Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
November 5, 2001
This story is dedicated to the people of a Koocha (dwelling), called Andrabi, in Kabul.
KOOCHA
Our Koocha was self-sufficient and we had everything. At the heart of the Koocha there was an old mosque. God knows when our Mosque was built but it appeared to have strong foundations with verandas above and below, wooden pillars, the mehrab, shelves for Islamic books, a huge folding wooden doors on the upper floor and a small and solid door on the ground floor. The upper floor was used in summer time when the breeze flowed through freely ventilating the mosque hall and, the lower floor was used more for the winter when the weather was cold and the windows and the doors small enough to restrict the cold draughts into the mosque. The number of devout Muslims of our Koocha was directly and proportionally related to the degree of Celsius. When it was showing less than zero the lower floor was packed with worshipers surrounding the bukhari (the wooden fire place) and when it was summer time the same worshipers were surrounding the roses at the local gardens, Parke Zarnegar (golden carpeted park) where flowers were blossoming and love was in the air.
In our Koocha we had a shop belonging to Nikoye Lang (Lame Niko) who was a bit of a bastard and often mistreated the young children by taking away their money and not giving them their goods in return or if he was in a good mood he made sure to give them the worst quality or rotten material. I myself have had the pleasure of being stung by him many a time and then being stupid enough to go to his shop again, being a well brought up and good mannered and polite child, asking him nicely: “Niko Uncle, can you give me some raisins for one Afghani”. Many big trays surrounded the entrance to Niko’s shop making it very difficult for the small arm of a child to reach him and therefore he would often ask us children to throw our Afghani coins to him. Throwing the money was not always accurate and if the coin disappeared amongst the dry fruits and other goods that he had in his many trays then Niko would simply deny us and tell us it was our fault. He was really harsh not caring that the small amount of money that we had was probably our allowance for the entire week. And if we complained, Uncle Niko only denied receiving our money and on top of that would attack us with terrible verbal abuse in order to dominate the weaker and smaller children and really make us run away without further protest. Uncle Niko never came to the mosque. That irritated our elders in our Koocha but they just turned a blind eye towards our Uncle Niko-the-Lame , the bastard.
Then in our Koocha we also had the women Nanwai (women bakery) and they made fantastic home-made bread. Bread with aroma covering the Koocha valley from the top to the bottom. This made uncle Safdar mad not because of the smell of freshly backed naan but the sight of the bakery. The bakery was the center of gossip for the women in our Koocha who came to buy either fresh bread or simply brought their own dough to be baked in the tandoor of Aaja. Aaja was a very pretty woman from Hazarajaat. The bakery actually had three Aajas. They were all called Aaja. The senior Aaja and the two junior Aajas. The Senior Aaja was the eldest and the prettiest with a good size bum delicious to eager sights and on top good size juicy breasts greatly pleasing to our local Afghan men. It was this eldest Aaja and not the freshly baked bread, which made Uncle Safdar go mad with desire and he constantly made excuses to come to the bakery as frequent as possible, sometimes buying bread again and again in another two three hour’s time. Well the women of the bakery were not stupid not to realise why Uncle Safdar was coming so frequently, indeed but they did not mind and in fact he was a good sport and harmless. Whenever the aroma of the fresh bread announced the start of activity in the bakery, Uncle Safdar arrived queuing in position behind the long line of people, making constant adjustments to be either at the back or front of senior Aaja. The other women who were also waiting for the bread did not object to Safdars strategy. In reality they enjoyed seeing him in his favourite place eyeing either the bum or the tits of Aaja because it was great fun for them to observe his ogling. They watched with interest as Safdar’s eyes popped out each time Aaja bent over the tandoor to slap new bread on the side of it. Each time when she did this her ass and her tits stuck out in parallel to Uncle Safdar’s eyes popping out and in the background the giggling of the observing queuing audience.
Well the Bakery was not the only place for so much naughty activities as the Koocha also had its own whorehouse. The whorehouse was situated in the most hidden part and was frequented by strangers most of the night. Unfortunately I do not know any more than that as I was too young and naïve to understand the complex politics of that aspect of the Koocha.
