SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  Abdul Rahman, having heard the last part of Ejaz’s response, added the obvious additional consequence. “It also means the enemy’s forced us to focus on these things, denying us the ability to organize any new attacks on them. That’ll allow them to build up forces and attack us again,” he sighed.

  Rapid repair of the fields was essential if wheat was to be planted, assuming that enough grain could even be spared. Failing that, they would have to increase the space allocated to poppy and use the cash from that to buy wheat. Poppy planting could be delayed until after necessary field repairs, up to late October or even early November. However, none of this would supplant the grain reserves lost in the attack.

  Abdul Latif was the youngest member of the village jirga. The jirga’s involvement was clearly necessary on this occasion as virtually everyone was affected. Hurriedly, they met and a plan emerged that required the villagers to organize into three groups. As this was a matter of survival, everyone would have to make a contribution. The first group was to head up to the higher mountain villages of Takhto, Showlghar, Baro, and Chenar and persuade each of them to sell about a quarter to a third of their reserves to the Laghar Juy delegation. The second group was to repair the fields and ready them for planting. The third would be engaged in reconstruction. Meanwhile, any family that had lost its home would have to be housed by a family with an intact one until a replacement could be built, as had already been arranged within Abdul Latif’s extended family.

  Thankfully, the enemy had no capacity to shut off the main stream running through the village, providing irrigation as well as the water needed for making bricks, so a key commodity was still plentifully available. Sikander was assigned to the rebuilding group along with Saleem and several other young men. The women and girls were to help in forming and drying the bricks.

  Abdul Latif’s sons were assigned to field repair while he himself led the delegation to secure grain from the mountain villages. Ejaz accompanied him along with six other men. Gathering as many pack mules as they could, they set off for the hills within the day.

  The following weeks were filled with toil. For Sikander and Saleem their first order of business was to cut a channel, about eighty meters long, from the village stream to a point close to Abdul Latif’s home site. At that location, Noor and Rabia took the mud from the edge of the channel and mixed it with chopped straw or mule hair. The mixture was poured and tamped down into a simple wooden mold and left out in the sun. Once the mud started to dry, the mold would be removed and the resulting brick left to dry out completely over several days. When the bricks were sufficiently hardened, it was down to Sikander and Saleem to put up the walls as close to their original position as possible.

  Sikander spent considerable time with Razya, Saleem, Rabia, and Noor as the reconstruction progressed. Rabia was a quick-witted girl, a fact that had become increasingly apparent to Sikander given their new proximity to each other. Being at such close quarters however, also added to the risk of quarrels and Rabia often got into minor spats with Saleem. On such occasions, Sikander was too available to ignore when it came to adjudication. Rabia could always make a compelling case, but Sikander was especially taken by her seemingly effortless ability to cover the entire range from caustic to charming within a single argument.

  Despite his role as judge in these matters, it wasn’t uncommon for Sikander himself to be drawn into argument with Rabia, especially when his judgments were unfavorable to her. From time to time, sensing he was losing the argument, he would tease her with derisions delivered in Urdu or English while smirking at her momentary perplexion, an expression that was quickly dismissed by her certainty that she’d been insulted. She would glower, or wear a playfully evil smile while narrowing her eyes as her mind indulged in fantasies of retribution, sometimes turning them into plans.

  On one occasion, after spending four hours in the sun molding bricks then lugging them in their damp, heavy state to add to a row waiting to dry, Rabia took a moment to rest.

  Just then, Sikander came along with his crude barrow to bring a handful of dry ones back with him to the wall that he and Saleem were working on. In one of the drying rows he noticed a soggy, misshapen brick, which deteriorated even more when he picked it up.

  “What’s this, Rabia?” Sikander asked, impishly.

  “I think you can see what it is, Sikander,” she retorted.

  “Hm…maybe I can get you to see it too!” Sikander picked away a lump of mud from the brick’s corner and lobbed it at her. Rabia’s left cheek and nose caught the bulk of the projectile.

