Dancing in the Mosque

Trust me and believe in the history that I’m trying to make. Try not to be angry at me for this separation. Instead believe in yourself, for it is you and I together who must create a new Afghanistan. I look forward to the day when the two of us will live in a society of equals. Even from the darkness of this dungeon, I look forward to the day when a blue sky will unfurl its bright and beautiful horizons. Nobody is going to give us this blue sky for free. We must take it by and for ourselves.

Every season came and went, but the season of war was endless.

During the seventh summer of the Russian invasion, our half-burnt mulberry tree was heavy with fruit. The sparrows pecked at it, scattering berries across the yard. From behind the window, I pointed to the fallen berries to help the sparrows find them. But they paid no attention. They were fighting with the mynah birds chattering in the branches.

For two nights, the sky was peaceful, filled only with stars and a thin moon. Uncle Basheer came home late, after being out most of the night. “Did you go to the moon with Uncle Naseer?” I asked.

“No, I was standing in front of Wali’s window, watching his television. I couldn’t hear the sound, but I saw Russian men and women dancing together. And then I saw pictures of our mujahideen who had been killed …”

“Uncle Basheer, what is television?” I asked.

“It is a box, and in it you can see lots of different people.”

“But, Uncle, how can all those people fit inside a box?”

Nanah-jan called out from across the room, “There are only short people in that box, Homeira.”

After dinner, I noticed that Uncle Basheer had disappeared again. I took my shoes and snuck out of the house. I wanted to see that box and see those women dancing inside it.

The veil of night spread darkness over the streets. We were forbidden from going out after dark. Nanah-jan had warned us, “When it gets dark, the infidels hunger for blood.”

I looked for Uncle Basheer, but I couldn’t see him. I looked in both directions, making sure there were no bloodthirsty infidels lurking. Nanah-jan’s voice whispered in my ear, “The infidels bite the vein in your neck and suck all the blood out. They like to grab a bunch of children all at once. And they like girls’ blood the most, Homeira!”

I heard a man running down the street. I shrank against the wall. Was he one of the bloodthirsty infidels or a neighbor running away from them?

My heart was pounding in my chest. Could the infidels hear it? I didn’t want to attract vampires. Hearing the sound of flowing water, I remembered the culvert built into Wali’s wall where a stream emptied from his yard into a ditch beside the street. In the fall rains, it was full of water, but now there was only a trickle. I crawled into the culvert.

I covered my mouth with my hand in case a frog would try to jump onto my face. I crawled forward. The culvert opened into a corner of the courtyard. I stood up and looked around. Uncle Basheer was standing in the yard, silhouetted by a window that flickered with a soft blue light. I crept up to him. “Uncle?”

Shocked, my uncle whirled around. “Homeira! What are you doing here?”

“I want to watch television, Uncle.”

“You’re too short to see in the window. Go home right now!”

I clung to my uncle’s leg. “Please, just once! Just once!”

Uncle Basheer looked at me with one eye, while he kept the other glued to the television. A woman’s singing reached us from inside the house. My uncle hoisted me onto his shoulders. A gentle breeze wrapped its cool breath around my sweaty neck.

“Careful, Homeira. We don’t want Wali’s father to see us.”

Uncle Basheer raised me to the height of the window. I saw something lit up in the corner of the room. I squinted my eyes … I couldn’t believe it … the woman’s voice was coming from that box, a woman with bare legs, wearing a short dress, not trousers. I squeezed Uncle Basheer’s neck. The Box Woman looked nothing like Nanah-jan. She looked like Samira’s mother, a teacher, who walked to school without a hijab, wearing a skirt and a sleeveless blouse.

Suddenly, the night exploded. Stuttering bullets shattered the silence.

Uncle Basheer’s friend Wali appeared at the window, placed a finger on his lips, and closed the window. A frightening noise hissed by my ear—a hot breath of wind. I heard glass breaking. Wali was still there, standing at the window, right in front of me, staring right at me, his eyes opening wider and wider. And then, suddenly he fell over.

