Stories Better Left Untold
Sanaubar's Memoirs
Julie Ryan
Some stories are better left untold. They remain dormant until the relief of death comes. Fortunately these unheard of tales disappear forever with the body.
I do not believe that death is the only relief of the pain that these stories bring. A pen can be like a needle, draining away this pus-filled abscess, and perhaps what is left will help this child understand his Sasa for what she really was. His memories of me will be limited, as my days are running short, but one day he'll embark on these documents and with his knowledge of my journey, I'll be forgiven.
I pray that upon completion he'll thank Allah for his glorious family and days filled with happiness, and despite hills he faces, he'll see that running in the opposite direction will take you nowhere and only distance yourself from the people that would have made your climb worthwhile.
I dedicate this to Sohrab, and his father-my beautiful smiling Hassan.
Part One
My Early Recollections
I had an older sister named Uzuri. She was lovely, of course, but didn't compare to my beauty. She made up for it in honorable stature, the prize daughter of my father; the suppressed intellectual, doomed to become some workingman's clever little housewife with no intention of passing down her brains to her children.
I had a little brother named Rasnam. Third times the charm, they say. Rasnam was born to carry along the family name. Unlike my father, he was tough-willed and headstrong. His beliefs were firm and I could see from the beginning that he would enforce his steel-hand upon his own family. My father was proud of these early signs of aggression. Perhaps a little jealous of his tenacity.
I didn't let my idiot siblings define me.
They bestowed much happiness upon my father. But even one blemish on the face of honor will ruin a pretty picture.
Eventually, I learned that none of it mattered.
~~~~~~~
I was born and raised in the city of Kandahar. The fast export-city lifestyle shaped the inhabitants to be quick-tempered, but there was a general air of happiness among them. It wasn't so lovely for the Hazaras, who were forced upon a lifetime of monotonous work. Etched in the brow of my father were the twenty years he had bent over machinery for our little family. I believe I have chiseled my share of lines into his forehead as well, as his troublesome little daughter.
He was employed at the Jahangir Fruit Packing company, working the canning operations. A terrible career move, but he had limited potential. A truly pathetic man.
Luckily, due to his job we would constantly have delicious canned pomegranates, grapes, and other assorted fruits. Unfortunately that didn't do much for my health. My early childhood was constipated with illness. I was a sick wreck for seventy percent of all of the days I should have spent playing outside with the other children, experiencing nature, making mischief, and socializing in general. I was isolated. I didn't develop proper immunities until I was about eleven-years-old. Uzuri and Rasnam had their own friends and I played alone.
We were a very fortunate Hazara family, because of our connections with a sinfully wealthy man from Kabul whom my cousin Ali was a servant and lifetime friend of. We received financial help constantly and we always had food and clothes and a safe place in the community. For my ninth birthday Ali gave me a brand new beautifully crafted rohab, a polished violin. Those days spent indoors during my illnesses were spent with the rohab. When Ali visited he'd show me a few tunes but eventually I was writing my own, for my own ears.
When I was twelve years old in they built an International Airport three miles from our home. It was because of this airport I became an insomniac. My anxiety developed quickly as I'd lay crunched up with no sleep, the windows rattling with the roar of the plane's engine upon descent. When sleep came I dreamt horrible dreams of twisting, burning, crashing metal and huge fireball explosions.
These sleepless nights brought a horrible realization to my life-my loneliness. Not only was I separated from the other children, I was separated from God; he didn't exist. His presence was not in this life. I was completely on my own.
Uzuri didn't understand. She avoided me at all costs, avoided conflict, avoided argument. I pleaded with her to try to understand but she simply screamed for me to stop pillaging her feeble little mind. She was of no use to me. I tried to make Rasnam see, that was also in vain. All he wanted to do was play! I was livid with envy as I watched him chase around the other children, obviously the dominant force out of his friends, the leader of the pack, the dictator.
Bitterness metastasized, warping me into a sociopath. My tendencies frightened even my father. Now that I recall, I'm not surprised it was he who was the most terrified. He was meek, and said nothing to me. I believe for three years there was no conversation between us.
My mother tried. She was almost as mild as he was, despite her necessary strength to push out a baby and make sure it didn't die. She was revolted by my utter disrespect for Afghan society. I picked away fruitlessly the hypocrisy of religious devotion. Horrified, she began practicing compulsive rituals of Nahi-Anil-Munkar, to cast away evil. It was all in vain!
