A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story

by Qais Akbar Omar

  A few moments later, the thick wooden door opened with the clank of a thick chain that must have been attached to it. A man whom I recognized as my father’s business partner came through it, with two house servants close behind. I had seen the man many times in his carpet shop. He had always been impeccably dressed in a silk necktie and tailored jacket, with bright eyes that poured a good feeling into his customers. But this morning, he was wearing only his pajamas and holding a cup of tea in his hand. His eyes were sleepy. He greeted my father, gave salaams to the other adults, and welcomed all of us.

  His name was Haji Noor Sher. Whenever my father took Wakeel, my older sister, and me to the shop, Haji Noor Sher gave us candy and put some small money in crumpled bills in our pockets. He always had foreign customers in his shop looking at carpets, but he would put his business affairs aside when we came in and give all his attention to us. He never used our real names; instead, he called us “nephew” and “niece,” and he told us to call him “uncle.”

  If he was surprised to see us all at that early hour that morning, he did not show it. We had had no way to get a message to him to tell him that we were coming. But he and my father were close friends, and close friends help each other in times such as those.

  My father took him to one side, and they talked quietly for a moment. Haji Noor Sher spoke to one of the house servants, who always stood behind him like bodyguards. The servant ran back into the house to get us some tea and something to eat. Haji Noor Sher acted as if he were accustomed to having visitors every day at this time, and to keeping those words for his servants ready in his mouth.

  “Hey, everybody, welcome to my house. Do you like it?”

  We really had not seen anything yet except big walls and the towers, but we nodded because we were relieved to be away from the fighting.

  “This place is called the Qala-e-Noborja. Did you know that?” He held himself like a famous actor whom everybody knows, but none of my aunts and uncles had ever seen him before. “The reason we call it the ‘Fort of Nine Towers’ is because when it was built more than a hundred years ago, it had nine towers. It’s antique, like me.” He had a big smile that was contagious, so we all smiled at him.

  I interrupted him: “Uncle Noor Sher, but I only see one tower.” I pointed to the one full tower, ignoring the stub of the other one outside the gate.

  He looked at my father, winked, and said, “Oh, he is smart.” I liked hearing him say that, especially in front of all my cousins. “The other towers,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “are invisible. Just because we cannot see something does not mean that it is not there.”

  Even though the Qala-e-Noborja had only one tower still standing, it made me feel safe, especially since it had been there for more than a hundred years. Maybe the rockets could not hurt us here.

  He handed his teacup to the other house servant and led us away from the door and down a steep, rose-lined path between the old fort and the one-story house to a terrace on the slope below the house. He and my father walked in front, and my cousins and I followed behind them, my mother and my aunts after us. The terrace was covered by a canopy of grapes. The bees were humming around them.

  The sky was completely clear, and the sun was floating in a lapis-blue space shining down at everything through the leaves. The wind gave no rest to the leaves and rustled them. I wondered whether there was still war on the other side of the mountain, or whether everything there had changed, too.

  When I turned and looked behind me, I saw the old fort’s one last tower rising above me. It looked even higher from where we were standing below it on the terrace. I was curious what was inside those high walls, but was too busy seeing all the new things in this large garden that surrounded them to wonder about that for long. On the terraces—there were four of them cut into the steep slope—rosebushes and vegetable gardens were laid out in neatly tended rows.

  On one of the terraces a fountain shot water into the air. Near the fountain were two massive trees. Two of my cousins tried to hold hands with me around one of the trunks. We could just barely reach one another’s fingertips.

  Down another level, in a flat area at the lowest point in the garden, was a stream. As he led us to it, Haji Noor Sher told us that its cold water came from the Hindu Kush mountains sixty miles away. It was flowing into a pool cut into the rock. More than ten types of colorful fish were swimming in the pool.

  Some parrots, canaries, and eagles were in cages near the pool, and cooing pigeons had a place of their own.

  In a cage built against the high wall that separated the garden from a street, a big dog with bloodshot eyes was pacing quietly. Some bones lay in a corner. He was the kind of dog the Kuchis, nomads, keep in front of their cattle to protect them from wolves. From other cages next to it, two Russian wolfhounds glared at us.

  When we got close to the cages, the dogs began barking at us, and jumping against the sides, trying to break out and tear us apart. They were fighting dogs. We ran away.

  There was yet another cage, a very large one, at the base of the tower. At first we saw nothing in it and thought the cage was empty. Then something shifted in the shadows of a small doorway that led into the bottom of the tower. Slowly, the shadow moved toward us. It was very big. My older sister and some of my girl cousins took a step back.

  Nobody said anything as a leopard walked gracefully out into the sunshine and looked at us. It was yellow with brown spots. We had seen leopards in the Kabul Zoo. We had been told they were very dangerous. No one dared to speak as the blood ran out of our faces. What kind of place is this that has a leopard in the garden? I wondered.

  The leopard had no interest in our fear. He lay down in a sunny place and started licking himself. We all tiptoed away. This garden seemed to me like paradise, but even more interesting than the way my older sister had described it.

