The Afghan Wife

1. The Revolutionary

1

The Revolutionary

Herat, Afghanistan, September 1979

The hot, dry lands around Herat were cooling quickly. The autumn fruit had been harvested and winter was on its way. Firzun could smell the change of season on the dusty breeze as he crouched behind the wall. From here he had an uninterrupted view of the lunch party.

Behind the barred gates of the Soviet consulate, the guests were enjoying themselves. They spilled out of the French doors and onto the lawns. Diplomats, advisers, military men, and their dumpy wives held champagne glasses. Arrogant bastards! Firzun thought. They believed their own propaganda about the invincible USSR. He’d show them—this was his country, not theirs!

He checked his watch. Next to him he could hear Osman breathing heavily. ‘Two minutes,’ he whispered.

He squinted through a gap in the wall. Even from this distance he could see the cake. It was a centrepiece in the middle of a white-clothed table. They’d delivered it over an hour ago, dressed as bakers. The two sentries who’d waved them through had already reeked of alcohol. Idiots! He and Osman had staggered towards the main reception room and put their heavy carton on the table.

He focused on the scene in front of him. It was like looking at a movie with actors playing out their parts, smiling, chatting, putting glasses back on trays.

He muttered the prayers for the dead and his heart hammered in his chest as he counted backwards. Three … two … he held his breath … one! Nothing happened. They were still there, all of them. Still laughing, still drinking.

Osman turned to him and their widened eyes met. They didn’t dare speak. Firzun looked back at the building. The lunch party had turned into a tableau. The guests watched as a couple of soldiers in combat gear kneeled behind the cake. One of them had his head bent forward and Firzun could see his arms moving, defusing the device. The cake should have exploded by now and sent them all to hell!

Then someone flung open the gates and more soldiers in combat gear poured out of the building, spraying bullets from sub-machine guns as they ran into the street. Guests screamed as they rushed to safety. Behind the wall, Firzun and Osman scrabbled along on all fours.

The van was waiting, the backdoors flapping open. Bullets ricocheted off it. A hand grenade exploded behind him, making his ears sing and pop. He threw himself into the van and rolled along the metal floor. Osman hurled himself in as the van gathered speed. Choking on the dust, Firzun yanked the doors shut; he shouldn’t have waited … he’d wanted to be sure and now they’d seen the van. It tore through the streets until they got to a courtyard, scattering chickens and children.

‘Get out tonight!’ he said to Osman as they tumbled onto the ground.

‘Allah u Akbar!’ Osman mumbled.

Firzun nodded. Allah u Akbar—God is great. This had nothing to do with God, he thought as he changed quickly from his dirty clothes. He pulled a fresh shalwaar kameez over his head and rammed his flat pakul on his dusty hair. He had to get out of town fast and he couldn’t do it without his cousin Zahra, and—he spat on the ground—her vile husband Mahmoud.

Zahra sat her desk in the empty classroom, marking her students exercise books as fast as she could. She jumped when she heard the light tap on the door, but before she could get up to open it, her cousin was in the room. She frowned; he looked more dishevelled than usual. His long shalwaar kameez was crumpled, his pants were grimy. To her surprise he’d grown a beard.

He glanced round restlessly, his deep-set dark eyes darting back to her face as he greeted her quickly. ‘Salaam alaikum, cousin Zahra. Are you alone?’

‘Wa alaikum as-salaam,’ she replied automatically. ‘The other teachers have gone home, but the caretaker’s here somewhere. What’s wrong?’

She knew about his anti-communist activities. When things got rough he went to ground. Once he’d hidden in the wood store of her apartment block for three days and she’d taken him food and water. If Mahmoud had found out he would have punished her, but Firzun was family, more like a brother than a cousin. If he was in trouble again she had to help him.

‘I have to get out of Herat,’ he said urgently. ‘I need you and Mahmoud and little Ahmad to come with me. We can escape as a family—it’s a good cover. It won’t be for long.’

She put her hand over her mouth and looked at him. He was stocky and strong, but only a head and shoulder taller than her. His thick black hair had already dislodged his pakul and he rubbed his new beard distractedly.