Friends of my father came and went, probably due to my odd placement in the family. They would ask questions about me. Why did he never speak of this pretty little girl that is his daughter? Things seemed sketchy and eventually my father would distance myself from people. Different employees would come over for supper, drinks and horrible-smelling Pakistani cigarettes. (I would shake out my hair for hours to rid of the stink!) One employee, whom sat adjacent to him in the factory, a stout Hazara named Fazel Lankarani, was his closest friend. He was over almost every weekend, on occasion bringing his wife, a woman I don't recall too well.
The Lankarani family had six children, all males. It was awing how each one was a carbon-copy of the next. But they had no resemblance to their fat little father, oh no...these boys were tall and slender and gorgeous. They had no trace of Mongol features, unlike their father whom was purely and obviously a descendant of Genghis Khan himself! I mean, he just reeked Mongolian. It seemed the six of his children shared this strand of long-lost DNA like a dusty-old book you find at the very back of the bookcase that you open to discover the most delightful little secrets. Perhaps just a little too forbidden to embark on.
My thirteenth year was when everything fell into place. It all seemed to happen at once: gaining five inches on my legs, filling up my clothes with curves in every right place, and my ego. As a child I had blended among the mush of all Hazaras. Now as I approached adulthood everyone took notice of my presence.
I replaced my rambling opinion with a pretentious little smile. Boys of all ages could not help but take a second glance as I strolled by. Their mouths would drop open slightly at my returning, penetrable gaze. It was absolutely pathetic.
The power was invigorating. I laughed with the arrival of my woman's curse, was joyous through the weeks of my transformation. Uzuri wouldn't come within ten yards of me. I was a demon to her and she joined in my mother's attempts to cast off the evil spirits, truly fearing for her life. It was a month after I became a woman that we celebrated Uzuri's lafz, the celebration of spoken word. She would be married off to the second eldest son of Fazel Lankrani, and after that marriage we never spoke again. I could hear my father weeping the night Uzuri and I mutually agreed that I would never touch her first born child. Good! I didn't want to hold her little pedar sag anyway.
With my newfound power I soon joined my mother's side on her trips to the marketplace. We began to develop a somewhat normal friendship. My mother beamed with pride as we'd stroll together through town with her glorious prize-daughter. She loved to show me off like a new pari. I met and befriended all of her fellow housewives and internally grimaced in disgust at each and every one of them. At fourteen years old I vowed to never resort to the lifestyle of a puny little rag doll whose sole purpose was to be battered around and inevitably inseminated like a farmcow.
For Rasnam's tenth birthday my father threw him a birthday party of epic proportions considering our financial situation, which was at the time, not so fortunate. We had not received our pitiable charity money for almost six months as the wealthy man had been busy starting his own carpeting business. My father glowed with pride as his son aided in the slaughter of the lamb he had saved up for months to purchase for this occasion. It was truly magnificent to them. The entire Lankrani family was present as well as numerous of my father's co-workers, my mother's friends and our neighbors. I gorged myself and added twelve glasses of wine to the equation, momentarily making a fool of myself before excusing myself to the bushes behind our property.
I remember this: Leaning myself up against the fence, slowly sliding down to a sitting position and letting my head loll to the side drunkenly. I'm not sure how much time passed but it was Sayid Lankrani, the fourth oldest at seventeen, who was shaking me.
"Sanaubar? Sanaubar? Your father is looking-"
"Who!?" I projected. He came into focus, inches from my face.
"This isn't proper, you crazy girl, stand!"
I slurred incoherently, and he pulled me to my feet. I wavered, and he stood there for a moment aiding me. I felt honored as he looked after me. I looked at him stupidly, trying to play with him but everything was too fuzzy.
"You are the strangest girl I've ever met," he stated, fazed.
"Thank you kind sir," I attempted to articulate, and saw him laughing silently at me out of the corner of my eye before I idiotically stumbled off to my room.
I woke up unpleasantly retching but a smile crept across my face as the remnants of the previous night crept back into my awareness. His blurry angelic face, his mouth, his trifling shadow of a beard. These thoughts brought me no affliction!
Five months later, and alas! It is the wedding of my dear sister Uzuri! Ali and that very wealthy and respected man arranged a beautiful ceremony. It was magnificent for a Hazara union. It was held at the wealthy man's mansion and everything was elaborate and ornate and unnecessary. The ceremony was boring and I deliberately focused my thoughts on each and every individual guest, there must have been a hundred and fifty of them, imagining up a life story for each person complete with pointless little dramatic details. My livid imagination got me through until the party.
