99 Nights in Logar

by Jamil Jan Kochai

  “Marwand,” he said, noor shining out from his skin, “this is for you.” And he handed me a Quran wrapped up in shimmery blue linen. “That’s to be read,” he continued. “Don’t put it up on your shelf expecting it to protect you, to love you, without you loving it back, you understand?”

  I said that I did, and he smiled at me with a mouth of perfectly white teeth, then he touched my face, my jaw, and walked away just as Rahmutallah Maamaa came up to me, asking if we found Shagha. When I told him we hadn’t, Rahmutallah went to gather Malang, who was quietly arguing with a bunch of white-bearded hajis about the negative side effects of too much Coca-Cola. Then, just before we left, we heard one of the last announcements made by the imam. It was about a mysterious series of attacks that had left some of the local livestock maimed and wounded and without their hooves.

  “Be wary, brothers,” the imam concluded, “for the Signs are apparent. May you be in Allah’s hands.”

  And so we left.

  After we dropped off Malang and picked up Moor and Nabeela, we rode back to Moor’s compound, and the whole drive there Moor whispered to Nabeela in the back seat. I got to sit up front with Rahmutallah Maamaa, and I wanted to ask him if he thought Budabash was the one eating those animals, but he was so focused on the road or on his thoughts, he didn’t even think to ask me about the Quran I had in my lap.

  I looked out the window of the Corolla and rubbed the gauze forever clinging to the stump of my torn finger, and it was as if all the trees and the grain and even the dust from the roads were drawing in toward me. Budabash was still out there.

  He was still alive.

  On the Fifty-Seventh Day

  When I got back to the compound that day, the first thing I noticed were the wooden poles installed just outside the big green gate. The laborers had only begun their work, so the poles stood naked on the path: no conductors or wires. Only wood and earth and a promise of things to come.

  I rushed into the courtyard, searching for my little maamaas, and found them in the den.

  First, I asked about the poles.

  Turned out that Abdul-Abdul did have some sway with the local government, and according to Gul, by the end of the year Moor’s house was going to be the first compound in Naw’e Kaleh with running electricity.

  “Our brother came through,” he said, as though he’d expected it all along.

  Next, I told them the story of Malang’s hooves and the imam’s warning.

  “Malang?” Dawood said. “Your hash-head cousin?”

  If it weren’t for the fact that Dawood had hulked up in the short few days I was gone, I might have defended my cousin’s reputation, but Dawood had grown at least four inches and put on probably thirty pounds. His face was all bruised up too because Ruhollah had been kicking his ass every time he caught him sneaking food between meals. Apparently, he kept on sneaking and filling himself up whenever he got the chance. Beating or no beating. Stealing or screaming. Whatever it took. Wallah, he was getting kind of scary.

  “No offense, Marwand,” Gul said, “but I’m pretty sure Malang has seen much weirder sights than hobbled sheep on his adventures. We got bigger problems to deal with.”

  See, ever since Gul got officially engaged to the butcher’s daughter, he’d been kicking ass in the classroom, studying between chores, acing all his exams, and staying out of trouble. No more fistfights. No more back talk. No more tardiness or absences or pranks or fun. Everyone was thrilled with Gul’s sudden change of habit. Including Abdul-Abdul, who’d been visiting the compound more often to check on the power lines and for the sake, he claimed, of Nabeela’s wedding. In fact, Abdul-Abdul was so happy with Gul’s recent success, he went ahead and got him an early wedding present: a small Chinese motorcycle.

  But Abo wasn’t about to let her fourteen-year-old son—engaged or not, good grades or not, balls dropped or not—ride the roads of Logar, by himself, on a motorcycle like some sort of a bandit. She wanted it gone immediately. Abdul-Abdul refused to return it, and Baba and Rahmutallah Maamaa weren’t willing to throw away good money. So they decided to keep it locked up in the tool room until they could find a buyer. Meanwhile, Abo refused to speak to her husband or any of her sons until the bike was gone. Gul said he was on the verge of getting her to forgive him for falling in love, but now the issue of the bike, which he never wanted in the first place, had brought him back to square one with his mom.

