The other day I awoke about five in the morning to the sound of dogs. The sun was rising, entering a protracted eclipse. I rolled over, pulled a corner of the curtain and peeked outside. No sign of eclipse here, the light was almost blinding. I listened, watched and waited. In a minute they appeared, nine of them, crossing from just below my window, an urban pack. The dominant one I recognized as the big yellow boy I’d seen back in April take sole ownership of the corner. He trotted, back straight, head erect in front of the others, meandering it seemed, carefree. It stands to reason food would be a constant issue, but not so for this bunch. There wasn’t a runt or gimp or mange among them. Several were yellow like their leader, honey colored chows blended into the size and legs of Siberian huskies. There were two smaller mud-colored ones weaving side to side at the rear; what they lacked in brawn they made up for in quickness and speed. At the center of the pack was a lone albino, not much smaller than the alpha. She was magnificent in her purity, her coat thick and even, her snout and eyes and ears proportioned like that of a long faced wolf. One mid-ranked male had assumed the duty of keeping her in line. As the pack made its way down and up the block he periodically pushed against her, took one of her ears into the grip of his teeth and growled a disgusting, menacing growl. This went on, like a terrible Pavlovian grooming process with no allowance for error. The white dog kept her head down, moved to the whim of voiceless commands from the fore. The alpha didn’t even turn his head. Order was being implemented the way nature deems it necessary to survive. My eyes were pasted to this un-detonated drama. Finally, thankfully the pack turned down a side street. A shepherd was approaching, eager to be first to arrive at the grand bazaar that morning. His herd moved down the main avenue like a lazy cloud across the sky. Complicitous, gray, stupid. Not all would return from Butcher Street that evening. How swiftly, I thought, the pack would tear the life from one of those goats.
I closed my curtain and rolled onto my other side, back to the window. Soon I’d have to get up, dress, make the bed. I didn’t want to wait until one of the children tried to open my locked door. It was hot and the air was as still as the mountains that surround Kabul. Fatima had recently insisted upon cleaning my room. She kicked me out, spent an entire day scrubbing, ceiling to floor. Now, three days later, my room was once again layered with a film of dust, the dust that dissolves into the air as salt into water. There is no way not to breath it. I know now why praying Moslems make such a fuss about cleaning their mouths, their nostrils, their eyes, their hair. The dust, left to its druthers, gets into your skin. I looked at my watch. Almost six. I felt I should realize in that moment something special, something powerful and informative, but like the eclipse it skirted borders with other lands. I closed my eyes. They wouldn’t stay closed. It was then for the first time since planning this journey I lost my nerve. I didn’t want nan. I didn’t want chi. I didn’t want to learn another word of dari, and I didn’t want to feel guilty for not giving every ounce of my time and love to these children every day and every hour that remains for me to be in their lives before I leave them to the legacy of war and corruption and misogynistic freaks like Frankenstein’s monster superpowers created and now one after another that destroy their creator in fits of rage at being alive in such a world, yearning instead their idea of Paradise where gardens perpetually bloom and submissive virgins sprout like beans bearing grails full of mead and ambrosia.
In other words I wanted to fly away.
I wanted Afghanistan to be news again, statistics, something fed to me like weak diner coffee I drink because it is there and it makes the eggs and toast feel like a real breakfast. And I could, if I wanted. Fly away. Nobody would blame me. The embassy just sent another alarming warning to all Americans. I closed my eyes and this time they stayed closed. I don’t know for how long, twenty minutes, until one of the kids tried to open my locked door.
Three of the orphans left for Italy this week; Maria, Mahbooba and Farzana. They participate in a wonderful program providing them a western education and a host family to bring them through it. I do not know when I will see any of them again. Not before I leave. Each in her own way has been my angel, smoothing my stay at Mehan. They are veterans here, testament to the character building over the years. They are also the only children who speak enough English to have a conversation. Maria was leader of drama class, keeper of the storeroom. She is an ambitious and determined young lady, has her sights set on becoming an engineer. Mahbooba, having been around the longest, has just about outgrown the orphanage. The school here is remedial in comparison to her level of learning, and her time as the model of behavior and maturity has reached its apex. She is loving, personable, intuitive. If she wants, she will one day make an exceptional teacher. Farzana, of course, is my favorite. A moody adolescent Hazara with a dark past she wears like her scarf upon her shoulders. Her father beheaded, her village destroyed, a girl disowned and in the eyes of many, born in a body belonging to a race that is less than human. I’ve seen her dismantle a problem with one sharp sentence, and equally put a dismantled yet good-natured girl back together with merely a look and a smile. She will be a leader. Her tears she kept hidden, while everyone else in the orphanage sobbed their goodbyes. In her suitcase was the book of poems I gave her, the one she carefully covered with rose paper. I have heard or witnessed so many candidates for bravery these months; hers is the stock on which I’d place my bets. This is how it must have been for those big Irish families and friends waving to the apple in their eye as he sailed away on a steamer for America and a better life. Farzana’s sister, Sosan, accompanied them to the airport. She returned a bit defeated, but chin up enough to orchestrate dinner chores. An hour later their plane flew right over the orphanage. Sosan and I looked at each other in the kitchen, our hands holding dirty plates above the sink; her eyes welled up, triggering mine. Together we cried.
