In the Sea There are Crocodiles (2 page)

She’s not coming back.

At that point I ran out of questions. There must have been others I could have asked, but I didn’t know what they were. I stood there in silence looking at the down on
kaka
Rahim’s cheeks, but without really seeing it.

It was
kaka
Rahim who spoke next. She told me to tell you something, he said.

What?

Khoda negahdar
.

Is that all?

No, there was something else.

What,
kaka
Rahim?

She said not to do the three things she told you not to do.

My mother I’ll just call
Mother
. My brother,
Brother
. My sister,
Sister
. But the village where we lived I won’t call
village
, I’ll call it Nava, which is its name and which means
gutter
, because it lies at the bottom of a narrow valley between two lines of mountains. That’s why, when I came back one evening after spending the afternoon playing in the fields and Mother said, Get ready, we have to leave, and I asked her, Where? and she replied, We’re leaving Afghanistan, that’s why, when she said that, I thought we were just going to cross the mountains, because as far as I was concerned the whole of Afghanistan lay between
those peaks. Afghanistan was those rushing streams. I had no idea how vast it was.

We took a cloth bag and filled it with a change of clothes for me and one for her and something to eat, bread and dates, and I was beside myself with excitement about the journey. I’d have liked to run and tell the others, but Mother didn’t want that and kept telling me to be good and keep calm. My aunt, her sister, came over and they went off into a corner to talk. Then a man arrived, an old friend of my father’s, but he didn’t want to come into the house. He said we should go now, because the moon hadn’t come out yet and the darkness would deceive the Taliban or whoever else we might run into.

Aren’t my brother and sister coming with us, Mother?

No, they’re going to stay with your aunt.

My brother’s still little, he won’t want to stay with my aunt.

Your sister will look after him. She’s nearly fourteen. She’s a woman.

But when are we coming back?

Soon.

When soon?

Soon.

I have the
buzul-bazi
tournament.

Have you seen the stars, Enaiat?

What have the stars got to do with anything?

Count them, Enaiat.

That’s impossible. There are too many of them.

Then start now, said Mother. Otherwise you’ll never finish.

The area where we lived, in Ghazni province, is inhabited exclusively by Hazaras, who are Afghans like me, with almond-shaped eyes and squashed noses, well, not exactly squashed, but a bit flatter than others, flatter than yours, for example, Fabio: typically Mongol features. Some people say we’re descended from Genghis Khan’s army. Some say our ancestors were the Koshan, the ancient inhabitants of those lands, the legendary builders of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. And some say we’re slaves, and treat us like slaves.

To leave the area, or Ghazni province, was extremely dangerous for us (and I only say
was
because I don’t know how things are today, though I don’t suppose they’ve changed much), because what with the Taliban and the Pashtun, who aren’t exactly the same thing but both used to treat us badly, you had to be careful who you ran into. I think that’s why we left at night, the three of us: me, Mother and the man—I’ll just call him the man—because Mother had asked him to go with us. We set off on foot and for three nights, under cover of darkness, with only the light of the stars to guide us—and in
a place like that, without any electricity, starlight is a very powerful light—we walked to Kandahar.

I was wearing my usual gray
pirhan
: long trousers and a knee-length jacket of the same material. Mother walked in a
chador
, but she had a
burqa
in her bag to put on for when we met people, which was useful for hiding the fact that she was a Hazara, and also for hiding me.

At dawn on the morning of the first day, we stopped at one of the huts where caravans of traders break their journeys, though to judge by the bars on the windows, it must have been used for a time as a prison by the Taliban or someone. There was no one there, which was a good thing, but I was bored, so I used a bell hanging from a beam for target practice. I gathered some stones and tried to hit it from a hundred paces. I finally managed, and the man came running, grabbed me by the wrist and told me to stop.

