In the Sea There are Crocodiles (3 page)

My house had one big room for all of us, where we slept, a room for guests, and a corner for making a fire and cooking, which was below floor level, and in winter pipes would take the heat from the fire all through the house. On the second floor there was a storeroom where we kept feed for the animals. Outside, a second kitchen, so that in summer the house didn’t get even hotter than it was, and a very large courtyard with apples, cherries, pomegranates, peaches, apricots and mulberries. The walls were made of mud and very thick, more than a meter. We ate homemade yogurt, like Greek yogurt but much, much better. We had a cow and two sheep, and fields where we grew corn, which we took to the mill for grinding.

This was Nava, and I would never have chosen to leave it.

Not even when the Taliban closed the school.

Fabio, can I tell you about when the Taliban closed the school?

Of course
.

You’re interested?

I’m interested in everything, Enaiatollah
.

I wasn’t paying much attention that morning. With one ear I was listening to my teacher and, with the other, to my thoughts about the
buzul-bazi
contest we had organized for the afternoon.
Buzul-bazi
is a game played with a bone taken from a sheep’s foot after it’s been boiled, a bone that looks a bit like a die, although it’s all lumpy, and in fact the game you play with it is a bit like dice, or like marbles. It’s a game we play all year round, whereas making kites is more a spring or autumn thing, and hide-and-seek a winter game. When it gets really cold in winter, it’s nice to hide among the sacks of corn or in the middle of a heap of blankets or behind two rocks, huddled up close to someone else.

The teacher was talking about numbers and teaching us to count when we heard a motorbike driving round and round the outside of the school as if looking for the front door, even though it wasn’t all that difficult to find. Then we heard the engine being turned off. A huge Taliban appeared in the doorway. He had one of those long beards they all have, the kind we Hazaras can’t have because we’re like the Chinese or the Japanese, we don’t have much facial hair. A Taliban once slapped me because
I didn’t have a beard, but I was only a child and even if I’d been a Pashtun and not a Hazara I don’t think I could have had a beard at that age.

The Taliban came into the classroom, carrying a rifle, and said in a loud voice that the school had to be closed immediately. The teacher asked why. My chief’s orders, the man replied, you have to obey. And he left without waiting for a reply or giving any other explanation.

Our teacher didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just waited until the noise of the engine had petered out and then picked up the math lesson exactly where it had been interrupted, in the same calm voice and with the same shy smile on his face. Because my teacher was actually quite a shy person, he never raised his voice and when he shouted at us it was as if it hurt him more than it hurt us.

The next day the Taliban came back, the same one, riding the same motorbike. He saw that we were in class, and that our teacher was giving a lesson. He came in and asked the teacher, Why haven’t you closed the school?

Because there’s no reason to close it.

The reason is that Mullah Omar has given the order.

That’s not a good reason.

Don’t blaspheme. Mullah Omar says the Hazara schools have to be closed.

And where will our children go to school?

They won’t go. School isn’t for the Hazara.

This school is.

This school is against the will of God.

This school is against
your
will, you mean.

You teach things that God doesn’t want taught. Lies. Things that contradict his word.

We teach the boys to be good people.

What does that mean, to be good people?

Let’s sit down and talk about this.

There’s no point. I’m telling you. Being a good person means serving God. We know what God wants from men, and how to serve him. You people don’t.

We also teach humility.

The Taliban passed between us, breathing hard, the way I did once when I got a stone stuck up my nose. Without another word, he walked out and got back on his motorbike.

The third morning was an autumn morning, the kind when the sun is still warm, and although the first snow is blowing in the wind, it doesn’t chill the air, just gives it a certain flavor: a perfect day for flying kites. We were practicing a Hazara poem in preparation for the
sherjangi
, the poetry contest, when two jeeps full of Taliban drove up. We ran to the windows to look at them. All the children in the school leaned out to have a look, even though
we were afraid, because fear is seductive when you don’t really know what it means.

Twenty, maybe thirty armed Taliban got out of the jeep, and the same one we’d seen twice before came into the classroom and said to the teacher, We told you to close the school. You didn’t listen to us. Now
we’re
going to teach
you
.

The school was a big building and there were a lot of us, maybe more than two hundred. Years earlier, when it was built, every parent had contributed a number of days’ work, each person doing what he could, some making the roof, others finding ways to stop the wind coming in at the windows so we could have lessons even in winter, although they never really managed to do much about the wind: whenever we put up sheeting, the wind always tore it off. The school had several classrooms and a headmaster.

The Taliban made everyone, children and adults, go outside. They ordered us to form a circle in the yard, the children in front, because we were shorter, and the adults behind. Then they made our teacher and the headmaster stand in the middle of the circle. The headmaster was pulling at the material of his jacket as if trying to tear it, and weeping and turning this way and that, looking for something he couldn’t find. But our teacher was as silent as usual, his arms hanging by his sides, and his eyes open
but turned inward. I remember he had beautiful eyes that dispensed goodness to everyone around him.

Ba omidi didar
, boys, he said. Goodbye.

They shot him. In front of everyone.

From that day on, the school was closed, and without school, life is like ashes.

This matters a lot to me, Fabio
.

What does?

Making it clear that Afghans and Taliban are different. I want people to know this. Do you know how many nationalities they were, the men who killed my teacher?

