Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [92]
In those long-ago days, Peshawar had been heavily populated with Afghan Pashtun, the dominant ethnic tribe from the east of Afghanistan, where we were now. Once more, I observed similar vendors selling similar street food, smelled familiar odors, saw the same antiquated transportation, and admired the handsome Pashtun. For me, Peshawar and Jalalabad were alike in more ways than they were different.
I paid close attention to my father, who kept me by his side wherever he went. My father has a habit of averting his eyes whenever he is out in public. Whether this comes from a basic shyness or the fact that he takes extreme care not to look upon a woman not of his family, I do not know. I considered telling him that he could look as he pleased, for it would have been impossible to see a woman’s face in Jalalabad even had he tried. Afghan females were cloaked in pale-colored burqas, the tentlike costume that billows over every part of a woman’s face and body. I was glad to see that the heavy fabric of the costume was fitted with a tiny barlike screen over the woman’s upper face so she wouldn’t trip and fall. Some of the wrinkled old women were not dressed in the burqa but instead were wearing long-sleeved, ankle-length embroidered billowy dresses with long-tailed scarves over their hair. When those ancient women saw a strange man, they would yank the tail of the scarf over their face.
I gawked so openly at the people and the sights that I noticed some people stop in their tracks to stare back. Most seemed interested in my father, who attracted attention for his unusual height, for his face, deemed by many to be exceptionally handsome, and for a certain aura that he had about him. After checking out my father, their eyes would turn to Abu Hafs, who was so tall he could look my father directly in the eyes, and to Sayf Adel, who surveyed everything around us, always looking for troublemakers. I garnered the least attention, a boy too young for a beard walking in the middle of a group of stern men. I’m sure those Afghans were wondering why well-dressed Arabs were in Jalalabad, because most Arabs had left their country when the Russians had departed nearly ten years before.
My father was keen to visit some of his old friends from the Soviet conflict. One I remember most distinctly was Younis Khalis, who had once been an important sheik in Afghanistan. Younis Khalis was the oddest-looking man I had ever met. First of all, he appeared ancient to my eyes, already seventy-eight years old when I met him, though he still sported an eye-catching red beard. It was easy to see that he was slowly being defeated by old age.
His former soldiers were very loyal. Although we were visiting him in the late spring, the nights could be quite chilly. When the old man complained of cold, his men made determined efforts to keep him warm. His house was old-fashioned and had been built of mud blocks with a raised concrete floor. Under the floor there was a special open space and his men worked hard running back and forth to shovel hot coals under the concrete, keeping the room toasty warm.
I wondered if my father might agree to such a method of heating for our family. Since he was set against central heating, I was already dreading the cold of the mountain winters.
Sheik Khalis was an unusual man for tribal Afghanistan. He had been a highly regarded Afghan leader during the Russian war. But the moment a peace agreement was put into place, he threw his hands in the air and said that was it! He was finished with fighting. Ten years of bloodletting was enough for any warrior. To prove that he meant his words, he made a big point of giving away all his weapons, including a number of tanks, grandly presenting them to the Afghan central government. Afghan men feel tremendous love for their weapons, and by giving away all of his weapons, Sheik Khalis hoped to create a precedent. He thought that all warlords should donate their weapons to the government, return to their lands, and remain