I was in a pearl-colored gown which had once been Uzuri's. It shone against my body like freshly washed china, and I knew how glorious my curves filled out the material as opposed to how it had fit Uzuri years ago. I was the talk of the celebration, and Uzuri shot me a glare of envy. I beamed and danced, not too precociously, just right. Then I approached the band, flirting, and one of the men let me play his rohab. I impressed the entire party with my skills. My father ducked away embarrassed of his bold daughter, but I could see some pride in his face. Not like I cared!
After humoring my mother by socializing with the horridly crippled Ali, I boldly approached Sayid for a dance. We made our way out among the twenty other couples, and as we danced properly he searched my eyes with, what seemed like, confidence. As our gazes lingered I toyed with him, penetrating him with my jade-jewels of death, instantly stripping away the veil of confidence and pinpointing the shy little boy within. It was right on the surface, easy to find. I smiled. His face flushed and he broke our stare, looking past me, searching painfully for something right to say.
"You are too concerned," I noted.
"You are not like other girls,"
"I believe you've said that before. I'm well aware. Thank you,"
The song's abrupt end shocked me into a spiraling fast-paced dance. I was growing weary of this. Dangerously, I took Sayid's hand. He recoiled, alarmed, amused.
"Sanaubar!" he said, but I could see that he was more amused than alarmed. I grabbed his gaze again in a vice-grip, asphyxiating his moral fibers. "This is...absurd,"
"Sayid, absurdity is the most fun you'll ever have, I promise."
Hardly a twitch of the finger and he was mine. He replaced his hand and I pushed it away, put a finger to my lips, and we stole off to one of the many bedrooms. My innocence was gone that night with absolutely no iniquity. At the end he looked upon me with a face of a countless emotions; in which the most evident was horror. But right next to that was gratification and pure lust.
The power surged through me in waves as he tenderly kissed me goodnight. Baba had us stay at his mansion, and I slept in that very bed the entire night through until mid-afternoon; a dreamless sleep of pure relaxation. Before I left my room, I let myself get lost in my reflection through a gold-framed mirror. Still Sanaubar, unchanged, besides the sparks of emerald electricity dancing around her irises.
Part Two
Birth
Consciousness at last.
I'm sure I had been screaming and gasping in the darkness for some time. At last I gave a cry loud enough to wake myself up and come out of the dream to the bed I shared with my husband, sat up on my elbows, staring wide-eyed at nothing. I let out a long, shivery sigh and fumbled for the lamp on the bed table.
The dream again. The birth dream, the nightmare.
It was always the same. Gripping, real, pain. Blood. Death.
The baby stirred with my sudden position change and I felt so uncomfortable I had to stand up and shift to calm the thing. I begged for the child to stop tormenting my body. Ali shifted next to me, groaning disgustingly.
"Where are you going?" he said with a hot jet of foul breath.
"I need to move, shut up," I spat, and continued my struggle of standing. At last gravity ailed me and I was up, my swollen, bare feet numb with the cold of the floorboards. The winter would be treacherous, I decided. It was only a month into the cold, and a week or so away from when I'd be free of this debilitating weight on my soul.
I wrapped myself up, and stepped out to retrieve wood for the stove. Light was just peeking through the night, it was bitterly cold. My breath verified this, making its appearance unwelcomingly.
I fetched some kindling and a heavy log which was perhaps just a little too large for a lady this late in pregnancy to be hauling. Tiredly I made my way back to my shack, taking a glance at the mansion where I had destroyed my life several years ago, yet it felt like just yesterday.
My tired ears perked up. Perhaps it was my recently acute senses that aided me in hearing this strange, soft, tingling sound in the distance. Delightful music. In spite of my prenatal agony, I drifted to the front of the yard, up to the street edge. I was an obscene portrait: a woman with child in her nightclothes, carrying an absurd amount of wood, gazing out dreamily as if on opiates.
That's when I saw them turn up the street. They were far in the distance, just a little spot in the horizon of my vision, but they were there. Twenty of them, high-pitched lulling music. Indescribable. Women twisting and writhing meticulously to the sound, their sheer clothing wispy with their movements, their different colored fabric making up the colors of a sunrise. As they approached, light began to stream through the clouds, as if their dance was summoning the New Day.
The women were followed by a cart-like vehicle. These gypsies-so beautiful-advanced slowly, beckoning.
