There have been many wars, many dead.

To bring peace to her land Aybanu sacrificed herself.

She became the wife of the mogul ruler.

Do you have anything to say? she is asked.

Yes, she says.

Yes, spread these words.

Women should give birth to their children with hatred of war.

The world has been destroyed by the hand of heroes.

It is to us to build it up!

Play both, songs of joy and songs of grief.

As far as eyes can see the world is shattered.

Praised shall be those who build it up.

Praised shall be those who bring a fruitful world.

Bahram Beyzaie

HOW IT CAME ABOUT

What’s your name?

Shirin-Gol.

Is that your child?

Bale. Yes.

And that one?

Bale.

And what about that one?

Bale.

Those two boys there? Are you telling me they’re brothers?

Yes. My sons, Navid and Nabi. I gave birth to them myself.

The official, Malek, looks dubious, but he still brings his stamp down on the thin paper, sweat-drenched and floppy from being clutched for so long in the woman’s hands.

Go down to the back there, Malek tells her self-importantly. Show my colleagues this piece of paper, tell them Mr Malek’s sent you, and there’ll be no problems and you’ll get your sacks of wheat. One for your husband, one for you and one for each of your children. You understand? A sack each.

The woman’s face is completely veiled, the fine net in front of her eyes is too dense to give even the faintest impression of her eyes. But despite her facelessness her fury, her shame, the feeling of humiliation is palpable. Although I don’t know if she’s looking at me, I smile, express my sympathy, show that I’m not on Malek’s side but hers.

Did you see that? asks Malek, as though we were old friends or relations or in-laws. Familiar. He and myself on one side and the people around us, his compatriots, on the other. I take a step backwards and avoid looking at him.

Malek knows very well that it’s pure good fortune that he’s not standing on the side of fate where he would have to hope for a hand-out of wheat. Where he would need a stamp, a permit, the mercy of one of his fellow countrymen. This time, this time he’s lucky. This time he has a job and is thus one of a tiny handful of privileged people.

Since the United Nations set up this transit camp for Afghans returning from Iran, he has earned the equivalent of about sixty dollars a month, which means that he’s able to feed both his own family and his brother’s. Particularly since at least once a week a sack of wheat, which is supposed to make life easier for the ones coming home, doesn’t make its way to its proper owner, and Malek sells it for good hard cash.

Did you see that? he repeats, with the same attitude of self-importance.

Yes, I say dryly, as though I hadn’t the slightest interest in the fate of Shirin-Gol, the woman with the damp piece of paper and the four children who look as though they were born to different mothers and fathers. Malek is disappointed, and his lecherous expression makes way for an almost childish defiance.

I can imagine what he would like to talk to me about while his compatriots crouch in an endless queue on the sandy ground in the blazing sunshine, waiting for him to give them a stamp.

He probably wants to explain to me that Shirin-Gol only borrowed the children to get more wheat than she’s allowed. Then she’ll put the poor things out on to the street, and he, Malek, will have to gather them up and find somewhere for them to stay. Or he’ll tell me Shirin-Gol has, like many other Afghan women, sold her body and had herself impregnated by different men.

Mr Malek, I say in anticipation, please forgive me. It’s too hot and windy here, I’m going to look for a shady spot. Thank you very much for allowing me to watch you at work.

But you haven’t seen a thing, Malek protests.

I’ll come back later, I lie, disappearing between the blue plastic tents. I don’t want Malek to find out where I am and who I’m talking to.

It’s just as I feared. The children who look as though they have different mothers and fathers have vanished into thin air, and I didn’t look at Shirin-Gol’s shoes. Women’s shoes are the only way of recognising them. A blue, pleated cloth covers the women from head to foot, making them all identical, dehumanising them. How could I find Shirin-Gol? The place is swarming with blue burqas, blown by the wind against the women’s thin bodies, then inflating like balloons as though the women were about to rise into the heavens and float away. Again and again I try to make out human faces through the finely-woven net before the eyes of these living ghosts.

I stand undecided in the middle of all the cloths, staring straight ahead. I’ve had enough. I’ve been back in Afghanistan for a month and a half. I’m tired, I’m exhausted. The constant, dusty wind and the dry air, heated by the sun, make even breathing a terrible effort. Call me whatever you want. I just don’t want to hear any more stories about people who have lost everything, everything except their fear, their hunger, their pain, their misery, their poverty, their illnesses and a little bit of hope that things might get better again.

Perhaps I should just withdraw into the shadows somewhere. Perhaps I should find myself an empty tent, lie down and sleep. Then again I could also climb into one of the empty lorries driving back to the border to collect more new refugees. By evening I could be back in my homeland, Iran, where I was born and grew up. From there I could finally return to my comfortable, western world of luxury.

Unable to take so much as a single step further, I stand there in the heartless sun, my body leaden, just staring straight ahead. Suddenly, a blue cloth comes towards me.

La-elah-ha-el-allah. What do you want of me? Those are my children. Leave me in peace in the name of God.

