In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [2]
Covering my eyes with my hand because of the light, I walked up to the owner, kaka Rahim, and apologized for bothering him. I asked about my mother, if by any chance he’d seen her go out, because nobody went in or out without him noticing, right?
Kaka Rahim was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper written in English, some of it in red, some in black, without pictures. He had long lashes and his cheeks were covered with a fine down like those furry peaches you sometimes get, and next to the newspaper, on the table at the entrance, was a plate containing a pile of apricot stones, along with three succulent-looking, orange-colored fruits, still uneaten, and a handful of mulberries.
There’s a lot of fruit in Quetta, Mother had told me. She had said it to entice me, because I love fruit. In Pashtun, Quetta means “fortified trading center” or something like that, a place where goods are exchanged: objects, lives. Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan: the fruit garden of Pakistan.
Without turning around, kaka Rahim blew smoke into the sun. Yes, he replied, I saw her.
I smiled. Where did she go, kaka Rahim? Can you tell me?
Away.
Away where?
Away.
When will she be back?
She’s not coming back.
She’s not coming back?
No.
What do you mean? Kaka Rahim, what do you mean, she’s not coming back?
She’s not coming back.
At that point I ran out of questions. There must have been others I could have asked, but I didn’t know what they were. I stood there in silence looking at the down on kaka Rahim’s cheeks, but without really seeing it.
It was kaka Rahim who spoke next. She told me to tell you something, he said.
What?
Khoda negahdar.
Is that all?
No, there was something else.
What, kaka Rahim?
She said not to do the three things she told you not to do.
My mother I’ll just call Mother. My brother, Brother. My sister, Sister. But the village where we lived I won’t call village, I’ll call it Nava, which is its name and which means gutter, because it lies at the bottom of a narrow valley between two lines of mountains. That’s why, when I came back one evening after spending the afternoon playing in the fields and Mother said, Get ready, we have to leave, and I asked her, Where? and she replied, We’re leaving Afghanistan, that’s why, when she said that, I thought we were just going to cross the mountains, because as far as I was concerned the whole of Afghanistan lay between those peaks. Afghanistan was those rushing streams. I had no idea how vast it was.
We took a cloth bag and filled it with a change of clothes for me and one for her and something to eat, bread and dates, and I was beside myself with excitement about the journey. I’d have liked to run and tell the others, but Mother didn’t want that and kept telling me to be good and keep calm. My aunt, her sister, came over and they went off into a corner to talk. Then a man arrived, an old friend of my father’s, but he didn’t want to come into the house. He said we should go now, because the moon hadn’t come out yet and the darkness would deceive the Taliban or whoever else we might run into.
Aren’t my brother and sister coming with us, Mother?
No, they’re going to stay with your aunt.
My brother’s still little, he won’t want to stay with my aunt.
Your sister will look after him. She’s nearly fourteen. She’s a woman.
But when are we coming back?
Soon.
When soon?
Soon.
I have the buzul-bazi tournament.
Have you seen the stars, Enaiat?
What have the stars got to do with anything?
Count them, Enaiat.
That’s impossible. There are too many of them.
Then start now, said Mother. Otherwise you’ll never finish.
The area where we lived, in Ghazni province, is inhabited exclusively by Hazaras, who are Afghans like me, with almond-shaped eyes and squashed noses, well, not exactly squashed, but a bit flatter than others, flatter than yours, for example, Fabio: typically Mongol features. Some people say we’re descended from Genghis Khan’s army. Some say our ancestors