Authors: Elliot Ackerman
After a few hours’ begging, my legs would begin to ache. Ali would wheel me down an alley behind the mud walled stalls of the bazaar. It was soggy and brown and an open sewer ran the length of it. Out of view, I could stretch. We didn’t earn much, but now, when it snowed, we had enough for a few days stay in a teahouse. This is how we survived our third winter.
One day as we returned to the bazaar, a grocer named Rafi Jan confronted us. He had a thick black beard and a round hard stomach. Long ago we’d learned to avoid his stall. Under his arm, he carried a large sack of rice. He looked down his pointed nose at us and shouted: Here’s your zakat, boy!
He dropped the sack on me. Its weight knocked over the wheelbarrow. My legs shot straight out before I landed in a heap on the dirt floor. Merchants stepped from behind their stalls and shoppers gathered around me.
This boy is no cripple! announced Rafi Jan to the crowd.
A wave of laughter rose up through the bazaar. Shame made my stomach crumple like paper. I fought my desire to cry. Even a boy can lose his nang.
I pulled myself up from the dust of the road and as I did, Ali ran past. Rafi Jan continued to laugh, blinded by his own fat hilarity, the huge mass of his stomach lifting. Ali threw his fist into Rafi Jan’s groin. The
merchant’s laughter choked and he fell onto his side, the dust settling onto the perfect blackness of his beard.
Hanzeer!
Ali screamed over him. Next time I’ll kill you!
A silence fell over the bazaar. Then, one by one, the merchants laughed harder than before. While Rafi Jan lay there, his nang in the dirt, another merchant approached us. He wore plain clothes, a serious face, and carried a heap of twisted branches in his arms. He introduced himself as Hamza.
You understand how to defend your brother’s nang, he said to Ali. You know something of Pashtunwali. That is all too rare in these days. I could use a young man like you. Untangle these branches and deliver them as kindling to the Rish Khor Teahouse. You know the one?
Ali nodded. We’d stayed there once. It was far away, on the north side of the city.
Good, said Hamza. This will be yours when you return.
He held up a 500-Afghani note, enough for a day’s food.
We sorted the wood into piles and lashed bundles of each. It took us nearly an hour to get to the teahouse and the same to return. By this time, the stalls of the bazaar were closed, but Hamza was still there, rocking back on two legs of a worn wooden stool. When he saw us, he reached into the shirt pocket of his baggy shalwar kameez. Pinched between his fingers was the 500-Afghani note. Ali snatched it from Hamza. Holding the note, my brother put his eyes to the ground, ashamed by his desperation.
I need someone to watch my shop tonight, said Hamza. If you boys do that, others will likely have business for you in the morning.
You would trust us with your shop? asked Ali.
I ask no man to trust me and I trust no one. Trust is a burden one puts on another. Then he spoke the proverb:
But he is my friend that grinds at my mill
.
Hamza left us two blankets and an oil lamp. We wrapped ourselves in them and placed the lamp between us. Our blankets smelled of straw and dirt, the lamp of diesel. It was warm inside the stall, and we slept.
In the morning there was work. The other merchants agreed—it was difficult to find someone who’d make an honest delivery for a 500-Afghani note. All through that winter and the following seasons, Ali and I hauled goods to and from the bazaar. Flour to the bakers, bolts of fabric to the tailors, we stacked our wheelbarrow’s load so its height often exceeded our own. We’d soon earned enough money to buy a handcart or even a mule, but Ali refused to spend it. Instead he saved every coin, and at the end of each day the last merchant to close up would let us sleep on the dirt floor of his shop.
The next fall was our fourth away from home. This is when the Americans came. The militants in Orgun hid in the border mountains. At night they’d return. Some were Haqqanis, I think, but most now called themselves Taliban. A few were honorable men who practiced Pashtunwali, but many did as they pleased, taking what they wanted from homes and shops. We heard stories of far greater crimes outside Orgun. Militants accused men of being informants and beheaded them in front of their families. Americans accused men of being militants and disappeared them in the night on helicopters. The militants fought to protect us from the Americans and the Americans fought to protect us from the militants, and being so protected, life was very dangerous. Those who came to the market from smaller, far-off villages spoke of gun battles and bombings. We learned the names of commanders such as Sabir, Hafez, and later, Gazan. They fought on all sides and lived with us like shadows, like those of the boys we’d once slept beside in the mountains. The merchants in the bazaar picked no side. The politics of their war never changed—survival. Ali and I continued to make deliveries. We also gave
the merchants a watchful set of eyes at night. For this we were valued and that seemed very good.