  Dawood had his own problems: as Gul’s grades got better, his plummeted. He failed his big English exam, swearing all the words were in his head, but just as soon as he sat down in front of that blank piece of paper, with his pencil and his brain, this pop pop pop started going off in his head, and he couldn’t focus on anything except for the scent of white flowers.

  “I can’t smell anything else,” Dawood said. “Even when I eat.”

  So from one side Ruhollah was kicking his ass for sneaking food and from the other Rahmutallah was kicking his ass for failing classes. To make matters worse, Abdul-Abdul came by one evening, cigarette in his teeth, an envelope of cash in the pocket of his army fatigues, and, maybe noticing how big Dawood had gotten, told him not to worry about school anymore because he’d hook his little brother up with a cushy job in the military just as soon as he turned sixteen.

  When Rahmutallah found out about Dawood’s new plan, he was about to kick Dawood’s ass, but both Ruhollah and Abdul-Abdul got between the oldest and the youngest of the brothers, arguing that Dawood didn’t have the brains for school and that there were worse things than being a soldier. Apparently, Rahmutallah had looked upon his three little brothers, all teamed up against him, his plans, his dreams, and he let it go. He hadn’t kicked anyone’s ass since. Dawood was all torn about it.

  “It’s like,” Dawood said, almost about to sob, “he doesn’t think I’m worth whupping anymore.”

  I made a comment about Abdul-Abdul always ruining things and Dawood calmly told me to shut the fuck up.

  “Listen, Marwand,” Gul said, “you’re our buddy and our blood, but Abdul-Abdul is our brother, so you need to keep his name out of your mouth. You understand?”

  I did, but I was still pissed, so I walked out of the den and into the courtyard, where all the ladies were still busy with the preparations for the wedding. Zia’s six sisters were grooming the flower bushes, forever sweeping the petals and stringing them together into decorations for the walls and the doorways in the courtyard. Most of my khalas were in the beranda, sewing and resewing the three different wedding dresses Nabeela planned to wear for the ceremony. Nabeela led the charge in that department, instructing her sisters, including Moor and Hawa Khala, on what exact patterns and colors and floral decorations she wanted on each dress. Moor advised Nabeela to go subtler with the designs, more traditional, but Nabeela wasn’t having that.

  “This one day,” she said. “This one day I’m going to shine out. After that, my sweet sisters, I’ll fall back into line, I swear to God I will. Besides, think of all the guests waiting to see my new designs. They’ll be customers soon enough.”

  So Moor let Nabeela have her way.

  First dress was bright purple with these fluffy sleeves, a shimmering—nearly see-through—shawl, and a skirt as big and as billowing as a Kochi dress. Her second dress was the Kochi design she’d come up with on her own and was still all the rage up in Kabul. The final dress she wouldn’t show anyone, especially Abo, because apparently it was going to be white.

  As I stood by the well, pretending to draw water, Abo called me into the beranda. She sat in her corner, Moor right next to her, and they both made some room for me to sit in between them. After I took my seat, Abo held up my chin and examined my face.

  “Your father been working you?” she said.

  I nodded my chin in her palm while Moor took up my right hand, unfolded the gauze, and inspected my finger, which, she noted, wasn’t healing very well.

/>   “And look how dark your father has made you so soon before the wedding,” she said.

  Moor and all her sisters and even some of the younger girls were being real careful about staying in the sun too long. Nabeela, especially, had gotten into the habit of lathering her skin with this white paste she bought in Kabul.

  “How is your seasickness?” Abo asked me.

  “It comes and goes.”

  “Did you take the remedy I made you?”

  “I’m sorry, Abo, I left all the bottles at Agha’s house, so I don’t think I can take it, but the seasickness is not so bad. I get a little dizzy, but I hardly notice it anymore.”

  “Don’t worry,” Moor said, “I remembered to grab the bottles. They’re in my purse in the guest room. Why don’t you go and grab one.”

