A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story

by Qais Akbar Omar

  The guys with guns cheered and said, “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” as if he were their nephew. Then one of them said, “Let’s go, the movie is finished.” They all left.

  The other women made a circle again around the new mother and did what they could to help her. The men, sitting shoulder to shoulder, were deeply embarrassed.

  The young mother woke up after half an hour. When she opened her eyes she started saying “Ahmad! Ahmad!” again.

  We did not know who Ahmad was. We all looked at one another to find whether there was an Ahmad among us. But there was no Ahmad there. A woman who had torn her scarf in two, and wrapped the baby in half of it and tied the other half around the young mother’s head so she would not feel ashamed at being uncovered, asked her gently, “Who is Ahmad?”

  “Ahmad is my husband. Who are you? Why am I here? Why is it so dark here?” She sounded confused, as if she did not remember what had happened to her. She asked all those questions in one breath.

  The men and women all looked at one another and did not know what to say.

  She repeated, “Why am I here? Where is my husband? Who tied up my head with this cloth? Oh, I’m feeling dizzy. What is wrong? Why is everyone staring at me?”

  “Calm down, calm down, sister! You just gave birth to this child. He is a boy. We are here because we are in the captivity of those warlords, and we don’t know what is going to happen to us next. Don’t you remember anything?”

  The new mother touched her stomach, then looked up at the woman next to her, not really understanding what she had just heard. She grabbed her child from the woman and started kissing his bloody face. Then she looked around her once again and asked, “Did I give birth in the presence of all of you in here?” She was looking at everybody’s eyes, one by one, to hear an answer. Then she fainted. The woman next to her caught the baby just before he hit the ground. He cried from the shock.

  The men and women looked wearily at one another. There was no water to give her.

  The woman who had torn her scarf left us and disappeared up the dark space of the tunnel. She came back in ten minutes with a bucket. She sprinkled some water on the young mother’s face and gently tapped at her cheeks. Slowly, the mother regained consciousness and drank some water from the woman’s hand.

  We all drank from that bucket, too. We had not eaten lunch, and a minute later our stomachs began making noises.

  * * *

  We did not know what time it was. The guards had collected our watches along with our money and the women’s earrings, necklaces, rings, and bracelets before they had imprisoned us in the tunnel. But after what must have been several hours, one of the guards came with eighteen naan flatbreads and gave everybody one. They vanished in minutes. Those who finished first looked at the others who were still eating. Some of them had not had any breakfast either.

  One of the women asked the time, and the man who had brought the bread said it was 6:00 p.m. We had been in that tunnel since midday, but it felt as if it had been much longer.

  Some of the men were yawning and ready to sleep, but there was not a mattress or a blanket. My father asked one of those ragged-looking men for something to sleep on.

  “You would be the luckiest man to have it,” the warlord said.

  He disappeared along the tunnel and came back in half an hour with five mattresses and five blankets for the eighteen of us. The tunnel was filled with the stale smell of sweat.

  The young mother was shivering from the cold, damp air. She needed a warm place and good food. Her baby needed to be kept warm in a soft bed. The other women gave her one of the mattresses and two blankets. But she still was shivering under the blanket, and crying and saying things that we could not hear clearly.

  We now learned that she had lost her husband that morning, when a rocket struck their house.

  “The last time I saw my husband was this morning when he was half-alive and half-dead,” she told us after a long silence. She spoke softly, as if she were talking to herself. It was the first time I heard her talking like a normal person. “He said, ‘I cannot make it, let me die here by myself.’” Her lips trembled, and tears streaked down her cheeks. She sighed deeply, full of pain, and continued.

  “We had eaten our breakfast together. He said we would go to Pakistan, where his parents live, to get visas for England.

  “We’d met each other and become engaged when we were studying in the Faculty of Social Law at Kabul University. Then his parents fled Afghanistan when we were in our fourth semester. They had to go; his father was involved in political affairs. My husband was their only child, and they did not want him to come back to Afghanistan. But we were in love, and he suffered from being away from me. Two years ago he returned to marry me.”

  She was speaking in a whisper. Slowly, by telling us her story, she was making us a part of her family, as if she were our sister, to ease the shame of everything that had happened to her in front of us. “This morning when we were eating breakfast in the dining room, he looked at me and said that he was so lucky to have a wife like me, and he kissed me. I went to the kitchen to get butter and jam from the fridge, then I heard a huge noise. Then I was under the ceiling beams, with the earth and straw from the roof all on top of me. When I wanted to stand up, I could not move. But I was at the corner of the kitchen, and there was less rubble than in the middle. I finally pushed a beam off me. When I stood up, my mouth and nostrils were filled with dust and the smell of gunpowder and smoke. I started calling my Ahmad for help. He did not answer me. The beams from the ceiling were blocking the door. I was stuck in the kitchen with the smashed jam jar still in my hand. I climbed out from the kitchen window to the courtyard.

  “The dining room ceiling had totally collapsed. I struggled to move the thick beams, but they were too heavy for me. I looked around the courtyard and found a shovel to dig the earth from the roof that had buried my husband.

