“The witch has certainly cast a spell on you!”
Ahmad was watching Rebecca as he gobbled his food. He was hungry after a day of fighting practice, and the Kabuli pulao and Qormah Gosht were very tasty. Qureshi had been shopping for medicines, but mostly he bought baklava on his trips. Ahmad hoped they would serve it today while it was still fresh.
“Mohammed,” said Arif. “Want to go up the hills and play police and thief?”
Arif saw Mohammed look at Ahmad, who shook his head.
“Oh, are you going to be spending time with your special friend?” asked Arif mockingly, looking at Ahmad. “Can we also come, please, please, please?”
Ahmad just ignored him, but Arif would not let it go; he moved next to Ahmad and made kissing sounds close to his face. Before Ahmad could react, Mohammed came to the rescue.
“Leave him alone. He’s not troubling you. Why are you always after him?”
“You should have seen them the other evening when they were sitting together on the rock edge. What does she tell you, huh, Ahmad?”
Ahmad remembered that time; talking to her just felt so right. He liked spending time with her, and he wanted to know more about her life.
“Do you realize they can play games on the phone with anyone around the world?” Ahmad was happy to share such exciting information.
Arif was jealous that she did not share her stories with him. Ahmad felt he was at an advantage for a change.
“Really, how? By magic?” Arif scoffed. “Is she a witch? The witch has certainly cast a spell on you, dummy!”
“Computers, internet…,” Ahmad shrugged, unable to fully understand this mysterious communication. He imagined playing a game from the mountains with kids in Rebecca’s country. Would it be like their marble game? Would he beat them? But how did this work? How could he throw his marble across the world; was Rebecca telling the truth?
“Mohammed, is it true that Rebecca is going to marry your father?” grinned Sarfraz, another orphan who was sitting next to them.
Everyone had heard the rumors, and Ahmad looked at Mohammed, who just shrugged.
The day she had escaped, Ahmad had followed her. He had been to “the rocks” and had seen Rebecca behind the men’s cave. Something had made him hide and watch her. Mullah Shaheen and Qasim came out, and he had created rustling noises to distract them.
Curiosity had gotten better of him, so he had followed her to the dwelling and had heard her cry for help. He slept when she slept, only to be wakened by her captors, and then he followed her back. He had felt utterly helpless and angry at seeing her dragged back into camp. He was proud of her when she held her head high and fought them. He wanted to fight them too.
He was an orphan; he realized this was not his real home, and these people were not of his blood. Did he have a family somewhere? He had flashbacks of a different life; he knew he didn’t belong here. What had happened all those years ago? What took him away from his world? They said he had survived a bomb blast in a market in the north.
No one claimed him, so Mullah Shaheen brought him here. Why was Shaheen there? Had he bombed the market? Ahmad had so many questions and no answers. A family consisted of a network of close relatives; possibly, someone knew about him and wanted to find him as much as he sought to locate them.
“When I grow up, I’ll find my family,” he swore as he made his way to where Rebecca sat, ignoring the giggles from Arif and the other kids.
Safia never forgot that day five long agonizing years ago. Naseer had tried to discourage her from going into the town, but she had insisted it would be okay. She maintained that she felt safe with the Lashkar, their local army, who always protected the civilians.
Safia’s husband was the head of their village and a member of the tribal council. He had recently made some enemies due to his no-nonsense attitude towards trouble making fanatics. He understood his religion and could not tolerate the distorted versions promoted by those who wished to sow discord in his peaceful village. In the last few days, he had received a lot of threatening letters, and the elders advised caution.
“When we get a fridge, I won’t have to go out daily,” she remarked, glad that electricity would soon be a part of her life in the area.
“You know you can shout out to Ali,” Naseer replied. “He’ll bring you what you want from the bazaar.”
“That Ali; he has no idea how to buy vegetables,” Safia countered, tying the ribbon of her burka under her chin. “Besides, I must visit Fatima Bibi and see how she’s recovering after her operation.”