My senses react in slow motion, I can hear myself saying, forgive me. I can say nothing more than that, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I stare at the cloth in front of me until I can finally regain my ability to speak: I’m just standing around here. I don’t work for the United Nations, or for any other aid organisation. I’m just here because I …

Because I what? Because I want to see your misery, film it and write about it? Because we Westerners can only feel our own hearts beating if we see the far-off suffering of the world? Because I think it might help you if someone told about the cruelty of the life you lead? Particularly if the Lord your God sent you into the world as girls. Because I …

Are you all right? the cloth asks. A hand emerges from underneath it, pushes my sleeve back and settles on my arm.

This can’t be happening, I think. I’m standing in the middle of the desert, watching hundreds and thousands of people being crammed like cattle on to the backs of trucks, and this woman is asking me if I’m all right?

I’m watching people coming from a home that never was, and returning to a home that will never be. Women, children, men who know nothing but constant flight. People who have buried daughters and sons, their fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters. People who have no houses, nowhere to sit down, to eat, to sleep. Little girls and boys with only one arm, one leg, no arms or legs at all. People who are thin and rickety, sick, undernourished, nothing but skin and bones. Men who have killed other men, who have looked death in the face themselves. Women who would rather be dead than watch another of their children die.

That’s what I was thinking, says Shirin-Gol in a calm voice that falls on my heart like soft velvet.

What? I still don’t quite understand. What were you thinking?

That you didn’t belong to a relief organisation. You speak our language. Who are you? What are you doing here?

Shirin-Gol’s strong hand is still on my arm. She squats down and pulls me down to sit next to her on the sandy ground.

I’m writing a book, I say, and try to make out the woman’s eyes through the finely woven net. I get the usual explanations ready in my mind.

A book about Afghanistan, about us? people laugh. A book about a country where there’s nothing but hunger and misery, wars and corpses? What’s there to write about? Who wants to read a book like that?

I can read too, Shirin-Gol says instead. When the Russians were here I went to school and learned to read. Apart from my school books I’ve read three and a half proper books. The first I bought myself. The second my teacher gave me, the third was only half a book. I found it in the bombed-out ruins of the capital. A shame I never found the other half. I’d have liked to read the whole story to the end, it was such a lovely story, about a girl who … oh, I can’t remember. And the other book was given to me by my friend, the only real friend I’ve ever had. She was a doctor. I met her in one of the many villages where we have lived, and worked for her.

The Shirin-Gol-cloth looks at me and I have the feeling that she’s reading me, too, like one of her books. That she doesn’t need any of my words to understand me.

Finally she takes her hand off my arm. A little damp patch remains on my skin. I don’t wipe it away. Let it dry in the sun.

A book, says Shirin-Gol, without moving her cloth-covered head. I smile at the blue fabric.

Should I tell you my story for your book? asks the cloth. Would you like that?

Her question sounds like a warning, there’s something threatening about it. While I don’t know why I don’t say yes, why instead my eyes sweep into the distance, to the trucks, bringing the dusty Afghan home-comers back from Iran, and spewing them out into the midst of blue plastic tents, while my thoughts have no beginning and no end, Shirin-Gol takes my chin in her hand, turns my head towards her, forces me to look at her cloth-covered head and asks once again, Would you like that?

Only years later would I understand that Shirin-Gol knew even then that if I said yes, if I got involved with her and her story that morning, we would be bound together for years. Perhaps for ever.

Yes, I’d like that, I say, smile, and put my hand on hers, which is still holding my face.

I’m glad I said yes.

Shirin-Gol is different from all the other women I’ve met in all my years in Afghanistan. Shirin-Gol is like a tree. Like a powerful, slender poplar that withstands the strongest winds and storms, seeing everything, understanding everything, knowing everything and passing everything on.

No other Afghan woman I know has talked so readily, so openly and so honestly about her life, let alone about her relationship with her husband. Shirin-Gol talks about everything she can remember, precisely and in detail, as though she wanted to be sure that at least her stories would remain when she herself had passed away. She doesn’t care whether I ask her any questions or not. Shirin-Gol has her own rhythm, her own tempo for telling the stories of her life. Shirin-Gol’s words are like the weather, sometimes they all sweep away like a storm, sometimes they settle on the heart like a soft, light breeze, sometimes they warm the heart like a tender spring sun, sometimes they burn like the heartless desert sun, sometimes they cool the senses like a little shower, sometimes they drum down like a rainstorm, become a rushing river and demolish everything that stands in their way.

Shirin-Gol’s story isn’t unusual, it relates the very normal madness that thousands of women and other people have experienced and continue to experience in Afghanistan, either like this or in a very similar way.

The camp where we first met, the cities, villages, the whole country, is full of women, children and men who are constantly in search of hope, constantly leaving where they live, constantly believing that everything will be sorted out. And time and again it looks at first as though everything will indeed be fine.

Chapter One

RED BLOOD, SWEET FLOWER

IN AFGHANISTAN ALMOST all names have a meaning. Shirin-Gol means Sweet Flower. To claim that her mother saw a sweet flower, smelled the scent of a flower or even thought of a sweet flower the moment she was born would be to exaggerate, a romanticised invention of the Western imagination.