  “As I was working, the contractions came several times, but I still continued. And then I saw my husband’s leg. I recognized his jeans. It was the only part of him that I could see. I nearly fainted, but I said to myself, ‘Be brave.’

  “After an hour of hard work, I dug my husband out from under the rubble. He smiled at me and said, ‘You made it through, I’m very proud of you, just remember that I love you so much that I can’t put it in words. I don’t think I will live, but tell my parents that I love them so much. Tell them they are the greatest parents in the world.’ Then he touched my stomach and said, ‘Tell our child I wanted to see him, but God didn’t want us to meet in this world. Tell him I am waiting for both of you.’

  “Then he put his head on my lap and asked me to pat his hair. I patted his hair and I was crying. He looked at me and said, ‘I hate seeing tears in your eyes. Don’t cry for me, it was my destiny, and I’m going to a better place.’ Then he said, ‘Smile, smile, smile!’

  “His breathing became very heavy. Then, after a great shake, it stopped. He still had a smile at the corners of his mouth but his eyes were wide open, horror-struck. I closed his eyes and left him there.” At last she started to weep. Then she started shaking because of the cold, and the loss of so much blood.

  One of the women went to her and held her tightly to try to keep her warm. No one said anything. We were feeling the woman’s agony at being here with strangers at a time when she should have been with her family.

  I started to shiver.

  My father took a blanket for me. I used half of the blanket as a mattress and half of it to cover my body. I fell asleep right away, thinking about Ahmad and the son he would never see.

  * * *

  I woke up a few hours later. My father and some other men were doing push-ups to warm themselves up. Some of them were shivering and their noses were red. When they breathed, little clouds came out of their mouths. My father patted me on my head and told me to sleep; I slept again.

  Three or four hours later, somebody was kicking me on my back. At first I thought I was d
reaming, but it was real, and it was painful. When I woke up, I saw a big guy standing in front of me and shouting, “Wake up, wake up…”

  My father was begging him not to hurt me. “He’s a little kid,” he said.

  A minute later, still half-asleep, I found myself with the others at the place where the tunnel ended in a wall of dirt. Everyone had shovels.

  We were separated into three groups. Most of the men were set to digging, making the tunnel longer. We were never told where the tunnel led or why it was being dug. We knew we should not ask. The women put the loosened earth into buckets. And four men and I carried the buckets of earth to the entrance of the tunnel and dumped them outside. I wanted to stay outside even though the sun hurt my eyes, but one of the guards was always standing there to make sure we did not escape. Once when one of the men was slow going back into the tunnel, the guard beat him with a heavy stick.

  The young mother was holding her baby. When the baby cried, she began breast-feeding him. A few hours later, she was released, because she could not do any work.

  We worked for a couple of hours. Then we had a loaf of coarse, dark bread—the Russian kind they made at the yellow silo bakery for poor people—and a glass of water for our breakfast. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all the same, a loaf of Russian bread and a glass of water.

  That second night, we started talking to one another and trying to get to know one another better. We made some jokes, too, even though everybody’s lips were sealed against laughing. Everybody started talking about their lives, kids, wives, husbands. But no one talked about politics, or why we were being held captive, because we were all afraid of one another.

  The commander and four of his thugs came with their guns hanging from their shoulders. One of them had a bag on his back that was so heavy that he could hardly carry it. He put the bag in front of us and opened it. The bag was full of handcuffs. The commander started handcuffing the hands and feet of all the men. Then, with a long chain and heavy padlocks, he connected each of them with the man next to him. My father was right in the middle. No one could move. Even a small shift in position could hurt the others.

  He handcuffed three of the women together, separately from the men. Only one woman and I were not handcuffed. The other four captors watched passively as he fastened the handcuffs and tugged on them to make sure that the locks held tight.

  Then he looked at the woman who was not handcuffed and said, “It is better you don’t struggle and yell or curse. It is better you take off your clothes now for me. Soon, one by one, we will be finished. You cannot imagine how fast we release. We are away from our homes and our wives. We are at war, and war without sex is like poison.”

  She was confused at what she was hearing. “Are you fighting for peace in this country, or to do shameful things?” she asked sharply, as if she were a teacher speaking to a naughty student.

  “You’re going to be a problem, I can see that,” the commander told her.

  The commander started tearing the woman’s clothes with his knife.

  My father moved to stand up and say something, but the handcuffs held him down. Then one of the thugs hit him on the head with the butt of his Kalashnikov. I tried to run to him, but the commander grabbed the back of my collar.

  I yelled, “Let me see my father,” but instead of letting me go, he slapped me on my head so forcefully that for a moment I saw strange lights, though the tunnel was very dark.

  Blood was running from the top of my father’s head to his jaw and was dripping from his chin. He was slumped over and unconscious. The men handcuffed to him on either side tried to ease him into a sitting position.

  In a few moments, the woman was naked, cursing and spitting at the commander. He climbed on her. I closed my eyes. I was deeply ashamed to be seeing these things. She screamed piteously. When he had finished, he wiped the spit off his face with his sleeve, then stood up.

