Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“Well, as you can imagine, after they were killed, Khalid went wild with rage, and he sneaked back into Afghanistan on a regular basis to fight to the death if need be. When the Taliban finally fled and ran into the mountains of Tora Bora, he even followed them there. By then the war was all but over, and when the trail of the Taliban and al-Qaeda grew cold he returned home to the land he loved, satisfied that he had honored the memory of his wife and his daughter.

“As he spoke, Fawad, I was spellbound. Khalid had done so much in his life compared to me; he had seen so many things that usually come only from the pages of storybooks in my country. I thought he was incredibly brave and honorable, and as this man opened up before my eyes, laying his history in my lap for me to wonder at, he suddenly, out of nowhere, told me he loved me.

“I laughed in his face at first, which wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, and I told him that it was impossible; that we had only known each other for five minutes and that was far too quick for anyone to sensibly fall in love. But he answered me by saying, ‘I’m not joking, Georgie. I know my heart, and my heart is telling me I love you.’ And that’s when I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man.

“After that conversation it became almost unbearable to be in his company with so many people watching us, to be unable to do anything but touch with our eyes. But as the weeks went on everyone seemed to notice, and we were given space to spend more and more time alone, until I was certain that his words weren’t just words and that they came from his heart.

“It was a magical time, full of late nights talking amid the buzz of the gaslight or sitting under the stars on the flat of his roof. Everything was so beautiful: the brilliance of the stars; the giant moon that hung in the sky; and, of course, Khalid. ‘You see how close the star comes to the moon?’ he asked me one night. ‘Well, you are like that star and I am like that moon, but soon that star will begin to fall away from the moon and slowly that star will disappear into the darkness and become lost to the moon.’

“We both sat silently on the carpet that had been laid out on the rooftop for us, and he gently reached for my hand—brave now because only the tea boy remained with us, to fill our cups when needed, and the boy needed the money too much to tell anyone.

“It was a very sweet moment, but it was also a very sad one because we both knew the story of the star and the moon was true. I did have to leave soon because my job was coming to an end. And even though we tried to treasure every moment we had left together, we felt the days slipping away from us like sand through our fingers.

“Eventually, and because the world does keep on turning and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, the day came when I had to return to Kabul, and then to London. Khalid traveled with us, and we were able to steal a few more days together in the capital before I left. We even went to your district one night.

“As soon as I saw Paghman, driving past the old golf course and over the bridge, I was amazed by how pretty it was. It felt like I could have been visiting somewhere in the Mediterranean, which is a warm place where people from my country go on their holidays. And it was in Paghman, as we sat on a stone wall in front of the lake, that Khalid looked at me and whispered that he loved me with all his heart. For the first time I told him that I loved him too, but then his eyes turned sad and, staring hard at me, he said, ‘Thank you for that, but I know I love you more. You are my world, Georgie.’ It was a beautiful thing to say, because I suppose that’s all anybody ever wants in life—to find someone who thinks the world of them.

“Then, as we carried on talking, he said there may be times in the future when I wouldn’t hear from him and that I shouldn’t become ‘hungry for other men’ when that happened. I laughed at that because I thought he’d said ‘angry for other men,’ but as I did he looked at me and said, ‘I’m serious, Georgie. You are my woman now. If you leave me, I will kill you.’ And of course I laughed again, but although he smiled I couldn’t be sure that his eyes were doing the same. In fact I still can’t be sure that he was joking, even today.

“Anyway, after I returned to London my life felt pretty empty. No one talks about the moon and stars in my country, and everything seemed so dull and ordinary compared to Afghanistan. I think I became a little obsessed, and I began to fill my time with everything Afghan: watching every documentary about your country, reading every book, helping out at a local community center for asylum seekers, even learning Dari. I chose Dari because it was a lot easier than Pashto, and besides, Pashtuns are so clever they know both languages. But I was waiting, you see, waiting and killing time until I found another job to take me back to Khalid and this country I had so quickly fallen in love with.

“Although it was almost like torture in those first months away, Khalid would call me maybe twice a week, staying on the phone for hours at a time, and we would playfully discuss the future and how he wanted to have at least five children with me and how we would spend our days drinking pomegranate juice in the Shinwar sun.

“Needless to say, within six months I couldn’t stand the separation any longer, and I returned to Afghanistan just for a holiday. For two weeks I stayed at Khalid’s home in Shinwar and his new house in Jalalabad. We spent the days traveling around, visiting old friends and making new ones. I came to know his family, and he showed me all the projects he was working on. We walked through giant fields filled with tiny ankle-tall saplings that would one day become fruit trees, olive trees, and perfume bushes. Everything was just as I had left it, and more, and I felt the pull even more strongly to return to him once and for all.

“When I flew back home again I applied for every job going, and in the meantime Khalid kept up his calls, whispering his love over satellite phone lines. But then, as the months dragged on, Khalid’s calls began to fade, first to once a week, then to once a month, until, by the time a job offer did eventually arrive and I’d packed my bags for Afghanistan, I hadn’t spoken to him for three months. I was livid with him, but I couldn’t allow myself to believe that everything he had told me was lies, so I carried on with my plan and returned to the country, without even telling him.

“For that first month, I lived in Kabul under a cloud and cried tears like you wouldn’t believe, wondering what I’d done and thinking it was all one big giant mistake. Then one day the doorbell rang at the house I was staying at, and it was Ismerai. I’d first met him in Shinwar and had seen him again during my holiday. Even so, I was pretty shocked, although overjoyed, to see him. He told me that Khalid had sent him to track me down after one of their friends had spotted me on the street one day waiting for my car. ‘Kabul is a big city,’ Ismerai told me, ‘but if we want to find you we can.’

“However, even though Ismerai had dutifully found me, Khalid still didn’t call. It was two weeks later that I was summoned to Jalalabad and brought to his house like a naughty schoolgirl.

“When I arrived, Khalid’s hall was full of guests so our talk was careful and polite, but when the men finally grew tired of their curiosity and left for their own homes, Khalid turned to look at me as the doors banged shut and his eyes burned bright with fury. ‘You come into my country, and you don’t even tell me?’ he shouted. ‘I know you are angry because I didn’t call you, and I know what I did was unacceptable, but what you have done is even more unacceptable to me! If I came to your country, the first thing I would do is come to your door.’