بخش 7

Rahim Khan’s Story

There were a lot of reasons why I went to find Has-san in 1986. The biggest one, Allah forgive me, was that I was lonely. By then, most of my friends and relatives had either been killed or had escaped the country to Pakistan or Iran. I barely knew anyone in Kabul anymore, the city where I had lived my entire life. Everybody had fled. So eventually, I stopped going out to the city. I would spend my days in your father’s house, up in the study, reading your mother’s old books, listening to the news, watching the communist propaganda on television. Then I would pray namaz, cook something, eat, read some more, pray again, and go to bed. I would rise in the morning, pray, do it all over again.

And with my arthritis, it was getting harder for me to maintain the house. I did not want to let your father’s house go to rot; we had all had many good times in that house, so many memories, Amir jan. I tried to water the trees every few days, cut the lawn, tend to the flowers, fix things that needed fixing, but, even then, I was not a young man anymore.

But even so, I might have been able to manage. At least for a while longer. But when news of your father’s death reached me . . . for the first time, I felt a terrible loneliness in that house. An unbearable emptiness.

So one day, I fueled up the Buick and drove up to Hazarajat. Ali had a cousin there as I recalled. I had no idea if Hassan would still be there, if anyone would even know of him or his whereabouts. After all, it had been ten years since Ali and Hassan had left your father’s house.

But, with the grace of God, I found him there. It took very little searching—all I had to do was ask a few questions in Bamiyan and people pointed me to his village. The people in Bamiyan had told me I would find him easily— he lived in the only house in the village that had a walled garden. The mud wall, short and pocked with holes, enclosed the tiny house—which was really not much more than a glorified hut. I knocked on the wooden door and stepped through into a yard that had very little in it save for a parched strawberry patch and a bare lemon tree. There was a tandoor in the corner in the shadow of an acacia tree and I saw a man squatting beside it. He was placing dough on a large wooden spatula and slapping it against the walls of the tandoor. He dropped the dough when he saw me. I had to make him stop kissing my hands.

“Let me look at you,” I said. He stepped away. He was so tall now—I stood on my toes and still just came up to his chin. The Bamiyan sun had toughened his skin, and turned it several shades darker than I remembered, and he had lost a few of his front teeth. Other than that, he had those same narrow green eyes, that scar on his upper lip, that round face, that affable smile. You would have recognized him, Amir jan. I am sure of it.

We went inside. There was a young light-skinned Hazara woman sewing a shawl in a corner of the room. “This is my wife, Rahim Khan,” Hassan said proudly. “Her name is Farzana jan.” She was a shy woman, so courteous she spoke in a voice barely higher than a whisper and she would not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze. But the way she was looking at Hassan, he might as well have been sitting on the throne at the Arg.

We all settled around the adobe room. There was nothing in the room, just a frayed rug, a few dishes, a pair of mattresses, and a lantern.

“Where is Ali?” I asked.

Hassan dropped his gaze. He told me that Ali and his cousin— who had owned the house—had stepped on a land mine two years before, just outside of Bamiyan. I was deeply saddened to hear Ali had died. Your father and I grew up together, as you know, and Ali had been with him as long as I could remember. I remember when we were all little, the year Ali got polio and almost died. Your father would walk around the house all day crying.

Farzana made us shorwa with beans, turnips, and potatoes. We washed our hands and dipped fresh naan from the tandoor into the shorwa—it was the best meal I had had in months. It was then that I asked Hassan to move to Kabul with me. I told him about the house, how I could not care for it by myself anymore. I told him I would pay him well, that he and his khanum would be comfortable. They looked to each other and did not say anything. Later Hassan said the village was his home now; he and Farzana had made a life for themselves there.

“Forgive me, Rahim Khan. I pray you understand.”

“Of course,” I said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

It was midway through tea after shorwa that Hassan asked about you. I told him you were in America, but that I did not know much more. Hassan had so many questions about you. Had you married? Did you have children? How tall were you? Did you still fly kites? He said he had befriended an old Farsi teacher in Bamiyan who had taught him to read and write. If he wrote you a letter, would I pass it on to you? Then he asked me about your father. When I told him, Hassan buried his face in his hands and broke into tears. He wept like a child for the rest of that night.

They insisted that I spend the night there. Farzana fixed a cot for me and left me a glass of well water in case I got thirsty. All night, I heard her whispering to Hassan, and heard him sobbing.

In the morning, Hassan told me he and Farzana had decided to move to Kabul with me. His eyes were still red and puffy.

“Agha sahib was like my second father . . . God give him peace.”

When we got to Kabul, I discovered that Hassan had no intention of moving into the house. “But all these rooms are empty, Hassan jan. No one is going to live in them,” I said.

But he would not. He said it was a matter of ihtiram, a matter of respect. He and Farzana moved their things into the hut in the backyard, where he was born. Then, in mourning for your father, Hassan wore black for the next forty days.