In all likelihood Shirin-Gol’s mother, like all mothers in the world, suffered terrible pains at the birth of her fourth daughter, her ninth child, and in all likelihood she wondered at that moment how she would feed another child with her already weakened body and her empty breasts. And she was probably glad when she pulled the child from her body and saw that it was only a girl, because if Shirin-Gol had been a boy, that boy would have needed even more milk, even more attention. His mother would have had to carry him more often in her arms, they would have had to give a party to celebrate his birth and slaughter a sheep, rustle up some money for his circumcision and send him to the mullah to learn the Koran.

No, Allah is merciful, and this time he only sent her a daughter. To be precise, God has always been merciful to Shirin-Gol’s mother. He made her first child a son, so that her husband could feel like a real man, and wouldn’t have to knock her teeth out or divorce her, or take her back to her father’s house.

For safety’s sake, so that everything would stay as it was, God sent her another boy just after the first. And the third child was a son as well.

Then God thought about Shirin-Gol’s mother and sent her three daughters in a row. That meant she finally had some help with all the work she had to do for her husband and her three sons, tilling the field, baking bread, sewing clothes, tending the sheep, milking the cows, making meals, weaving carpets and whatever other tasks came her way.

The next two children were boys again, and for each of them Shirin-Gol’s father slaughtered a sheep. Each one had to be circumcised, but at least these two didn’t have to go to the mullah, because the first three sons in the family had learned the Koran.

And the year after these not-so-important brothers, Shirin-Gol suddenly comes into the world. As far as her father’s concerned it’s neither good nor bad. For her mother it’s good.

Shirin-Gol is a quiet child, and her life is good. When she is a little girl everyone leaves her in peace. She sits in the shade by the corner of the mud hut on the sandy ground, watching her mother and father, her elder brothers and sisters, tilling the little field, milking the few sheep they have, watering the donkey, sweeping the dust out of the hut, weaving carpets, fetching food, baking bread, ensuring the survival of the family afresh each day. Shirin-Gol is set down at the corner each morning by her sister with the mole on her cheek, given a piece of bread in her hand, and given no other task but to behave as quietly as possible, to look, and to understand a girl’s role in life: to be inconspicuous, to work, and to obey the orders of the boys and men.

It is only when she is about two years old that Shirin-Gol stands up by herself for the first time, comes out of her corner in front of the hut, takes a few steps, goes over to Mole-sister, who is crouching in front of the hut and washing clothes, crouches beside her, splashes her little hand around in the soapy water, gets a smack on the fingers, pees on the floor, is carried back to her place by Mole-sister and set back down again.

God sees all that and at that moment he remembers Shirin-Gol’s mother. He suddenly remembers that for two years he has forgotten to give Shirin-Gol’s mother a new child in her belly. So merciful God hurries to catch up on what he has missed, and before Shirin-Gol is quite three years old she has two brothers at once put in her lap, and from that point on, day in, day out, she is busy with the twins.

She rarely raises her head now, no longer knowing what her mother and older sisters, her father and other brothers are doing all day.

The next time Shirin-Gol looks up and sees what is going on in the world around her is the day the twins take their first steps without her holding them by the hand. One of them walks straight from right to left and the other from left to right, they crack their heads together, fall over, start howling and both look to their sister Shirin-Gol for help. Then, very close by, a rocket explodes, the first, but by no means the last, that Shirin-Gol will hear in her lifetime. The twins fall silent, both stagger anxiously over to their sister, burying their heads in her little skirts. Their mother looks up in horror, the older brothers run back from the field, the older sisters howl, their father looks concerned and says, more to himself than to anyone else, then it’s true. The Russians are here.

The Russians? Who are the Russians? Our neighbours? Why have they turned up? What do they want from us? We haven’t got anything ourselves, says Shirin-Gol’s mother in a loud, high voice.

Her father looks at his sons and says, we’ll have to go into the mountains. In the past the English occupied our country and decided our fates, now the Russians are having a go. In the past the English cast an eye on our wives and daughters, now it is the turn of the Russians. In the past the English dishonoured and sullied our country and our religion, took away our power and responsibility for ourselves, robbed us of our freedom and polluted the soil of our homeland, now it is the Russians. We have no other way, it is time for us, too, to join the Mujahedin, go to war against the Russians, and, if it has to be, fight them to the last drop of our blood. To the last drop.

Those are the last paternal words that Shirin-Gol remembers. Her father lines up with her older brothers, prays, gives each of the brothers a rifle and ammunition, and vanishes from Shirin-Gol’s life and the mud hut, leaving a lot of room for eating, for sitting, for looking after the twins, for picking lice from their hair, for spinning wool, sewing clothes, weaving carpets, chopping sugar into small pieces, grinding corn, sitting together and talking about the war, the wounded, the dead, the Russians, spreading out the sleeping mats and blankets at night.

