recently I read 'the kite runner' and really enjoyed it. This story involves Kamal, Assef's friend. The lines divide his time escaping Afghanistan and his memories. The 'I remember' section (you'll recognise it when you see it) is about the past but he feels like it is the present.

My respects to L. Harris whose mind seems to work in the same way (ie. writing something about Kamal)

My name is Kamal Qalzai. I turned twenty-two last week. Twenty-two…it is an age when the bearer is supposed to feel grown-up, self-confident, mature. Yet I feel I am none of these things. I curse myself again and again for trying to fight the Russians, what could I have done against so many? My body hurts all over. I try to remember how to relax, but I cannot. My father is stroking my head in his lap as if I were a little boy again. It does not soothe me, yet I want it to continue. Please. Do not stop.

I had a happy childhood for the most part. I was an only child, so did not have to bear the endless quarrels of siblings. It did not seem to matter that my mother was quite a lot older than my father, even though the neighbours apparently gossiped about their marriage at the time.

My mother was a lovely woman, shrewd but kind, and I worshipped her. She was always so sweet to me, baking me and my friends all kinds of snacks, despite the fact we had a servant to do it for us.

We had so much fun, my friends and I. Every morning we would walk to school together, a group of five, all pretty similar in our likes and hopes. I would never have been called an original child, for I faded into the background like an extra piece of refuse in a city street, but nobody seemed to mind.

We would sit in small groups discussing things both serious and trivial, or race around town trying desperately to tag each other. Thoughts were shared back then, not hidden as they as are in adolescence and adulthood. Sometimes I wish we could all return to those happy, carefree times, yet I know in my heart it is not possible.

I do not understand what is going on at the moment. Every time I open my eyes my surroundings are different. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything that is happening to us, although the others around me seem remarkably calm.

Why is it that I cannot remember anything of the last week, that even yesterday is a blur? Yet my emotions of at least five years ago are as clear as if they were happening at this very moment.

My father's hand is no longer at my hair. I cannot see him for a moment, but then I feel calloused fingers at my elbow. The panic recedes and I feel myself start to drift back into the now-familiar deep sleep that fills all my days.

I was fourteen years old when things began to change. Well, to everyone else the world must have revolved in just the same way as before, but I felt myself to be different. That was the year I met Assef.

It was at a party, where all these life-changing moments take place. The guests were all adults apart from an eight-year-old girl, myself and him. I had always been rather gauche around my parents' friends, so was not expecting to enjoy the smallish event much. I was sitting on the doorstep hunched over a glass to escape from the endless pleasantries, when I felt a tap on one of my shoulders. It was the girl, too young to be at such an occasion, appearing suitably tired. She was dragging behind her a European-looking boy of about my age. He was grumbling and she looked close to tears.

"I can't find my mother," she murmured.

"What do you expect me to do?" he retorted in a tired voice.

I wondered vaguely why I had been drawn into this, so gave a smile that felt to me to be more of a grimace. The boy seemed to notice me for the first time and cleared his throat imperiously.

"Ah, Souzan here said you were the host's son. Do you know what I should do with her? She seems to have attached herself to my arm."

By chance I remembered that the girl had been with a woman in a blue scarf so was able to direct her to the other side of the garden. The boy turned to go.

"Wait!" I cried, then looked away in embarrassment. He stopped, then looked round to survey me through narrowed eyes.

"Well, if you're so keen, we could go for a walk."

"Go for a --?"

I was cut off as I found myself almost frogmarched to my front gates and out into the street.

The remainder of that evening is unclear to me. I suppose it was like any other evening out in Kabul, but the details have clouded over in my brain. We talked, I think, but it was in a far different way of talking to what I was used to. For one, there were long periods of silence, yet without awkwardness. I did not speak much, and neither did he, but we somehow made a promise to see each other again. I thought about bringing him to meet my school friends but decided against it, telling myself that it was to avoid disconcerting them with his European looks paired with Farsi speech.

My parents grew used to me occasionally meeting him somewhere. They were pleased that I had friends out of school and thought him a lovely boy, so obviously did not discourage me in any way from being his friend. If only they had, things might have been different.

Blackness. Complete blackness. It is soothing and allows me to think, so I welcome it. Then, without warning, a light flicks on somewhere in the dark. I wish it would go away, for I do not want to see anyone else's face. The past seems another world but, despite that, I wish I was there. The faces of the present have no place in my mind.

I had known Wali Sajadi all my life, but had never liked him much or known him very well, so it was a surprise when I saw him with Assef one morning. We eyed each other up at first, but did not speak much throughout the months that the three of us gradually began to form a group. Then, one day, I approached him when he was on his own, an easy task seeing as nobody really seemed to enjoy his company.

That was the one time we ever discussed anything properly, but it seemed to change a lot of things. I hardly remember what we talked about, but it helped to ease the atmosphere between us. Nobody who knew us well could ever have called us friends, but I felt that he understood me. We learned to gauge whether Assef was in a bad mood or not, when to speak up, and when to keep quiet. With the movement of an eyebrow or a bit of hurried lip-reading we communicated information that often made me have to pretend to cough loudly to stop myself bursting into fits of laughter. On the other hand, I was never really alone with him after that one time, and all our conversations were 'business'-based.

I remember little of the children the three of us used to tease. Names and faces and punishments are all mixed up in my mind. But there are some things I remember in flashes, concluding in my tired brain that they must belong to the same event.

I remember running. I am good at it, ahead of my companions. One of them, Wali I think, trips and almost falls, but I grab his arm. He yells something in my ear, loud above the rush of the streets.

I remember holding an arm. It is skinny and grimy, and sweat coats my palms with its sickening odour. I am staring at a bicycle in the gutter, green and old-fashioned. The sweat has spread to my forehead now.

I remember laughing as I jog past a market stall. The smell of stale sewage reaches my nostrils. My feet pound in a rhythm, and soon I am able to part with the boys beside me and fling myself onto a sofa at home. I pick up a random book and start reading as if my life depended on it. Maybe it did, back then.

It was wonderful, going after younger children. The rush it gave me was the best feeling I had ever had. The power and prestige too, the benefits seemed endless.

It was about that time that I began living a double life – no, a triple one to be precise. I felt like three different people, and flicked between my personalities with ease.

At home I behaved childishly, hugging my parents and having long talks with them. Father once told me that he loved the way I felt I could trust him and tell him all my troubles. Poor, foolish man.

With my friends I was full of ideas, known as a comedian and a bit of a daredevil. It must have seemed to them that the five of us were as close as we had been all our lives. Now I am older, I wonder if they too had secrets.

And with Assef and Wali I was quiet, sullen and poisonous. In front of a mirror in my room I perfected a sneer, a swagger. I never went out with my parents any more, giving smiling excuses that I was too busy. For the first time I truly began taking an interest in what I wore. All this, just to fir in with my third identity.

When I was about eighteen I got tired of bullying. In some way I think I had outgrown the need to do it. For four years now I have lived without intimidating anyone. Fights seem to pave their ways around me; close, but never touching. Perhaps it is fitting for me to leave Afghanistan at this time. Four years of violence, four years of peace : the scales are balanced.

The scales of life and death have always swung towards life until now but, if I keep very still, I can feel them tipping. Some say death is like a long sleep – I shall keep my eyes open.

Review and I will reply (and be incredibly happy)

ROH