Safia would come to the market to shop every few days, hidden within the voluminous, protective folds of her white burka; this had become second nature to her after living in Afghanistan during years of Taliban rule. Their family had moved across the border into Pakistan, but still, she felt safe wearing her burka when she went outside her home. Force of habit; she felt naked in public without it.
“Humph! You want to gossip with your friends,” Naseer Husain said, knowing his wife would not change her plan. “Well, I’ll drop you off on the way to my meeting; just be careful!”
“I will, Naseer Sahib!” Safia replied as they walked out of the front door of their comfortable home that her husband and his brothers had constructed for her as a new bride.
Holding her three-year-old son, Safia got into their trusty old Jeep. It took them an hour to reach the market. The boy wanted everything he saw. The mother was almost child-like herself as her attention flitted excitedly from one enticing article to another, trying to take in all the things that caught her eye. She enjoyed the experience that coming into town offered and relished her shopping excursions, even if they were to buy the usual household items.
The combination of pungent smells from different cuts of meat hanging from shop ceilings clashed with the sweetness of fresh fruit and the delightful displays of sugary sweets. Every hawker tried to attract her to his wares on display, offering tempting bargains. The cacophony of their frantic advertising conflicted with the popular Pashto songs, played too loudly over tiny discordant speakers in a street-side restaurant.
“As-Salaam-Alaikum, Begum,” greeted a hawker selling bangles of different styles and colors. Safia stopped and stood for a moment to admire the rows of glittering bracelets.
My Aisha would love this, she thought as she touched the metal and imagined it on her daughter’s delicate wrist.
She had made a long list of things she needed to purchase and had even added some items that her neighbors had requested. Naseer Husain would be impatiently waiting for her. If she did not finish her shopping soon, she knew he would grumble impatiently. She decided to come back for the bangles later if time permitted and walked towards the vegetable stalls.
Ahmad pulled at her burka, and from the small window of the purdah, Safia looked at the chubby, dimpled face.
“Ammi!” he cried, his green eyes pleading with her.
Following his little pointed finger, she saw what had caught his attention. One of the hawkers was luring him with a buttery date in his hand. She groaned and tried to pull Ahmad away, but the persistent child squirmed out of her grasp and ran over to the man’s stall. Safia followed and then knelt in front of him, lifting her head covering to expose her mouth and gave him a big kiss on his cheek. She laughed as Ahmad wiped it off with a scowl and continued pointing towards the sweet delights.
Safia sighed and greeted the hawker politely but firmly, to convey she was not a person whom they could cheat. Haggling with him for a reasonable price, she bought some dates for Ahmad, hoping this would give her some quiet time to complete her shopping. Wanting to keep her hands free to select the freshest vegetables, an art that Ali had certainly not mastered, she sat Ahmad down on a rough wooden bench nearby and handed him the packet of dates.
“Sit here,” she sternly said while Ahmad smiled at her, showing his deep dimples, while munching away on his delicious treat.
Focusing on the listed items, Safia chose what she required. As the vendor weighed the vegetables, she glanced around at Ahmad to make sure he was not up to any mischief, and she saw him enjoying his dates and looking around at the people. She smiled and, after some bargaining, paid for her vegetables and was ready to buy some meat.
“Let’s go, Ahmad Baba,” she called lovingly, turning around to find the bench empty.
“Ahmad?” Safia screamed as she looked around in panic. Her heart raced wildly, and her mouth went dry as she repeatedly shouted her son’s name amid the startled faces of onlookers.
“Where is he? Ahmad was sitting right there. He’s not the kind of child to wander off; where had he gone?”
She ran around the area, but there was no sign of him. Breathing hard, she asked the nearby hawkers if they had seen him, but most said they were too busy with customers to notice. Her worst fears were confirmed when one of them said he saw a man carrying a small child walking towards the main road.
“I remember because the boy had big green eyes,” he recalled.