One night more than a year after Ali punched Rafi Jan, now one of our best customers, my brother said he had a gift for me. I asked him what it was, but he would tell me nothing. Instead, he turned down the flame of the oil lamp that sat between us on the floor. The room grew dark and he held his index finger to the sky as he spoke.
Look there, Aziz, what do you see?
Father’s ring, I said. The ring shone in the dim lamplight, and I thought perhaps he would give it to me.
Khar
,
donkey! Ali snapped, and clapped me on the back of the head. I point at the moon and you stare at my finger. Do you see the moon, there?
I looked past his finger and through a small shuttered window.
Yes, I said. I see it.
And what do you know of it?
It is a half-moon tonight.
Do you know why? Ali asked.
No.
No, he repeated. Do you feel any shame that you don’t know?
You don’t know either, I reminded him.
You’re right, he said. I don’t. But I feel shame because of it.
Between us it became quiet.
And this, Father’s ring, he said. How would you replace it if it were lost?
I would never lose it.
Someday it will be lost, he said. And if we haven’t learned to replace it, the loss will be complete.
If you give it to me, I said, it will never be lost.
I very much wanted the ring.
Ali shook his head and spoke: That is what those fools in the mountains say, give it all to me and it will never be lost. They create nothing and so the little over which they fight is already lost. You will learn another way. I have been saving our money so you might start at the madrassa.
Who will help you with work? I asked, hurt by Ali’s wish to be without me.
That is my burden now, he said. Your burden is to be educated. It’s what Father wanted for me. It’s what I can give you. To make something new.
I won’t abandon you, I said.
To not go, you abandon me.
These last words he spoke the strongest of all.
–
For a long time that is how it was. I went to the madrassa each day and in the evening I returned to the bazaar. Ali never let me help with the deliveries. He insisted I study. I sat against one of the bazaar’s stalls, reciting the Holy Qur’an or my math, the two subjects we learned. At night we stayed in whatever shop hosted us. We lay on the floor, on opposite sides of our oil lamp, staring at it. The jerking flame became all that moved between us.
Tell me what you’re learning, Ali whispered.
Ask me how many aayaaths there are, I said.
He asked and quickly I gave the answer.
There are 6,666 aayaaths in the Holy Qur’an. Ask me my multiplication tables.
He asked what 13 times 13 was, but my math didn’t always come as quickly. Soon I figured the way of it and answered, 169, and Ali listened carefully as I went on, telling him how we’d soon be taught algebra and the other holy texts such as the Bukhari. He asked me what algebra was, but I didn’t know how to explain it. The imam had only told us that we
would learn it, not what it was. And in this way, Ali would listen to me until he fell asleep.
Always he fell asleep first, and always I turned off the lamp between us.
–
Whatever small life we’d built unraveled on a gray afternoon in winter. The air was hard and cold. It was the day of Ashura, almost five years since the Americans came. I left the madrassa and was walking back to the bazaar. The fast had not yet broken, but already people piled into the streets. Somber marches carried the crowds toward the mosque where in the night they’d commemorate the ancient martyrs.
I walked through the alleys, jumping over the open sewers, avoiding the crowd. Suddenly a shaking like thunder overcame the city with a noise like steel down a washboard. I stopped. Alone in the alley, I searched the rooftops. Dark smoke curled upward from the bazaar. My body stiffened with fear. I stepped into the crowd. They rushed toward the smoke and the violence which just occurred. I didn’t follow them. I ran to the hospital instead. If there were something to learn of my brother, I would not find out as a victim in the street.
I arrived at the hospital red-faced and gasping. I shouldered through the swinging double doors. Inside the echoes of my breath traveled the long linoleum hallway. Apart from this, it was quiet. A doctor with a young face and neat-trimmed moustache grabbed my wrist.