I did not want them to, but the two of them did all the cooking, all the cleaning. I do not know what I would have done if he had not been there.

In early 1990, Farzana became pregnant. It was that same year, in the middle of the summer, that a woman covered in a sky blue burqa knocked on the front gates one morning.

“Who are you?” I said. But she just collapsed right there in the driveway. I yelled for Hassan and he helped me carry her into the house, to the living room. We lay her on the sofa and took off her burqa. Beneath it, we found a toothless woman with stringy graying hair and sores on her arms. She looked like she had not eaten for days. But the worst of it by far was her face. Someone had taken a knife to it and . . . Amir jan, the slashes cut this way and that way. One of the cuts went from cheekbone to hairline and it had not spared her left eye on the way. It was grotesque. I patted her brow with a wet cloth and she opened her eyes. “Where is Hassan?” she whispered.

“I’m right here,” Hassan said. He took her hand and squeezed it.

Her good eye rolled to him. “I have walked long and far to see if you are as beautiful in the flesh as you are in my dreams. And you are. Even more.” She pulled his hand to her scarred face. “Smile for me. Please.”

Hassan did and the old woman wept. “You smiled coming out of me, did anyone ever tell you? And I wouldn’t even hold you. Allah forgive me, I wouldn’t even hold you.”

None of us had seen Sanaubar since she had eloped with a band of singers and dancers in 1964, just after she had given birth to Hassan. You never saw her, Amir, but in her youth, she was a vision. She had a dimpled smile and a walk that drove men crazy. And now . . .

Hassan dropped her hand and bolted out of the house. I went after him, but he was too fast. Sanaubar cried that coming back had been a mistake, maybe even a worse one than leaving. But I made her stay. Hassan would return.

He came back the next morning, looking tired and weary, like he had not slept all night. He took Sanaubar’s hand in both of his and told her she could cry if she wanted to but she needn’t, she was home now, he said, home with her family.

Hassan and Farzana nursed her back to health. It was Sanaubar who delivered Hassan’s son that winter of 1990. I remember Sanaubar came out of the hut holding her grandson, had him wrapped in a wool blanket. She stood beaming under a dull gray sky, clutching that baby in her arms like she never wanted to let go. Not this time.

They named him Sohrab, after Hassan’s favorite hero from the Shahnamah, as you know, Amir jan. He was a beautiful little boy, sweet as sugar, and had the same temperament as his father. You should have seen Sanaubar with that baby, Amir jan. He became the center of her existence. By the time Sohrab was two, he was calling her Sasa. The two of them were inseparable.

She lived to see him turn four, and then, one morning, she just did not wake up. She looked calm, at peace, like she did not mind dying now. We buried her in the cemetery on the hill, the one by the pomegranate tree. The loss was hard on Hassan—it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place. But it was even harder on little Sohrab.

He kept walking around the house, looking for Sasa, but you know how children are, they forget so quickly.

By then—that would have been 1995—the Shorawi were defeated and long gone and Kabul belonged to Massoud, Rabbani, and the Mujahedin. The infighting between the factions was fierce and no one knew if they would live to see the end of the day. Kabul in those days, Amir jan, was as close as you could get to that proverbial hell on earth.

On those days when the rocket fire eased up a bit and the gun-fighting was light, Hassan would take Sohrab to the zoo to see Marjan the lion, or to the cinema. Hassan taught him how to shoot the slingshot, and, later, by the time he was eight, Sohrab had become deadly with that thing. Hassan taught him to read and write—his son was not going to grow up illiterate like he had. I grew very attached to that little boy. He reminded me of you, how you loved to read when you were little, Amir jan.

In the wintertime, Hassan took his son kite running. There were not nearly as many kite tournaments as in the old days—no one felt safe outside for too long—but there were still a few scattered tournaments. Hassan would prop Sohrab on his shoulders and they would go trotting through the streets, running kites, climbing trees where kites had dropped. You remember, Amir jan, what a good kite runner Hassan was? He was still just as good. At the end of winter, Hassan and Sohrab would hang the kites they had run all winter on the walls of the main hallway. They would put them up like paintings.

I told you how we all celebrated in 1996 when the Taliban rolled in and put an end to the daily fighting. I remember coming home that night and finding Hassan in the kitchen, listening to the radio. He had a sober look in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong, and he just shook his head. “God help the Hazaras now, Rahim Khan sahib,” he said.

“The war is over, Hassan,” I said. “There’s going to be peace, Inshallah, and happiness and calm. No more rockets, no more killing, no more funerals!” But he just turned off the radio and asked if he could get me anything before he went to bed.