Watching, my uncle fell to his knees. My face was burning in a hundred places as if I had been stung by a swarm of bees. My hands were wet and sticky. Inside the house, Wali’s mother and sister were screaming.

“Uncle?” I asked.

Basheer didn’t answer.

I jumped off his shoulders and stared into his eyes. Uncle Basheer was looking at me, his eyes wide and unblinking.

I pulled on his arm. “Let’s go home, Uncle.”

He stood up. I pulled him toward the culvert. I crawled in; he followed. We slithered under the wall. Baba-jan’s voice was calling from down the street.

“We’re here, Baba-jan!” I shouted.

Baba-jan ran toward us; Madar and Nanah-jan were right behind him. Uncle Basheer fell down. Lifting him up, Baba-jan carried him to our house. Once inside, Agha knelt beside me, examining my hands and face. “It’s Uncle Basheer’s blood,” I said. “The bullet passed right next to us. It hit Wali’s stomach.”

Screaming, Uncle Basheer jumped up and ran toward the door. Baba-jan caught him, holding him tightly, while Uncle Basheer screamed and screamed. Madar washed my bloody hands and cleaned my face, removing bits of glass with a pair of tweezers. The sky blazed brightly; then fell dark … light … darkness. I could feel the tanks’ rumbling outside.

When I woke up in the morning, Uncle Basheer was sitting in a corner with his face in his hands, crying. I crawled toward him.

“Uncle Basheer, what happened to Wali?”

Uncle Basheer cried louder. My face began to burn again.

Neither my grandfather nor my grandmother went to Wali’s funeral. “They were communists,” Baba-jan said. “They wouldn’t like us reciting Fâteha at the funeral.”

Crying, Uncle Basheer said, “But Wali wasn’t a communist!”

Madar said, “A bullet doesn’t care whether you are a mujahid or a communist. The smoke from the fires that started in this country scorches everyone’s eyes.”

Wali was buried in his yard under a burnt pomegranate tree. They couldn’t take him to the cemetery because the streets were packed with both communists and mujahideen.

Baba-jan said to Agha, “Wakil Ahmad, take the hands of your wife and children and go. They will come for you next. This land doesn’t belong to you or me anymore.”

That night, Baba-jan wrapped me in his arms. “Come to me, Homeira.”

I fell asleep in his arms. I don’t remember anything he said, I only remember that he was repeatedly drying his eyes with the tip of his turban.

When I awoke, it was very warm. My mouth was filled with dust. My face was burning. I rolled over and sat up. The blazing sun was directly overhead, shining. I looked around. I was surrounded by a flat, empty desert, without a single shadow—a dun-colored landscape with thorn bushes scattered all the way to an incandescent horizon.

I thought that our house must have been flattened by a rocket; that our entire neighborhood had been destroyed. But there was not even a pile of adobe or a burnt tree branch to be seen.

“Where is Baba-jan, Aunt Azizah, Nanah-jan …?”

Agha put a finger to his lips. “We are emigrating.”

It was my first time hearing this word. I crawled over next to Madar. Shading her eyes with one hand, she gazed at the small thorn bushes in the distance. “Madar, what does ‘emigrating’ mean?”

Still searching the horizon, Madar said, “It means becoming a stranger in a foreign country … It means dying alone.”

I had a thousand questions, but neither of my parents was looking at me. “Madar, when we emigrate, can I still sleep next to Baba-jan?”

Madar’s eyes were fixed on the distant rocky plain lying at the foot of the mountains. The hot wind scoured the soft soil, lifting it high into the air, creating whirling funnels of dust that danced across the landscape.

In the distance, I saw a motorcycle, a tiny speck trailing a huge plume of dust, growing larger and larger, ripping the heart out of the plain with its roaring.

With the two boghcha on his shoulder, Agha began to run faster. “Agha! Why didn’t you bring Baba-jan?” I ran after him.

Madar was trying to reach us. I shouted, “Madar, what happened to Nanah-jan?”