‘Is it bad?’ she asked.

He frowned, then told her what had happened. It was bad this time, she thought fearfully. If the authorities arrested him, he’d be executed.

The latest news from Kabul, Firzun went on, was that Afghan communist President Taraki had been arrested and ‘disappeared’.

She stared at her cousin—he was making her feel extremely nervous. In March, a resistance group had killed more than a hundred Soviet citizens living here in Herat. Now he was attempting to kill even more of them. Why?

‘I’m not a communist, Zahra, you know that,’ he said defiantly, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I want a democratically elected government. If we continue to harbour the Soviets, they’ll invade and take over.’

‘Firzun …’ she began, but he interrupted her.

‘I’ll come and see Mahmoud tonight about the arrangements. I thought you should know first.’

She hardly had time to say goodbye before he wrenched open the door and she heard him running down the corridor. She didn’t see him cross the open playground, but he knew the back way out of the school. She gathered her books together quickly and put them to one side on her desk; she’d have to come in early tomorrow and finish them. Mahmoud didn’t like her working at home. She was glad Firzun had warned her—most Afghan men wouldn’t consider telling a woman anything before her husband knew, but Firzun despised her husband. He knew that Mahmoud hit her, but there was nothing he could do about it. She paused as she collected her pens together. She had no idea where they were going—he’d forgotten to tell her.

The shadows were lengthening and she heard the start of the afternoon prayer call as she hurried towards the bus stop. She enjoyed her status as a teacher of English and Persian language at the prestigious girl’s school, but she knew her job would be in jeopardy if she’d been seen alone with a man in her classroom—even a male cousin. The communist government had lifted restrictions on women’s dress—she wore a suit for work with a skirt below her knees—but many customs were still ingrained in Afghan society. At her husband’s insistence, she also wore a lose headscarf over her long brown hair.

‘You’re the wife of a Muslim man, you should show some respect for your religion,’ he’d said righteously more than once.

She would always turn her head away from the smell of alcohol on his breath, infuriated by his hypocrisy. Good Muslims never touched alcohol, and he had no right to grow a beard and allow people to refer to him as ‘Haji’, a title reserved for people who had performed the ‘Haj’—the pilgrimage to Mecca. In a drunken moment, he’d laughed and told her he’d never been to Mecca but the beard gained him a lot of respect. Now her cousin had grown a beard. She was absolutely sure he’d never been on the ‘Haj’ either.

The main street was busy as usual and the smell of diesel fumes hung on the warm air. As she walked she thought of Firzun. They’d been brought up together in the same extended family and had always been close. As she hurried along, one memory connected to another: her Afghan father dying when she was ten, her Iranian mother tolerated by the family until that wonderful day when Zahra was seventeen and they’d left to start a new life in Tehran, the capital city of Iran.

She sighed. What was the point in going over the past and the terrible ending of their journey to Iran? It had been Firzun who’d escorted her home. Firzun who’d ordered his mother, her aunt, to be kind to her.

Zahra got onto the hot, overcrowded bus and managed to find a seat. The vehicle moved off then jerked to a stop when two police cars, sirens screaming, rushed passed. Her heart sank—had they found Firzun? She looked out the grimy window again in time to see several Russian jeeps full of armed soldiers following the police cars.

‘Someone tried to blow up the Russian Consulate,’ one of the other passengers said.

Zahra felt as if a hand was squeezing her heart, making it hard to breathe. Firzun had done this, and now he expected her husband to help him leave town. She wondered if he had gone home to his mother, her Aunt Mina. She doubted it. Mina never knew where he was; she probably thought he was still in Iran. He’d won a scholarship and completed a degree in chemical engineering at Tehran University. Now he often got contracted work in different parts of Iran.

Zahra stared at the crowds thronging the streets as the heat of the day eased. Shopkeepers were lounging in their doorways, resting after they’d dragged sacks of dried lentils, beans and spices out onto the footpaths for the evening trade.

The bus stalled and she watched as a man and his young helper heaved boxes of fruit out of their shop, then arranged them carefully, waving away the begging children gathered around them.