  “Sikander!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet. Wiping away the offending mud she gave the grinning Sikander a venomous glare. Running after him in her exhausted state would be futile. Guile, of which she had plenty, would have to be employed and she began immediately planning her badal.

  A few days later, Rabia decided to leave the straw and hair out of the brick-making mud and to place the seemingly dried bricks among the fully dried pile. None the wiser, Sikander and Saleem managed to build at least five courses of a wall and were standing back as they sometimes did to take a rest while admiring their work. Rabia, with a gleam in her eye, joined in, feigning her own admiration, when the weight of the wall initially caused an ominous bowing out of the freshly laid bricks, which was followed moments later by their total collapse into a pile of mud crumble.

  The expressions were priceless: Horror, puzzlement, and dawning understanding flowed across the young men’s faces in succession, assisted in the latter case by a now unrestrainable, smirking Rabia. Unable to contain herself any longer, she pulled out from behind her back a wad of straw, making sure they could see it as she burst out laughing before dashing away. They immediately gave chase.

  Saleem was genuinely mad at her, at least briefly. He had been the “innocent” bystander on this occasion. Sikander, the true target, could see the humor, however, and once he was past the issue of the wasted effort, he had to laugh. In these somber times, such humor was itself of value, so he was inclined to let her go with a simple admonishment about the seriousness of the reconstruction effort. But first she had to be caught, which, although a foregone conclusion, was still no easy task.

  When they finally did catch her, feeling none of Sikander’s leniency, Saleem plucked her right ear, and gripping it with cautionary zeal, he marched her back home. Sikander discreetly remained in the background as Saleem presented his case to his mother and Razya. Noor admonished her daughter appropriately. Privately, she had to admit to being pleased that Rabia was taking on more of a personality and entertaining herself in customary, girlish manner. Rabia had spent several months coming to terms with the passing of her father and it was time for her true personality to blossom. Noor noted that Rabia would be about seventeen now. Though the precise date was uncertain, she knew that her daughter had been born after the planting season in 1969.

  Rabia had studied at school until the end of July. She was one of the more accomplished students at the local village school and it was her father’s wish that she become a doctor. With him now a shaheed, she promised herself to strive to fulfill his wish. But the school had since been demolished by rocket fire and hadn’t been reconstructed, given the difficulty in obtaining anyone to teach under such circumstances.

  When she wasn’t fighting or arguing with Sikander, Rabia would ask him about life in Pakistan, and school was often the subject.

  Once, as the three of them were resting after several hours of construction work, Rabia began probing. “How did you come and go to school, Sikander?”

  “We’d walk, usually.”

  “Hm…how many boys were there? How many in your class?”

  “For the school? I’m not sure. Probably over four hundred. We’d be in classes of between fifteen and twenty and study all kinds of subjects.”

  “Was there a favorite?”

  “I’d say English…geography, maybe.” Sikander shrugged. “I like reading English books. Our English t
eacher had a lot of material on America.” Sikander recalled his dreams of going to America; dreams whose realization now seemed more remote than ever.

  About as interesting to Rabia as school was the way in which people got around in Pakistan. She knew about all the modern modes of transportation but had never experienced anything other than the mule and the horse, except for one brief ride with her late father in a captured old Russian vehicle. “What about cars?” she asked. “How do you feel traveling in them? Isn’t it bumpy when you go so fast?”

  Sikander patiently answered her questions, all the while increasing her appetite for more information until it was time to get back to work, finish the meal, or resume whatever else had been pressing at the time.

  Rabia was sufficiently aware of the outside world to have more than a smattering of knowledge, but it was unique for a villager like her to have direct access to a person who had actually lived elsewhere. He would tell her about the kind of things he had learned, and enjoyed playing English teacher, translating for her the names of the everyday objects in their environment.