Now the house feels empty, but not just for the absence of the three. Exams are over and most of the children have left to visit their villages for a week. Still, there is not time to wallow. New faces pop up without warning; Mahbooba’s little brother, Siraj al Hok who speaks only Nuristani, wild from the streets, like an impish pickpocket from a Dickens tale. Where his sister had reached completion, he has just begun. He marches into my room without knocking, rifles through my closet, laughs inappropriately when admonished, and can’t figure out how to speak using gesture and facial expression and tone. There is no doubt whatsoever if he did not come to live in this orphanage he would one day become the enemy. Poverty fuels the Taliban, more so even than poppies and oil.
A second tapping on my door and a turning of its handle; I finally pulled myself up out of bed. It was Mastura, another of Mahbooba’s siblings. She had brought me nan. She had brought me chi. She is a quiet girl, not social like Mahbooba. She is tougher, though. She’ll not back down from any bull running toward her. She smiled, averted her gaze. “Nan maykonee?” I noticed she wore a skirt over her jeans, the tai-dyed yellow one that belonged to her sister, worn the same way.
“Nan maykorum.”
Next week the orphanage will be full again; I need to prepare for classes. My plan is to organize a final presentation, open to the public. Nabila will sing, Araj too, backed up by the Frishta octet of nine-year old girls. The older boys will recite “All the World’s a Stage”. I’ll share the photography class portfolio, and drama class will perform a condensed, Afghan version of Mother Courage. I imagine some Persian poetry in there somewhere, and maybe I’ll perform a new tune. It’s more than I think I can orchestrate, but it is better to be busy.
I examined my weekly planner and began to scribble some notes. Not a minute went by before I heard the at once friendly and decisive voice of kawka Ryan. “Een, come join me!” Ryan is the patriarch of the orphanage. White hair and beard, finely trimmed, he walks the three kilometers from his house every morning, wears a business suit and always a fine point pen in his breast pocket. He is sixty, or fifty-five. It is impossible to know without spending a while calculating the age of his eldest son, from there to his wedding, converting the Islamic calendar, approximating from the time of what season he was born. He was once a worker in various ministries. Now he is the liaison between the orphanages and the government, as well as the man in charge of security. He understands a bit of English, and I know just about as much dari, so we get by. I put my planner down and went upstairs to sit with him. As on other occasions when he had asked me to join him, there was a story he wanted to share.
Ryan is from a village up in the foothills of Paghman, a lush and spring fed Eden that after being torn asunder by war is slowly recovering. He met and married his wife there. It was a traditional wedding with the groom arriving on a horse and the bride led in on a shutur kajawa, a caravan camel adorned with bells and colorful trimmings. They have three sons and two daughters. The oldest boy is an engineer, the next an actor, a daughter teaches, and another son is an artist. The youngest daughter is in grade 5 or 6. Ryan is diabetic, he often asks if I might send him quality insulin from America. He is missing several teeth, a condition I presumed having to do with poor brushing. Nevertheless he gives a good strong handshake.
I sat on the couch opposite him and he poured chi, black for him, green for me. “Today is hot,” he said. “We sit and talk.”
There was something edgy in his demeanor. I am worried about his health, walking all that way every day. He is the man the Afghan intelligence service interrogated into the night about my presence in the orphanage, insulting and intimidating him in their attempt to get his signature on a piece of paper absolving the government of any responsibility for my security. Ryan wouldn’t sign. The whole affair set off a nosebleed that no amount of pressure would stop. They took him to a hospital, but brought him back to finish their interrogation. It was the third time this kind of harassment has occurred in the past year. I was just another excuse. Someone in government is very sensitive to the idea of nurturing a generation of educated, independent girls and equality minded boys. Even so, I feel responsible and take special care to look at the color of his skin, watch his stance, detect any downturn in energy. He has become a most improbable mentor, given our language barrier. I’ll look over and find him staring at me. He never turns away.
“Do you know I was in prison?” he asked quite ordinarily. I took two sips of my tea, as if it was milk.
“No, kawka. I didn’t.”
“Pienj years,” he said, breathlessly, holding up his hand and spreading his fingers.
