Zainab Akhlaqi, after leaving Afghanistan. Translated by Zubair Popalzai.
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I put the two rucksacks that contained my life’s belongings on the luggage cart, and then sat down on it myself. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, fresh air filling the depths of my lungs. As I did this, the sound of a car door slamming reached me, and then the click-clack of high heels drawing nearer. When I opened my eyes again, I saw a woman with blonde hair standing a few metres from me. I looked at her bright clothes, delicate as garlic peel or autumn leaves, and a moment of uncertainty crossed my mind. Was it spring or autumn?
With a laugh, I reminded myself that, for these people, all seasons feel like spring. Only the impoverished experience the cold, here. Like in Abu Dhabi, where only the labourers endured the heat.
The woman glanced at me several times. It seemed as though she wanted to shift her gaze, perhaps to admire the evergreen trees surrounding the building, or to take in the hotel’s intriguing architecture, its entrance embellished with leaves and colourful flowers. Anything that could divert her attention away from me. But there was something about me that captured her focus.
I turned my own gaze towards myself. A black scarf concealed my black hair. I’d enveloped myself in a black winter sweater. I wore wide black trousers. Reflecting for a moment, I realised that she was right to pay attention to me: I was a black dot on a vivid painting.
She drew closer, and asked in her language, ‘Do you need help?’ I recalled the hotels on Pul-e-Surkh in Kabul. Whenever I passed by, I would see beggars crowded at the entrances, wishing someone would ask them this very question.
In her language, I replied, ‘No, I am waiting. Thank you.’
She nodded, making her way gracefully, cat-like, through the hotel’s entrance.
I wondered why I’d dressed entirely in black that day, as if I were mourning. I glanced across the parking lot, which led to an alleyway and then on to a pavement. I replaced the blonde woman with an aunty walking up the alley, who had pulled her chador tightly over her head. She looked approvingly at me and remarked, ‘A girl should be ladylike, as you are, and dress in dark colours. Not like those frivolous girls.’ I laughed, both at the aunty and my own imagination.
My husband came out from the reception and said, ‘Let’s go. Our room is ready.’
‘I just sat down,’ I said. ‘Wait a few minutes so I can straighten my back, and then we’ll go.’
He gave me a mischievous look and then said in a childish voice: ‘My dear granny, should I carry you on my back?’
‘No, thank you, my child. And may you grow up to be a great person!’
He laughed and pushed the cart suddenly. I lost my balance and fell back onto the luggage. My feet came off the ground and I clung to the bars of the cart. I cried out, laughing. ‘What are you doing? You’re making a scene. Let me get off first.’
‘Relax. Imagine you’re in Afghanistan.’
A smile rose to my lips, bitter, as I murmured, ‘Yeah, we’re no longer in Afghanistan.’
We entered the hotel. There was a large open space in front of the reception desk, dotted with a few sofas, tables, and beautiful vases. We spun around the base of a column, laughing and letting out short screams. I noticed the fleeting glance of the blonde woman, who was now standing at reception and talking to an employee. We reached the door to the room reserved for us for a few days by the government, and I finally got off the cart.
I tucked my hair back under my scarf, and my husband took a plastic card from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘You open it.’
I looked between the lock and the card for a while. When I showed them to each other, the door clicked and opened with a green light. My mouth opened the same way. It was like opening the enchanted gate in One Thousand and One Nights.
The door opened into a kitchen, and my eyes lit up when I saw the sink and stove. ‘Kitchen!’ I exclaimed to my husband, who was bringing in the suitcases behind me. ‘There’s a kitchen here!’ I saw the electric kettle next to the microwave. Two things take away a person’s weariness: seeing mother and freshly brewed tea – the old saying came to me, this kind electric kettle waiting to take the weariness of a thirteen-month journey from my body. I opened the cabinets. Seeing the glass bowls, the matching white dinnerware, the non-stick pots and pans, a tear of joy collected in my eye. I touched everything, making sure this kitchen was real. My husband, organising the suitcases, looked on. He said nothing, but his eyes gleamed with happiness. I said: ‘We will cook and eat an egg tonight. For the first time in a year.’