There were also other less significant happenings in our Koocha – like the small shop belonging to Moochi (the shoe maker) and a smaller shop belonging to the barber. These shops were opposite each other with incomes almost similar. Their income dependent on the growth of hair or the wear and tear of old shoes. As young boys we disliked going to the barber because we did not want to have our haircut. However, the order came from the school authorities or from our parents alas we had to obey. But we did not mind the Moochi so much especially as his son was our good friend and his daughter was befriended to our sisters.
The Koocha also had many other characters, who were not necessarily providing or contributing to business or services but they too held some kind of community titles, such as our Uncle Calanter (Uncle Leader) who had a role in leading the people of our Koocha, then there was Haji Baz Gul (Haji Hawk and Flower) who was not as strange as his combined name of hawk and flower sounds and he had the privileged role of inviting people to the mosque for prayers and reciting the Azaan (call for prayer). Then there was Uncle Tuf Tufi (the spiting uncle) who was once publically caught spiting on the palm of his hand and then touching his lower parts. Well you can imagine why he could never get rid of his Koocha name – our Uncle Tuf Tufi the spiting uncle. He did not hold any position as such but always seemed to complain and groan about life and often seen talking aloud to himself. But he had his moments of contribution to the Koocha society for sure enough like sometimes in winter when he felt good he made beautiful kites and sold them to the children for much less money than what Uncle Niko-the-Lame, the Bastard was charging. So he had won the children’s heart while they disliked Uncle Niko-the-Lame. How could one possibly like or be kind to a lame when the same person always managed to behave like a bastard. And then not to forget our Qadeer the Sharabi (drunkard Qadeer) who could always be found drinking alcohol in front of Niko’s shop, seated on a bench provided by Niko himself. Well in comparison Niko was moderately hated but Qadeer the Sharabi was really hated by many for his lack of respect for the Koocha people by drinking so obviously in front of the entire Koocha so as to speak. And Niko’s shop was not so far from the mosque, not so far at all. But nobody could say anything to Qadeer or rather they chose not to, for Qadeer was rich and powerful and belonged to a ruling family that in the past was known to be associated with the former King. Niko and Qadeer were good friends indeed. And it was Niko himself who was making the homemade alcohol that he in turn sold to Qadeer contained in plastic bags, as his factory had not yet produced bottles. Niko’s alcohol was called plastiky (alcohol in plastic bag).
And there was Taq the musician who did not compose music through his own choice but rather because of the effect of hashish that finally made him loose his mind and become crazy. He smoked the Afghan black too much and simply could not give it up. I did not care for his songs but the lyrics were wonderful. All homemade:
Sare kohe beland zardak namaisha
Dele dukhtar ba peermardak namaisha
Dele dukhtar ba lugey aashadaras
Ke lungey aashadar paida namaisha
On the top of the mountain carrots do not grow
The young girl is not in love with the old man
The young girl loves the man with a special turban
That kind of turban is not easy to find
Or another one like this:
Negare nazaneene yare dardam
To ke shooi may geree kawshe maraa gham
To ke shoooi may geree maam zan gerefftum
Ba to khanda kuna khalqaaie aalam
My beloved who shared my happiness and my sorrows
God married but even my shoes do not give a damn about it
Yes she got married and I will get married too
But she will be the one who will become the joke of the people
Well he was a philosopher in my mind. A philosopher without followers, but a poet with listeners. Lots of them.
While our Koocha was the center of activity and excitement, our school was completely opposite to that. It was a terribly boring place with teachers such as Qari Umar (religious study teacher) with a very dry sense of humor and Najiba-Jaan, the-tyrant-and-dictator, teaching geography, although to give her credit she did have the sexiest and most wondrous thighs that made us learn another kind of geography all together. There were many others living in our Koocha but their nicknames and influence not as significant as those mentioned so far.
These were the two most influential characters of my young living in the Koocha. Firstly our Qari who introduced a very strict rule of forcing the learning of the Quran by heart. As a very young child I was required to wake up every morning before sunrise in order to go to the mosque to learn the Quran from the Mullah himself. This was a real torture to be forced out of bed before sunrise as a young child and I can never forget my craving for sleep of those days.