  “Don’t use all your energy on me, there are more coming,” he said with a laugh. As he spoke, three more thugs came up the tunnel to where we were being held. They were laughing, too.

  The other women wept in low voices. They knew that tomorrow night the same thing would happen to one of them. They should have been in their homes with their families. All that seemed so far away. The men closed their eyes, but they could still hear the sound of the woman’s cries.

  She continued cursing for six of them, her voice growing coarser and coarser. By the seventh man, she went quiet.

  They continued long into the night. After the last one had finished, a boy who was about eighteen came with a bucket of water and left it in front of the woman. She was unconscious.

  Later, five men whom I had not seen before came with sleepy eyes and guns hanging from their shoulders. One of them splashed the bucket of water on the woman. She took a deep breath and sat up, and then she looked around to find something to cover her body. All she saw were her torn, wet clothes. She covered herself as best she could, then put her head on her knees and wept.

  * * *

  One of the other guys bent down to unlock the men’s handcuffs and unlocked the padlocks. The other four were pointing their guns at the men and women, their fingers on their triggers. Once the locks were open, the captives started rubbing their wrists and ankles. I ran to my father, who had regained consciousness by then but was badly hurt.

  Suddenly, one of the captives jumped at the guard who was collecting the handcuffs and chain and knocked him onto the ground. The captive was on top, punching his opponent’s face with his right hand, trying to get his gun with his left hand. The other four captors pressed their backs against the tunnel wall, pointed their guns at us, and said, “If any of you move, we will kill you all.”

  One of them took a grenade out of his military waistcoat pocket and said, “This will be enough for all of you. Do not move!!”

  The captive kept struggling, but the guard under him managed to push his gun into the captive’s chest. Suddenly, we heard a loud gunshot. The captive’s face went pale; his eyes were wide open with horror, and his brow glistened with sweat. He raised himself up and looked at all of us, then dropped onto the guy under him.

  The guard on the ground struggled to get up. The other thugs had to help him. When they turned the victim on his back, there was a tiny hole right at his chest where his heart was. The exit wound was bigger than the entrance. The exit wound is always bigger than the entrance; this is something children in Kabul had come to know.

  I looked at my father. He made a motion with his eyes that told me, “Do not say anything.” Throughout the time we had been in the tunnel we had hardly talked at all, and never about what was happening to us. I was young, but old enough to understand that it was dangerous to speak.

  They half carried, half dragged the body out. One of them stood in front of us, pointing his gun at us. Nobody spoke. Everybody was staring at the bloodstains on the ground.

  Now there were sixteen of us.

  * * *

  Days passed. The routine was the same every day. The commander and his men used the women during the night in the presence of all of us, and forced the men to work as slaves in the day. The commander was always there, but the others changed every night. We never saw the same ones twice. Our food was a piece of bread with a glass of water three times a day, though twice we were given rice and lamb. Those who did not work hard were whipped like donkeys.

  I lost track of the days. I was very hungry, and feeling weak. I had hardly enough water to drink in all this time, and could barely walk.

  By the end of about two weeks, only seven men and two women were left besides us. The rest of the men had been killed by the commander, two I remember for refusing to work, one because he was too weak and sick. One of the women was let go because she cried so loudly and in such pain all day and all night the commander got fed up with her. Another woman was dragged outside after they had used her. We never saw her again.

  One day as we were starting to fill the buckets
with earth, a tall Hazara guy came to the tunnel to inspect the commander’s work. I turned my back, tried to make myself appear very busy in the dim light, and did not look at him.

  The commander was trying to be very nice to that tall man, but the tall man did not care and paid no attention to what the commander was saying. The tall man walked the length of the tunnel to see how far we had gone. He looked at his commander and said coldly, “You have done very little.”

  Instantly, I knew his voice.

  “Hey, Berar!” I shouted.

  He looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

  “This is Qais,” I said.

  He pointed a torch toward my face.

  “Qais jan, what are you doing here?” There was surprise in his voice as he spoke to me, using the title “jan,” a sign of affection and respect.

  “I didn’t come here by myself. My father and I were brought here. To work like slaves. Berar jan, I’m very, very thirsty, but I am not allowed to drink water at work time,” I said. “Please, can I have something to drink?”

  “Whose order is that?” he asked me, as he knelt in front of me.

  “This man’s,” I said wearily as I pointed at the commander.

  “How do you expect people to work for you if you do not give them enough water? You don’t buy water, do you?” he said.

  “No, sir,” the commander said, staring at his feet like a bad child.

  “What is ‘No, sir’? Get the hell out of my sight! Bring some water, for God’s sake,” he shouted, and the commander hurried off.

  Berar asked me for how long I had been working there. I said for maybe two weeks. Then he asked me what I had been eating. I told him. I also told him about the commander and his men having sex with the women in front of us, and about killing the men.

  Berar put his hand on my mouth, closed his eyes, and said, “Stop, stop, it is enough.” He was silent for a moment and then he shouted, “Stop working, please!” He stood up, and the men stopped shoveling, wondering what was happening.