A few weeks later, the Taliban banned kite fighting. And two years later, in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Rahim Khan slowly uncrossed his legs and leaned against the bare wall in the wary, deliberate way of a man whose every movement triggers spikes of pain. It hit me again, the enormity of what I had done that winter and that following summer. The names rang in my head: Hassan, Sohrab, Ali, Farzana, and Sanaubar.

“Is Hassan still in that house now?” I asked.

Rahim Khan raised the teacup to his parched lips and took a sip. He then fished an envelope from the breast pocket of his vest and handed it to me. “For you.”

I tore the sealed envelope. Inside, I found a Polaroid photograph and a folded letter. I stared at the photograph for a full minute.

A tall man dressed in a white turban and a green-striped chapan stood with a little boy in front of a set of wrought-iron gates. Sunlight slanted in from the left, casting a shadow on half of his rotund face. He was squinting and smiling at the camera, showing a pair of missing front teeth. Even in this blurry Polaroid, the man in the chapan exuded a sense of self-assuredness, of ease. Looking at the photo, one might have concluded that this was a man who thought the world had been good to him. Rahim Khan was right: I would have recognized him if I had bumped into him on the street. The little boy stood barefoot, one arm wrapped around the man’s thigh, his shaved head resting against his father’s hip. He too was grinning and squinting.

I unfolded the letter. It was written in Farsi. No dots were omitted, no crosses forgotten, no words blurred together—the handwriting was almost childlike in its neatness. I began to read:

In the name of Allah the most beneficent, the most merciful,

Amir agha, with my deepest respects,

Farzana jan, Sohrab, and I pray that this latest letter finds you in good health and in the light of Allah’s good graces. Please offer my warmest thanks to Rahim Khan sahib for carrying it to you. I am hopeful that one day I will hold one of your letters in my hands and read of your life in America. Perhaps a photograph of you will even grace our eyes. I have told much about you to Farzana jan and Sohrab, about us growing up together and playing games and running in the streets. They laugh at the stories of all the mischief you and I used to cause!

Amir agha,

Alas the Afghanistan of our youth is long dead. In Kabul, fear is everywhere. The savages who rule our watan don’t care about human decency. The other day, I accompanied Farzana jan to the bazaar to buy some potatoes and naan. She asked the vendor how much the potatoes cost, but he did not hear her, I think he had a deaf ear. So she asked louder and suddenly a young Talib ran over and hit her on the thighs with his wooden stick. He struck her so hard she fell down. He was screaming at her and cursing and saying the Ministry of Vice and Virtue does not allow women to speak loudly. She had a large purple bruise on her leg for days but what could I do except stand and watch my wife get beaten? If I fought, that dog would have surely put a bullet in me, and gladly! Then what would happen to my Sohrab? The streets are full enough already of hungry orphans and every day I thank Allah that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

I wish you could see Sohrab. He is a good boy. Rahim Khan sahib and I have taught him to read and write so he does not grow up stupid like his father. The two of us often walk up to the cemetery on the hill. The droughts have dried the hill and the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years, but Sohrab and I still sit under its shade and I read to him from the Shahnamah. It is not necessary to tell you that his favorite part is the one with his namesake, Rostam and Sohrab. Soon he will be able to read from the book himself. I am a very proud and very lucky father.

Amir agha,

Rahim Khan sahib is quite ill. I am so worried about this dear man I pray for him every day. He is leaving for Pakistan in a few days to consult some doctors there and, Inshallah, he will return with good news. But in my heart I fear for him.

I have been dreaming a lot lately, Amir agha. Some of them are nightmares, like hanged corpses rotting in soccer fields with bloodred grass. Mostly, though, I dream of good things, and praise Allah for that. I dream that Rahim Khan sahib will be well. I dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person, and an important person. I dream that lawla flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul again and kites will fly in the skies. And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.

May Allah be with you always.

Hassan

I read the letter twice. I folded the note and looked at the photograph for another minute. I pocketed both. “How is he?” I asked.

“That letter was written six months ago, a few days before I left for Peshawar,” Rahim Khan said. “I took the Polaroid the day before I left. A month after I arrived in Peshawar, I received a telephone call from one of my neighbors in Kabul. He told me this story: Soon after I took my leave, a rumor spread that a Hazara family was living alone in the big house in Wazir Akbar Khan, or so the Taliban claim. A pair of Talib officials came to investigate and interrogated Hassan. They accused him of lying when Hassan told them he was living with me even though many of the neighbors, including the one who called me, supported Hassan’s story. The Talibs ordered him to get his family out of the house by sundown. Hassan protested. So they took him to the street—” “No,” I breathed. “—and order him to kneel—” “No. God, no.” “—and shot him in the back of the head.” “No.” “—Farzana came screaming and attacked them—” “No.” “—shot her too. Self-defense, they claimed later—” But all I could manage was to whisper “No. No. No” over and over again.