On the second day we saw a bird of prey circling over the body of a donkey. The donkey was dead (obviously). Its legs were trapped between two rocks and it was no use to us at all because we couldn’t eat it. I remember we were near Shajoi, which was one place in Afghanistan that Hazaras really had to avoid. In that area, it was said, passing Hazaras like us were captured by the Taliban and thrown alive into a deep well or fed to stray dogs. Nineteen men from my village had vanished like that on
their way to Pakistan, and the brother of one of them had gone to look for him. He was the one who’d told us about the stray dogs. All he had found of his brother was his clothes, with a pile of bones inside.

That’s how things are in my country.

There’s a saying among the Taliban: Tajikistan for the Tajiks, Uzbekistan for the Uzbeks, and Goristan for the Hazara. That’s what they say.
Gor
means “grave.”

On the third day we met a whole stream of people on their way to some unknown destination, escaping from some unknown threat: men, women and children on wagons filled with hens, rolls of fabric, barrels of water and so on.

Whenever a lorry appeared going in our direction, we would ask the driver for a lift (even for a short distance). If the drivers were nice people they would stop and pick us up, whereas if they were unpleasant, or angry with themselves or at the world, they would speed up and drive past us, covering us with dust. As soon as we heard the noise of an engine behind us, Mother and I would run and hide in a ditch or among the bushes or behind some stones, if there were big enough stones. The man would stand at the side of the road and signal to the driver to stop, just like a hitchhiker, but he didn’t use only his thumb, he waved his arms, to make sure they saw him and didn’t run him over. If the lorry stopped
and everything was safe, then he would tell us to come out of the ditch, and Mother and I would climb aboard, either in front (which happened twice) or in the back, with the merchandise (which happened once). The time we climbed in the back, the trailer was full of mattresses. I slept very well that time.

By the time we got to Kandahar, after crossing the river Arghandab, I’d counted three thousand four hundred stars (a pretty good number, I’d say) at least twenty of which were as big as peach stones, and I was very tired. Not only that. I’d also counted the number of bridges blown up by the Taliban, and the burned-out cars, and the blackened tanks abandoned by the army. But I’d still have liked to go back home, to Nava, and to play
buzul-bazi
with my friends.

I stopped counting the stars when we arrived in Kandahar. I stopped because it was the first time I’d ever been in such a big city and the house lights and streetlamps would have been too distracting, even if I hadn’t been too tired to keep count. Kandahar had tarred roads. There were cars and motorbikes and bicycles and shops and lots of places where men could drink
chay
and talk, and buildings as much as three storys high with aerials on the roofs, and dust, wind and dust, and so many people on the streets, there couldn’t have been anybody left in the houses.

After we’d been walking for a while, the man stopped and told us to wait while he made arrangements. He didn’t say where, or who with. I sat down on a low wall to count how many colored cars passed, while Mother just stood there, so still it was as if her
burqa
was empty. I could smell fried food. A radio was broadcasting news about lots of people disappearing in Bamiyan and the discovery of a large number of dead bodies in a house. An old man passed with his arms raised to the sky, crying
khodaia khair
, begging God for a bit of peace. I was starting to feel hungry, but I didn’t ask for food. I was starting to feel thirsty, but I didn’t ask for water.

When the man came back he was smiling, and he had another man with him. This is a good day for you, he said. This is Shaukat and he’ll take you to Pakistan in his lorry.

Salaam, agha
Shaukat, said Mother. Thank you.

Shaukat the Pakistani did not reply.

Go now, said the man. We’ll meet again soon.

Thank you for everything, said Mother.

It was a pleasure.

Tell my sister the journey went well.

I will. Good luck, little Enaiat.
Ba omidi didar
.

He took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead. I smiled as if to say, But of course, we’ll meet again
soon, take care. Then it struck me that
Good luck
and
We’ll meet again soon
didn’t really go together. Why wish me good luck if we were going to meet again soon?

The man left. Shaukat the Pakistani raised his hand and signaled to us to follow him. The lorry was parked in a dusty yard surrounded by a metal fence. In the back were dozens and dozens of wooden poles. Taking a closer look at them, I realized they were electricity poles.

Why are you carrying electricity poles?

Shaukat the Pakistani didn’t reply.