I became a child again, except the bitterness of it was gone. It was pure ecstasy. The child in my womb evaporated. I was beautiful and sixteen again. The cold disappeared from my joints and my lungs were filled with something sweet and familiar that I could not place. I was warm and alive.
Soon they were right in front of me, passing the wealthy man's mansion. The dancers were angelically beautiful, all between the ages of fifteen and thirty, dancing in harmony, one gorgeous being. An older-looking man controlled the cart, a shadow of a smile manifested on his face as he watched the scene, as if he were the ringleader. The band played, their eyes closed, all young men, the Gods of their instruments. They played dairas, sarindas, tamburs...the high-pitched sound was coming from a man playing a tula. It was glorious.
A young boy who seemed to be about six-years-old followed them, carrying a basket already half-full of money from their early morning escapade through the marketplace, and he stopped in front of me, gawking at my protruding stomach.
"Would you have some to spare?" he asked charmingly.
I fumbled with myself, and noticed I had let the wood slip from my arms to the ground in between the boy and I. There were no pockets on my nightgown. I stammered. "I...I don't right now. But if you travel this way tomorrow, I promise you twenty afghanis!" The words were foolish, as if from a different mouth.
His moonish eyes lit up with hope. He went running off, and hopped alongside the cart sideways, hurriedly telling of how the extremely fat girl over there would pay them to come back the next day for twenty afghanis! I saw the ringleader peer around the side of the cart at me, narrowing his eyes as they got farther and farther away, their rhythmic lullaby continuing, echoing softly throughout the street.
Then I was taken aback as a man I had not noticed sitting atop of the cart began to pluck a chang and from his mouth came the saddest song I've ever heard. I was mesmerized by him, and even though he was yards away I could see that life in his eyes, that captivating ability to pluck and toy and manipulate. What I had once obtained. Or still obtained?
~~~~~~~
The wealthy man had insisted in my fifth month that I decrease my workload significantly; a worried expression sprawled across his face. He was always looking at me with those pitiful eyes with too much wisdom in them. I wouldn't let my heart weaken for him, or anyone. I disobeyed him, working vigorously, scrubbing, cleaning, hauling, aiding the wet nurse occasionally with the wealthy man's small child, Amir. He was cute when he came out of the wealthy man's wife, Sofia a year ago, red-faced, unlike the demon I dreamed would come from me in my dreams. Of course, the child Amir had killed his own mother, which left an air of sadness with every coo and smile emitted.
It was now noon, and the wealthy man was out with Rahim-Khan at one of their carpet warehouses so I knew he wouldn't be back before sunrise. I vigorously dusted the entire house and stole my way into the wealthy man's room last. It was inside of his expensively beautiful armoire where he stashed his emergency supply. There was a fortune of epic proportions in that wicker basket. I reached my hand in and stole forty-five afghanis.
He owes this to me, I thought, the bitterness consuming me.
~~~~~~~
He came home earlier than I had expected, retreating to his room immediately. I finally went back to my living quarters, the money hidden in the clothes protecting an unheard of place on my body, but it really wasn't important, because tomorrow morning would be a new day, and a new song would greet me after a dreamless slumber.
~~~~~~~
My wishes were not fulfilled. I dreamt of the past, a long horrible dream about the worst day of my entire life.
I was seventeen-years-old. It was a year after Uzuri had wed, and she was already with her first child. I was disgusted by Uzuri's commitment to everyone that dictated her life. Sayid and I had betrayed what was morally acceptable several more times before he completely withdrew from me. He started working at the canning factory and became religiously devout, as if his experience with me had awakened something in him that greatly changed his life.
He was cleansing himself.
I recall the awful rage that surged through me. Ten minutes later it was gone with my grief. He was just a boy, and I had tired of his inexperience almost immediately. He was completely inadequate. I needed a man.
I was on top of the world that winter night, busily brushing my long mane of curls which had finally reached passed my ribcage. It had taken forever to grow, a slow-crawling animal. I moved within an inch from the mirror at my eyes. Startlingly green, with flecks of gold and silver, they radiated something wonderful. Such feminine glory. My trance shattered as the bedroom door burst open. It was my father. A beast within him had been released. Perhaps to never be caged again? He grabbed me with incredible strength and had me up against the wall of our filth-covered hut in a second. I cried out but he clamped his hand over my mouth.