I remembered the days in the Abu Dhabi camp – one room, one toilet, no cooking facilities – and the promise I had made to myself at the time. How I craved just a simple noodle dish, like the ones we saw in ads or English educational clips. I promised myself that the first day I could, I would make delicious noodles, mixed with all the right spices, and yoghurt, mixed with garlic, and throw a small party for my stomach. It appeared that day had come, and a rumble reminded me of my pledge.
Now my eyes had turned to the living room. I inspected the furniture, the lights, the TV. And then a loud noise came suddenly from the other room. Panicked, I looked at my husband. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Why are you scared? It is safe here.’ There was a caring anger in his voice.
He went grumbling to the other room, returning a moment later: ‘It’s the AC in the bedroom’, he said. ‘It turns on and off automatically. Stop worrying. It’s over. Taliban, Daesh, suicide attacks, bombings. All over.’
After a few moments, I tasted the things he had said. The word ‘bedroom’ was sweet in my mouth. I asked, disbelievingly, ‘Does that mean we have another room?’ I went in. The AC unit was huge, perched right above a big bed with neatly arranged pillows and quilts. There was a TV set on top of a small cupboard opposite the bed. Yes, these separate rooms were suitable for spending time in. After a year, I could finally have a quiet corner to myself. I could recreate the world in which it’s just me, my laptop and my stories, and no one could touch us. I felt a smile appear at the corner of my mouth.
I grabbed my backpack from the other room and brought it into the bedroom. I took out my notebook and placed it on the small table next to the bed. Before I went to sleep, I would write down all the ideas that had recently come to my mind. Then, from tomorrow, I would close the door and work on the next drafts of my stories, shutting out the bullets in my husband’s video games (only God knows how I have cursed those game developers in the last year).
I went to the kitchen and did the thing an Afghan does when they return home. I set some water to boil. It doesn’t matter where you have come from, even if it’s the streets and roads of Canada, tea must be ready. This electric kettle had a large belly, ready to satisfy our tea-drinking needs.
From behind me, I heard my husband’s voice. ‘Shall we go to the store next doors? To shop for dinner?’
I nodded. ‘Let me take my coat off. It’s warm outside now.’ My red sweater was revealed, the black stain vanishing from the painting.
I picked up our enchanted key card and we left the room. The lobby was abuzz. Young men stood by with their suitcases, dressed in matching uniforms. Two people, presumably accompanying the men, spoke with the receptionist. A housekeeper was walking down the corridor with her cleaning trolley. The blonde woman received her card.
We manoeuvred between them and stepped outside, traversing the red carpet at the entrance. When the automatic door slid open, a cool breeze caressed my face and wrapped itself round my body. I embraced myself against the chill.
As we strolled past the opulent cars parked outside, my husband began his usual chatter: ‘Do you see this car? What an incredible vehicle! Shame it guzzles so much fuel.’ I made vague sounds in response. I occasionally looked up at the towering pine trees that surrounded the hotel like a protective wall. Then my eye would be drawn to the meticulous garden and its pruned shrubbery.
We reached the main street and a couple holding hands walked towards us. My husband kept looking from our side of the street, lined with trees, to the other, where each white-windowed apartment had its own balcony with a table, chairs, and a handful of flowerpots. I watched the other couple approach, a funny thought inside me. I turned to them and made a familiar joke from home: ‘Hold on tight, so they don’t snatch you away.’
Engrossed in their own conversation, they passed us by. My husband chuckled. ‘Now you’re saying this? What others used to say about us?’
‘Don’t worry, they don’t understand Farsi.’
With a gentle shake of his head, he encouraged me, ‘Speak up. Don’t hold it in.’
A single raindrop landed on my glasses, and then a gradual drizzle onto the paved street. I turned to my husband. ‘Isn’t there any soil here?’
‘Why? Do you miss the dirty streets of Kabul? Being knee-deep in mud by the time we waded to the end of the road? Or the dust storms? Having to keep our windows shut?’
‘No, I miss the smell of wet soil after the rain had touched it.’ He sighed and fell into silence.