The wind threw the sand against my face, filling my mouth with dust. It didn’t taste like anything.

The motorcycle reached us. The driver shouted, “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

I raised my arm and waved good-bye at the invisible home. The driver was driving as fast as he could.

The thornbushes flew by, big and small.

I wished I had kissed Baba-jan’s face before we’d left. I thought to myself, The wars were not this bad. At least we were all together.

I decided to count the steps that were taking us farther and farther away from everything I knew. One, two, three … Faster! One, two, three … One, two.

A year later, in the depths of the winter, after the Russians left Afghanistan, we returned to Herat, eagerly awaiting the return of spring, eagerly awaiting the return of peace. I knew about the seasons, but I didn’t know what peace was. For me, it was enough to feel once again surrounded by Baba-jan’s embrace. It didn’t matter what little of the house and the garden remained intact.

My dear Siawash,

The only things I have received from the fourteen years of shared life with your father are a few pictures of you that I’ve hung on the walls and the door of my room here in California. In the mornings my eyes open to your sweet face and at night my eyes close looking at that same face. Even though you must have grown past the age of breast-feeding, at your nightly feeding hour I still wake up, afraid I may have missed it. I stare at all the pictures of you I have on my wall, but the one I look at most is the picture on your birth certificate. It takes me back to the day this certificate was issued.

On the day after you were born a frigid wind burst through my open window. Out on the street, people must’ve been collecting the scattered body parts of their dead relatives. A yellow-orange water tanker had come to help the snow wash away the crimson streaks of human cruelty.

But I didn’t want to think about the blood and bodies I had seen the day before. All my thoughts were with you as you were sleeping comfortably in my arms, and looking at your little pink face had taken away all the despair of Kabul from me.

It was eleven thirty in the morning. I heard the coughing of a man behind the curtain of my room. I hurriedly pulled a blanket to cover my bosom. A man dressed in a blue uniform came from behind the curtain and greeted me. He had a pen and a folder that seemed to contain thick yellow cards. The man looked at my mother and me and asked, “Don’t you have a man around?” My mother kept quiet, but I replied, “He has stepped outside, but we can talk, too.” The man shook his head at my audacity and said, “I’ll come back.” He had hardly left the room when your father entered. The man introduced himself to your father behind the curtain and said that he had come to fill out the birth certificate of the newborn to complete the record. The man asked your father, “Is the newborn a girl or a boy?” I could hear your father’s excitement. “It’s a king-boy,” he said. The man asked, “His name?” Your father responded, “Siawash.” Obviously, the man was filling out those yellow birth certificates behind the curtain.

The man asked for your father’s name and then for the name of your father’s father. Then he asked for the gynecologist’s certification papers. Your father picked up those papers from the table next to the bed and gave them to the man. I could hear him flipping through the papers. Moments later, when the man was done filling out the information, he congratulated your father and left.

You were busy nursing. When your father came through the curtain, he had the yellow birth certificate in his hand. I took the birth certificate from him and read it. It contained your name, your father’s name, and your grandfather’s name. But nobody had asked for my name. I was irrelevant. I looked at you and I wanted to hide you back in my womb so that once again you could belong to me, too.

I gave the birth certificate to my mother. As she was reading it, she sighed deeply. Although she was clearly upset, she was not surprised; she had lived as a woman in Afghanistan all her life.

Later, when your father brought in the identity registration card, once again my name, as your mother, was nowhere to be seen. Even in your passport, they didn’t ask for my name. Your mother’s name does not appear in any paper document. My son, in your motherland the mentioning of a woman’s name outside the family circle is a source of shame. And no child is known by its mother’s name.

But don’t worry, dear son. Should you one day want to find your live-buried mother, I have tried to leave you a sign, a clue, a hint. On your birth certificate next to your name, when no one was looking, I wrote in a bright color, “Mother’s name: Homeira.”

