In the Sea There are Crocodiles Read online

  When the man came back he was smiling, and he had another man with him. This is a good day for you, he said. This is Shaukat and he’ll take you to Pakistan in his lorry.

  Salaam, agha Shaukat, said Mother. Thank you.

  Shaukat the Pakistani did not reply.

  Go now, said the man. We’ll meet again soon.

  Thank you for everything, said Mother.

  It was a pleasure.

  Tell my sister the journey went well.

  I will. Good luck, little Enaiat. Ba omidi didar.

  He took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead. I smiled as if to say, But of course, we’ll meet again soon, take care. Then it struck me that Good luck and We’ll meet again soon didn’t really go together. Why wish me good luck if we were going to meet again soon?

  The man left. Shaukat the Pakistani raised his hand and signaled to us to follow him. The lorry was parked in a dusty yard surrounded by a metal fence. In the back were dozens and dozens of wooden poles. Taking a closer look at them, I realized they were electricity poles.

  Why are you carrying electricity poles?

  Shaukat the Pakistani didn’t reply.

  This was something I only found out about later. Apparently, people came from Pakistan to Afghanistan to steal things: whatever there was to steal, which wasn’t much. Electricity poles, for example. They came in lorries, knocked down the poles and carried them across the border, to use them or sell them, I’m not sure which. But for the moment what mattered was that we were getting a good lift, in fact, more than good, an excellent lift, because at the border they didn’t check lorries from Pakistan so carefully.

  It was a long journey, I couldn’t tell you how long, hours and hours across the mountains, bumping along, past rocks and tents and markets. Clouds. At some point, when it was already dark, Shaukat the Pakistani got out to eat, but only him, because it was better for us if we didn’t get out. You never know, he said. He brought us some leftover meat and we set off again, with the wind whistling through the window, the pane lowered just a crack to let in a bit of air but as little dust as possible. Looking at all that land rushing past us, I remember thinking about my father, because he’d also driven a lorry for a long time.

  But that was different. He was forced to.

  My father I’ll just call Father. Even though he’s no longer around. Because he’s no longer around. I’ll tell you his story, even though I can only tell it the way it was told to me, so I can’t swear to it. What happened was that the Pashtun had forced him—not only him, but lots of Hazara men from our province—to drive to Iran and back by lorry, in order to get products to sell in their shops: blankets, fabrics, and a type of thin sponge mattress: I’m not sure what they were used for. This was because the inhabitants of Iran are Shia, like the Hazara, while the Pashtun are Sunni—it’s well known that brothers in religion treat each other better—and also because the Pashtun don’t speak Persian whereas we can understand it a bit.

  To force him to go, they said to my father, If you don’t go to Iran to get that merchandise for us, we’ll kill your family, if you run away with the merchandise, we’ll kill your family, if when you get back any of the merchandise is missing or spoiled, we’ll kill your family, if someone cheats you, we’ll kill your family. In other words, if anything at all goes wrong—we’ll kill your family. Which isn’t a nice way to do business, in my opinion.

  I was six—maybe—when my father died.

  Apparently, a gang of bandits attacked his lorry in the mountains and killed him. When the Pashtun found out that my father’s lorry had been attacked and the merchandise stolen, they came to my family’s house and said he’d made a mess of things, their merchandise had got lost and we had to pay them back for it.

  First of all they went to see my uncle, my father’s brother. They told him he was responsible now and he had to do something to compensate them. For a time, my uncle tried to find a solution, like sharing his land, or selling it, but nothing worked. Then one day he told them he didn’t know what he could do to compensate them and it wasn’t his business anyway, because he had his own family to think about. I don’t blame him for that, because it was true.

  So one evening the Pashtun came to see my mother, and said that if we didn’t have money, instead of the money they would take me and my brother away with them and use us as slaves, which is something that’s banned all over the world, even in Afghanistan, but that was what it amounted to. From that point on, my mother lived in fear. She told me and my brother to stay outside the house all the time, surrounded by other children, because on the evening when the Pashtun had come to our house we hadn’t been there and they hadn’t seen our faces.

  So the two of us were always outside playing, which we didn’t mind at all, and the Pashtun who passed us on the streets of the village didn’t recognize us. For nighttime we had dug a hole in the fields, next to the potatoes, and whenever anyone knocked, even before going to find out who it was, we would go and hide there. But I wasn’t very convinced by this strategy: I told my mother that if the Pashtun came for us at night, they certainly wouldn’t bother to knock.

  Things carried on like that until the day Mother decided I ought to leave because I was ten—maybe—and I was becoming too big to hide, so big that I could hardly get into the hole anymore without squashing my brother.

  To leave.

  I’d never have chosen to leave Nava. My village was a good place. It wasn’t technologically advanced, there was no electricity. For light, we used oil lamps. But there were apples. I would see the fruit being born, the flowers opening in front of my eyes and becoming fruit. I know flowers become fruit here, too, but you don’t see it happen. Stars. Lots and lots of them. The moon. I remember there were nights when, to save on oil, we ate in the open air by the light of the moon.

  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

  Khasta 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, th
e 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.