Delusions of Paradise E-Book

Maiwand Banayee

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 475

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When Maiwand Banayee was 16, he wanted to become a suicide bomber for the Taliban. In this inspiring tale of survival and self-discovery, the reader will follow Maiwand's journey down a dark path and his ultimate redemption. Growing up in Kabul amid the Afghan wars, he witnessed atrocities that no child should ever see - rotting corpses, starving families, a neighbourhood torn apart. He escaped to a refugee camp in Pakistan, where religious militants began the gradual grooming of Maiwand and other Afghan boys. These confused and traumatised children were indoctrinated, radicalised and prepared to die in the name of a religious war. But Maiwand escaped this life. Fleeing Afghanistan, he had a life-altering crisis of faith, confidence and meaning, finding new purpose and rebuilding himself. Maiwand taught himself how to read and write in English, and here tells his astonishing story in crystalline prose. Delusions of Paradise offers a powerful warning about the dangers of radical religion, and is a stunning celebration of self-determination and redemption from an important new voice.

Leseprobe

 

 

Published in 2025 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.com

ISBN: 9781837731909

eBOOK: 9781837731923

Text copyright © 2025 Maiwand Banayee

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typesetting by SJmagic DESIGN SERVICES, India

Printed and bound in the UK

This book is dedicated to the people of Afghanistan who have endured four decades of war, with a particular focus on the women who have been denied access to education now. Your suffering is woven into every word on these pages.

‘Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.’

—Albert Einstein

CONTENTS

Chapter 1The Call to Paradise: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1996

Chapter 2A Heavy Burden

Chapter 3Dogs Fight over Ancestral Pride

Chapter 4Behind the Iron Curtain, Kabul, 1991

Chapter 5Mujahideen Takeover, Kabul, 1992–94

Chapter 6Toy Bombs and Martyrs

Chapter 7Stranded by War

Chapter 8Rise of the Taliban, 1994

Chapter 9From Refugee to Talib, 1994–2001

Chapter 10Myths of the Afterlife

Chapter 11Kabul Is Burning

Chapter 12The Taliban Takes Control, Afghanistan, 1996

Chapter 13Crisis of Faith, Pakistan, 1997

Chapter 14Losing My Religion

Chapter 15Torn Between Two Worlds

Chapter 16September 11

Chapter 17Cardiff, Wales, 2002

Chapter 18Homeless and Alone

Chapter 19Lost in Dublin, 2004

Chapter 20Another Life: Carlow, 2006

Chapter 21Spine Expert

Chapter 22The Past Is Not a Distant Place, 2019

Chapter 23Redemption Blues

Acknowledgements

This book is a work of non-fiction. It contains only factual stories. There is no exaggeration added for impact, but I have changed the names and identity of some characters to safeguard their privacy. The dialogues are not a word-for-word transcript but they capture the essence of the actual discussions.

Chapter 1

THE CALL TO PARADISE: PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 1996

When I was sixteen, I wanted to become a suicide bomber for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Fortunately, I didn’t stick with it. Now, when I look back on that young man and the ignorance, delusion and false narratives he took as truth, I feel empathy for the boy that I was. And I shudder with fear for today’s generation of young men and women, who are once again living under the Taliban’s harsh rules and are being brainwashed into destructive ideologies.

I was born in Kabul in 1980, the year Soviet troops invaded my country and bombed rural Afghanistan to ashes, killing men, women, children and animals. Then the American-backed mujahedeen took over in 1992, and the bombs and bloodshed continued in a neverending civil war that reduced Kabul to rubble. Growing up amid the Afghan wars, I’ve seen what no child should ever see. To tell you the truth, I’ve never known the free and peaceful Afghanistan of my parents’ generation and those before them. The golden age of the 1960s and 70s – when Kabul, ‘the Paris of Central Asia’, was a cosmopolitan city flush with European and American tourists. Young people shopped in record shops, mingled at cinemas and co-ed college campuses, and women wore miniskirts and makeup, had jobs and weren’t imprisoned in their homes. Surrounded by majestic mountains, Kabul was once full of beautiful old buildings, palaces and gardens, and was famous for its roses and grapevines. By the time I reached my teenage years, Kabul was a ghost of a city, a war-torn place of ruins, where so many lives were lost, broken, marginalised.

I will begin my story when I was sixteen and studied at a madrassa (Islamic seminary) in the Shamshatoo refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan. A cluster of mud houses dotting the sweeping arid landscape of stones and rocks, Shamshatoo was one of 150 such camps that had been built for 3 million Afghan refugees fleeing the anti-Soviet war. It was a hotbed of radical Islam where Osama bin Laden found recruits. I’d fled wars in Kabul two year ago in 1994 and settled there with my family.