In February 1989 the Russians left our country. One day helicopters were hovering overhead like huge, angry, flying dragons as we cowered in darkness; the next day, the endless blue sky was filled with flights of doves, sparrows, and mynahs, testing their wings after years in hiding. But the chasm between the Afghan people and the government grew even wider. President Najibullah was unable to gain the support of mujahideen resistance groups and his government forces continued to fight the mujahideen, while KhAD and the Islamist factions stalked the cities, killing their enemies.

Despite Herat’s ruined vistas and fallen monuments, life had started moving through the city’s streets like blood pumping through a resuscitated child’s veins. The city took a deep breath. People began to climb out of their basements, where they had huddled for years. They could finally stand in the sun beneath the open sky and speak to each other without having to shout over the screams of low-flying rockets and jet fighters.

The mujahideen struggled home, the survivors, the wounded, the blind, the lame, the limbless, the foot soldiers. They came to look for their families. Some found orphans, some found homes, others found bone-filled craters where their homes had once stood.

Many people that KhAD arrested never returned, but Uncle Basheer came back. Everything seemed fine, except he was missing some of his fingernails. Whenever I asked him what had happened to them, he hid his hands in his sleeves and said nothing. Uncle Naseer also returned, with only one missing kidney. I never dared ask about that.

Our own house was still standing, but the neighborhood along the river was a wasteland of water-filled bomb craters. Cut down by bombs or for winter firewood, not a single tree remained standing in the Bagh-e Zananah, the Women’s Garden, which surrounded Queen Goharshad’s mosque and mausoleum.

For two years, we held our breath, unaware that this lull would soon be followed by a storm of discord and civil war.

My fondest memories belong to a time after the Russian retreat. In those days, we took short excursions to Kababian village, where I ran in the meadows with no fear of bombs. This village where Nanah-jan had spent her childhood was a place I could let my mind roam free in childhood fantasies. We went twice each year, once during the mulberry season and again in the fall when the wheat was cut and threshed.

When the mulberries were ripe, I would spend all day up among their leafy branches, picking the ripe red and milk-white mulberries. The sparrows were my rivals, stealing my harvest. I ate my fill before the birds arrived. Except sometimes it was the other way around.

The women spread their shawls beneath the trees. We children would climb like monkeys, kicking and shaking the branches, so the mulberries would fall like purple and white snow in the scarves stretched to collect them below.

Women would put the collected mulberries in baskets that were then lowered in the clear flowing stream so the water would cool them.

Afterward, the village women sat in the shade, leaning their heads together and gossiping while they ate the cool, ripe berries and doogh, a yogurt drink. And I hid in the branches above them, eavesdropping on their small talk and chirping with the sparrows.

Once in a while, Madar would call me. “Sparrow, come down now.”

“Madar, the sparrows are protesting. They are complaining that we have picked all the ripe berries and left nothing for them.”

“Homeira, tell the sparrows to stop complaining. They have wings and can fly from tree to tree, wherever their desires take them. Tell them, child, that the sun is shining and will soon ripen more berries for them.”

I tried to explain to the birds exactly what Madar had told me, but they just chirped their protests and blinked their beady eyes at me. “Madar!” I said. “I understand what they are saying. I just can’t speak to them.”

Madar’s laughter rose among the shiny leaves. “Understanding them is not enough, my daughter. You should be able to speak to them as well.”

My six-year-old brother Mushtaq chimed in, “Yes, Homeira, you must be able to speak to the birds. Everyone knows what they are saying.”

“And you know how to speak to them, I suppose?” I said to him in astonishment.

“Yes, look,” Mushtaq said. He took off his shoe and threw it up into the branches. The sparrows exploded into the sky in a noisy cloud. “That’s how you speak to them!”

In Nanah-jan’s village, my favorite pastime was to slip away in the heat of the afternoon and explore the narrow streets. I believed that one of those narrow streets would turn a corner and I would suddenly end up in the round part of the earth.

Madar told me that the world was divided between light and darkness, the night on one side and day on the other. One day I searched and searched that labyrinth of streets to find an alley where one half was in darkness and the other half in light.