  * * *

  The house servants appeared, carrying a huge breakfast on big shiny trays; many types of fruit juices, apples, grapes, milk, tea, butter, cheese, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, and fresh breads. They unrolled several bright red and green sofrah, eating cloths, on the terrace near the fountain, and began to set the trays of food on the ground. Haji Noor Sher invited us to start eating, then went back up to his rooms inside the courtyard of the old fort.

  We did not know what to eat first. We had not had a proper meal for weeks. Everybody forgot all their manners as we piled our plates high. My father said, “Slowly, slowly, the food is not running away.” Wakeel laughed, but the others were too busy eating.

  Above the clink of the knives and forks, we could hear the birds singing as they flew from one tree to another. We had not heard birds in Kot-e-Sangi in months. Twelve baby deer that were grazing placidly in the garden around us occasionally looked up at us.

  * * *

  As we finished eating, Haji Noor Sher came out of the old fort and down the garden steps alongside the terrace where we were seated. Now he was wearing a white shalwar kamiz, a silk chapan coat, a karacol lamb’s wool hat, and leather slippers. His two house servants stood behind him. They were much taller than he was.

  Haji Noor Sher was so short and so portly he was almost round. My cousin Wakeel whispered to me that he could be a large marble like the ones we played with. My father overheard him and glared at him. Wakeel lowered his eyes sheepishly, but the rest of us were giggling very softly. Even though he was small, Haji Noor Sher had a big presence. I had never seen the king, except on television, but Haji Noor Sher looked like a king to me.

  “Do you like my garden?” he asked us. We all told him how beautiful it was. A big smile took over his face.

  “Come with me, I will show you my courtyard.” Now we would see what was inside the high mud-brick walls of this Fort of Nine Towers that had only one tower. He turned and led the way up the steep path. We all rushed to find our shoes that we had taken off when we sat to eat. I wore one of my own shoes, and one of Wakeel’s. He shouted at me. I had to run back and give him
his.

  Haji Noor Sher pushed open the heavy wood door that led from the garden into the courtyard. Finally, we could see the thick chain attached to the inside of it that made a clanking sound each time the door moved. After the first door was another, but it was at right angles so that anyone trying to invade the fort could be stopped in the passage and not just rush straight in.

  Beyond it was a large courtyard half as long as a football field, and half as wide. It was surrounded by two levels of rooms with tall, wood-frame windows. On one side of the courtyard, a room with windows on three sides projected into the garden. On the other, the rooms on the upper level were set back, leaving a broad upper terrace in front of them. A perfect place for flying kites, I thought.

  The courtyard was full of fruit trees and roses and many flowers I had never seen before and whose names I did not know. Grapevines covered an arbor in the far corner. A tall acacia tree dominated the end near us, and a very old, spreading arghawan tree reigned at the other. In between were peach and pomegranate trees, as well as two enormous thickets of lilacs. Haji Noor Sher made a special point of showing them to us. The lilacs had been a gift to his father from the king. He said that for years after acquiring the fort from the royal family, his father had always sent the first lilacs of the season to the king, large scented armloads of them.

  Carefully trimmed rosebushes enclosed beds of brightly colored geraniums and lilies. Haji Noor Sher was proudest of a black rose that he had, and cautioned us against telling anybody about it. He said it was very rare and someone might come and steal it. Morning glory and honeysuckle vines climbed the wall at the far end of the courtyard, where a small door led into a hammam, a steam bath.

  In front of the hammam was a large enclosure with a few deer in it that looked like they were the parents of the little deer outside in the garden. Two peacocks stood watching us with their tails spread. Haji Noor Sher made a funny noise, and they came running to him. He patted them; we all wanted to do that, too. But when we tried, they ran away and screeched, “Fanark!” We soon learned that “fanark” is the most common word in the peacock language. It is always said very loudly.

  As we walked across the courtyard, I found a small peacock feather. I picked it up and kissed it, because we had been told they are holy. These many years later, I still use that feather as a bookmark for my Holy Koran.

  My father walked next to Haji Noor Sher. He was much taller than Haji Noor Sher. I walked next to my father. The rest of the family walked behind us, and the servants behind them.

  Haji Noor Sher showed us five rooms that faced the courtyard and said we could use them all. He was living in the old fort by himself in some rooms above the passageway into the courtyard. He had moved his family to India as soon as the fighting had started so they would be safe. Now he flew back and forth between Delhi and Kabul every couple of months. He had shops in both places. In Kabul, he bought old carpets with my father’s help, and in Delhi he sold them.

  The floors of our rooms were covered with several layers of carpets. Low mattresses had been placed all around the walls, with long, narrow carpets covering them. In the corner of each room was a pile of quilts and pillows. The carpets made the rooms look like the garden had come in from outside.

  Haji Noor Sher told the servants to bring us more tea as we came out of the rooms. We all sat in the shade of the grape arbor and relaxed in a way that we had not done for months.

  I entirely forgot about war and those dead bodies on the road. I even forgot about my grandfather and my uncles and unmarried aunts who were still at our house, until we heard the first rocket.

  There is a noise a rocket makes when it is fired. You can hear it from miles away. It is not loud, but it stops all conversations instantly. First, there is the fumf of the launch, then the silence as everyone waits, and then the explosion as a house is destroyed or a school collapses. Then slowly the conversation resumes, sometimes with a half-spoken prayer.