  After almost three weeks, Abdul Latif and Ejaz returned from the hills. The glow on Ejaz’s face betrayed the evident need to have traveled farther back into the mountains—clearly as far as Hinna’s village. Indeed, Abdul Latif brought back with him a few simple gifts for Noor and her family, as well as confirmation of preferred dates for the wedding. Five days later, Abdul Latif’s home was complete. It was built slightly larger than before on account of Sikander’s presence, and the boys lost no opportunity to make other minor improvements that might ease their living.

  Now well supplied with seed, their fields repaired, and their homes rebuilt, the people of Laghar Juy could continue with a semblance of normality. There was still less grain than required for planting, but enough for an average winter’s flour-making. They would have to plant poppy. Allowing the repaired fields to go fallow for want of wheat grain would be a waste.

  With the family in its new quarters, Sikander had more time on his hands, and though he pitched in like everyone else with the planting, he often took the time to stroll into the southern and higher elevations of the village and look away from it toward the distant mountains. He wondered what life might be like back in Hayatabad barely a month after he’d left his family. He was homesick.

  Chapter 6

  Applecross

  BY THE END OF SEPTEMBER most of the homes in Laghar Juy had been repaired or rebuilt. The villagers were settling in for a normal winter. In the lower elevations the weather was usually mild, but higher up it could get harsh, especially during the prolonged period in the day when this close to the mountains, the sun was blocked by them. Abdul Latif imagined that once again, as in prior years, the fight with the Soviets and the DRA would wind down, as the weather would inhibit any adventurous initiatives by either side. He was wrong.

  In the first week of October, Aamir and Yassir Khan were back with more weapons to be stockpiled for the offensives that would follow the break in the weather next spring. As before, having visited Yaqub Khan, they brought word that all preparations were underway for a wedding in late February, a time that could usually be relied upon for good weather. With Noor having agreed to the date, a modest level of preparation became a fact of life in her household. Keenly interested in every aspect of her brother’s soon-to-be big event, Rabia was eager to lay eyes on the girl who was destined to be her sister-in-law.

  As was customary, Aamir and Yassir were afforded all the hospitality demanded by melmasthia. They were put up in Abdul Latif’s house and Sikander and Abdul Majeed were asked to bunk over at Noor’s place for the few days the guests would be staying.

  The following day, October 5, Noor invited Abdul Latif and his family to dine with hers and to bring the visitors with them. Everyone sat on the floor in the usual cross-legged style, and the meal was served on a cloth placed over the durree in her main room. While Rabia, Noor, and Razya served the meal, the men talked about the war and what might eventually transpire.

  “Brother Abdul Latif, your role in devising the attack strategy on the tanks last month was reported by Jalaluddin to Younus Khalis and stories of your courage and intelligence have spread around among the mujahideen,” gushed Aamir.

  Abdul Latif grinned modestly as he customarily declared “Alhamdulillah.”

  “Indeed,” said Yassir, “the RPG technique has been noted, brother, and the men you trained have been training other men.”

  “I can’t say I invented it, but I’d heard of it being used by Massoud’s people up in the Panjshir area, though I hadn’t seen it in action before I tried it myself. But if we’re to get really serious, I know the Americans have started sending Stingers into Afghanistan, alhamdulillah. I hope we start seeing them soon in Laghar Juy.”

  The two men exchanged knowing glances as Abdul Latif focused on forming a mouthful of rice and lentils in his hand. Sikander watched intently, and was intrigued by the level of understanding that seemed to cross the space between the visitors.

  “We…uh…we’ve heard the same, about Stingers being used by Hekmatyar’s men, and at the end of last month there was a spectacular success, which downed three shaytan-arbas in a single skirmish,” noted Yassir.

  “Really?” asked Abdul Latif. “So? What about us? What have you heard about our getting these weapons, Brother Yassir?”

  “As far as we’ve heard, the Pakistanis have been trained in their use and are training Hekmatyar’s men right now. In fact, some ISI people have been in America this past summer to be trained.”