And then Najiba Jaan with her mannerism of handling children in school which made my life miserable both at school and in our Koocha. Najiba Jaan, a university graduate was famous for wearing short skirts. She was amongst the number of teachers who came from professional teacher training faculty. But her style of teaching was really weird. She really made me dislike school for no reason whatsoever, especially as I was good in my class and studies, in fact very good in comparison to the other children. Unfortunately not all the children at the school were capable of remembering her teaching and she was one of those teachers who always asked students about the previous lesson that she delivered a week ago. Fortunately my memory was good but Jano’s memory was not. He actually paid little attention to her teaching but more to her thighs and her skirt. Apart from his mind being focused on her assets and not concentrating in the class he was also strategizing and planning his next move of how to cause his next damage to our Koocha. He was a bully with little respect for the people and always stole petty things including the bulbs from the street-lamps that kept the Koocha lit at night. Jano’s such theft and pranks forced the elders and young children to find their way home in pitch darkness. Jano was indeed a nasty piece of work and I had to deal with him through Najiba Jaan. As I said previously Najiba Jaan had a very especial way of teaching and asking questions to check if the students have learnt their lessons. Question time was in fact punishing time and that gave Najiba Jaan a chance to treat us to her realm of dictatorship.
Najiba Jaan had the habit of punishing the lazy children by their own classmates. Her policy was to ask the lazy, bad students some questions that many could not respond to. Then she would put forward the very same questions to the other good students and obtain a satisfactory response. After that question and answer exercise Najiba Jaan would inflict her punishment in her particular style, this in her case involved ordering the good students to take turns in slapping the bad students on their faces. It was in this situation that I encountered Jano and slapped his face under Najiba Jaan’s order only to later suffer a big beating up by him and his gang when they stopped me on my way home. I really hated both of them. I hated Najiba Jaan and Jano and felt that they both harmed me.
Fortunately my school torture did not continue for too long but the depth of punishment and psychological impact thereof inflicted by Jano was visible for much longer and I feared him, feared the school and feared Najiba Jaan for a long time. Even when Jano finally left school and became a proper gangster I had difficulty in looking forward to school. Fortunately Najiba Jaan also decided to continue teaching grade4 and thus we escaped her clutches the following year. Thanks God, finally after what seemed like a very long time I managed to fill my lungs with fresh air.
Jano in reality did not vanish completely from our thoughts and somehow his memory continued to enter our minds again and again. He was behind any small theft and then bigger and bigger thefts. He was behind the black-market of cinema tickets, buying them cheaply and selling them for a profit. He was also behind the harassment of girls, stopping them and making sexual demand from them when they were on their way to schools. That was probably the biggest impact of his behavior on our Koocha.
Well life was not always too bad for me at school and there were moments that I really enjoyed it, such as when playing football at school and being part of the team, the very team that had Ali as its captain. Ali was really good in football. He was fast. He was tricky and he was considered mean because once he had the ball at the strategic place, he scored. He developed such a reputation that when in position, the opposing goalkeeper would psychologically give up and believe that the ball would inevitably touch the back of the net and it did, every time. However, Ali was only mean when he was playing football and let me say that the reason that he was called mean was because he was without mercy towards the opposition. But he was a very fair player and never harmed anyone in play. I also liked Ali’s modesty and gentleness and for another special reason namely that he once repaired my shoes.
It was one of those old afternoons when I was coming back from the school. That day Jano and his gang stopped me for a good beating. As usual I resisted and put up a good fight but was overwhelmed by the gang. My resistance made the gang angry and this time they made sure to beat me harder than before and in addition to beating they even damaged my clothes. I was wearing my new shoe called boote aaho (deer mark shoes). They were of good quality and my father had bought them for me after my good school results. The shoes were expensive and my father told me to be extra careful with them. Jano’s gang realized my vulnerability towards my new shoes and they predicted the consequences that I would face with the wrath of my father for being considered careless with them. After the gang finished with me and my new shoes I realised I was now in a real fix also at home. I just sat at the edge of the road and started to cry at my next awaiting fate. It was there, with my head hidden between my legs, that I heard Ali gently asking: “what is the matter?” I told him what happened. He cursed Jano and also felt my fear of facing my father with my now damaged shoes. He gave me comfort and suggested a solution for my problem. I agreed and soon we were in front of the shoe repair shop. The moochi (shoe repairer) was Ali’s father. Ali told his father what happened to me and his father was kind enough to repair my shoes in such a way that the damage hardly showed and moreover he did not charge me for the repair.