“Ahmad!” she shouted like a deranged woman. Someone took her child; this was her worst nightmare, and she had no idea what to do. She did not want to leave the place if, by any chance, he came back, but she also knew she had to inform her husband. How she dreaded facing him!
Making sure everyone around knew to hold Ahmad if he came back, Safia ran to where her husband was having his meeting. Dazed, with tears on her face, she shouted, “They’ve taken Ahmad!”
Naseer Husain was sitting in a group of 20 chieftains from neighboring villages. Everyone in the room stared in shock at the news. As Safia related what had happened, Naseer Husain’s face darkened, and his eyes narrowed. She knew, even in such dire circumstances, he would not allow anger to cloud his judgment. Comforting his wife, who pleaded with him to get their son back, the chieftains consulted with each other.
“This has to be the work of Mullah Shaheen, the leader of the Talib-E-Azad group! He wants us to release his brother-in-law, Abdullah,” opined Zaram Ali, a young man with a wise head on his young shoulders.
“If only I’d have taken his threats seriously and…,” Naseer Husain replied with a distressed look on his face. Safia finished the sentence, “I should’ve stayed home!”
“I know where his hangout is,” said Alam Shah, another village elder. “We should go and confront him, maybe threaten him, and see if we can get any information.”
Naseer Husain nodded to that. He looked at his distraught wife and, to her relief, decided to take her along.
“Come Safia Begum. It’ll do you good to see what kind of people we’re dealing with.” He did not speak harshly, but the message in his words was clear. She should have listened.
Along with five Lashkar soldiers, they followed Alam Shah’s directions. If this man was the one who had taken her son away, Safia had to face him and wondered what she would do or how she would react.
They stopped at a tea stall and saw a few people standing outside the entrance. All the men except one were holding AK-47 rifles on their shoulders. Naseer Husain spoke to the seemingly unarmed man; his quiet voice demonstrated much more force than if he had shouted.
“You’re a coward, Shaheen; Pashtuns don’t hide behind children, they fight man to man,” he alleged.
With his turban and long hair and full beard, it was hard to judge Shaheen’s exact age, but Safia guessed he must be in his late thirties. His clothes had once been white were now stained. Safia could think what else might have caused them. He was so typical of the detested Taliban, wearing his arrogance like a crown.
Safia hated them for what they had done to her community. She had seen the terror by which they ruled in Afghanistan, and while, in recent years, they were becoming a minority, people were still scared of them. Safia knew that it was up to people like her husband to stop these extremists from becoming too strong, but right now, she felt everyone was entirely incapable of bringing back her boy.
The man did not seem surprised at all to see Naseer Husain; in fact, he seemed to have been waiting for this confrontation. He looked at Safia boldly in the face as an insult to her menfolk and sneered at the group of villagers.
“Naseer Husain, you know what I want; my brother-in-law Abdullah,” Mullah Shaheen demanded. “You must have him released.”
“Abdullah is where he belongs, and that’s down to his stupidity!” retorted Naseer Husain, his eyes hooded in anger as the veins stood out on his forehead. “Our people were being terrorized by him and his religious extremist followers. I was delighted to catch him smuggling. No matter what you do or say, I’m not going to do anything to get him released. He’ll rot in jail forever if I have my way!”
Mullah Shaheen looked like he wanted to retort, but the chieftain continued, pointing a sharp, thick finger that almost jabbed Shaheen’s crooked nose.
“And believe me… I’m also going to do my very best to see that you join him behind bars!”
“Oh, really; are you sure, Naseer Sahib?” Shaheen asked quietly, not taking Naseer’s bait.
“Oh yes, I’m very, very sure!” replied Naseer, and this time, his voice carried an icy chill. With those menacing words, he turned his back and moved to leave with the other chieftains behind him. Safia was about to follow, but then she saw a smirk pass across the Mullah’s face. Fear that her dimpled, green-eyed Ahmad would be at the mercy of this monster, she walked up to Shaheen; and, after making sure his eyes locked with hers, she slapped him hard across the face. Then, holding her head high, she followed her husband.