Читать книгу Flashes of War - Katey Schultz - Страница 12

My Son Wanted a Notebook

How can I tell you this? My son Anoosah worked in a sweatshop weaving rugs. This was during the good time—after the Taliban but before everything got worse again. He worked ten hours, six days a week. His small, brown fingertips looked as blistered and cracked as the streets of downtown Kabul. Still, each day he came home. He kissed my cheeks. He played the games that young boys play, and when he ran, he moved as freely as a cloud.

Anoosah earned two dollars a month. We bought barley and figs. We could only do this sometimes. Other times, I stole from the farmers at the bazaar, stuffing corn and cucumbers into my clothing. Once, Anoosah tried to pillage a nearby hen house. The owner found him sitting on the floor, coddling the hens, their warm, ruffled feathers like nothing he had ever felt. The man took pity and gave Anoosah some eggs, but only after he earned them by cleaning out the coop. “Like silk,” Anoosah told me later. “Holding those hens felt like holding bags of silk.”

My husband’s feet were crushed in the rubble from an American missile in the early attacks. The same people who hurt him later helped him, and so he lived. He uses crutches while we wait for his prosthesis. It’s been four months. He sleeps all day. He survived, but the only part that’s still alive is his anger. He says his country is nothing if he cannot feel the earth beneath his feet.

A new school opened for women. There were business classes, driving instructions, and lessons on self-care. I got permission to attend and walked there every day. We tried lipstick. Learned basic English. They even gave us lunch. One of the teachers fitted me for eyeglasses, and my handwriting improved.

I told Anoosah everything so he could learn as well. He wanted a notebook of his very own—a small luxury—so I sent him to the shops. I had a voucher from the school for just these kinds of things. He ran out the door, stuffing the voucher into his pockets. He would be able to tell stories and let me write them down for him. He could make sketches of the hills and show them to his father. “Get the biggest one you can,” I said. “We’ll fill every page!”

The explosion happened a few blocks from the store. I heard it from our home and didn’t worry. These things still happened sometimes, though this one was loud and close. My husband pushed himself out of bed and crawled across the kitchen to our front door. “Anoosah,” he said and grabbed his crutches and lifted himself up. There was no way to do this quickly, and he wouldn’t let me help. He wrangled out the door and onto the street. He hadn’t been outside in months. First one crutch, then the other, a sort of hop-heaving motion from one rubber tip of the crutches to the next. I walked next to him as he teetered, a building with no foundation. One block later he collapsed. That’s when we saw it.

The car bomb must have gone off at the wrong time, because the driver was a smoking statue, one foot still on the brake, the other sticking out the open door and touching the sidewalk in mock escape. His burning hand looked glued to the door handle. Limp bodies encircled the flaming car like petals around the center of a flower. How can I tell you this? My son wanted a notebook. He wanted a notebook, and he was killed.