From then on Shirin-Gol and the twins no longer sleep in the corner behind the fireplace in the ground, get more to eat and are allowed to talk more than before. Only the shots, rocket attacks and bomb explosions in the mountains remind them of their brothers and their father, who only ever appear occasionally, stay for a short time and then vanish again.

Shirin-Gol is in the field collecting the last puny kachalou, potatoes, when a man quickly runs past her. He is carrying another man on his shoulders, covered in blood all over. The man with the bloody man on his shoulders stops and turns to look at her. She recognises him as one of her older brothers and smiles. Her brother does not smile back, asks, why aren’t you wearing your burqa? walks on and disappears behind the mud hut.

Shirin-Gol’s mother comes out of the hut, her face drained of colour. Madar. Mother.

Madar-with-no-colour-in-her-face stands in front of the hut, holds the clay water jug in front of her belly with both hands and says a lot of little words that Shirin-Gol can’t hear, because Madar-with-the-drained-face has also lost her voice.

Shirin-Gol stands there, staring at Madar-with-no-colour-in-her-face-and-no-voice-in-her-mouth. Shirin-Gol wonders who has stolen the colour from Madar’s face and the voice from her mouth, whether it was the bloody man or whether Madar herself put them in the niche and forgot to bring them back out again. Shirin-Gol is wondering this, when Madar-with-no-colour-in-her-face-and-no-voice-in-her-mouth hurls the clay water jug on to the ground, so that it breaks and becomes a thousand and one little shards of clay.

Colour gone. Voice gone. Water jug gone.

Shirin-Gol takes the twins by the hand, turns around without looking at Madar-with-no-colour-in-her-face-and-no-voice-in-her-mouth-and-no-water-jug-in-her-hand again, and goes back to the field, to the puny kachalou, which are under the earth and have a good life because it’s cool there and there is no mother there to go around breaking clay water jugs.

More men come at night, familiar and unfamiliar, her father and her other elder brothers. Shirin-Gol hears them chopping up the soil behind the hut, goes out, sees the bloody man her brother had been carrying on his shoulder being put into the hole and the hole filled up again. The men weep, put their rifles and Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and vanish back into the dark of the night.

The next morning only Shirin-Gol’s mother is crouching by the filled hole. She has a black cloth over her head, her body rocks back and forth as though she were in pain, she keens and laments and doesn’t even stop when Shirin-Gol brings her a fresh glass of tea.

Shirin-Gol thanks God that Madar has recovered her voice, says a quick prayer for God to bring the colour back to her face, and to make sure that she hasn’t pulled the black cloth over her head because she’s lost her eyes, her nose and her mouth as well. But if she had lost her mouth, she wouldn’t be able to lament, Shirin-Gol thinks to herself, and decides to behave as though she hadn’t seen Madar-with-no-colour-in-her-face-and-no-voice-in-her-mouth-and-no-water-jug-in-her-hand the day before.

What’s wrong? the little girl asks, putting as much unconcern into her voice as God is willing to grant her.

What do you think is wrong? Madar sighs, taking the cloth from her head to take a sip of tea. Then Shirin-Gol sees it with her own eyes. During the night Madar has lost the colour from her hair.

And then Shirin-Gol learns that God killed the bloody man in the hole for that very reason, so that Madar would lose the colour from her face, the voice from her mouth, the clay water jug, the colour from her hair, and so that her mother’s heart would break and her mother’s hair would turn white.

Shirin-Gol still doesn’t understand how everything connects, but the further the sun travels to sink in the west at the end of the day, the more Shirin-Gol learns about the man in the hole, and what he has to do with her mother’s suddenly white hair.

The man on her brother’s shoulder, the man now lying in the hole in the ground behind the hut, is actually a martyr, fallen in the name of the Prophet, the Koran and of Islam.

Shirin-Gol has heard of martyrs many times, but always firmly believed that martyrs dwelt in the company of God, in Paradise, and not in holes in the ground. But now she has seen it with her own eyes, in the hole behind the hut there is a flesh-and-blood martyr. A shahid.

Shirin-Gol also learns that he will not be the last shahid in her life by any means, and that this shahid had previously been a real man, someone that Shirin-Gol had known, even someone from her own family, one of her brothers, to be precise, the second son that God had granted to her mother, the first he had taken back for himself, and precisely for that reason her mother has terrible pains that may kill her and it is for that and no other reason that her hair turned white overnight. Shirin-Gol takes the twins by the hand, sits down by the filled hole in the ground and does as her mother and everyone else, she weeps, doesn’t understand, closes her eyes and asks God why he does that. First he sends mothers sons that they grow to love, sons they get used to. Then he makes the little sons turn into big sons, sends the Russians into their homeland and the sons into the mountains, where they die and become shahid and break their mothers’ hearts – and all for them to have white hair in the end? It would be much simpler, wouldn’t it, if he didn’t send them any sons in the first place, and just gave the mothers white hair from the beginning.