After that a great friendship started between Ali and myself. I was always in his team although I was not really as good as many others. Being in his team made me confident and because his team always won I developed this attitude that I was a good footballer.
Our friendship was not always one sided and I also tried to reciprocate, sometimes bringing dry fruit and sharing it with him or even inviting him to come to our home to have tea with us or other times invite him to our family picnics. His father was also happy to see this friendship and allowed his son to join us for picnics to Paghman, a most beautiful spot just outside Kabul.
Ali had a sister who was also attending school. She was very shy but a good-looking girl who seemed to grow up unusually fast. She was also a bright student and a good example of a child from poor background doing well at school. Being beautiful and shy made Nasrin a target of Jano’s mischiefs. One day when Nasrin was on her way home, she was stopped by Jano and asked if she would agree to a romantic relationship with him. Nasrin was poor but not poor in mind. She knew that Jano was the last person she wanted to be with, and therefore rejected his advances. Unfortunately Jano did not give up and the next day when Jano tried harder to persuade her she retaliated by slapping his face. Jano was very upset remembering his ego being damaged at school was one thing but to have his face slapped on the street publically especially by a woman was quiet another thing. He was very a macho type of man. That day he disappeared from our Koocha and we did not hear from him. There is an Afghan proverb saying “one hundred times hammering of jeweler is not equal to one time hammering of the blacksmith”. I felt that I had been just a jeweler with my attempted hammering on Jano’s face but what Jano needed was simply the one hammer from Nasrin. Over night the shy and beautiful girl of our Koocha became a heroin.
1979 was a big bang. Our Koocha started to change, beginning with the inhabitants. Some people left and others arrived. On our streets cars and army tanks rolled in together, whilst our skys were traversed with army warplanes. The Russians arrived with a loud noise and with them many other changes too. We saw strangers coming to our Koocha. People from other villages, men with big mustaches carrying arms and calling themselves protectors’ of the revolution. They were Marxists and very loyal to Russians. All these things did not worry me. In fact deep in my heart I was dissatisfied with our previous corrupt government and wanted to see some changes for the better. The first real impact of the foreign invasion that I experienced was the night when two men from the Afghan Youth Association came to my house asking specifically for me by name. The Association was a group of young people who were working for the revolutionary government to maintain safety and security of the citizens and to protect the revolution from its enemy, the enemy who were supposedly supported by the CIA. It was not a good sign to see these Youth Association men at that time of the night with their klashinkoves and Russian jeep, asking for me. My mother was really worried but there was no way to deny them. I reluctantly followed their order and sat at the back seat of the jeep to be driven to a destination that I did not know about. When I asked them where we were going, they did not answer me. Simply shutting me up by saying: “wait and see”. I must admit the twenty minutes drive was the longest drive of my life until I saw that our car entering the Youth Association compound and it was then that I realized that I must have done some thing really, really wrong.