  I went to the guest room and took up the bottle and sloshed the potion around, which had the same texture as soft mud. When I opened the cap and smelled the concoction itself, I gagged so hard I couldn’t take another sniff. Instead of drinking my medicine, I snuck into the washroom and dumped it all into the drain. Back in the beranda, I handed the empty bottle to Abo, almost sure she was going to catch me in my lie.

  Without smiling, she kissed my forehead. “Inshallah,” she said, “you will be well.”

  After I tricked Abo, I went to look for Zia and found him in his parents’ room, reading his Quran. He’d gotten so skinny in the past few days I almost didn’t spot him where he sat in a corner of the room, with just enough light to read his surahs.

  At first, he didn’t want to hear about my time at Agha’s house, about the mutilated sheep, but when I showed him my new Quran with the shimmery blue cover, telling him it was a gift, telling him I’d bought it just for him in the markets in Kabul, I caught his attention. He seemed to be touched by the gesture. But when he actually opened the Quran and saw what was inside, he closed his eyes, handed me back the holy book, and asked me, very quietly, to please please please please please please please leave the room.

  So I did.

  On my way out, I opened the Book and saw what Zia saw inside, what Jawed the Thief—dressed up as a Sufi in the mosque—had done to the word of God. In the center of the pages of the Quran was my Coolpix. The Thief had cut out the square of a hole to perfectly (secretly) fit the camera inside. It lay there, nestled within the tatters of the pages, with the lens facing up.

  I stared at myself in the lens and wondered where else I might have been talking to the Thief without knowing it, and I became suspicious of all my memories, of all the people I met on the road, of all things I thought, and then I closed the Book, leaving the camera inside, and I went to hide it in one of my bags because I didn’t know how you were supposed to dispose of a damaged Quran. I heard from Gul that the American soldiers at one of the nearby bases had gotten together and pissed on a whole stack of Qurans because one of their buddies got killed. They took pictures too. And while I wondered what they did with those Books, Moor called me in for dinner.

  Abdul-Abdul arrived just before Maghrib and sat where Agha usually did, folding his long legs and filling the beranda to its max. We all got together to eat chicken shorwa, diced tomatoes, and onions, which I shared in a bowl with my brothers and barely touched because the smell of it made me nauseated.

  I sat across from Dawood and Zia, who were sharing their own bowl. Zia broke his daily fast with a date and a glass of water and hardly touched his shorwa. Dawood devoured bowl after bowl. He ate with his mouth open, without hardly chewing, without even savoring the taste, but his eyes still seemed to glaze over with the joy of the meal. Shorwa was the one dish no one faulted Dawood for overeating since it was basically just bread and broth. Plus, he didn’t have to fight for portions. Zia hardly ate.

  Though (as far as I knew) Rahmutallah didn’t tell Zia to stop fasting, his eyes were on him the whole dinner. Here was the boy he always wanted. His future qari, his soon-to-be sheikh, praying and fasting and becoming so holy it was eating him all up. Even Hawa Khala made saat to Zia only twice before moving on. I’m sure they were worried in secret, but no one could condemn Zia for his devotion to Allah. He was all that they had.

  Throughout dinner, Zia didn’t even glance my way.

  On the men’s side of the beranda, Abdul-Abdul and Ruhollah discussed the development of the concrete road sneaking into Naw’e Kaleh. Abdul-Abdul noted that for the first time in six months it was actually making progress. “At this pace,” he claimed, “in a few years we’ll have power lines running throughout the whole village. No more generators or lanterns, and when the insurgency is finally blotted, our land will be worth a fortune.”

  Rahmutallah and Baba chatted in Farsi about what I thought were the mutilations occurring across the village. But they also might have been discussing the migration of birds or the integration of harvesting techniques or Zia’s hunger. I wasn’t sure.

  On the other side of the beranda, Nabeela and her sisters planned dance routines for the wedding. Apparently, Sadaf and Shireen had choreographed a whole number inspired by a Bollywood flick, but they still didn’t know if Gul would be able to organize an attan with all of the younger guys in the family. Everyone expected me to take part in the attan since they assumed Shagha’s son would know how to dance.