And just in case he plans to do the same thing with Shirin-Gol, when she is grown up and a mother, then frankly she’d rather he didn’t, because she doesn’t want all the work that boys bring with them, after all she’s already learning from the twins how much effort and attention boys need, and how much responsibility they mean, and nor does she want, if God intends to make her sons die as shahid as well, to have to endure the pain. And the eyes swollen from all the crying and the white hair – she doesn’t want any of it.

God’s ways are endless, says Shirin-Gol’s eldest sister every day from this point onwards. On the fourteenth day after her brother’s death she paints her lips red and her eyes black and goes down into the village.

Where are you going? Why are you painting your lips? Why aren’t you wearing a veil? What will people say? They’ll talk behind your back. You’re sullying the honour of our father, our living brothers and our dead martyr brother. In the name of the Prophet, the Koran and Islam, you are bringing shame and misfortune upon us.

Shirin-Gol says all that and everything else she has learned to believe and obey, but her sister doesn’t listen to her, she goes into the village and doesn’t come back until the following morning, when she has four Kalashnikovs with her, a box of hand grenades, one of ammunition, four pairs of trousers, four helmets and a horse to carry it all.

How many were there? asks her mother. Four, says Shirin-Gol’s sister, lowering her eyes.

I want to go, too, calls Shirin-Gol two weeks later, when her sister and now the next eldest paint their lips red again and go back into the village. No, you don’t, says the eldest, draws a knife from under her skirt, holds it to Shirin-Gol’s breast, looks her straight in the eyes and asks, or would you dare to carve up Russian soldiers?

I want to go, too, calls Shirin-Gol a few weeks later, when the two elder sisters and Mole-sister as well, go back to the village and she herself does nothing but go to the field, sweep the floor of the hut, cook meals, wash the blood from her sisters’ clothes, keep an eye on the twins and comfort them when they crack their heads together.

You’ll have to do that soon enough, says Mole-sister, looking Shirin-Gol in the eyes, chokes back her tears, kisses her on the forehead, pulls her veil over her face and vanishes into the village.

But I want to go now, Shirin-Gol complains, crouching over the washing bowl when her sisters come back in the evening and throw their bloody frocks into the soapy water, sending the water and the bubbles jumping into the air, drenching Shirin-Gol. The sisters pay no attention to Shirin-Gol, sigh wearily, squat down and sort and hide the Russian Kalashnikovs, ammunition, hand grenades, mines, boots, helmets and whatever else they have taken from the Russian soldiers.

It was only two this time, says one sister.

They were careful, says the other. Word has gone around about how dangerous it is to go into the villages and violate Afghan women. Thanks be to Allah. They’re frightened.

Frightened? The Russian soldiers? The enemies of the homeland, of the Prophet, of the Koran, of Islam and freedom? Who turned her brother into a shahid in a hole in the ground? The men in the uniforms, with the heavy boots, with the rifles, the mines, are frightened of her sisters? Fairy tales, the sisters are inventing them to make themselves important and Shirin-Gol envious.

Shirin-Gol creeps secretly behind her sisters, sees everything with her own eyes. But only years later will she understand that they weren’t fairy tales.

Her brothers, her father, the other men from the village are in the mountains fighting against the Russians and the government soldiers. Other Russian soldiers come into the villages, plunder, rob, steal, carry off women and even little girls.

The soldiers are still boys themselves, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, no notion of life, of war, of killing – let alone of being killed.

Two days before they were still in their barracks, in Kazakhstan, Leningrad, Uzbekistan, slurping borscht from metal bowls and writing letters to their mothers and the girls who promised to wait for them until they were released from military service, until they came home and married them.

The call comes suddenly, as it always does, boots on, combat pack on their backs with Kalashnikov, ammunition and helmet, lashing everything down, with stamping boots, into the plane, flying in darkness, seeing nothing, believing they’re being flown to Siberia or somewhere, to shovel coal or whatever. Disembarking, with no idea where they are. Nothing but mountains all around, pitilessly rocky, unimaginably high. Snow-covered, the massif of the Hindu Kush soars into the sky. How much is seven thousand metres? Who are the Mujahedin? How many of them have hidden out in the mountains, what have they done to us, why are we killing them, why are they enemies of the Soviet people, of the Socialist Party? How many enemies have we killed already, how many more will we have to kill, how long are we staying, why can’t I send that letter to my mother?

Hashish and opium silence the questions, the anxiety, the hunger. Afghan girls with black hair that looks like silk, eyes like coals, big white teeth like pearls, soft lips like plums awaken lust, assuage sad, young Russian hearts.

What they don’t get given freely they take by force. Afghan food, clothes, money, Afghan women, girls, the honour of Afghan men, fathers, sons, the dignity and pride of the nation, faith and trust in God.

Russian boys in uniform obey orders, overcome fear, perform military rituals, muster courage, demonstrate power, strength and superiority. They fall upon villages, carry off women, rape, cut breasts off, carve stomachs open, sling foetuses into the sand with a slap. They part children’s necks from children’s bodies, kiss girls’ mouths, lick girls’ stomachs, grab girls’ breasts, satisfy young Russian cocks in virgin Afghan vaginas.