On arrival I was rushed into a large room with bulky furniture. I saw a man behind a big desk concentrating on reading some papers. I could not see his face. The other two men who brought me there left the room and I stood still with fear not moving an eyelid. I did not dare to talk and waited. It was a very long wait. The boss man finally lifted his face from his papers and walked towards a cabinet to pour himself a drink, some Russian vodka gulping it very fast. Until then I had been concentrating more on his actions than his face and when I finally focused to see his face I was shocked to see Jano in this ridiculous larger than his size uniform sipping vodka and looking at me as if I was a piece of meat. He produced a dry and sarcastic laugh and said “it has been long time since we met the good boy of the class. I suppose you did not really know that I would be in this position” I was frightened. “Come and sit” he said that with command and authority in his voice. I slowly sat on the chair in front of him waiting to see what would happen to me now. The silence continued and my fear grew more and more. He kept drinking. There was a knock on the door and a man entered, he went to Jano and whispered some words in his ear. Jano nodded and then said aloud that he would quickly solve this issue. The man left the office and Jano reached for his coat and followed leaving me on my own. It was torture not knowing what would happen to me. I had not asked a question so far. I sat there and waited. I don’t know if it was the fear or the tea that I had consumed before coming to Jano’s office but my bladder was bursting. I was not brave enough to leave the office. It was painful. Really painful. I was really tired and felt sleepy but the pain of my bladder was strong enough to keep me awake. Finally after many hours of waiting Jano returned. He saw me waiting and had the same nasty smile on his face. He ordered me to get up which I did very quickly driven by fear. “Go and tell all the people in the Koocha that Jano is back. I now belong to the Afghan People’s Party and we are determined to clean Afghanistan from the elements of the CIA, Pakistani and Arab fundamentalists.” He came closer to me and I was shivering with fear. “You know I can kill, just as easily as killing a fly and nobody can touch me, Nobody!” he shouted. “I want to warn you that you have to behave. Join our party. Collaborate with us. Tell us what is happening in the Koocha. Tell us about the enemy of the people. Go home and think about it and remember that life is no longer like in school and there is no Najiba Jaan to protect you. In fact the bitch is already sent to hell. Count yourself lucky”.
My head was spinning. I went home that night but could not sleep. I knew of the rumors that the new government supported by Russians were putting people away in jail and torturing them but I did not know that some thing like that could happen to me. I thought the new government was only dealing with its ideological enemies but after seeing Jano in charge I realized that many people were sent to jail because of personal animosity. Yes the nightmare had come to our Koocha and to my personal life. I kept a very low profile and decided to make less contact with others and never talked politics. However, day-by-day I heard of the disappearance of the people in our Koocha. Some were detained by the government police and others simply left the country fearing for their safety as refugees. Their disappearance caused others to become insecure. Their relative who stayed in the Koocha were looked upon as relatives of the enemy of the government. Nobody was secure. Our sky was covered with fear instead of the beautiful Afghan kites that had previously brightened it.
All these things put pressure to break the normal rhythm of the Koocha but it did not quite collapse until one day we heard that Ali had shot Jano with a gun. It didn’t sound too good for the Koocha. Everybody was panicking, thinking that the revolutionary government will imprison many more people as collaborators to Ali and enemy of the government. We really did not know that Ali had any connection with the Arabs, Pakistanis or the CIA. After the shooting, he escaped the country and it was his unfortunate father who was imprisoned. We heard that the father was tortured in order to reveal Ali’s whereabouts. Unfortunately the old man did not know any thing about Ali or his decision to go and shoot Jano.
I too was not very happy with Ali and thought that he did not have any right to disturb our Koocha for his political cause. I had perceived Ali surely to be more sensitive than committing such an idiotic act as putting all his family members at grave risk. I feared for my own safety, as I was known to have been a close friend of Ali’s. Much time passed before the truth behind Ali’s action surfaced. The story was related to Nasrin. Apparently Nasrin was kidnapped by the Youth Association and was taken to Jano. She was detained for the night and raped. The following day when she came home the worried family found out what had happened to her. Ali’s blood boiled after hearing his sister’s ordeal and went straight to the Youth Association. At the entrance he overcame a guard and took a pistol from him and before anyone else could react he had entered Jano’s office and shot him. He then disappeared and took the road towards Pakistan to join the fight against the remaining revolutionary people. The government covered the truth by claiming that Ali was on the side of fundamentalists and the killing was political.
The disappearance of Ali from my life brought dullness. Another tragedy that broke the heart of the Koocha was Nasrin’s suicide. The humiliation of being raped, loss of her brother and her father resulted in her madness and one evening she took her life. Haji baz Gul was also put to prison. Religion was announced as poison of the mind. I felt the time had come to leave our Koocha and made secret arrangement to escape from all these adventures. I remember clearly the day we were to finally leave our Koocha. The sun was shining but I was feeling very cold. Near the mosque I saw Taq sitting with his head between his legs and a dark cloud of hashish smoke covering his head. On the other side I saw Qadeer, this time with a huge bottle of Russian vodka in front of him and a very silly smile plastered on his face. I walked and passed them all in silence.
Bashir Sakhawarz
26 October 26, 2001
Kosovo
Prishtina