No one has arrived yet, he said. When they do come, make yourself useful. Help unload the ambulances.
I stood in the dim corridor with the hospital staff. Sirens wailed in the distance. Everyone pulled on rubber gloves. Nurses rolled out gurneys made up with white sheets. The sirens’ noise rose and fell, closer and closer, and my stomach followed the rhythm, sick with sound. Hold this, said an old sinewy nurse. He placed my hand on a gurney. The task steadied me.
The wounded and dead arrived together. Two paramedics threw open the hospital’s double doors, backing their ambulance into the main corridor. Its well-dented fender crashed into either side of the jamb. Its decrepit engine sputtered exhaust in our faces.
Unload them outside! shouted one of the doctors.
The paramedics ignored the doctor and began to empty the ambulance. Inside bodies were stacked on each other. We pulled them apart just as my brother once pulled apart the twisted branches he bundled and delivered as kindling from the bazaar.
Take what you can in the gurneys! shouted a paramedic. Carry the rest!
Hurry, there are more still in the bazaar! shouted another.
We unloaded bodies onto the gurneys. Soon we pulled off the sheets. It was easier to clean the slickness from the plain rubber mattresses. When we ran out of gurneys we heaved bodies onto our shoulders and carried them to the operating room. The ambulance sped away. The old nurse grasped my arm again. His sad eyes fell toward the ground and rested on a large man whose clothes had been burned from him. He rolled the man to his back. It was Rafi Jan. The only part of him I recognized was the fatness I once despised and his singed beard. He was too far gone to notice me. Either the old nurse didn’t see the shock on my face or didn’t care. He lifted Rafi Jan onto my shoulders. Against my neck Rafi Jan’s burned skin felt like the curled bark of a tree. I expected him to scream but he was silent. He wasn’t yet dead, but he’d already crossed over. I’d once wished badal against this fat man who’d laughed at me. Knowing this, I felt both guilt and, it shames me to say, satisfaction.
Some of the wounded cried out, most did not. Many looked at their broken bodies with curiosity, as if in a new suffering existed a chance to escape the old one. The last ambulance returned with only two men. I recognized neither. We brought them inside. Outside the hospital fell quiet.
My brother arrived in the back of a cheap binjo. His waist was wet and red. A sheet covered an emptiness where his left leg would have been. He grasped a slick trash bag, his knuckles white with effort. In it was the leg. His cheeks looked like green ash and his eyes swam about his face. Tears poured over his temples.
He saw me and propped himself up on his elbows. His body failed him and he lay back down. He stared at nothing, looking past, but not at me. We loaded him onto a gurney. I moved to whisper in his ear, but found myself with nothing to say. I hung my head close to his.
Zakat for my poor brother the cripple, he whispered. Zakat, zakat, zakat . . .
No, no, I assured him. There are many who walk again.
His eyes rolled. He breathed, panting.
There is more gone, he said.
The old nurse pushed the gurney inside. I ran next to it.
Let me tell you what I learned today, I said. The imam explained algebra.
I put my hand on Ali’s head. The sweat in his hair was cool and slick. He looked away, saying nothing. I continued: It comes from the ancient Arabs. In their language it means to make whole from parts.
It is enough, Ali said.
He shut his eyes. The moustached doctor, the one with the young face, stood outside the operating room. He held up his arm. No further, he said. They rolled Ali past. I sat in the hallway against the wall. I could hear only the squeak of a loose metal axle. The old nurse wheeled a steel mop and bucket down the far end of the corridor. Dark red blood pools stained the linoleum. The mop slopped down. Water leaked from its braids. The old nurse swayed back and forth, spreading the dark red into light. I brought my knees to my chest and rested my head between my arms.
I fell asleep.
–
Hours later, I woke up in the hallway. It was morning. I searched for my brother. The room where he’d been wheeled was now full of empty beds and shining trays of surgical equipment. The night before felt like a tear in my memory. I left the room and wandered the corridors. I didn’t recognize any of the doctors or nurses. At the far end of the main corridor, away from the double doors, was a steel desk. Behind it, hunched over his work, sat a small man with sharp shoulders and a cratered face. His oily hair was neatly parted. It gleamed even in the dimness. I placed my palms on his desk.