He delivered the first of many punishments. Hard. My jaw cracked agonizingly. He dropped me and I slumped against the wall like a pile of laundry, stunned. My overactive brain finally quieted, as if his hands had put me exactly where I belonged. I stayed there for the longest time, silent, no thoughts going through me at all.
~~~~~~~
My dishonor had lost him his job. Word of mouth in Afghanistan was a pandemic. He was the shame of Kandahar, the lowest of all lows. I had taken everything from my father. His friendship with Fazel was tarnished, all because Sayid had taken a sudden religious turn and needed a clear conscious.
There were few choices. He could have easily killed me, so that my existence didn't further tarnish the family name. I would have likely chosen the end over the latter option. To restore some of his honor he married me to Ali. The ultimate punishment.
A man with a crippled leg? A man with no money, no future besides to serve for some wealthy Sunni would never respect him? A man who couldn't even smile.
It was the end for me. My father and I never spoke again. There was a new force of male power in my life. Ali. He was kindhearted and completely disgusting. And half of a man. I had become the battered up rag doll with a sterile husband, doomed to a life I had vowed to never let happen. I was trapped.
I didn't want to try to impress anybody anymore, and I retreated into myself. I began to see that the more reclusive I became, the more obsessive and interested the community became with me. I was the biggest mystery in Kabul, the most sought after woman, everyone stopped to stare. Gossip spread like wildfire. Tales circulated back to me of how I was a devil worshipper. How I degraded Ali in public. I didn't even make contact with the public. True he was an ass of a husband. I didn't care what they thought, didn't have to prove anything to them; I didn't have to redeem myself.
Then there was the wealthy man.
The way he fixed his eyes on me was too familiar. The stare of longing, of loneliness. He is the all-unfeasible. He was the portrait of strength, of courage. Everything my father wasn't. I was the only woman able reduce him to a babbling idiot.
The moth is always drawn to the fire.
The man and I betrayed everyone who ever meant anything to us. I concerned not. When his wife Sofia died, he sought my comfort.
And I gave him more than he had ever bargained for.
~~~~~~~
I recall this last awful day in that mansion.
I had awoken before sunrise, gripped in pain, my body on fire. A cramp ripped through my abdomen. I could feel how low the baby was sitting in my body. The slightly uncomfortable and noticeable contractions I had been experiencing throughout the week made no comparison to the clenching I felt immediately upon awakening. I panicked. Not yet. I'm not ready to die! I cried out without control and Ali awoke in a horrible state of panic as well.
There would be some time but it was coming near. Ali raced out as quickly as his polio-stricken leg would take him, and within minutes the wealthy man was at my side.
"Is it time yet, Sana-jan?" he had asked, sweating.
"Not yet, not yet, not yet, I don't think," My teeth were chattering as the anxiety was flooding me; I could hear the planes roaring above me, metal snaking into shards and bodies burning. The jets were coming straight for this house.
"I'm going to have the mid-wife come right away,"
The ugly woman came immediately, and upon her arrival I clammed up and became the stubborn teenager I had once been. I didn't want her handling me. Her grin was plastered onto her face but her eyes were the beady ones of a weasel. I cringed when she touched me. Her screeching voice announced that there would be some time before the baby would come. These were early signs of labor. She told me that I was panicking and shouldn't be in such a state of stress.
"This is not a celebration," I said in my head, repeating the phrase over and over until it was a mess of gibberish; I was on the edge of my sanity. Twisting, crashing metal. Mushroom clouds of flame.
I thought back, tried to think of something to comfort me; a face. Thinking of my mother or my father spread the pain from my abdomen to my chest, to my toes. No end...there would be no peace on this morning, nothing to cease this agony.
Within thirty minutes my blood pressure started to go down. Alas breaths of relaxation came. Oxygen soothed me. The wealthy man returned to his bedroom. Ali laid next to me, his presence a slight relief. There would be some time before the hour of truth. Something was itching me in the back of my brain. I shot up in bed, frightening the mid-wife who sat near the window.
"Sunrise!"
The time was now. I could hear the tula in the distance. My redemption.
Part Three
The Old Cure
"Sanaubar, Sana, Sana..."
My eyes slowly closed, hypnosis washing over every nerve, over every fiber of my being. The sheets, the mattress, the frame of the bed, the floor, the ceiling, dirt, roots, sky...we were all apart of one single unit.
Eons passed and I was staring up at his ethereal face, upside down, and those sapphire-jewels for eyes, so bright, so penetrating.
"Adnan," my voice croaked.
