On that day, as the “Fall” happened, our beloved homeland once again fell into another bone-burning winter and another dark, long night. The day of the “Fall”, that ominous Sunday, and that Satanic night became a graveyard of the instant dead, the instant buried. In this story, I would like to express my very first experience facing the “evil Taliban”. And how—with great horror—I came close to being murdered by the suicide dead. (Everything I write here I’ve never told anyone before.)
The Horror of Death
It was in the fall of 2005, for the very first time, that I encountered the deadly Taliban. (I don’t have any first-hand experience of Taliban 1.0, for we were out of the country.) I was at my aunt’s in Pul-e-Surkh, Qalai-Wazir Street, when suddenly my cousin, Marzia, came in from outside shouting, “Taliban’s here! Mom, the Taliban’s here!” I instantly ran fast towards the small blue iron gate, eager to see what the hell the Taliban looked like.
I sat on my feet, crouching behind a bullet hole marked on the door, a witness of the civil war. At a distance of 100 yards, there was a white pickup truck with three masked men wearing grey shalwar kameez, holding AK-47s, stressfully looking to the left and right of the street. Out of curiosity, I wanted to open the door, poke through it, and have a quick look at them when suddenly one of them turned to me and his roaming eyes fell on me. Pointed the gun at the gate, that is, at me—fired the gun. I shut the door as fast as the bullet could hit me. It was the first time I heard gunfire. One of the bullets hit the gate but did not strike me; it flew over my head. And then I heard the truck moving. Gone.
The First Days of the “Fall”
On the Sunday evening of August 15, 2021, the news of the Taliban’s militiamen seizing the ARG—the presidential palace in the heart of Kabul—was on international channels; I felt like they had entered our home. Out of fear and terror, combined with supernatural concentration, not only my five physical senses but also my five hidden ones were activated (don’t know how, just happened), and I felt it in my bones that they were in the room at the moment: rotten shalwar kameez, thirsty AK-47s for more human blood, the aura of horror and terror radiating from their cold bodies. I have no word to describe, literally, “Sheer horror!”
A few days later, on the weekend, my friend, Dawoud, and I took a stroll to Pul-e-Surkh. O Pul-e-Surkh! (Meaning Red Bridge, set in the west of Kabul City, a cultural centre and home of writers, poets, and intellectuals.) O lonely Pul-e-Surkh! A mother with vacant arms who had just lost her profoundly happy and free sons and daughters. Pul-e-Surkh is the picture of fallen splendour.
Though it was summertime, I could feel the ice wind passing and howling. The sun had hidden its face since the fall. I feel… I can’t write this line. My heart: a graveyard of broken bones and fallen bridges! O God, I can’t write it . . . I remember what Rumi said: “Describing separation’s torture, then, / Is best postponed until we speak again.” (The Masnavi, V1, verse 131)
Returning from Pul-e-Surkh, when we reached the street of my house, we were about to say goodbye when a group of “Talibans’ militiamen” appeared, approaching us with all their nightmarish glory: cold and soulless.
They got off the Ranger truck—six or seven of them. They approached us, and I could feel his sour breath and rotten skin. Their leader, big as a ghoul and dark-skinned, looked at me with black eyes like the heart of the devil and thick, knitted eyebrows and said, “Why the f**k are you standing here?” I had just returned from Pul-e-Surkh, the graveyard of my dreams and the future of a whole different generation, and I was full of grief and pain. I no longer feared the earth to open its mouth and swallow me into its seventh circle of hell, nor would the sky be raining ashes. As the Joker says, “I’ve got nothing to lose!” I tried to talk. If there was anything left to say. If those monsters from the underworld understood human language,
I decided to mutter something if I could, but Dawoud, who knew about my state, spoke for me: “Why Qari Sahib? (A Muslim who reads the Quran a lot) shouldn’t we hang out in front of our house?”, Dawoud said gently.
As I knew, how does it matter for the dead who are from the Dark Ages? Now they have been resurrected from the seventh circle of the graveyard. It didn’t take him long enough to start punching Dawoud in the face. Dawoud fell to the ground right in front of my eyes. The Taliban militiamen started by kicking Dawoud in the stomach. I was shocked and didn’t know what to do. What could I do? Could I have shielded myself against him? Or I would have found a rock and hit it hard on Talib’s worm-eaten head.
Fortunately, right at that moment, Haji Sahib, our landlord, came out of the house. He rushed to us and calmed the unleashed monster of the Taliban.
Talibans’ fear, since then, their cold eyes have settled deep into my bones. My mental condition became worse than before. I was so serious in my thoughts that I wanted to kill at least one of them or be killed. A few months later, in the dead winter of that year, that dangerous thought came to life. And it almost killed me.
Author: Snow