  For some reason, the ceasefire had ended hours earlier than had been announced. My father jumped up and looked panicked. He had been enjoying the magnificent peace in this place for a few moments before heading back to get the others. But if the fighting had started again, he could not go home now.

  We were hardly four miles away from our house, but it was too far to go if the snipers had started shooting again. We could not hear the fighting, because the small mountain with two peaks separated us from it. In our mind’s eye, however, we could see everything that was happening.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, we settled into our new rooms and worried about Grandfather and the others. We could hear the rockets, but the fighting seemed very far away. The cousins filled the days playing hide-and-seek in the vast garden, or splashing cold water on one another from the pool. The adults said we would not be here long. The fighting would end soon, and we could go home.

  On the fourth day, we heard again from the BBC World Service that on the following day there would be a one-day ceasefire between the two main factions that were fighting in our Kot-e-Sangi neighborhood.

  Early the next morning, my father woke me up. Then he went to my sisters to rouse them. In five minutes we all were awake, waiting to hear what my father would tell us.

  My father kissed my mother first, then he came to me. I was still sitting on my bed, stretching my arms. He crouched on his heels in front of me and said, “I’m going now to bring your grandfather and the others here. If something happens to me, and I cannot come back, you have to forget that you once had a father. You will be your own father, and a good son to your mother, and a kind brother to your sisters and your brother. I leave you all the responsibility of a father. But you have to learn how to take care of your sisters and mother. Understood?”

  I did not know what to say. I was now ten years old. I said, “Yes.”

  He went to my older sister. He sat on his heels in front of her bed and said, “You are my oldest child. You’re the most beautiful and intelligent child that I have, but you have to learn how to be helpful to others, and not to feel lonely if I’m not around. You have to educate your little sisters and help your mother. Don’t wait for anyone to tell you what to do. If something happens to me, you are responsible for your sisters, to keep them busy, and make them learn one new thing every day. Help with your little brother and keep your mother happy, understood?”

  Tears came from my older sister’s eyes as she gazed straight at my father. My father hugged her for a minute. Then slowly and gently he rubbed her back and told her to be brave. I did not feel sorry for her. Wakeel and I used to call her “fountain eyes,” because she cried so easily, when she was not making stupid jokes.

  He went to my two little sisters, who slept together in one bed in those days, because they were scared of the rocket sounds. “Did you have good dreams last night?” my father asked them.

  The older one said “Yes.” The younger one said “No.” Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I had a good dream last night.” They both wanted to talk at the same time. Both wanted to talk louder to be heard.

  “Stop, stop, stop! One by one! Who had a good dream last night, raise your hand,” my father said.

  Both of them quickly raised their hands.

  He pointed to the littler one. “You tell me your dream.”

  She thought for a second, then said, “I didn’t dream last night. I will try to have a nice dream tonight, and I’ll tell you tomorrow morning.”

  My father smiled and tousled her hair. “You naughty little girl.” Then he asked the older one to tell him her dreams.

  She cleared her throat, but she was silent for almost a minute. My father was waiting to hear from her. She cleared her throat a second time, but was still silent.

  “Come on! Tell me your dream,” my father said.

  “Why are you in a hurry? Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

  “I just don’t want to wait till evening, listening to your throat clearings,” my father said.<
br />
  She cleared her throat a third time and said, “Well, it will take seven hours to tell you my dreams, because I slept for seven hours last night. Now, sit properly. You may get tired sitting on your heels.”

  My father asked both of them to come closer to him, then he hugged them both and kissed their heads, foreheads, and cheeks and said, “I’m going out to buy some milk for breakfast. When I come back, I will listen to your dream stories. Okay?”

  They both nodded their heads and smiled at my father. The younger one pulled her blanket off and got up from the bed. The older one, suddenly cold, shouted at her. The younger one shouted back to wake up and brush her teeth. Then they started arguing with each other, as always.

  My mother was standing the whole time at the corner of the room with folded arms, leaning against the wall, resting her head on her right shoulder, watching my father. My father got up and walked toward her. He stood in front of her and said, “I have to go. It will get late.”

  Her face looked very sad. “Be careful.” She started to say something else, but her voice caught. We all looked at her. “We are waiting for you,” she said softly.

  I could read in my mother’s face that she had a lot in her heart. She wanted to say something, but her mouth, lips, and throat refused to obey.

  My father kissed her forehead and hugged her. He winked at me with a big smile over her shoulder, and I smiled back.

  He stood at the threshold of the door, holding the doorknob; he took a long look at all of us and said, “I will be back soon.” He looked at my older sister and me and said, “You two, don’t forget what I told you.” Then he went out. My mother followed him.

  Everybody started to fold their sheets. My littlest sister ran outside, but my father had already gone. She came back to tell my mother, “Father doesn’t need to buy milk. His friend’s servants prepare us a good breakfast every day, and it has milk, too.”

  “Yes, you are right; I forgot to tell him that.” My mother tried to sound surprised. “But don’t worry, he’ll drink the milk before he goes to sleep.”