances there is more than one possible definition and spelling for the given words.

  Afghan—a person of/from Afghanistan.

  Afghani—the currency of Afghanistan.

  ahmaq—a fool.

  Allah—God.

  Al-Qaeda (also spelled Al-Qaida)—an Islamic movement founded by, among others, Osama bin Laden some time in l988–89. This fundamentalist movement calls for a complete break between Islamic nations and what are considered “foreign influences.” Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for many attacks, including the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D. C.

  ANA—Afghan National Army.

  Baba—father, grandfather, elder.

  Babar the Elephant—character introduced in a French children’s fictional book, Histoire de Babar, written by Jean de Brunhoff and published in 1931. The English version is called The Story of Babar and was published in l933.

  bacha bazi—is a boy, fourteen to eighteen years old, who is dressed in women’s clothing with bells tied to his feet and paraded out to dance at parties and weddings. This tradition is condemned by human rights activists and Muslim clerics.

  Beg—see Ulugh Beg.

  bride-price (sher baha)—the money negotiated between the bride’s family and the groom.

  burka—head-to-toe fabric that covers the body and face. A lattice or grille covers the eyes, allowing minimal direct vision and no peripheral vision.

  buzkashi—popular Afghan game played by men, sometimes compared to polo as both are played on horseback. However, polo is played with a ball, while buzkashi is played with a dead animal. Games often last for several days.

  campal—a blanket.

  chapan—a silk coat with a sash.

  chars—marijuana.

  dambura—a musical instrument, similar to a long-necked lute.

  Dari—one of two official and national languages of Afghanistan.

  dastarkhoan—a cloth spread on the floor before a meal.

  du’a—tends to mean personal prayer. The name is derived from an Arabic word meaning to “call out” or to “summon.” This prayer is regarded as a profound act of worship.

  ETA—estimated time of arrival.

  FOB—a military’s forward operation (operating) base, any secured position away from the main base. (In Afghanistan the main UN base is called KAF, or Kandahar Airfield.) A FOB may contain an airfield, hospital, or other facilities and is usually used for an extended period of time.

  Genghis Khan—founder of the Mongol Empire who began the Mongol invasions of eastern Europe in the thirteenth century. By the time of his death, in 1227, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China. He promoted religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire and created a unified empire from the nomadic tribes of nor
theast Asia.

  Habibullah Khan (1872–1919)—Emir of Afghanistan from l901 to 1919. He attempted to modernize his country and worked to bring Western medicine and other technology to Afghanistan. Habibullah was assassinated on February 20, 1919.

  Hajji (Haji)—title of respect given to anyone who has made the pilgrimage (Hajj or Haj) to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest meeting site in Islam. It is believed that those who have gone to Mecca and touched the cube-shaped building known as the Kabah have had all their sins removed from “the book of record.” The Kabah is the most sacred site in Islam. Every capable Muslim is expected to perform the pilgrimage once in their lifetime.

  Hajji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev (1823–1924)—philanthropist oil baron who built the first boarding school for Azeri (Muslim) girls in Russia. It opened in 1901.

  halal—lawful or permissible according to Islamic law.

  haraam—bad behavior, or actions forbidden by Islamic law.

  haversack (British)—knapsack, backpack.

  Hazara—ethnic group who mainly inhabit the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan, although there are significant populations in Pakistan and Iran because of the refugees fleeing the conflict in Afghanistan. There are dozens of tribes within the Hazara grouping.

  hijab—type of head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women, but this can also refer to modest Muslim styles of dress in general. The literal translation, in Arabic, means to “cover, ” to “veil, ” or to “shelter.”

  imam—the leader of prayer in a mosque (place of worship).

  International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)—in Afghanistan, troop contributors include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, Poland, and most members of the European Union and N ATO, including Australia, New Zealand, Azerbaijan, and Singapore. The American, British, and Canadian forces have sustained substantial casualties in combat.