  See, Agha had a reputation stretching from Naw’e Kaleh to Peshawar to Birmingham to Fremont to West Sac to LA for his skills as a dancer. He used to attan as a kid at all the local weddings, and because there was no war then, no occupation, no bombings, the weddings were aplenty and the funerals so few that Agha had the chance to practice whenever he wanted. He had small feet and light hands, a beautiful head of long hair, and, most important of all, the unrepentant swagger and mock bravado that all great attan men need. His spins were violent and quick, but the turning of his hands was graceful, and he kept his neck on a swivel, bobbing, twisting, cutting back and forth with the rhythm of the drums.

  Agha arrived at Moor’s compound a few minutes into dinner, but Moor and her family hadn’t expected him—at least they claimed they hadn’t—so when Agha walked up to the beranda and saw there wasn’t anywhere for him to sit, he must have felt slighted.

  Abdul-Abdul and Ruhollah both got up immediately to give him their spots, but Agha didn’t even acknowledge them. He pulled up a chair just outside the beranda and was set on eating in the courtyard.

  “I don’t need to bother anyone,” he said. “I’ll eat right here.”

  Rahmutallah Maamaa had joined his brothers in their stand.

  “If you don’t sit down right now,” Agha said, “Wallah, I will leave.”

  The men tried to plead with him, begging Agha not to shame them for eating without him, for not waiting.

  “What shame?” Agha said. “Sit where you sit and I’ll sit here and we’ll all eat.”

  At this point, all of the ladies were also pleading with Agha. Well, all of the ladies except for Abo, who was oddly quiet throughout dinner, and Moor, who hadn’t said a word since Agha arrived, even though it was probably her apology he wanted to hear the most. In the end, Agha sat down with us only after Abdul-Abdul and Ruhollah left.

  Before dinner was through, I snuck out of the beranda and crept in the dark of the courtyard until I got to the guest room, where I supposed that Moor and Agha would be having their argument about me and my brothers. Hiding behind a stack of toshaks in a corner of the room, I waited for my parents.

  Agha came first. He lit a lamp and smoked by the window, looking out onto the courtyard. He wore a white kameez on account of the Jumu’ah prayers, and the light of the lamp reflected off his clothes in a way that made him seem holy or ghostly. I tried not to breathe too much, worried that the stink of the smoke might make me cough.

  When Moor arrived, she sat near Agha, by the window’s sill, and didn’t speak.

  The lamp sat in between them. Its fire was long and thin and did not flicke
r.

  To start, Agha asked Moor why she decided to bring the boys back to her father’s compound without consulting him, and in response, Moor asked Agha why Malang was acting as our babysitter.

  Neither of them yelled. In general, my parents didn’t raise their voices or curse each other when they fought, especially not in the compound, where every word seemed to echo into every room. On occasion, Agha got mad and he broke a plate or he slammed his fist through a glass table, but never in his life—I mean as far as I knew—did Agha ever hit Moor. While all of my buddies’ fathers used to beat on their moms (you’d hear about it over the great Afghan gossip line), I was the only one I knew who didn’t have to hide that sin.

  “You know Marwand has been acting up ever since he got here, leading the boys out on that chase,” Moor said.

  “Marwand didn’t lead anyone.”

  “He said that he did.”

  “And he was lying. Boys that age are made to lie. It was either Gul or Dawood that led them out. Your brothers are the only ones with the balls.”

  “Again with my brothers.”

  “Right, again with your brothers. The spy keeps coming back every other day with his cash and his bullshit: buying a fourteen-year-old a motorcycle. Bragging about his military connections. Now he’s going to get Dawood mixed up into it?”

  “Rahmutallah won’t let him.”

  “Like with Ruhollah? He was a good boy before he started helping the Americans.”

  “He’s still good.”

  “You know what they do at those bases?”

  “I know.”

  “With the booze and the heroin and the chai boys?”

  “I know.”

  “So what then?”

  “They have to eat.”

  “So they’ll eat flesh?”

  Moor didn’t say anything. She looked out the window and then back into the room, and, Wallah, for a good five seconds she stared right into the corner of the room where I hid. The lamp in between them brightened Moor’s skin. While Gwora and Mirwais inherited Moor’s light complexion, I became dark like my father.