We reached the sidewalk, went over the pedestrian crossing, and then stopped at the traffic light. My husband hesitated. ‘Should we cross? It’s amber.’
‘Let’s observe a few people crossing, first. To understand how it works.’
For nearly half an hour, we observed the lights, the people, the cars. I was astonished that no one was honking their horns. There were no traffic police, either. And yet there was order, of the kind found nowhere in all of Afghanistan.
As we made our way towards the store, we encountered a multitude of people coming and going. The carpark was full, and people were unloading their purchases into their cars from overflowing trollies. The store itself was vast: it took us an hour to get from one end to the other, even though we were only looking at the items lined up on the shelves. Everything from basic groceries to the impossible could be found there.
With a small box of eggs, some tomatoes, garlic, cooking oil and salt, we returned to our room. As my husband lay on the sofa in front of the television, I remembered, ‘Bread!’ He glanced at his watch, and then went out to get it.
I started to prepare tea while he was out. I remembered the eggs I used to make in the mornings back in Kabul. I washed the tomatoes and peeled some garlic, placing a little oil in a pan and waiting for it to heat. My mother always advised against adding anything to cold oil – whether it was onions, or eggplants, or potatoes, or bolani. How I longed for bolani. And how I longed for my mother.
A drop of hot oil spat out of the pan onto my hand. I took my mobile phone, added in the dialling code for Iran, and called my mother’s new number.
‘Salaam, my daughter.’
‘Hello, Modar. Are you alright?’
The line, or her voice, was breaking up. ‘Hello, my beauti/ful daughter. We are fine. How are/ you? What’s/ happening?’
‘I’m fine. You’re breaking up. Is the VPN on?
‘I can hear you. By/ the/ way. We/ immigration office/ today. They refused/ any documents. They say, go back to your country. The girls/ still cannot/ school here.’
‘What? Why? What will you do?’
‘I don’t know, m/y daughter. Your fa/ther says we should go/ back/ Ka/bul.’
‘What? What will you do in Kabul? At least you’re safe in Iran, Modar-jan. Hello? Hello?’
The call dropped. I called again, but it didn’t connect. The silence stirred a commotion in me. I sorely missed my sisters – more like my daughters, because I raised them myself. It enraged me to think of them meeting a member of the Taliban on their way to school – a man waiting to go to his imaginary paradise, to meet a beautiful huri there. But then, of course, no girls’ schools are open in Afghanistan anymore.
My husband arrived back, sniffing the air and swallowing his saliva. The room was overtaken by the smell of good food: fried eggplant and garlic and omelette. I didn’t feel anything. Even as he put pieces of the food into his mouth, I had no appetite to take a bite. When he asked why I wasn’t eating, I said, ‘These eggs don’t taste like the eggs in Kabul.’ He stopped eating then, too.
That night, I wasn’t in the mood to write. I didn’t reach for my notebook. I left my computer untouched in my rucksack at the foot of the bed. I threw myself on the bed, thinking about my sisters. Ever since the suicide attack in front of Sayed al-Shuhada girls’ school, near our house in Kabul, I’ve worried for their safety. When schools were open, I would take them myself – not because seeing me would put the Talib off his attack, no, but so that I would be with them whatever happened.
There was a knock at the door. When I opened it, a blonde woman was standing there. She said in a Kabul accent: ‘Come with me, we must go to another place.’
‘Are you Afghan too? Where must we go? We have just arrived.’
She tugged at my hand. ‘To a safe place.’
I went with her, not saying a word. At night, the alleys here seemed like the ones in Kabul; just as dark, just as ominous. But in Kabul they’re lit by bright moonlight, and here it was just the faint light of the yellow lamps. I glanced down the alley, and it seemed as though everything had changed under the streetlamps: the building’s walls were no longer white, but the colour of earth, like the mud walls of Kabul’s lanes. The balconies had disappeared and plastic had been stretched over the window-frames. They looked like holes cut into the wall, just like in Chindawol. When I looked closer, I could see raw bricks under the cracked mud.