Afghan teachers, peasants, shoemakers, butchers, bakers, tradesmen, pupils and students become freedom fighters, take to the mountains, kill, are killed, lay mines before they step on one themselves, carve up Russian soldiers before they themselves are carved up.

The Afghans call it ‘taking off their shirts’ when they cut around the waists of the Russians and pull the skin over their heads, leaving the skinned men in the sun, that the Afghan flies can feast upon their exposed red Russian flesh.

In Kazakhstan, Leningrad and Uzbekistan, the Russian mother feels a pang in her heart, two weeks later a letter arrives, an officer, two soldiers, a zinc coffin: Do not open.

Everything is different in war, things are permitted that are forbidden by faith and tradition, ancient values and personal morality, things are permitted that only death would otherwise atone. Unveiled, red-lipped, well-behaved Afghan girls sit in the corner, in the place where the Russians have occupied an Afghan hut, smoking a gift of hashish, losing their senses, bereft of all desire save for one thing, the giggling, nudging girls with their kohl-rimmed eyes and bodies that no man has ever seen, let alone touched.

From her hiding place Shirin-Gol sees it with her own eyes, hears it with her own ears, but still can’t believe it. Befogged Russian boys stare with their blue eyes at her unveiled sisters, slaver, lecherously lick their lips, stretch out their hands, lay them on her sisters’ breasts, grasp her sisters’ hips, kiss her sisters’ necks, pull her sisters’ backsides to them, groaning ever louder, saying words in a language that Shirin-Gol doesn’t understand.

A cry, not of satisfaction but of death. A carved-up Russian boy in uniform lies at her sister’s feet, bent double and wriggling, tries to pull the knife from his stomach, hasn’t the strength, claws his bloody hand into her sister’s skirt, begs for mercy with his blue Russian eyes and gets it.

After all, he is only a human being with a mother waiting somewhere on this goddamn earth for her son to come back, her sister says, wiping tears from her kohl-rimmed Afghan eyes. Bending over the dying man she pulls the knife from his stomach and frees him from his torments. With a quick slice to the throat.

For freedom, for honour, for faith and with the aim of staying alive herself.

Even after twenty years or more these images have still not fled, they lie heavy and blood-red in Shirin-Gol’s heart and won’t let her forget.

Since those days Shirin-Gol’s Mole-sister has had djinn, evil spirits, in her body. She will be sitting somewhere peacefully, talking, eating, cooking, washing or just staring ahead when she will suddenly start gulping for air, start screaming and crying. She gets yellow foam around her mouth, clenches her teeth together so hard they crack, and she pulls her hair out.

Another one driven mad by war, the people say.

Even Shirin-Gol’s father knew what his daughters did for honour, for their homeland, the Prophet, the Koran and Islam. With the passing of the years he spoke less and less until he was finally mute, until he stopped talking altogether. Never again, to no one. He never looked anyone in the eye again, not his daughters or his sons, not even his wife.

Chapter Two

A NAKED WOMAN, A LETTER, A WORD AND A LITTLE FREEDOM

THE TWINS ARE still wetting themselves, still nursing, still crouching in Shirin-Gol’s skirts, still having titbits stuffed in their mouths. They’ve been talking for a long time now, saying words and whole sentences, bread, water, hungry, Shirin-Gol, give me that, leave me alone, come here, go away, tired, carry me and lots more, when Shirin-Gol’s life changes once again. The sun is just casting its first light over the top of the hill above the village, the weapons of the Mujahedin, the brothers and fathers of the village and the Russians are silent in the mountains, the cock is crowing, one of the twins presses his little, sleeping, rigid body against his sister’s, the other twin places his hand tenderly on his sister’s cheek, when a deafening explosion tears through Shirin-Gol’s sleep and the silence of the early morning.

A moment later the sky is full of roaring, humming, massive iron birds whose like Shirin-Gol has never seen before.

God has sent the flying monsters, her mother says, to punish us for our sins.

What sins? asks Shirin-Gol.

They aren’t birds or monsters, the older brother says, they’re Russian helicopters and they’re called Antonovs.

Antonov, Shirin-Gol whispers. A pretty name, what a shame they’re so coarse and horrible.

From her hut, set outside the village, Shirin-Gol watches the fire-spewing, horrible monsters with the pretty name flying low over the village, wheeling in a broad arc and coming back, flying lower and lower, so close you could touch them, with fire-spitting metal rods that make a horrendous din. In less time than it would take to say half a prayer, all the mud huts are in ruins, and more than half the village population have been turned into martyrs.

Shirin-Gol, the twins, her mother, the brother who had emerged from her mother’s stomach shortly before Shirin-Gol and her three sisters, all grab as many of their things as they can carry and flee into the mountains. From there they watch the Russians descending on one side of the village in tanks, trucks, jeeps and on foot, killing anything or anyone left alive, setting everything alight and leaving on the other side.

Shirin-Gol, the twins and the rest of the family scrabble a hole in the ground and hide the Russian Kalashnikovs, rifles, mines, helmets and everything else that has to stay here. Shirin-Gol wonders whether the rifles and everything else that has to stay here are martyrs as well, finds no answer, hurries not to be left behind and heads north towards Kabul, the capital, with the others.

