Born Under a Million Shadows (22 page)

“Shit,” replied my friend. “It must have been a hell of a bad joke.”

“Yeah, it was,” I admitted.

For the next three hours Spandi and I talked about the possibility of me being a dead man walking and whether my attack on his boss would be bad for Spandi’s business. We both agreed, with black hearts, that I should look for somewhere new to live and Spandi should find another job.

“There are some empty flats around here that we could hide you in, and I can bring you food once or twice a day while I look for something more permanent,” Spandi suggested, warming to the idea after his initial shock and despair at the thought of having to find a new can of herbs. “You’ll need a gun as well.”

“I don’t know how to use a gun,” I said, frightened but excited by the thought.

“How hard can it be? We’re Afghans; it probably comes more naturally than riding a bike.”

“My bike!” I shouted, suddenly remembering I’d left it with its wheels spinning somewhere in Wazir as I launched my attack. “I forgot it when I ran off.”

“Damn shame,” Spandi sympathized, patting me on the shoulder. “That was a fine bike.”

“Maybe I should go back and look for it.”

Spandi shrugged. “You’ll need wheels,” he admitted. “I should also say good-bye to my mother,” I added, thinking of her for the first time since I’d punched Haji Khan in public and imagining her sadness as the last of her children left her.

“Haji Khan might be watching the house,” Spandi warned. “Maybe you should wait until it is dark . . . and we’ve got you a gun.”

“And how long will that take?”

“I don’t know,” Spandi admitted. “I’ve never tried to get a gun before.”

“No, I’ll have to risk it,” I decided, getting to my feet, my mother’s face now the only picture in my mind.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Spandi asked, which I thought was kind of him.

“No,” I told him after thinking about it a short while. “I’ll move faster alone. Besides, Haji Khan might be looking for you too because you’re a friend of mine.”

“Shit! I never thought of that.” Spandi got to his feet. “Do you think I should hide too?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It might be a good idea.”

It
was practically dark when I made my way back to Wazir Akbar Khan. Now that I was alone, my bravery had disappeared, so I walked home frightened to the point of one hundred percent scared—ducking into the shadows every time a Land Cruiser came into view, thinking one of them might belong to Haji Khan and imagining it pulling up close to me with its window rolled down so that someone could shoot me in the head.

As I turned the corner into our street, the fear that had been itching at the surface of my skin took on the life of a giant when I saw his three Land Cruisers parked outside the house.

I immediately spun on my feet to run away from the ambush and certain death—and straight into the legs of Ismerai.

“Whay!” he grunted, grabbing me by the shoulders.

“Get off me! Get off me!” I shouted, fighting at the massive hands now trying to hold me. “Help! He’s going to murder me!” I screamed, and a handful of people stopped what they were doing to watch Ismerai carry out his crime.

“Don’t be stupid!” Ismerai barked in my ear. “Nobody’s trying to murder you!”

“Yeah, not while everyone’s looking you’re not! Help! Murderer!”

Ismerai shook my body roughly, making my eyes bounce sorely in my head and bringing me to a stop.

“Listen to me! Listen to me, now!” he ordered. “We were worried about you, Fawad. All of us were, and that includes Haji Khan. He sent me to Pir Hederi’s shop to look for you.”

“Yeah, to find me and kill me!” I interrupted, though with less strength than before as Ismerai’s words began to walk around my brain, looking for a place to stay.

“Not to kill you, to bring you home. That’s all, Fawad. We just want you home.”

I stopped struggling and looked hard into Ismerai’s eyes. They didn’t look like the eyes of a killer. They looked like the eyes of a man who liked to tell jokes and smoke hashish.

“Honestly, son. Nobody is angry with you. We’re worried, that’s all. It’s been a shock for all of us.”

I looked at him again, searching his face for any signs of a trap. “Okay,” I said finally, deciding he was probably telling the truth. Still, a boy can’t be too careful, and as he took me by the hand I turned to the people still hanging around us and shouted, “If I’m dead tomorrow, he did it!”

“For the love of God,” Ismerai hissed, pulling me away.

And I let him drag me home.

As we walked past the guards, one of whom saluted as I approached, and through the gate of the house, the first thing I saw was my bike leaning against the wall. Haji Khan must have brought it with him after I ran away from Wazir.

The second thing I saw was the worried face of my mother.

Ismerai let her hug me and whisper a few words that melted together in a dozen ways to say “Don’t worry, son.” He then asked her to bring us some tea and led me away into the garden.

There was no sign of Haji Khan, but as his uncle was here as well as his army of guards, I guessed he must be upstairs
with Georgie, no doubt planting more false promises into her already broken head.

Inviting me to sit first, Ismerai settled into the seat opposite me and lit up one of his cigarettes. His face looked sadder and older than I remembered, his eyes becoming slowly pinched by time and heavy lines.

“He does love her, Fawad.”

Ismerai looked at me as he spoke, but I said nothing because I didn’t believe him.

“I know you probably don’t believe me right now,” he continued, “but it’s true. I’ve known Haji Khan for most of my life. We played as children, we fought as men, and we’ve both known and understood love.”

“Then why does he never phone her, Ismerai?” I could hear the sound of tears breaking in my voice as worry, and relief at not being killed, tugged at the bottom of my throat. “Why does he make her so unhappy that her baby died and she can’t eat anymore? Why?”