"Rest for a while longer, Sana. Take it in slowly, let it wash over you..." He touched my hair with utter admiration. I faded off again.
~~~~~~~
"Where are we now?"
"Near Herat," he replied, licking his rolling paper. He smelled like sweet bakhoor incense. I rested my head against the nook between his neck and his shoulder, sighing comfortably. "This sap is very fresh, I know you'll love it."
I smiled up at him, and we met eyes and held them for a while, our little game.
He sparked the cigarette. Soon delicious, smooth smoke was coating my world. I peered out the cart window. We were last in the row of five carts, long and adorned with various decorations according to where we had been over the past year. Adnan and I had built this one together, as a family, our vehicle. Papa Elias was steering ours, his silence a sign of frustration.
"Talk, Papa!" I yelled, dizzy and high.
He grunted, adjusted his sunglasses uneasily. "I'm not amused, Sana,"
"I'll amuse you," I gloated, moving stealthily across the cart, putting my fingers through his tendrils of grey hair. "Don't fret,"
"We're moving slowly. We pick up so many performers as we move across the country! Everyone wants in on our growing fortune!"
"That's good, Papa," Adnan said, exhaling a huge cloud of sweet smoke. "We will rule Afghanistan,"
I leaned back once more against Adnan, my only love. The balance to my pessimism. Life was perfection. I was nineteen years old, and had been traveling with Papa Elias and his clan of entertainers for thirteen months, seeing different parts of the country, varied people, same society. It was the remedy to my restless soul. These people were my real family. I had known it the moment I had first heard their music two days before I gave birth to the child. They came back for me, knowing instantly that I belonged with them.
I had heard Baba calling after me as I disappeared in the night with Adnan.
There was no turning back. I was not fit to be the mother of any child.
The baby had come out of me squirming. Not making a sound. His body appeared normal, his limbs in tact, but when he was lifted towards my face his deformity was revealed. The grotesque split in his lip shamed me, a cleft. I recoiled from him. The nurse went to hand him to me and I glared at her with eyes filled with fire. She stepped back, alarmed, and handed him to Ali. He took no notice of me, and I believe I saw a glimmer of a smile on his face. I felt flaming anger rising in my throat. Words itched to be sprayed.
"There," I had spat. "Now you have your own idiot child to do all your smiling for you!" It had come out in a hellish torrent. Still, Ali took no notice of me, just holding his son. We never spoke after those words, cruel and intentional. I realized what a virus I had become. I knew that a small child had come from me but I wanted nothing to do with it, and nothing to do with the arms holding him. I was filled with a black hatred towards every living creature within a hundred miles.
Of course, I felt no hatred for the glorious sounds of the musicians, returning. I ignored the grotesque scene in that room; the midwife, the blood, the defects, and stumbled out on the lawn to pay a horrified moon-eyed child the money I had promised for their return. Adnan introduced himself, and I could feel his intrigue despite the fact that I was still in blood. It was an intrigue unlike any other man. I begged for them to take me along. He vowed to return after visiting the city one day's travel away. I feared they would never return, but they did. Elias and Adnan came for me several days after the birth so my insides could heal before making my escape. We left Kabul immediately.
Those last few horrid nights were riddled with the screams of a child for its mother. Those sounds I will never forget. I could not bring myself to look into his eyes. I did not want to touch him. I could hear jet engines in his screams of loneliness and discomfort. The third night the wealthy man took the baby into his own house and kept him with the baby Amir, as a brother. The fourth night I made my escape from the community where my reputation stood as a vixen, as a whore, as a demon, and as an unfit mother and daughter.
Upon traveling with the men and women of this band, I slept each night soundlessly. With each new day I was greeted by my family, a clan, thirty of us. We were all equal to each other; we shared everything-clothes, opium, food, money, and our perspectives. Our main understanding is that the day is now, everything happens for our pleasure. We radiate it through our dancing, through song. I only took one possession from my old home with Ali-my rohab.
This was my destiny.
It was a decade if bliss, a decade of music. Adnan and I married unceremoniously. It was a beautiful union with no religion involved, just a celebration of the love of two people. My entire family was there, all of us in our growing numbers, Papa Elias's children. We relished opium, feasted on Palau and danced until sunrise. Adnan and I sat atop our cart and paraded through the city like a king and queen. I was in a fairytale.
