Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“Did you sleep well?” Georgie asked, pushing a plate of bread and honey in my direction.

“Yes, thank you. Did you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I poured myself a cup of sweet tea.

“So, did you enjoy the wedding party?” Georgie asked.

“Yes, it was pretty good. What about you?”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it was pretty good.”

We then continued eating in silence until Massoud turned up to take Georgie to her office and I jumped on my bike to go to school. Although it was always nice to spend time with Georgie, neither of us was really a “morning person.”

As usual, I went to the shop after class to earn my money, such as it was, and to tease Jamilla before she went to school.

“I read yesterday that Shahrukh Khan got married to another man,” I told her.

“Where?” Jamilla asked. “In Fawad’s Special Newspaper of Lies?”

“No, in an Indian temple, of course.”

“Very funny,” she said, fixing her scarf before walking out the door.

“I thought so.” I laughed. “See you after school, Jamilla.”

“Whatever,” she replied, in English, making the sign that James had taught me and that I had taught her.

As she walked out the door, I suddenly noticed she was starting to get taller than me, which didn’t please me one bit. I’d scratched a mark on my bedroom door when I first moved into the foreigners’ house, and I didn’t seem to be getting any higher. It was starting to play on my mind, so much so that I’d recently got to wondering whether I’d end up like Haji Khan’s midget man. Even Jahid had commented on my height when I saw him at the wedding.

“Hey, runt,” he’d greeted me.

I ignored him, obviously, because in God’s great plan for us all he hadn’t come off too well either. But it was still annoying.

“How old are you now?” Pir Hederi asked when I mentioned it in the shop.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe ten, maybe eleven.”

“Oh, well then, boy, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Come back to me when you’re maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and you’re still no higher than an ailing calf.”

“I’m not likely to be here when I’m twenty-five or twenty-six, am I?”

“Where the hell else are you likely to be?”

“Well…” I stopped to think about it, and realized I had no idea. “Somewhere else,” I said eventually, now even more disturbed by the thought that I might end up as a man-midget working in Pir Hederi’s shop for the rest of my life.

“Look, if you’re seriously worried, my advice is to get your mother to boil up a chicken in hot water, throw in some chickpeas and a spoon of scorpion juice, and take a glass of the water every morning when you wake up.”

“We’re not allowed to eat even chicken these days because of the bird flu, never mind scorpions,” I told him.

“In that case, you’re screwed,” was all he said.

“You have absolutely nothing to worry about,” Georgie told me when I returned home later that afternoon to drink tea with her in the garden. “Girls mature faster than boys—that’s a fact. In a couple of years you’ll catch up with Jamilla, and then you’ll overtake her. And really, Fawad, you’re far too clever to end your days in Pir Hederi’s shop, so calm down.”

“Do you really think I’m clever?” I asked.

Georgie laughed. “Fawad, you’re the most intelligent boy I’ve ever met! You are… what is the phrase in Dari? I don’t know. In English we would say that you’re ‘bright as a button,’ meaning you’re amazingly clever and lively for your age. Honestly, I’ve met adults who haven’t got the sense you were born with. You are a very special little boy who will one day grow up to be a very special man. And you’re also very handsome.”

“Wow, I’m pretty good then, aren’t I?” I laughed.

“You sure are, Fawad.”

As I looked at Georgie, her lovely face sweating in the summer sun, I suddenly felt a cloud of sadness come over me. Things were changing so fast, and they would probably never be the same again: May was moving back to her country to have her French baby; I was moving to Kart-e Seh to begin my new life; James was worried about who was going to cook for him now my mother was gone, and why Rachel didn’t want to marry him; and Georgie—well, nobody knew what Georgie was up to.

“Are you going to leave Afghanistan?” I asked, watching her carefully.

“Who told you that?” she asked back, surprise making her voice grow high.

“Dr. Hugo told me before he got beaten up by Haji Khan.”

“He what? Khalid did what?”

My heart stopped. I’d gone and done it again.

“It was only because he loves you,” I added quickly. “And really it was all Dr. Hugo’s fault because he was trying to make him ‘back off,’ and Haji Khan said that you were in his teeth and he called Dr. Hugo a motherfucker and then he got really angry. But he didn’t kill Dr. Hugo or anything, even though he told his guards that he was going to rip his throat out.”

Georgie stared at me over her sunglasses.

“I’m in his teeth, am I?” she asked finally.

“Well, that’s what he said.”

“How romantic,” she replied, but she spoke the words in a flat way like it wasn’t romantic at all.

“So, are you leaving Afghanistan?”

Georgie shrugged. “Right now, I don’t know, and that’s the honest truth. Maybe it will become clearer on Friday when I go to Shinwar.”

“You’re going to see Haji Khan?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t, but I guessed she was about to give Haji Khan his answer.

“Can I come with you?” I asked.

“Well… I don’t know. I’ve got a few things to sort out.”

“Please, Georgie. What if you do leave? This might be the last chance I get to see Mulallah.”

“To be honest, Fawad, I’m not sure I’ll have time to visit Mulallah and her family.”

“Okay then, Haji Khan.”

My friend looked at me through her glasses.

“I don’t know…”

“Please, Georgie. I’ll be ever so good, and I won’t make any trouble, and I’ll play by myself when you need to speak to Haji Khan and—”

“Okay, okay, you can come!”

“Great!”

“But only if your mother agrees.”

Using Georgie’s phone, I immediately called my mother to ask if I could go to Shinwar for the Friday holiday. She agreed, as I knew she would, because when it came to a choice between Shinwar and leaving me in a house with James and a pregnant lesbian, Shinwar would win every time.

“Don’t forget your prayers, and be good!” she yelled in my ear.

“I won’t, and I will,” I promised, making a note in my head to show her how to speak properly into a phone when I next saw her. She was shouting so loud I could have heard her in Tajikistan.

As with our other journeys, it was Zalmai who arrived at the house to drive us to Shinwar, but this time Ismerai came with us and we were taken in a Toyota pickup with a guard in the front and two more outside in the back.

“Expecting trouble, are we?” Georgie asked when she saw our escort.

“No, not really,” Ismerai replied. “Haji just wants to take precautions with you both, seeing as you are such special guests.”

“Oh, come on.” Georgie laughed. “What’s happened?”

“Beyond the usual?”

Ismerai took off his pakol to scratch at the few bits of hair left on top of his head.

“Okay. Last week the governor escaped a roadside bomb and there have been a few other incidents, but nothing to get worked up about.”

“Because of the poppy ban?” Georgie asked.

“Poppies, power, the time of the year… who knows? This is Afghanistan. We don’t do peace that easily, as you well know.”