For those of us living life in these refugee camps, the madrassas were an important part of our day. One morning, just like any other, I painted my eyes with kohl, put on my white turban, and headed down the mud street toward the madrassa on the outskirts of the refugee camp. I removed my sandals and entered a bamboo-roofed mud hut, murmuring, ‘Assalamu alaikum.’

Mullah Asad, the bony-faced tafsir (exegesis of Quran) teacher sat at the head of the class behind a low Quran table, his bushy beard nearly reaching up to his eyes. He took off his white silk turban and ruffled his long black hair. ‘Waalaikumsalam,’ he said to me. ‘You’re late again this morning.’

‘Forgive me, saheb, I couldn’t sleep last night.’ Like the rest of the Taliban (students), I sat cross-legged on the threadbare carpet, leaning against the mud wall. After I opened my Quran, a talib (student)on my left, dressed in tatters, showed me the day’s lesson: The Chapter of Time.

Mullah Asad read, ‘By the passage of time, indeed, man is in loss …’ (Quran 103:1).He looked up from the large ornate copy of the Quran spread on the table in front of him. ‘Subhan Allah! Allah says we are losers.Young boys, this world is nothing but a mirage. A home that perishes is not a real home. A life that falls to death is not a real life …’

I was green, scared, broken and hungry most days. Mullah Asad’s words sent a pleasant hum through my blood, and with it I saw my existence as a waste of time on this earth. For much of my life, people had treated me badly, and I had witnessed so many horrible things that now I blindly embraced any opinion my madrassa teachers put forth. Anything seemed better than my painful, pitiful life.

Mullah drew a long breath. ‘The life of this world is like a shadow. The more you chase it, the more it runs away from you.’ He raised his voice. ‘Allah says in the holy Quran: Wherever you are, death will find you, even if you are in lofty towers …’ (Quran 4:78).

He paused to adjust his turban. ‘Talibano, if you want a real life, follow Allah and his prophet’s commands. And surely Allah will reward you in the hereafter with everything you have longed for in this life. Subhan Allah!’He raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘Once you enter Jannah [paradise], Allah will greet you at its doors, saying, “My pious worshipers, congratulations on immortal life.” In Jannah there will be no illness, old age, hunger, hurt, shame or guilt.’

The words ‘no more guilt’ rang in my ears. I had been feeling guilty, it seemed, for my entire life: guilty for being a coward, for not standing up to bullies, for not defending my name; guilty for disappointing my father. Mullah looked down at me and asked, ‘Are you afraid of death?’

‘No,’ I lied. I constantly lived in fear. Despite finding solace in Islam, the sounds of artillery still echoed in my ears and tormented my thoughts. Some nights I woke from terrible nightmares.

‘Congratulations on your eternal youth!’ He addressed us as if we were already inside paradise. ‘Jannah will be guarded by angels. There will be beautiful palaces made of gold, silver and precious stones. There will be dazzling white horse and camels. There will be delicious foods, rivers of milk, wine and honey …’

Breakfast that morning was stale bread and green tea, without sugar. My stomach growled, and I imagined myself sitting on a riverbank in this gold-lit paradise,eating honey with milk, warm bread, fresh apricots, dates and cherries.

Mullah nodded, smiling and enjoying his own fantasy. ‘In Jannah, there will be beautiful virgin houris with big chests, white skins and appetising lips. You can have sex with them all day long. The houris in Jannah are a million times more beautiful than the girls of this earth. Their beauty grows every time you look at them and have sex with them ...’

As Mullah grew more and more enamoured with the houris, I got an unwanted erection. With the Quran on my lap, it had to be a sin. I lifted the Quran from my lap, bent forward, and placed it on the floor in front of me.

‘But remember, young boys,’ Mullah said, ‘your deeds in this world will count toward your place in Jannah. The greatest level of Jannah, Jannat-ul-Firdaus, is close to the throne of Allah. Only chosen individuals will be permitted entry there, where they will rejoice in Allah’s company.’

‘Who are these chosen people?’ I asked, curious.

‘They are mainly martyred and very pious people.’

‘Will there be houris in Jannat-ul-Firdaus?’ asked another big-nosed Talib wearing an oversized turban.

‘That is crazy. Houris are always available, but the vision of Allah is the greatest of all rewards.’

‘Does a martyr meet houris the moment he dies, or will he meet them after resurrection?’ I said.

