After that there were just the three of us left in the cave, Mother, Grandmother, and me. For months after Father was taken away, Grandmother would spend her days lying on the mattress in the corner, and Mother would sit there beside her, gazing at nothing, hardly speaking. It was up to me now to find enough rice or bread to live on. I begged for it. I stole it. I had to. I fetched the water from the stream, a long walk down the hill and a long walk up, and I tried to bring in enough sticks to keep the fire going.
Somehow we managed to get through the winters without starving or freezing to death. But Grandmother’s legs were getting worse all the time. She could hardly get up at all now, unless one of us helped her.
What happened to Mother was my fault. I was with her at the market in town when I stole the apple, just one apple, nothing much – we had none left of our own by now. I was good at pinching things. I had never been spotted before. But this time I got careless. This time I got caught.
“Dirty Dog! Dirty Foreign Dog!”
Aman
I remember there was lots of shouting. “Filthy thief! Lousy beggar! Stop him! Stop him!” I tried to run away. But before I could escape, someone grabbed me. He kept hitting me, and would not let go of me.
Mother came to my rescue, to protect me, but a crowd gathered and then suddenly the police were there. Mother told them it was her who stole the apple, not me. So they arrested Mother, instead of me, and took her off to prison. They beat her there. She still has the marks on her back. She was gone for nearly a week.
They tortured her.
When she came back she just lay on the mattress beside Grandmother, and they cried together for days. She turned her face away from me, and would not speak to me. I wondered if she would ever speak to me again.
It wasn’t long after this that the dog first came to our cave – a dog just like your dog in that photo you showed me.
But when I saw her that first evening, she was thin and dirty and covered in sores. I was just crouching over the fire warming myself, when I looked up and saw her sitting there, staring at me. She wasn’t like any dog I had seen before – small, with short legs and long ears, and nut-brown eyes.
I shouted at her to go away – you understand, we do not have dogs inside our homes in Afghanistan. Dogs have to live outside with the other animals. Of course, I have lived here a long time now, and I know that in England it is different. Some people here like dogs better than they like children. Actually, I think if I was a dog, they would not shut me up in here like this.
So anyway, I threw a stone at this dog to shoo her away. But she stayed right where she was, and would not move. She just sat there.
I saw then that she was shivering. You could see her hipbones sticking out – she was that thin. She had sores all over her, and you could tell she was starving. So instead of throwing another stone at her, I threw her a piece of stale bread. She snapped it up at once, chewed on it, swallowed it, and then licked her lips, waiting for more.
I chucked her another piece. Then, before I knew it, she had come right into the cave, and was lying down there beside me, close to the fire, making herself at home, as if she belonged there. I noticed then that there was a wound on her leg, like she’d been in a dog-fight or something. She kept worrying at it, and licking it.
Mother and Grandmother were both fast asleep. I knew they’d chase the dog out as soon as they saw her there. But I liked her with me. I wanted her to stay. She had kind eyes, friendly eyes. I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. So I lay down and slept beside her.
Early the next morning, she followed me down to the stream when I went to fetch the water. She was limping badly all the way. She let me bathe her leg and clean her wound. Then I told her she had to go, and clapped my hands at her to try to drive her away. I knew that anyone seeing her might well throw stones at her – like I had after all – and I didn’t want that. But all the way back up the hill, she would not leave my side. Sure enough, as soon as we were spotted, a whole bunch of kids came running down the track and chased her off. They threw stones at her, and shouted at her, “Dirty dog, dirty foreign dog!”
I tried all I could to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. I don’t blame them now. After all, she did look different, not like the kind of dog any of us might have seen before. She scampered off and disappeared. I thought that was the last I’d ever see of her.
But that evening she turned up again at the mouth of the cave. I discovered then that she liked tripe, however rotten it was. You know tripe? It’s a sort of meat, from the stomach lining of a cow – it was the only meat we could ever afford in Bamiyan. Anyway, there were a few rotten bits still left, so I threw her those.
But then later on, when the dog crept in to be by the fire again, Mother and Grandmother woke up and saw what was going on. They became very angry with me, saying all dogs were unclean, and that she shouldn’t be allowed in. So I picked her up and put her down just outside the cave, where she sat and watched us, until Mother and Grandmother had gone to bed. She seemed to know it was safe to come in then, because when I lay down, she was right there beside me again.
“You Must Come to England.”
Aman
For weeks and weeks that’s how it went on.
Somehow the dog just seemed to know that when I was alone, or when they were fast asleep, it was all right for her to come inside the cave. And she knew when to keep her distance too. She’d be sitting there in the mouth of the cave when I woke every morning, and she’d come with me down to the stream. She’d have a good long drink, and wait for me to bathe the wound in her leg. Then, so long as there was no one else about, she would come with me when I went off with the donkey to gather sticks for the fire.
But there were some days, particularly when my friends were around a lot, that I’d hardly see her at all, just an occasional glimpse of her in the distance, watching me. I’d miss her then, but it was good to know she was still around. And sooner or later every evening she’d be there again at the mouth of the cave, waiting for her food, waiting for Mother and Grandmother to fall asleep. Then in she’d come, and she’d lie down beside me, her face so close to the fire that I thought she’d burn her whiskers.
One morning, I woke up early and found the dog was not there. And then I saw why. Grandmother was already awake. She was sitting up on the mattress, with Mother still lying down beside her, and I could see Mother was upset, almost in tears. I thought they’d had another quarrel maybe, or that Mother’s back was hurting her again.
But I soon learned what this was all about. They had talked about it often enough before, about the idea of Mother and me leaving Bamiyan, and going to England on our own, without Grandmother. She was far too old to come with us, she said. Grandmother would sometimes read out Uncle Mir’s postcards from England. I had never even met Uncle Mir – he is Mother’s older brother – but I felt as if I had. I knew his story. He had left Bamiyan long before I was born.
Everyone in the caves knew about Uncle Mir, how he had gone off as a young man to find a job in Kabul, that he had met and married an English nurse, a girl called Mina, and then gone off with her to live in England. He had never come back, but he wrote often to Grandmother. Uncle Mir was her only son, so all his letters and postcards were very precious to her.
She was always taking them out and looking at them. They had been brought over to her from time to time by Uncle Mir’s friends when they were visiting from England, and she’d kept