Ismerai sighed, releasing the smoke from between his lips, as my mother arrived with the tea. After saying his thanks, he waited for her to walk away before answering. “You know our culture, son. This is not the West, where men and women live their lives as one person. We live in a society of men, where the women wait indoors and look after the family. The men aren’t used to answering to women, and they’re certainly not used to checking in with them either. And though Haji is a freethinker and he knows the ways of the West, he is still an Afghan man. And he is too old to change that part of him now, even if he wanted to, even for a woman like Georgie. And even though Georgie is like a member of our family and she knows our ways as good as anyone, she is still a foreigner and her heart and her expectations remain from her own country.”

“But she tries so hard . . . ,” I said, feeling the need to defend her.

“I know she does, son. We all realize Georgie makes sacrifices for Haji, and her respect for him makes her the person she is and the person we love. But although we know she stays inside the house more than other foreigners and she takes care of herself more than other Western women who drink and party here like it is Europe, she is still a world away from us and always will be. Every time Haji spends evenings with Georgie, every time she comes to his house, he takes a risk. He also commits a terrible sin that rests heavy in his heart for days after. The fact is that people talk, Fawad, and when you’re a man whose standing in the community is as important as Haji’s, talk is dangerous. It is not something that can be easily ignored. Power is a difficult balance of wealth, honor, and respect. If you lose just one of these elements, you risk losing it all.”

“So he’s scared of losing his power and his money, then? That’s what you’re saying. That’s how much Haji Khan loves Georgie?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Ismerai corrected, taking up his tea and blowing hard, which isn’t really allowed in Islam because of the germs. “Haji loves Georgie. But what can he really give her? And what can she give him? No, what they should have done a long time ago is give each other up, but they were too scared or too stubborn to let go, and now both of them are trapped in a world where they have no future. They can’t walk forward and they can’t walk back, so they stand still, holding on to each other with no place to go.”

“But why do they have no future if they love each other?”

“What kind of future do you think they could seriously have? Marriage? Here in Afghanistan?” Ismerai laughed harshly and relit the cigarette that had died in his fingers.

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s impossible, you know that, Fawad. They are too different, and both of them are far too strong to change for the
other. Haji once described Georgie as a bird, a bright, beautiful bird whose very song brings a smile to your face and happiness to your heart. Would you have him cage that bird within our customs and traditions? Do you imagine, even if she converted to Islam, that Georgie could live as the wife of a high Pashtun man, locked behind the walls of her home, unable to go out, unable to see her male friends, unable to work? It would kill her. You know that.”

“They could move . . . ,” I offered, silently admitting that Ismerai was right and that if she did marry Haji Khan in Afghanistan he would probably be forced to shoot her within a week for bringing dishonor on the family.

“Where should they move to?” Ismerai asked. “Europe?”

I shrugged and nodded.

“And can you see Haji being able to live that life, away from the country he has fought for, that he has lost family for and whose soil is as much a part of him as his skin and bones? If he left to live with a foreign woman, how could he ever return and still keep the respect he and his family have earned over all these terrible years? He would have to live in virtual exile, and that would destroy him.

“The fact is, Fawad, Haji and Georgie are two people who fell in love at the wrong time and in the wrong place. The question they must now ask themselves is what do they do next?”

As Ismerai lit his second cigarette, Haji Khan appeared in the garden. His brown face was white, and tears hung in the corners of his eyes, waiting to be freed. My blood froze when I saw him, and I bowed my head as he walked over to us to take Ismerai’s cigarette from his hands.

“I didn’t know,” I heard him whisper to Ismerai, who had got up from his chair. “She never told me, and now I can’t reach her.”

“She needs time,” Ismerai replied, causing me to look up, remembering my mother’s own words.

“No,” Haji Khan corrected, his voice sore and rough. “She needs someone better than me . . . we both know that. But how can I even let that happen? She’s my life.”

As Haji Khan turned away he paused to look at me, and that’s when the tears fell, spilling out quietly from his dark brown eyes like two small rivers, kissing the edges of his nose as they ran to his lips.

18

“W
HAT IN THE
name of Allah is that noise?” I asked, finding James hiding in the yard after I’d finished the morning shift at school. Afternoon lessons were for girls.

“That, my dear Fawad, is the Sex Pistols,” he informed me, which I took to be the name of the noise screaming English words from Georgie’s room. “Count yourself lucky,” James added. “It was Bonnie Tyler this morning.”

“Bonnie who?”

“Big hair, big shoulder pads, big headache—”

“Hey! I like Big Bonnie Tyler!”

Georgie appeared at the door. She was dressed in blue jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt, and she was eating a piece of naan bread, which, if I wasn’t mistaken, was painted white with Happy Cow cheese.

“God, I’m starving,” she added.

As she walked past us carrying a box in one hand and her lunch in the other, I noticed her finger and her neck were empty of the jewelry Haji Khan had bought her just a few short months ago. I also noticed a pack of cigarettes sticking out from the back pocket of her jeans.

“What’s in the box?” James asked as she placed it near the outside trash can.

“Stuff,” she replied. “I’m spring-cleaning.”

Once she’d disappeared back into the house and into the noise, James and I looked at each other and raced to the
box. James got there first, but his legs were twice the size of mine and he’d also pushed me to the ground before we set off.