“The Taliban moved into the house,” Rahim Khan said. No one said a word about it. Most of it was fear of the Taliban, I think. But no one was going to risk anything for a pair of Hazara servants.”

“What did they do with Sohrab?” I asked. I felt tired, drained. A coughing fit gripped Rahim Khan and went on for a long time. When he finally looked up, his face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot. “I heard he’s in an orphanage somewhere in Karteh-Seh. “Amir jan, I summoned you here because I wanted to see you before I die, but that’s not all.” I said nothing. I think I already knew what he was going to say.

“I want you to go to Kabul. I want you to bring Sohrab here,” he said.

I struggled to find the right words. I’d barely had time to deal with the fact that Hassan was dead.

“Please hear me. I know an American pair here in Peshawar, a husband and wife named Thomas and Betty Caldwell. They are Christians and they run a small charity organization that they manage with private donations. Mostly they house and feed Afghan children who have lost their parents. I have seen the place. It’s clean and safe, the children are well cared for, and Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell are kind people. They have already told me that Sohrab would be welcome to their home and—” “Rahim Khan, you can’t be serious.”

“Children are fragile, Amir jan. Kabul is already full of broken children and I don’t want Sohrab to become another.”

“Rahim Khan, I don’t want to go to Kabul. I can’t!” I said.

“Why me? Why can’t you pay someone here to go? I’ll pay for it if it’s a matter of money.”

“It isn’t about money, Amir!” Rahim Khan roared. “I’m a dying man and I will not be insulted! It has never been about money with me, you know that. And why you? I think we both know why it has to be you, don’t we?”

“I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family. Kabul is a dangerous place, you know that, and you’d have me risk everything for . . .” I stopped.

“There’s something else. Something you don’t know.”

“Please, Rahim Khan—”

“Sanaubar wasn’t Ali’s first wife.”

Now I looked up.

“He was married once before, to a Hazara woman from the Jaghori area. This was long before you were born. They were married for three years.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“She left him childless after three years and married a man in Khost. She bore him three daughters. That’s what I am trying to tell you.”

“Ali was sterile,” Rahim Khan said.

“No he wasn’t. He and Sanaubar had Hassan, didn’t they? They had Hassan—”

“No they didn’t,” Rahim Khan said.

“Yes they did!”

“No they didn’t, Amir.”

“Then who—”

“I think you know who.”

The room was swooping up and down, swaying side to side. “Did Hassan know?” I said through lips that didn’t feel like my own. Rahim Khan closed his eyes. Shook his head.

“You bastards,” I muttered. Stood up. “You goddamn bastards!” He reached for me, but I shed his hand. Headed for the door.

“Amir jan, please don’t leave.”

I opened the door and turned to him. “Why? What can you possibly say to me? I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve just found out my whole life is one big fucking lie! What can you possibly say to make things better? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing!”

And with that, I stormed out of the apartment.

The sun had almost set and left the sky swathed in smothers of purple and red. I walked down the busy, narrow street that led away from Rahim Khan’s building. The street was a noisy lane in a maze of alleyways choked with pedestrians, bicycles, and rickshaws.

I walked into a smoky little samovar house and ordered a cup of tea. I tilted back on the folding chair’s rear legs and rubbed my face.

How could I have been so blind? The signs had been there for me to see all along; they came flying back at me now: Baba hiring Dr. Kumar to fix Hassan’s harelip. Baba never missing Hassan’s birthday. He had wept, wept, when Ali announced he and Hassan were leaving us.

The waiter placed a teacup on the table before me. I took a gulp of the blackest tea I’d had in years. How could he have lied to me all those years? To Hassan? He had sat me on his lap when I was little, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, There is only one sin. And that is theft . . . When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. Hadn’t he said those words to me? And now, fifteen years after I’d buried him, I was learning that Baba had been a thief. And a thief of the worst kind, because the things he’d stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali his honor. His nang. His namoos.

As it turned out, Baba and I were more alike than I’d ever known. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us. And with that came this realization: that Rahim Khan had summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.

I wished Rahim Khan hadn’t called me. I wished he had let me live on in my oblivion. But he had called me. And what Rahim Khan revealed to me changed things. Made me see how my entire life, long before the winter of 1975, had been a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets.

There is a way to be good again, he’d said.

A way to end the cycle.

With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul.

On the rickshaw ride back to Rahim Khan’s apartment, I looked at the round face in the Polaroid again, the way the sun fell on it. My brother’s face. Hassan had loved me once, loved me in a way that no one ever had or ever would again. He was gone now, but a little part of him lived on. It was in Kabul.

Waiting.

I found Rahim Khan praying namaz in a corner of the room. He was just a dark silhouette bowing eastward against a bloodred sky. I waited for him to finish.

Then I told him I was going to Kabul. Told him to call the Caldwells in the morning.

“I’ll pray for you, Amir jan,” he said.