This was something I only found out about later. Apparently, people came from Pakistan to Afghanistan to steal things: whatever there was to steal, which wasn’t much. Electricity poles, for example. They came in lorries, knocked down the poles and carried them across the border, to use them or sell them, I’m not sure which. But for the moment what mattered was that we were getting a good lift, in fact, more than good, an excellent lift, because at the border they didn’t check lorries from Pakistan so carefully.

It was a long journey, I couldn’t tell you how long, hours and hours across the mountains, bumping along, past rocks and tents and markets. Clouds. At some point, when it was already dark, Shaukat the Pakistani got out to eat, but only him, because it was better for us
if we didn’t get out. You never know, he said. He brought us some leftover meat and we set off again, with the wind whistling through the window, the pane lowered just a crack to let in a bit of air but as little dust as possible. Looking at all that land rushing past us, I remember thinking about my father, because he’d also driven a lorry for a long time.

But that was different. He was forced to.

My father I’ll just call
Father
. Even though he’s no longer around.
Because
he’s no longer around. I’ll tell you his story, even though I can only tell it the way it was told to me, so I can’t swear to it. What happened was that the Pashtun had forced him—not only him, but lots of Hazara men from our province—to drive to Iran and back by lorry, in order to get products to sell in their shops: blankets, fabrics, and a type of thin sponge mattress: I’m not sure what they were used for. This was because the inhabitants of Iran are Shia, like the Hazara, while the Pashtun are Sunni—it’s well known that brothers in religion treat each other better—and also because the Pashtun don’t speak Persian whereas we can understand it a bit.

To force him to go, they said to my father, If you don’t go to Iran to get that merchandise for us, we’ll kill your family, if you run away with the merchandise, we’ll kill
your family, if when you get back any of the merchandise is missing or spoiled, we’ll kill your family, if someone cheats you, we’ll kill your family. In other words, if anything at all goes wrong—we’ll kill your family. Which isn’t a nice way to do business, in my opinion.

I was six—maybe—when my father died.

Apparently, a gang of bandits attacked his lorry in the mountains and killed him. When the Pashtun found out that my father’s lorry had been attacked and the merchandise stolen, they came to my family’s house and said he’d made a mess of things, their merchandise had got lost and we had to pay them back for it.

First of all they went to see my uncle, my father’s brother. They told him he was responsible now and he had to do something to compensate them. For a time, my uncle tried to find a solution, like sharing his land, or selling it, but nothing worked. Then one day he told them he didn’t know what he could do to compensate them and it wasn’t his business anyway, because he had his own family to think about. I don’t blame him for that, because it was true.

So one evening the Pashtun came to see my mother, and said that if we didn’t have money, instead of the money they would take me and my brother away with them and use us as slaves, which is something that’s banned all over the world, even in Afghanistan, but that
was what it amounted to. From that point on, my mother lived in fear. She told me and my brother to stay outside the house all the time, surrounded by other children, because on the evening when the Pashtun had come to our house we hadn’t been there and they hadn’t seen our faces.

So the two of us were always outside playing, which we didn’t mind at all, and the Pashtun who passed us on the streets of the village didn’t recognize us. For nighttime we had dug a hole in the fields, next to the potatoes, and whenever anyone knocked, even before going to find out who it was, we would go and hide there. But I wasn’t very convinced by this strategy: I told my mother that if the Pashtun came for us at night, they certainly wouldn’t bother to knock.

Things carried on like that until the day Mother decided I ought to leave because I was ten—maybe—and I was becoming too big to hide, so big that I could hardly get into the hole anymore without squashing my brother.

To leave.

I’d never have chosen to leave Nava. My village was a good place. It wasn’t technologically advanced, there was no electricity. For light, we used oil lamps. But there were apples. I would see the fruit being born, the flowers
opening in front of my eyes and becoming fruit. I know flowers become fruit here, too, but you don’t see it happen. Stars. Lots and lots of them. The moon. I remember there were nights when, to save on oil, we ate in the open air by the light of the moon.