Where is Kabul? Why Kabul? Why not to the south? Why not to the east, to the west, back to the village? Why not build the huts back up again? Why? Why this, why that?

Be quiet, order her brothers, her father, her mother, when Shirin-Gol asks.

Be quiet, orders Shirin-Gol when the twins ask.

*

Noise and hubbub and asphalt, stone houses the size of mountains, people in a hurry, cars belching black smoke, stinking air, dirty trees, unveiled women, bare-armed girls, boys shouting stupid mountain people and meaning Shirin-Gol and her family. Shirin-Gol’s father, who is suddenly shrunken and smaller than he was in the mountains of home, lowers his eyes in shame. Shirin-Gol’s brothers picking up stones and dropping them again. Shirin-Gol’s sisters, peering secretly out from under their veils. Shirin-Gol’s mother, smacking them on the back of the head with the palm of her hand – Kabul, the capital.

Russian administration. Shirin-Gol cannot believe her eyes. But she can see it right there in front of her. A woman, an Afghan woman, her hair back-combed and as much paint on her face as if she were a bride, sits unveiled opposite her father. The skin and flesh of her arms and legs, her neck, are bare and visible to all. She doesn’t lower her gaze, she looks Shirin-Gol’s father straight in the eyes, addresses him directly so that her teeth and her tongue can be seen, asks him a thousand and one questions that have nothing to do with her.

Questions to which she gets lies in reply. Profession? Farmer. No, he’s never fought in the mountains. Mujahed? What’s that? Russians? Good people, here to help the homeland. Money? No, nothing. Possessions? None.

The only true words her father utters that day are when he says that neither he nor his wife and none of their children can read or write.

The naked woman gives Shirin-Gol’s shrunken father a piece of paper and says the laws of the new government state that all men, even Shirin-Gol’s father and her brothers, must report immediately to the nearest headquarters, to enter the service of the noble army, it is the prime task of every patriotic Afghan to fight for the fatherland against all enemies of the state and resistance fighters. In addition, it is the duty of every Afghan, man or woman, old or young, to join the honoured and beloved, newly founded People’s Party. Further, the laws of the new government decree that anyone seeking lodging or a tent must send his children to school, anyone who wishes to eat must send his children to school.

In short, anyone who doesn’t want to go to prison has to join the army and the Party and send his children to school and also forbid his wife and his daughters to wear the whole-body veil in public.

Shirin-Gol feels dizzy under her cloth, and she is glad that the naked woman can’t see her face, or she would probably be sent straight to jail. Shirin-Gol waits excitedly to hear what her father will reply to the naked woman’s blasphemous and outrageous words. But her father says nothing. He rises from his chair, knocks it over, not being used to chairs, and starts to go. Just like that. Without punishing the naked woman with so much as a harsh word for her brazen godlessness.

And then something happens that makes Shirin-Gol think she’s imagining and possibly dreaming it all. The naked woman gets up, holds out her hand, looks her father in the eye, holds her hand outstretched in the air until her father holds out his hand in turn and actually briefly touches the naked woman’s finger-tips.

Shirin-Gol utters a faint cry, gets a slap on the back of the head from her mother, hurries to pull the twins under her cloth so that at least their innocent, childish eyes are not forced to look upon the incredible things that are happening there, but it is too late, they’ve seen everything, and will clearly remember the naked woman, and talk about her, for a long time to come.

School? says Shirin-Gol’s father when they are back in the noisy, dirty, crowded, stinking street, and spits. His spittle doesn’t drain away, it stays where it is on the hard, grey ground called asphalt. While Shirin-Gol is looking at her father’s spittle to see what will happen to it her father says, Army? Never. I’m going back into the mountains and my daughters aren’t going to go to school. It’s the devil’s work. These infidels want to dishonour us. Girls who go to school become confused and curious, they know too much, they get greedy, they start demanding things, they become choosy, and what kind of man is going to marry a woman like that? And in the end, Allah is my witness, these infidels only want to steer us from the right path, stuff our heads full of this godless nonsense, destroy our dignity and our faith and turn our daughters into what that, that, that … Her father can’t find the word, but goes on, then her father finds the word and says, that WHORE? Never.

Disgrace and shame, a hundred times shame, God damn all infidels, Shirin-Gol murmurs under her cloth, and she almost feels ill at the idea of having to go to school, to end up like the naked woman.

What is school, in fact? What is a whore? Shirin-Gol bites her lips, shuts her eyes, prays to her God to protect her from that terrible fate. Shirin-Gol is about to say something, maybe something along the lines of, I’d rather be dead than end up like the naked woman, or, I’m going back into the mountains to kill Russians, but then she keeps her mouth shut after all, because her father is so worked up that she’d probably get a clip around the ear for daring to raise her girlish voice, unasked and in public, and say what she thinks.