No. How many?

There were twenty of them in that jeep, right? Well, there may not have been twenty different nationalities, but almost. Some couldn’t even communicate among themselves. Pakistan, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt. A lot of people think the Taliban are all Afghans, Fabio, but they aren’t. Some of them are, of course, but not all of them. They’re ignorant, ignorant of everything, and they stop children from studying because they’re afraid those children might come to understand that they don’t do what they do for God, but for themselves
.

We’ll say it loud and clear, Enaiat. Now where were we?

In Kandahar
.

Ah, yes. Kandahar
.

———

Let’s get back to Kandahar.

It was morning when we left—did I already say that?—on the lorry with the electricity poles in the back. We passed through Peshawar on our way to Quetta, but Mother and I didn’t get off. In Quetta we went looking for somewhere to sleep, one of those places we call
samavat
or
mosafir khama
—house of guests—with large dormitories where travelers stop on the way to Iran and look for guides for the rest of the journey. For three days, we didn’t leave the place. Mother was talking to people, trying to organize her return journey, but I didn’t know that. It wasn’t difficult. Getting back to Afghanistan was much easier than leaving it.

In the meantime, I had nothing to do but wander around the place. Then, one night, before putting me to bed she took my head in her hands, and hugged me tight, and told me three things I shouldn’t do, and that I should wish for something with all my soul. The next morning she wasn’t there on the mattress with me and when I went to ask
kaka
Rahim, the owner of the
samavat
Qgazi, if he knew where she was, he told me yes, she had gone back home to be with my brother and sister. Then I sat down in a corner between two chairs, not on the chairs but on the floor, squatting on my heels, thinking that I had to think. My teacher always said thinking that you have to
think is already a big step. But there weren’t any thoughts in my head, only a light that swallowed everything and stopped me from seeing, like when you stare straight at the sun.

When the light went out, the streetlamps came on.

Pakistan

K
hasta kofta
means “as tired as a meatball,” because the women where I used to live made meatballs by rolling them and rolling them and rolling them for a long time in the palms of their hands. And that was how I felt, as if a giant had taken me in his hands and made me into a meatball: my head hurt, and my arms, and another place, somewhere between my lungs and my stomach.

In Quetta there were lots and lots of Hazaras. I had seen them coming and going in and out of the
samavat
in the past few days, when Mother was still there. In fact, she’d spent a lot of time talking to them, as if she had great secrets to confide. Now I tried to approach them, but I noticed that these Hazaras were different from the ones I knew, and that even the simplest words from my country turned into complicated foreign words in their
mouths because of the accent. I couldn’t understand them or make myself understood, so after a while they stopped taking any notice of me and went back to their own business, which was apparently more urgent than the fact that I’d been abandoned. I couldn’t ask for information or exchange a few friendly words, a few jokes that would make one of them want to help me, take me to his house, for instance, give me a cup of yogurt and a slice of cucumber. If you’ve only just arrived (and the fact that you’ve only just arrived is obvious the moment you open your mouth to ask for something), if you don’t know where you are, or how things work in a place, or how you’re supposed to behave, people can easily take advantage of you.

One thing I wanted to avoid (one among many others, like dying) was people taking advantage of me.

I’d shut myself up in the kitchen, but now I went to find
kaka
Rahim, the owner of the
samavat
Qgazi. He was someone I
could
communicate with, perhaps because he was used to receiving guests and so knew lots of languages. I asked if I could work there. I’d do anything, wash the floor, clean shoes, whatever needed doing. What I wanted to avoid was having to go into the street, because I was really scared. I had no idea what was out there.

He listened, though he pretended not to hear me, then said, Only for today.

Only for today? What about tomorrow?

Tomorrow you have to look for another job.

Only one day. I looked at his long lashes, the downy hairs on his cheeks, the cigarette between his teeth, the ash from which was falling on the floor, his slippers and his white
pirhan
. I thought of jumping on him, hanging on to his jacket and wailing until either my lungs or his ears burst, but I think I was right not to do it. I blessed him several times for his generosity and asked if I could take a potato and an onion from the kitchen. He said yes and I replied
tashakor
, which means “thank you.”

That night I slept with my knees drawn up against my chest.

I slept with my body, but in my dreams I was awake. And I was walking in the desert.

In the morning, I woke up feeling nervous because I had to leave the
samavat
and go out onto the streets, those streets I hadn’t liked at all when I’d looked out at them from the main door or from the window of the toilets on the first floor. There were so many motorbikes and cars that the air was unbreathable, and the sewer didn’t run under the concrete, where you couldn’t see or smell it, but between the roadway and the pavement, a few meters from the door of the
samavat
.

I went and drank some water and rinsed my face, trying
to summon the courage to throw myself into the fray. Then I went to say goodbye to
kaka
Rahim.

He looked at me without seeing me. Where are you going? he said.

I’m leaving,
kaka
Rahim.

For where?

I shrugged my shoulders. I don’t know, I said. I’m not familiar with the city. To be honest, I don’t even know what difference it would make if I turned right or left when I got out of the door. So I’ll just go to the end of the street,
kaka
Rahim, look both ways and choose the best view.

There are no views in Quetta. Only houses.

That’s what I thought,
kaka
Rahim.

I’ve changed my mind.