On my twenty-sixth birthday I aided in delivering Adnan's sister's child. The birth of her daughter was serene, joyous. I suddenly felt twinges of heartache of what I had given away. Adnan had left the subject of my child out of my life completely, but Papa Elias had questioned me many times about my loyalty. If I was heartless enough to throw away my own baby, how could he determine whether or not I was true to their nature of family and security? I threw myself at his feet and tried to make him understand the oppression that my child represented, and the lifetime of sadness and persecution remaining with him would involve. Still, he was weary of me, wondering why I didn't steal away with my son. I could never make him understand.
It was 1971 and our country was in the worst drought she had ever experienced. Our supply of opium ran dangerously low. We were fiends, desperate for our release. Reality was slashing up our unity. Performers were dropping away with each city we traveled through. Civilians were too preoccupied to stop and watch or offer up afghanis. We were desperate as our industry was crumbling.
The only other option we had was to focus mainly on trafficking. The year was agonizing as our supplies were low. We had to resort a completely degrading lifestyle. We were raiding poppy fields, robbing innocent people. We had become true gypsies. Our sweet music no longer filled the streets.
Three successive seasons of drought had devastated Afghanistan. It was 1973 and there were only twelve of us left. I clung to Adnan for my life. He was my only purpose for living. My anxiety had returned, giving me a constant dread of impending doom. I felt the world was ending for me soon. I wondered if my son was alive. Thinking of the line that split his upper lip relieved me, for if he was dead, it was most likely much easier than the life he'd suffer.
I was an addict. I writhed and yearned for those familiar tendrils of smoke to fill my lungs and grey out this hell.
April 1976 was when the rain finally came. Our suffering was over.
But the rain wouldn't cease, and floods destroyed many parts of Kandahar, including my childhood home, and I had discovered that Uzuri and her family had been killed. I felt no shame. Life carried on.
The crop destruction was immense. We had attempted to settle in Herat but much of the city was also ruined by the floods. The twelve of us had slaved for weeks building what turned out to be a significantly inadequate shelter. Still we celebrated our new home! Traveling was glorious but it was time to take a rest.
Five weeks passed as we lived harmoniously amongst one another. I pined for that delicious drug, and marveled at the site of what seemed to be endless poppy fields only four miles away from the poor little village we had settled in.
I went into town with a younger girl named Ralila whom had joined us only several months before, as her only living brother had died from the starvation which she had narrowly avoided. She had been my associate, my sidekick. It was I who had led her to the poppy farm four miles from where we had settled temporarily. We had crept through the delicious aroma of the fields, past the fences, putting on the faces of a pair of confused wanderers if discovered. We descended to the open basement of the warehouse, not a soul in sigh. Only mounds and mounds and never-ending piles of that beautiful substance. We stuffed bags greedily into our clothing like a couple of ragamuffin starving children.
Suddenly, only red blood filled my vision. I was blinded with pain. It was only one man who had carried out our sentences, the owner perhaps. He did not spare Ralila, slitting her throat, a spray of red coating me. I prepared myself for the end, but it never came. I could see it right away, and knew my fate. I was his prize. He took one look at me, reduced to nothing, and smiled, a dark hilarity in his face.
Like a miracle I felt my strength surge back. The power I had not accessed for years. I reached into the depths of him, pillaging everything that made up his pathetic little life with my eyes. His fiery plastered smile softened strangely. His concern was immediately obvious. I saw the panic spread like wildfire.
I held his gaze for an eternity. His muscles relaxed. I saw his life in his black pupils, with a thick ring around it called FEAR. A moan escaped from his lips, and he jerked suddenly. I lost my vice grip on his soul, and within seconds his hands were around my neck. I gasped, eyes wide, choking. No air. This was the end.
"You are quite a particular creature?" he asked with peculiarity, and tightened his grip to something blisteringly horrible. "It's as if there's utter malevolence in you, something evil," he said, wavering a little.
He threw me to the ground, and the air was more satisfying than any opium I had ever relished. I had no time to celebrate this as he was upon me swiftly, doing everything he wanted, and I couldn't fight back. I was a mere one-hundred-and-twenty pounds and he was certainly over two-hundred. I suddenly thought of my son.
The blade came back, shining, drenched in Ralila's blood. It curving upward, smiling at me. The light peaking through the warehouse door bounced off the blade as it came at me.
My power, forever gone, as it slashed my face, cutting out one of the only jewels I owned. The man scooped me up like a pile of laundry and tossed me out on the street, where my family was only a block away. Why he didn't kill me, I do not know. I have no recollection of Adnan saving my life, but he did, despite my ugliness. White drained down my face; the ghost of myself dripping onto the dusty streets of Herat.