  “W’Allahi we have to get our young men skilled in their use!” Abdul Latif declared impatiently. After dinner, the men arose and assisted by a pitcher of water poured by Rabia, washed their hands outside the house.

  “It’s a pleasant evening outside. Yassir and I are going for a stroll. Brother Abdul Latif, we’ll go straight back to your place when we’re done,” Aamir said.

  “Go ahead. We’ll be along shortly.” Abdul Latif replied.

  Abdul Latif, his wife, and Abdul Rahman assisted Noor and her family to clean up, and as soon as they were done, left for home. Meanwhile, Sikander needed to go out to relieve himself after the meal, intending to return to Abdul Latif’s when he was done. As he was leaving the latrine, he was about to turn in that direction when something he hadn’t heard in quite a while, arrested his footsteps—English.

  “…to make sure Haqqani’s people also get the missiles and get trained.”

  “Yeah, we’ll need to be bloody careful selecting the men. There’s only going to be a few weapons initially and we don’t have a lot of time. Do you think Abdul Latif will make a good trainee?”

  “He might, but there’ll be a god-awful problem in this area if we take him away for that long. He has to stay. He’s the only one who can coordinate their defenses if the Russians come back too quickly.”

  The moon was new that night and had long since set, but with the dim flicker of lamplight leaking through from the window openings of a few nearby houses, Sikander could just make out Aamir and Yassir’s silhouettes. Seeing the men was unnecessary, however. Sikander had already recognized their inadequately soft voices. He was stunned. As he stood transfixed, far from any lamplight, the men rounded the back corner of Noor’s house, not far from the latrine. Sikander stepped into the dim light coming from the kitchen window to confront them but all he could think of was to mutter, “English,” in surprised curiosity.

  Yassir and Aamir exchanged glances, before locking eyes with Sikander. Until now they hadn’t heard him speak English. He had never had the need except on isolated occasions, like teaching Rabia a few words; something they had never witnessed. Having always assumed from their brief interactions that Sikander was a local, they hadn’t thought to consider his possible grasp of their native tongue.

  But their cover had been compromised and there was no point in trying to hide the truth now—at least not all of it. “Sikander, I—I’m Andrew, and this
is Simon. We’re British military officers and we’ve been traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan for the last several weeks. We’ve been supplying you mujahideen and we’re here to help. But it’s important that we don’t get caught, so…we’ve adopted these disguises, and as you can tell, we’re also trained to be fluent in Pashto.”

  Sikander sputtered in his own English, “I’m… I don’t know what to say. I’m so surprised to see you speaking like Pathans and yet be—British soldiers? What will you do now?”

  Simon responded: “We should probably discuss this with Abdul Latif, don’t you think?”

  Still shocked, Sikander nodded and motioned to the two men to walk on in front of him. Though he could hear them discussing what he was sure must have been their options, he couldn’t be certain of the details. Still, having decided that there was probably no danger, he was pleased he’d be recognized for having exposed the two of them.

  They arrived at Abdul Latif’s house in short order. Abdul Latif greeted them into the main room but quizzed Sikander on why he was with them.

  “Brother, er… Aamir and Yassir have something…something important to tell you,” answered Sikander.

  “Yes, yes all right,” Abdul Latif replied as he called out to his wife. “Razya! Make three more chais.” She called back her acknowledgement from the rear of the house. While his two sons sat on their durree, with their backs against the wall, eyelids heavy after the meal, Abdul Latif unraveled his turban to relax, stepping over to his newly replaced metal cabinet to put it away.

  “Brother Abdul Latif,” started Aamir, “please sit down. We need to tell you something important.”

  The earnestness in Aamir’s voice caught Abdul Latif’s attention and he scrutinized his guest quizzically before turning to the others as he sat down on the durree. The two British officers began by explaining their true identities, or at least the names they were using. Puzzled, Abdul Latif looked at his two sons, then at Sikander, and back to the two men, as if fishing for someone in the room who could make sense of this.