Earth and Ashes - Atiq Rahimi [3]
If only it were possible to begin life again from the beginning, like a newborn baby. You’d like to live again, if only for a day, an hour, a minute, a second.
You think for a moment about the time Murad left the village, when he walked out through the door. You too should have left the village with your wife and children and your grandchildren and gone to another village. You should’ve gone to Pul-i-Khumri. Never mind if you’d had no land, no crops, no work. May the land rot in Hell! You would have followed Murad. You would have worked in the mines, shoulder to shoulder with him. Then today, no one would be asking you why you’ve come.
If only …
Over the four years Murad has worked at the mine, you haven’t had a single chance to visit him. It’s been four years since he entrusted his young wife and his son Yassin to you and left for the mine to earn his living.
The truth is, Murad wanted to flee the village and its inhabitants. He wanted to go far away. So he left … Thank God he left.
Four years ago your neighbor Yaqub Shah’s unworthy son made advances toward Murad’s wife, and your daughter-in-law told Murad. Grabbing a spade, Murad ran to Yaqub Shah’s house, demanded his son come out and, without asking questions or waiting for answers, brought the spade hard down onto the crown of his head. Yaqub Shah took his wounded son to the village council, and Murad was sentenced to six months in prison.
After he was freed, Murad collected his things together and left for the mine. Since then he has returned to the village only four times. It hasn’t even been a month since his last visit, and now you’re going to the mine to see him, holding his son by the hand. He’ll definitely wonder why.
“Water!”
With Yassin’s shout, your eyes drop from the mountains to the dry riverbed, and from the riverbed to the parched lips of your grandson.
“From where should I get water, child?”
You glance furtively toward the guard’s wooden hut. You don’t have the nerve to ask him for water again. This morning you took some from his jug for Yassin, and if you ask him again … No, this time he’ll get angry and bring the jug down on your head … Better ask elsewhere.
Shading your eyes with your hand, you scan the other end of the bridge. This morning you stopped at a little makeshift shop there to ask the shopkeeper the way to the mine, and the man was kind. Go there again and ask him for water. You start to rise, but then remain nailed to the ground. If a vehicle goes past and the guard doesn’t see you, all this waiting will have been for nothing. No, you’d better stay put. The guard isn’t the sort of man to wait for you, or call out to you … No, Dastaguir, stay just where you are.
“Water, Grandfather, water!”
Yassin is sobbing. You kneel down, take an apple from your bundle, and hold it out to him.
“No, I want water, water!”
You let the apple drop to the ground, heave yourself up, grab Yassin with one hand and the bundle with the other, and hurry off toward the shop.
The shop is just a small wooden stand with three mud walls. At the front, four uneven planks form a window that is covered with plastic sheeting. Behind a small opening sits a black-bearded man. His shaven head is hidden by an embroidered cap and he wears a black waistcoat. A large pair of scales almost completely obscures his thin torso. He is bent over a book. At the sound of your footsteps, he raises his head and adjusts his spectacles on his nose. Despite his pensive expression, his eyes, magnified by the thick lenses, are strikingly bright. He greets you with a kind smile and asks, “Back from the mine?”
You spit your naswar onto the ground and respond meekly.
“No, my good brother, we haven’t gone to the mine yet. We’re waiting for a vehicle to pass. My grandson is very thirsty. Would you be kind enough to give him a little water …”
The shopkeeper pours some water from his jug into a copper cup. On the back wall of the shop there’s a large painting: behind a large rock, a man holds the Devil fast by the arm. Both of them are watching an old