*

The place where Shirin-Gol, the twins and the rest of the family are staying is made of stone, the walls and the floor are smooth and cold. There’s a button on the wall that you can press, then a globe under the ceiling lights up and makes more light than four oil lamps. The room has two doors, one takes you out on to the street, the other takes you to a tiny room with a hole in the floor. To her horror Shirin-Gol learns that the hole is there for you to do your business in.

Gradually Shirin-Gol starts to feel sorry for the people who have to live in the city. It’s really incredible, the women run about naked and half-naked, the streets are so hard that your feet hurt, the men’s spittle lies where it falls, it stinks, it’s noisy, and on top of everything you’re supposed to piss and shit where you sleep and eat and spend your days and nights?

Shirin-Gol keeps a tight grip on the hands of the twins, stays by the door and waits to go back to the mountains. But instead of going, her mother spreads out the blankets on the cold, hard floor, her sisters make a little fire, her brothers go out with a pot, fetch water, someone makes tea, someone else unpacks the dry bread, everyone eats, her mother clears everything aside, one by one they lie down and they all sleep.

During the night Shirin-Gol has a dream. She dreams her brothers were wrong and the Russian helicopters weren’t helicopters but wonderful Antonov birds that didn’t fire fire-spewing rods. In the fat belly of the Antonov birds there are little sheep that the birds give Shirin-Gol, and deposit in the field in front of her hut. Little white sheep with soft, fluffy wool that tickles when Shirin-Gol cuddles them. Little white sheep that grow into big sheep and give milk. Milk that her sisters can turn into cheese. Milk that Shirin-Gol can drink. Little white sheep that you can eat.

A shame it was only a dream, thinks Shirin-Gol when she wakes up.

On the third or fourth day in the capital a man in uniform comes to see them and talks to Shirin-Gol’s father outside the door. Four days later another man in uniform comes, but this time he doesn’t talk, he shouts at her father behind the door. There’s a rustling noise in the night, and in her half-sleep Shirin-Gol hears voices. In the morning when she wakes up her elder brothers aren’t there, her father isn’t there, her elder sisters aren’t there, even Mole-sister has disappeared. They’ve all gone back to the mountains to do what Shirin-Gol can never mention to a soul because her mother would tear out her tongue and God the merciful would blind her.

There is a knock at the door, Shirin-Gol gives a start, a woman in uniform comes in, talks to her mother, sits down on the floor with Shirin-Gol, her mother, the twins, smiles, takes the twins by the hand, gestures to Shirin-Gol to follow her, politely bids her mother goodbye and goes into the street with the three children.

The woman in uniform is not as naked as the naked woman on the first day, but neither is she dressed like Shirin-Gol’s mother, her sisters, herself and all the other women who have been in Shirin-Gol’s life so far.

Nonetheless, at least the half-naked woman covers her hair with a headscarf, her face isn’t painted, her arms are covered, her skirt is long enough to cover her knees, she wears stockings, flat shoes, she keeps her head bowed, doesn’t look men in the eyes in the street, makes way for them as one is supposed to do, stepping to one side if they walk towards her. When she looks at Shirin-Gol and the twins she always smiles. That’s good, because at least it makes Shirin-Gol and the twins a little less frightened.

The half-naked woman with the pretty smile is called Fawzi, she is a teacher and Shirin-Gol will be seeing her every day from now on.

That is your school, says Fawzi, that is your classroom, those are your fellow pupils. You can keep your shoes on, take your veil off, sit down over there where there’s a space free, no, not on the floor, there on the bench, this is an exercise book, this is a textbook, this is a pencil, this is a letter: Sh, the beginning of your name.

Sh-i-r-i-n-G-o-l, Sweet Flower.

W-a-r.

M-u-j-a-h-e-d, no, not freedom fighter, resistance fighter. Enemies of the people. Enemies of the Party and the honourable government.

We live in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Kabul is 3,500 years old. More than a hundred and fifty years ago the British tried to conquer our country, they tried over and over again, and over and over again they were forced back by the brave men and women of our country. Now the freedom-loving people of the Russians have come to our aid.

This picture shows the honourable president and the father of our beautiful homeland.

Shirin-Gol sits up, opens her mouth, is about to speak, falls silent and thinks, my father’s name is … he is …

S-i-l-e-n-t.

L-y-i-n-g.

F-e-a-r.

R-u-s-s-i-a-n-s.

N-a-k-e-d w-o-m-a-n.

*

Under no circumstances does Shirin-Gol want to become like the naked woman on the first day and all the other naked women she has seen on the street since then, but even worse than becoming a naked woman would be not going to school and going to jail for it. So Shirin-Gol tries as best she can to follow Fawzi’s instructions and do her best by her teacher, so as not to end up in jail. Because she knows one thing very well, and that is that in jail people have their tongues torn out, their fingernails torn out, their arms and legs drilled through with hot metal rods, their fingers cut off, the bones in their arms and legs broken, their stomachs run through, their teeth knocked out, their eyes ripped out.

Every free minute Shirin-Gol squats somewhere, usually by the door to the room that she shares with the twins and her mother, reading, writing, practising words and sentences.