The memories flooded back again—they always did when Firzun showed up. It was her Aunt Mina who had pushed her into marrying Mahmoud. If her mother had been alive she would have vehemently opposed the match and told her she could do better. Zahra would never forget the day he’d visited, bringing sweets and gifts. She’d been told to wait in her room while Mina ‘negotiated’ with him. But the walls were thin and she’d heard everything.

‘Of course, you know her mother was Iranian?’ Aunt Mina had said. Zahra could imagine the sneer on her aunt’s face. ‘After my brother-in-law died, she had nowhere to go. She had to stay here with Zahra … her family cut her off. Next thing, her mother rushes off to a long lost sister in Tehran and dies there. It was left to me and my husband to look after the daughter. We even let her go to university.”

‘You were very good to her!’ Mahmoud had answered smoothly. ‘Now I’m in a position to take her off your hands.’

‘Well, she does have a choice,’ Aunt Mina had replied. ‘My son, her cousin Firzun, would marry her, but she prefers you.’

Zahra stared unseeing out the window of the bus—if she’d married Firzun, she would have been trapped with vindictive Aunt Mina and forced to live with the extended family in their house. Firzun had no intention of marrying anyone, he’d told her that. She’d chosen Mahmoud hoping for freedom, but she’d been bitterly disappointed. She could recall every word he’d said to Aunt Mina. They’d arranged a ‘bride price’ and she’d ended up with no money of her own and none of the land that had belonged to her father. Mahmoud was a widower and he’d offered his first wife’s jewellery to Zahra as a wedding present. It was a parsimonious gesture, but it satisfied her aunt.

His parents were also dead and his sister lived in Kabul. At forty-two he was twice Zahra’s age. He’d asked for the wedding to be arranged as quickly as possible.

The bus driver’s voice broke into Zahra’s reverie as he called out her stop. She pushed her way off and started walking quickly down a narrow street bordered on both sides by mud brick houses. The road was unsealed and her smart work shoes were soon covered in dust. She pushed open a gate into a square courtyard of baked earth where several children including her son, Ahmad, were playing ball.

‘Mummy!’ He ran and threw his arms round her and she smiled down at him. Her lovely son, her only compensation for being married to Mahmoud. She tousled his dark hair, he’d turned five recently—in a year he’d be going to school.

She paid the young woman who ran the small kindergarten and carried on walking down the long alleyway with Ahmad chatting brightly at her side. A man leading a donkey with panniers on either side of its body pushed past them and several ragged children skipped alongside them, trying to talk to her and pulling at her sleeve. She stopped as she often did and gave them a few coins.

Even though Mahmoud worked as a lecturer in engineering at the University, of Herat, he insisted on living in the apartment that had belonged to his parents in a run-down neighbourhood. It was here that his first wife had fallen to her death on the outside stairs. Zahra had been appalled when she’d seen the apartment—such a far cry from the extended family compound where she’d been brought up on the other side of the city. Garbage and dust were a constant problem. When she’d suggested moving, her new husband had flown into such a terrible rage that she’d never raised the subject again.

The alleyway opened up and she turned to where the small apartment block stood. In front was an open space with cracked paving stones. It was full of litter, old newspapers, and household garbage tossed by passers-by. She climbed the stone stairs to the third floor, keeping her eyes lowered as Mahmoud had forbidden contact with the neighbours.

While Ahmad played with his toys, Zahra prepared the evening meal. Her hands trembled as she collected the plates and cutlery. Her cousin was in serious trouble. If the police found him he’d be tried and executed. He was putting them all in danger by even visiting their flat. Why would he think Mahmoud would help him? He must be desperate to even ask. Firzun knew about her husband’s savage temper, and Zahra dreaded a confrontation. She might even be dragged into a fight between the two of them. There’d been a tussle between the men a couple of months earlier and Mahmoud had grabbed Firzun by the throat. She’d ended up with a black eye after that, just for being there. This time she’d make herself scarce, watch and listen from behind the kitchen door, and hope that things didn’t get violent.