Глеб Бобров - The Torn Souls - An Anthology of Prose About the Soviet War in Afghanistan

And this miracle did happen.

One day, may be in the year of 1925, a some bai (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) from Kabul visited the city of Kandagar. It is happen, that the bai stayed at the place of the Latif’s master. One day a dispute arose between them on the question: is any sincere devotee left who could fulfil the most unfulfilling desire of his master. And again, it just happening that that young Latif was walking by during this hot dispute. Deciding to prove his point, his master summoned Latif and gave him the order: during the holy months of Ramadan, Latif should reach the city of Mecca by foot. If he did it, then the guest from Kabul — who was not believed in a devotion of servants — will added up a half of his neighbouring to the master’s land. If Latif will fail to reach Mecca than his master will gave up his land to the guest from Kabul. Nobody asked what Latif thinks regarding such dangerous trip.

Many years passed since that day, but Hadji Latif still remember his first hadzh in details. Later, he was travelling to Mecca and Medina many times on camels or by cars but these trips were different. Last visit to these sacred places, Latif conducted by “Boing” from the newly built airport in Kandagar “Ariana”…

Indeed, many things have happen for the last sixty years. During this years, Hadji Latif himself reached the wealth and became one of the richest land owner in the province. How he manages to do so — this is a different story, in which will be a place for everything: a love and hate, a friendship and betrayal. Usually, he was the one who was a victim of betrayal. And from whom? From the people of the Afshar tribe, whom he helped to establish themself, gave them chance to receive education. Shaitan (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) messed with the heads of these people by giving them all sort of indecent thoughts. Few years ago, one of them came to Loy-Karezak village, to the home of Lafar. This shaitan-driven man tried to take his land! Of course, Latif pointed out at the door for him and his helpers. But few days later the shaitan-peopled returned with the armed soldiers and the first blood was spelt. And them was a big invasion of shuravi (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) that brought to the land of Afghanistan a bid war that took the lives of his two wives and four children. Very recently, his third wife died not even conceived his son.

Before this bloody war, Latif knew on which side he will be holding the weapon. His people, whom he for many years gave his land for a rent, supported him. These people exchanged their agricultural tool to the weapon. The gazavat (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor) is begun.

His people were good soldiers too. Very soon everyone in their province knew about a vicious bravery of their attacks and his enemies from the military organisations, somewhere in Kandagar, usually turned pale when the name of Hadji Latif has been mentioned. However, the time arrived when the most warrior’s souls demand to have a peace and a little human happiness.

Something similar did happen to Latif. He was in his seventy five years old when he decided to have a rest from his military activities. By the way, he had the reason to do so.

His best friend — Haji Yusuf — lived in the neighbouring province of Pandzhvain. He was also a well recognised military commander as well as a wealthy man. He had a granddaughter, Guzel, who just turned fifteen years old. Her parents died during the first years of the war; and she was living in the house of her grandfather.

“Well, she cannot live all her life behind my back.” — Her grandfather decided one day, and the idea how to arrange the happy life for his granddaughter in such turbulent time, came to his mind. Learned about the death of the Latif’s third wife, the loving grandfather offered his granddaughter to be the next wife of Latif.

Muslims do not grieve for a long time due to their belief that the death is a beginning of eternity. So, Latif, after a month or two of his grieving, realized that in his house should be a woman who, with her gentle caresses and attention, could distract him from the hardships of the war. This is why he accepted Haji Yusuf’s proposal as a gift from Allah.

Matchmaking was conducted with a strict compliance to stern customs of Sharia (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor). For a kalym (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor), the old groom gave to Yusuf a brand-new car? — “Semurg”, a herd of fifty sheep, and a small land in the Daman county. The wedding was decided to be done without special festivities, just to avoid the trouble on their heads in a form of bombs or rockets from shuravi (see “Terminology and Glossary” — Editor).

It will be a modest wedding. Not attracting much attention, about a hundred bearded men will gather together for eating, smoking, and firing in the air from their automatic rifles, and later each of them will go to their own paths.

But on the day of the wedding, there was another event, which had the most direct influence on the wedding…

Approximately at 14.00 hours, an alarming message from the 70th Brigade, reached the Officer-on-duty at Administration of the Tsarandoi province, informing that the refilling car together with two Soviet soldiers and pressured gasoline complete disappeared. It was known that the car passed the block post near the fuel station, drove into the city and…gone without a trace.

The ginja (a criminal investigation department) staff immediately realized that the car could only be disappeared at the Sixth district, on the road between the “Black Square” and the technical college. In this particular place, some hungry-for-easy money shuravi, detouring from the prescribed main roads, stoped to do funny private business, by offering everything what they can steal from the army to the customers of the back streets. Fuel, spare wheels, empty canisters and even ammunition — everything possible and impossible could be finding here on sale.

These careless Soviet servicemen often were arrested by the gingja staff for unlawful activities, but they did not learn. They were also not afraid at all that at any moment they could become an easy prey for the enemies who wandered as well around the city in the crowds, searching for an adventure.

So, this is how it all happened.

As soon as so-called businessmen left the main road, they were immediately seized by people of the Haji Askar gang. In one hour the gingja department received the information about this seizure. A couple of hours later, a the missing car’s skeleton was discovered behind the tall clay fence of the courtyard of the ruined house. The car has no fuel, wheals, electric appliance, and other more or less valuable details. Anything that people of the Haji Askar gang could not take with them, were swiped by the local “locusts”. Now all these details can be seen in the local shops and garages, but to repossess these lost items was a dead business.

The driver and accompanying him ensign vanished in the thin air.

Next day about the accident not only Soviet side, but also the government of Afghanistan had a great concern because the Soviet General Varennikov shared his concerns with all appropriate military departments of the Government of Afghanistan and asked to establish, via theirs intelligence agents, the exact location of these two missing persons. What he was going to do next, the Soviet General Varennikov had not shared his plan and the Government of Afghanistan could only guessed.

In one week or so, one of the agents, imbedded into one of the rebellion gang, returned to the city the terrifying story of the last days of missing shuravies.

The wedding was full on, when the Toyota stopped next to a house with merry guests. In the back of this cat, there was a pair of shuravies with all signs of mercilessly tortures. Their faces were covered in blood and swollen to the stage that their eyes cannot been seen. Their lips were smash in blood. One of the captured man even did not has his lower lip because it was turned off and like a bloody sausage was hanging on his chin, widely opening his teeth less mouth.