Ryan was one of thousands thrown into Puli Charkhi prison during the Soviet backed regime of Babrak Karmal. We determined he must have been there from 1982 to 1986. It is impossible to say how many were killed there. Several tens of thousands would be conservative. Ryan’s crime was being a university graduate who spoke out against the oppressors. He put his cup of tea down on the table and pantomimed for me his first six months of incarceration. A neck shackle attached to ankle clasps with a short chain. He sat, hunched like that in a two by one meter cell. Each day at noon a security guard, also named Babrak came for him, intimating this was the day he would shoot Ryan in the head, push his body to the side where his blood would run into a gutter specially designed for the job. I thought of Dostoevsky and his mind bending “execution” that left him standing in the cold, blindfolded. Babrak was not so kind to his subject. He did this day after day; instead of shooting Ryan dead he beat him senseless. Ryan pointed to the spaces in his teeth. I felt ashamed. After six months life got better, the beatings came less and less. They removed the shackles. Ryan could not walk for three weeks, but eventually he was able to make his way to the visiting station where once a month his wife and son were allowed to see him. A man he knew in another cellblock did not fare as well. The guards nailed his body sideways to a wall. Still alive, he works for the city. There are holes in his caves and arms where the spikes went through. Once in a while a kind doctor smuggled bits of food into the prison; Ryan said the man’s confidence kept him alive. “Be strong,” the doctor said. “Don’t fear. You will live.”
By the time Ryan got out of prison the Mujahidin were converging on Soviet troops. Once in control, their infighting exploded into the destruction of Kabul. Thousands upon thousands of civilians were killed. Ryan and his young family huddled in the cellar of their home, without food or water, wondering when the shelling would stop. He paused in the telling of this story and leaned toward me. “Put your chi down. Listen,” he said. “There was a girl, Mahbooba’s age, she was taken by Mujahidin. Month, two month, every night two, three at a time took sex from her, what is the word? Raped. When finally she came home, she was pregnant. Her family, shamed by this, killed her. This is what has happened to us. These are the men in power.”
A great mural of history has formed in my mind. It is Shakespearean in stature, empires clashing with one another, negligent of the baffling forces of nature. Peace is like a letter that arrives one hour after the king has left. My country’s brushstrokes began the year Ryan was thrown into Puli Charkhi, back when the enemy of an enemy was considered a friend. It would take the blind poet Homer to lift this mural from the grasp of ever clouding time. In the end, his refrain would echo as far into the future as it does into the past; who thinks he can control history will be buried by it.
Ryan sipped the last of his tea and slapped his knees. “I must go,” he said. No warming up to it. He stood and I stood with him. He shook my hand and trotted down the stairway. I could hear his solid voice address one or another of the girls as he made his way out the door. I sat back down on the couch, my cup in my left hand. I finally put it down on the table and leaned back. I thought of those dogs in the street that morning, how I’d like to shoot them. All but the white one. The goats too.
A few days have passed. I helped the children and staff clean the house, hang the curtains back up. I got the stereo receiver to work and blared some Hindi dance music in the library. I taught Shagufa how to swing dance. I finished reading a book of Persian poetry, played chess with one of the other Fatimas. I lie in bed and stare at my hands. I try to look forward but my thoughts are confused.
I miss our girls in Italy, but the opportunity for them is staggering; how glad I am we took the time to learn the computer, open email accounts and practice sending pictures back and forth. I remember the only time I was with just the three of them. We were in my room looking at pictures. Over the months every once in I while I’d heard one of them say the word “shit”. It was Maria, this time. She’d simply scrolled too far down on the screen of my laptop. I am certain the girls have no idea just how profane the word is. They say it without an ounce of self-consciousness, quickly and delicately, the way you or I would say “ouch” from a pinprick. A discussion ensued wherein I asked them to teach me bad words in dari. They turned red and held their fingers to their mouths and giggled. The worst word they could come up with is khar, Persian for donkey. I pressed them. Being a task oriented girl Maria worked hard to think of one, but came up empty. Farzana just kept laughing. Mahbooba wanted to know what shit means, literally. I explained, sending all three into a tizzy. It was hilarious to them but at the same time I could see them rapidly try to recall all the incidences in which they said the word, horrified they disgraced themselves. It got so they couldn’t sit still. I closed the computer and they gravitated into the hallway, gesturing and expounding in flourishes of their own language.
The greatest struggle with children is setting them free. So, I imagine, with just about anything.
Before Farzana left I asked if she’d allow me to record her reading a favorite poem. Without hesitation she retrieved Bark’s translation of Rumi from under her mattress. I turned on my flip video recorder and sat at an angle to her. Late afternoon light streamed through a crack in the curtain and lit the side of her face. The pages of the book glowed softly against the shadow of her hands. “Ready?” she asked. I nodded.
The way of love is not
a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.
Farzana looked up from the book and smiled a little smile, no more or less than her eyes. This was her goodbye. I will think of it from time to time, especially when I am confused, tired, when ugliness creeps into my heart. Before I do something stupid, or whenever I think I might fly away.