Pale and out of breath, I finally reached home just as the crescent moon was suspended above the high walls of the compound.

“I was searching for the other end of the world, Madar-jan.”

The best part of my visits to the village was riding the gardonah, the wheat-threshing wooden chassis hauled around in circles by a team of oxen over wheat sheaves spread on a floor of rammed earth. As the gardonah circled around, loosening the wheat hulls away from the harder kernels, we kids sat on the gardonah as it went around and round, our weight helping to thresh the grain. I always managed to find a place on the gardonah with the older children.

When the wind was blowing, the chaff from under the threshing floor and the gardonah would rise in a dusty cloud, covering my face and hair. In excitement, I would burst into joyous screams. I wished that when the spinning of the gardonah came to an end, I would open my eyes on the other side of the world. My mother was always complaining about me and watched me closely. She would say, “You are a lot of trouble, Homeira. Why aren’t you like the other village girls? Why must you always be in the very middle of things?”

Like my brother, I was a rebel, but a very different kind. Madar and Nanah-jan usually approved of his mischief. Even when he broke Nanah-jan’s winter bedroom window. Or when he would displace the broken clay pitcher that Nanah-jan had placed in the tree for the sparrows to nest in. He would say, “Let the birds struggle to find their eggs.” Nanah-jan would even tolerate Mushtaq playing with her prayer beads, using them as a harness around my neck. He would kick me saying, “Hey, lazy horse, move it.” And when I would free myself from his harness screaming and shouting, Nanah-jan would say, “It wouldn’t kill you if you let your brother play with you as his horse. He is much younger than you.” And when that same younger brother would eventually become bigger than both my sister, Zahra, who was named after my aunt, and me, he would be given a bigger share of meat at dinner. When I would say to Nanah-jan, “I want the same size piece as Mushtaq,” she would look at me and say, “Since when has a girl’s share become equal to a boy’s?”

This kind of double-standard treatment infuriated me and led me to break rules. Even though I was a girl, I would walk swiftly and even run around the courtyard. I got a great kick out of the fact that I was able to climb a tree and Nanah-jan couldn’t climb after me to pull me down. I had learned to climb up the tree very quickly and would do everything possible to make sure I climbed a higher branch than Mushtaq. I remember always trying to climb the highest branches, and then one day I fell down from the tree. Nanah-jan shook her head with some gratification and said, “It was God’s doing.”

I was crying. Madar lifted me up from the dusty ground. My knees were bloody and bruised. Madar said, “May God keep your destiny in safe hands. You always do things you are not supposed to.”

Nanah-jan said, “In ancient times they would chain a girl’s feet together so that she wouldn’t stride wider and wouldn’t become a source of shame for her family.”

I was never concerned about the chain on the feet or the family honor. I didn’t even understand what that meant. I was in my own world. Away from the eyes of my grandfather, my uncles, and my father, I would spend half the day climbing the walls with Zarghuna, the neighbor’s daughter. Whenever we would hear a knock on the front door of either house, we would jump from the wall down to the veranda. With Shakiba, our other neighbor’s daughter, we would polish our nails and hold our hands in the sun to dry. We would enjoy the sunshine on our light skin. We did this in spite of Nanah-jan’s frequent nagging that this was the behavior of girls destined for hellfire. I would convince Mahjabin, another neighbor’s daughter, to play seesaw with me. We would ride timbered logs that would definitely bring shame to the past seven generations of a girl’s family and stain the honor of the mothers in any household. Years later, when Mahjabin was rejected and returned to her family by her husband because her virginity wasn’t intact, Nanah-jan fainted by the side of the wall and said, “May God save the destiny of this other log rider.”

In those days I committed my own sins and led the neighborhood girls to commit theirs. Especially on days when we couldn’t reach the raw grapes on the trellis. I would persuade the other girls to hold the bricks and climb like cats so our hands could reach the raw grapes that we loved so much. Mushtaq called me “the frightening creeper climber.”