~~~~~~~
It was on August 8, 1981 that I narrowly avoided death. I was welcoming the end, and it didn't come. My Adnan, Papa Elias, and almost the entire family were killed as we attempted to flee to Pakistan.
The evil crevice that was left in my face prevented me from an easy return to my homeland. The young boy, whom once collected money from me long ago as I stood entranced on the street, was with me, all I had left. His name was Quaiser, and he was the only other survivor of the family. Together we attempted to live amongst the chaos that Afghanistan had become. I became his mother, and in return he saved my life many times, as I was now defenseless and ugly.
We had returned to Herat to try to live a stable life together. It seemed for a while that the least conflict was in this city. The only employment I could obtain was sweeping and cleaning machinery in a fruit-canning factory. I had eaten my pride to survive, and a grape or two in the process.
It was April in 1985 that Soviet-Afghan attacks took place in the provinces of Laghman in the east, Qonduz and Samangan in the North, as well as Herat. Several hundred civilians were killed including my Quaiser. He was twenty-six years old.
The very next month I left the mundane fruit-canning factory and was hired as a servant for an attractive little family on the Iranian border of Herat. They had two young children who befriended me despite my face which at that point had warped considerably from my scar, and the opium addiction had turned me into an ugly hag approaching forty-years-old. They entrusted me altogether, which is not an intelligible move when you've hired a former gypsy Hazara devil.
I had pocketed a tiny share of afghanis each day until I had enough to fuel my raging addiction by the end of my week. The youngest son came into my living quarters to present me with a collection of fireflies in a jar and a huge waft of smoke came his way. I was sure I would be out on the streets within a day or so as he'd present this to his Baba. That night I was sure would be my last at this blessing of a home I had been given. Opiated, I slept longly and dreamlessly.
Was I dreaming again? The same dream of twisting, crashing, metal which plagued me for years? This time, I wasn't in my childhood room. My living quarters were on fire, and the entire house was destroyed. Burning bodies everywhere, thrashing screaming people, immense heat and sound pushing its way into my ears. I heaved for breath. The pain was exquisite, galvanizing.
It was no dream, for sure. Three planes had been shot down by the resistance, inevitably causing the deaths of almost two hundred civilians. Death had grazed and spared me once again. The entire family was eliminated, and as fate would decide, I was to be alone in this world, in the most ironic of ways.
~~~~~~~
Over the next five years I made my way back to Kandahar to find nothing as it had been. The airport controlled the city, and my house had been leveled many years ago. No trace of my family remained.
Or was there?
Was my son out there somewhere, alive?
Had this awful war spared his life!?
It took me another two years before I was able to make my way to Kabul. I walked mostly, owning only one tattered dress, my opium addiction which had once been a three-hundred-pound saddle throughout my travels had been reduced to a tiny chip on my shoulder. It would never truly leave me but it was minimized by my lack of resources. The constant electrical screech of my cravings eventually wore away. I dreamt of my son's smiling face every night, my Hassan. For the first time in my life I let myself speak his name out loud. It became my prayer! My word of redemption.
I reached the wealthy man's mansion, standing tall and beautiful as it had always been, with the familiar smell of pomegranate trees that stays with you for all your days. As I approached the door I was greeted with another smell, that of glorious home-cooked food. The place had an all-around air of Home.
Hunger gripped me as I climbed the stairs to the front door. I reached the top and used the last bit of strength I had to sound my arrival, before black spots clouded my vision and took away my consciousness.
I did get a glimpse of his face as he answered the door. Hassan! I reached and touched his face, grazing his beautiful mouth, which had been blessed with an operation to fix the deformity I had caused him with my wrongdoings, before falling into darkness.
~~~~~~~
Now life has been everything it should be. As an old woman I am greeted each day with the joy of my grandchild. I delivered my son's son as any mother should. I feared for a moment of the same deformity, as the baby came out exactly the same...quickly, and smiling as he greeted this Earth. His face was beautiful and pure. I cried with joy and wouldn't let go of him for hours.
Now my little Sohrab, you are almost four-years-old and I feel my days coming to a close, but each day we spend together are the happiest times I have ever had, where for once I am actually alive, complete!
I know there is a real God in my life, filling my presence and every warm afternoon that I spend out in the lush gardens of which I don't deserve, I spend with my son, the joy of my life, my beautiful smiling Hassan!