In the Sea There Are Crocodiles - Fabio Geda [6]
Fabio, can I tell you about when the Taliban closed the school?
Of course.
You’re interested?
I’m interested in everything, Enaiatollah.
I wasn’t paying much attention that morning. With one ear I was listening to my teacher and, with the other, to my thoughts about the buzul-bazi contest we had organized for the afternoon. Buzul-bazi is a game played with a bone taken from a sheep’s foot after it’s been boiled, a bone that looks a bit like a die, although it’s all lumpy, and in fact the game you play with it is a bit like dice, or like marbles. It’s a game we play all year round, whereas making kites is more a spring or autumn thing, and hide-and-seek a winter game. When it gets really cold in winter, it’s nice to hide among the sacks of corn or in the middle of a heap of blankets or behind two rocks, huddled up close to someone else.
The teacher was talking about numbers and teaching us to count when we heard a motorbike driving round and round the outside of the school as if looking for the front door, even though it wasn’t all that difficult to find. Then we heard the engine being turned off. A huge Taliban appeared in the doorway. He had one of those long beards they all have, the kind we Hazaras can’t have because we’re like the Chinese or the Japanese, we don’t have much facial hair. A Taliban once slapped me because I didn’t have a beard, but I was only a child and even if I’d been a Pashtun and not a Hazara I don’t think I could have had a beard at that age.
The Taliban came into the classroom, carrying a rifle, and said in a loud voice that the school had to be closed immediately. The teacher asked why. My chief’s orders, the man replied, you have to obey. And he left without waiting for a reply or giving any other explanation.
Our teacher didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just waited until the noise of the engine had petered out and then picked up the math lesson exactly where it had been interrupted, in the same calm voice and with the same shy smile on his face. Because my teacher was actually quite a shy person, he never raised his voice and when he shouted at us it was as if it hurt him more than it hurt us.
The next day the Taliban came back, the same one, riding the same motorbike. He saw that we were in class, and that our teacher was giving a lesson. He came in and asked the teacher, Why haven’t you closed the school?
Because there’s no reason to close it.
The reason is that Mullah Omar has given the order.
That’s not a good reason.
Don’t blaspheme. Mullah Omar says the Hazara schools have to be closed.
And where will our children go to school?
They won’t go. School isn’t for the Hazara.
This school is.
This school is against the will of God.
This school is against your will, you mean.
You teach things that God doesn’t want taught. Lies. Things that contradict his word.
We teach the boys to be good people.
What does that mean, to be good people?
Let’s sit down and talk about this.
There’s no point. I’m telling you. Being a good person means serving God. We know what God wants from men, and how to serve him. You people don’t.
We also teach humility.
The Taliban passed between us, breathing hard, the way I did once when I got a stone stuck up my nose. Without another word, he walked out and got back on his motorbike.
The third morning was an autumn morning, the kind when the sun is still warm, and although the first snow is blowing in the wind, it doesn’t chill the air, just gives it a certain flavor: a perfect day for flying kites. We were practicing a Hazara poem in preparation for the sherjangi, the poetry contest, when two jeeps full of Taliban drove up. We ran to the windows to look at them. All the children in the school leaned out to have a look, even though we were afraid, because fear is seductive when you don’t really know what it means.
Twenty, maybe thirty armed Taliban got out of the jeep, and the same one we’d seen twice before came into the classroom and said to the teacher, We told you to close the school. You didn’t listen