The further we went, the more my feet stuck to the ground. I looked down; mud and clay caked my boots. After a few steps, I saw two men coming towards us from the other end of the alley. One of them had a scarf wrapped around his head, and the other was wearing a Kandahari cap. Are they wearing piraahan wa tunban?’ I asked the woman. ‘Are they also Afghan?’ The woman nodded meaningfully. I said to myself, ‘There are many Afghans in this strange city.’
When they came closer, and I saw their height and their dishevelled hair and their long beards, I was afraid. I turned to ask the woman, ‘Isn’t it dangerous to be out at this time of night?’ But she wasn’t there. I scanned around, but she was gone. I looked ahead, worried. The man with the scarf on his head wasn’t there either, but with every passing moment the other one was getting closer. I turned and ran. Near the hotel entrance, I saw a rubbish dump and dog was rummaging for food. I whispered prayers under my breath and slowed my pace, so that the dog wouldn’t notice me. I had reached the hotel entrance, oh God. But instead of that automatic glass entryway, there was a rusty roll-up garage door, spray painted in Persian. DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE HERE.
I tried to push the gate up. I heard voices speaking my language on the other side, and tried to call out to them, asking their help, but my voice failed me. Behind me, I could sense the man, his chant of the takbeer echoing in my ear. Allahu Akbar, God is great.
I stood, hope disappearing, but then a moment later the gate squeaked open. I had been leaning on it, and so I stumbled in. I regained my balance and looked up. The lobby was filled with men dressed in piraahan tunban and lungi. The staff were serving them tea from a sooty, black-bottomed aluminium teapot. As I passed by, I overheard a man with a black beard talking to another man who looked just like him. ‘In tonight’s operation, the ticket to paradise is reserved for that kid who always wears his scarf on his head. He’s the one who’ll carry out the attack.’
His words drenched my body in sweat. I noticed the blonde woman standing behind the reception desk laughing at me. I thought of the man who had abruptly vanished from the alley, just as the explosion went off, and I jolted awake, screaming, ‘Suicide bomber!’, and found the room thick with black smoke.
The fire was spreading under the bed. I was confused. My mouth was dry, my body sweaty. I saw my husband trying to put out the fire with a blanket. But he didn’t know how to extinguish a fire, clumsily fuelling the flames instead. They were growing prouder. It took me a few moments to come to my senses, to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness. Giving up on his efforts, my husband pulled me out of the room. I stood outside the door as he ran towards reception for help. He was back a moment later with a tall, bald man wearing hotel uniform. The man took the fire extinguisher from the glass box outside the room and said in his language: ‘Stay here!’ He went in, and disappeared behind the black smoke.
‘What happened?’ I asked, my voice unsteady.
After a few coughs, with a fear that I had not before seen in him before, my husband managed to say: ‘I plugged in the power bank we brought from Kabul to charge it. I don’t know what happened. It just exploded.’
Blood flowed fast through my temples, each pulse pounding in my head. My tears were falling. As I stood trembling by the wall, the world spun around me, and the door to the room seemed to fly off before my eyes. I still didn’t know if I was asleep or awake.
The sound of the fire engines was getting closer. Within minutes, the fire-fighters appeared in the hallway and entered the room with confident, heavy steps. They didn’t seem afraid at all. It was as if they had come to a meeting with someone they knew very well.
After the fire had been put out, I realised that the little life that I had brought with me from Kabul and Abu Dhabi had been reduced to ashes. My computer and my stories were, too. I realised, that night, that the Taliban, the explosions, the suicide attacks and the fear are tied to us like umbilical cords. They will not let go easily. And sometimes I think that the Talib who disappeared in my dream made his way to my hotel room, to come and kill my stories.
Zainab Akhlaqi is a writer and contibutor to My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (2022).
Zubair Popalzai is a Pashto-, Dari- and English-language translation and interpretation professional with more than 20 years’ experience. He is a consultant translator for BBC Monitoring and has worked as an interpreter for United Nations special envoys in politically and militarily sensitive environments in South Asia. He also works as a legal interpreter at solicitors’ offices, tribunals, immigration detention centres and police contexts in the UK.
This story was developed through the Paranda Network, a global initiative from Untold Narratives and KFW Stiftung to connect and amplify the voices of writers from Afghanistan and those in the diaspora.
