marching, of bridges over the river in London. There was one that she read to us, over and over again. I remember almost every word of it. Whenever she read it, it started an argument.
“One day,” Grandmother would read out, “you must all come to England. You can live in our house. Mina and I have plenty of room for everyone. There is no war here, no fighting. My taxi business is good now. I have money I could send. I could help you to come.”
And Mother would always argue. “I don’t care about Mir and his postcards. And anyway, haven’t I told you and told you? I’m not going anywhere without you. When your legs are better, God willing, then maybe.”
“If you wait for my legs to get better, you will never go,” Grandmother would argue back. “I am your mother. But your father would say the same if he was still with us. I am only asking you to do what I say, because it is what he would say. I am old. I have had my time. I know this. I feel it inside me. These legs will never walk again like they did. You and Aman must go. There is nothing for you in the place except hunger and cold and danger. You know what will happen if you stay. You know the police will come again. Go to England, to Mir. You will be safe there. He will look after you. There you will be far from danger, far from the police. Listen to what Mir is telling us. There, the police will not put you in prison and beat you. There, you will not have to live in a cave like an animal.”
Mother often tried to interrupt her, and Grandmother hated that. One day, I remember, she became really angry, as angry as I had ever seen her.
“You should have some respect for your old mother,” she cried. “You expect Aman to do as you say, don’t you? Don’t you? Well, now you must do as I say. I tell you, I will be in God’s hands soon enough. I do not need you to stay. God will look after me, as he will look after you on your journey to England.”
She reached in under her dress, and brought out an envelope, which she emptied out on to the blanket beside her. I had never seen so much money in all my life. “Last week, Mir’s friend came again with another card, and this time with some money too, enough, he says, to get you out of Afghanistan, through Iran, and Turkey, and all the way to England. And on the outside of the envelope here, he has written the phone numbers of people he says you must contact, in Kabul, in Teheran, in Istanbul. They will help you. And you must take these too.”
She was taking off her necklace, pulling the rings from her fingers. “Take these, and I shall give you also all the jewels I have been keeping for you all this time. Sell them well in Kabul, and they will help to buy you your freedom. They will take you away from all this fear and ignorance. It is fear and ignorance that kills people in their hearts, that makes them cruel. Take Father’s donkey too. It’s what he would have wanted. You can sell him when you do not need him any more. Do not argue with me. Take them, take the envelope and the money, take the jewels, take my beloved grandson, and just go. And God willing, you will get to England safely.”
In the end, Grandmother managed to persuade Mother that we should at least speak to Uncle Mir on the phone. So the next time we went into town, to the market, we phoned him from the public phone. Mother let me talk to him when she had finished. In my ear, Uncle Mir sounded very close by, I remember that. He talked to me in a very friendly way, as if he had known me all my life. Best of all, he told me he supported Manchester United, and that was my team. And he had even seen Ryan Giggs, and my best hero too, David Beckham! He said he’d take me to a match, and that he’d let us stay with him and Mina as long as we needed to, until we could find a place of our own. After I talked to him, I was so excited. All I wanted to do was to go to England, go right away.
After the phone call Mother stopped to buy some flour in the market, and I walked on. When I turned round after a while, to see if she was coming, I saw one of the stallholders was shouting at her, waving his hands angrily. I thought it was an argument about money, that maybe she’d been short-changed. They were always doing that in the market.
But it wasn’t that.
She caught me up and hurried me away. I could see the fear in her eyes. “Don’t look round, Aman,” she said. “I know this man. He is Taliban. He is very dangerous.”
“Taliban?” I said. “Are they still here?” I thought the Taliban had been defeated long ago by the Americans, and driven into the mountains. I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“The Taliban, they are still here, Aman,” she said, and she could not stop herself from crying now. “They are everywhere, in the police, in the army, like wolves in sheep’s clothing. Everyone knows who they are, and everyone is too frightened to speak. That man in the market, he was one of those who came to the cave and took your father away, and killed him.”
I turned around to look. I wanted to run back and tell him face to face he was a killer. I wanted to look him in the eye and accuse him. I wanted to show him I was not afraid. “Don’t look,” Mother said, dragging me on. “Don’t do anything, Aman, please. You’ll only make it worse.”
She waited till we were safely out of town before telling me more. “He was cheating me in the market,” she said, “and when I argued, he told me that if I do not leave the valley, he will tell his brother, and he will have me taken to prison again. And I know his brother only too well. He was the policeman who put me in prison before. He was the one who beat me, and tortured me. It wasn’t because of the apple you stole, Aman. It was so that I would not tell anyone about what his brother had done to your father, so that I would not say he was Taliban. What can I do? I cannot leave Grandmother. She cannot look after herself. What can I do?” I held her hand to try to comfort her, but she cried all the way home. I kept telling her it would be all right, that I would look after her.
That night I heard Mother and Grandmother whispering to each other in the cave, and crying together too. When they finally went to sleep, the dog crept into the cave and lay down beside me. I buried my face in her fur and held her tight. “It will be all right, won’t it?” I said to her.
But I knew it wasn’t going to be. I knew something terrible was going to happen. I could feel it.
“Walk Tall, Aman.”
Aman
Early the next day the police came to the cave. Mother had gone down to the stream for water, so I was there alone with Grandmother when they came, three of them. The stallholder from the market was with them. They said they had come to search the place.
When Grandmother struggled to her feet and tried to stop them, they pushed her to the ground. Then they turned on me and started to beat me and kick me. That was when I saw the dog come bounding into the cave. She didn’t hesitate. She leaped up at them, barking and snarling. But they lashed out at her with their feet and their sticks and drove her out.
After that they seemed to forget about me, and just broke everything they could in the cave, kicked our things all over the place, stamped on our cooking pot, and one of them peed on the mattress before they left.
I didn’t realise at first how badly Grandmother had been hurt, not till I rolled her over on to her back. Her eyes were closed. She was unconscious. She must have hit her head when she fell. There was a great cut across her forehead. I tried to wash the blood away, kept trying to wake her. But the blood kept coming, and she wouldn’t open her eyes.
When Mother came back some time later, she did all she could to revive her, but it was no good. Grandmother died that evening. Sometimes I think she died because she just didn’t want to wake up, because she knew it was the only way to make Mother and me leave, the