Mullah quoted a Hadith this time. ‘Once a companion of the Prophet Mohammad attained martyrdom in the battlefield. The Prophet sat by his head and smiled. The rest of his companions asked, “Oh Prophet of Allah, why did you smile?” The Prophet said, “I saw houris beside this Shaheed.” Based on this hadith, it is more than likely that a Shaheed will receive houris the moment he dies.’

‘I’m sixteen now. If I embrace martyrdom, will I enter Jannah at the same age?’ I said.

‘No, everyone will be 33 years old.’ Mullah reflected for a moment. ‘Talibano, don’t think about how old you will be in Jannah, but rather about how to achieve it.’

I couldn’t help but wonder if a six-month-old baby died, how would he know himself as a 33-year-old man inside this heaven? But I immediately read my prayer and begged Allah to drive away my doubtful thoughts. Then I was like a blind sheep that anyone could lead to slaughter.

Later that day, the rest of classes were cancelled because we had to attend a jalassa (conference) protesting the CIA’s ban on Dawat University, which stood near Sayyaf’s, a mujahideen leader’s refugee camp in Pebbi, another mud-brick Afghan refugee camp from the anti-Soviet war era, ten kilometres from our camp. That university had been established in 1980 through Western aid for Afghan refugees of the anti-Soviet war, but in 1995 it had become linked to international terrorism because of the assassination of two CIA officials and the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

The jalassa was near our madrassa, so we arrived early. A large crowd of camp residents, mostly bearded men in rags and shalwar kameezes, squatted on a barren, dusty ground before a podium draped in green cloth with Quranic inscriptions. The posters on the wall behind the podium showed demolished mosques in Lebanon, Palestine and Bosnia, mutilated children’s bodies, and copies of the Quran strewn amid rubble. One poster showed Israeli soldiers kicking old men off their prayer mats, and another showed veiled women crying over coffins.

Those posters just reinforced my contempt for America and Israel. During the past two years of education, we had been taught that the entire West was evil and responsible for everything bad that happened in the Muslim world.

To start the jalassa, a slim, long-haired boy with a red bandana wrapped around his head recited the Quran. His beautiful voice reduced me to tears. After a few speakers, Nasir, a veteran of anti-Soviet jihad and a household name among Afghan refugees, spoke. He was a sturdy man in his fifties, with a salt-and-pepper beard nearly reaching his navel. During the anti-Soviet jihad from 1980 to 1991, Nasir used to hobnob with the likes of Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden and other high-profile Arab figures. The Russian-backed Afghan government had incarcerated him for a time.

I felt honoured to have the opportunity to hear him, and I wasn’t the only one. Before Nasir took the microphone, a classmate shouted, ‘No East, no West … but Islamic government.’

The entire crowd screamed, ‘Islam, Islam, Islam.’

Nasir began his talk with a long Arabic prayer, repeating several Quranic verses, and then shifted to Pashto, my native language. ‘Brothers, the closure of Dawat University is a sad day for the entire Muslim ummah. The alliance of Jews, Christians and their puppets want to destroy Islam. The West had no issue with this university during the anti-Soviet jihad, but now they link it to terrorism! Do you know why?’ I wanted to say because America was determined to weaken Islam, but I kept quiet.

‘Brothers, wake up! Dawat University was Islam’s bastion. They closed it because the West fears Islam. We crushed communism, and their materialistic, sex, drugs, alcohol and pleasure-obsessed democracy cannot offer any solution to the needs of humanity.’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘This democratic game is nothing more than a flimsy shadow, an endless cycle that leads mankind to nowhere.’

I joined the crowd roaring, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ a common Islamic phrase meaning ‘God is the greatest’.

Nasir nodded and lowered his voice. ‘Brothers, using the lure of freedom and democracy, the Western world has become demoralised. Men marry men. Bodies are sold and bought openly. Illegitimate children are born to unmarried parents. Respect for the elderly is lost, parents are abandoned in their old age. Wives don’t look after their husbands. The rich don’t look after the poor. The young don’t look after the old. Their youth commit suicide while their elders die of loneliness in nursing homes. Brothers, infidels are nothing more than slaves of their pleasures. Their godless lives have no other purpose beyond eating, sleeping and fornicating ...’

He placed both hands on the podium to build a moment of silence. I could hardly breathe. The repulsiveness of the West, the uselessness of their lives. I felt lucky to have been raised Muslim.

‘The West fears Islam because Islam and Sharia [the rule of Allah] come from God with a solution for every human problem.’ He struck the podium with his fist. ‘Brothers, Sharia does not recognise borders, creeds, race or colour, because everyone is equal in God’s view. Once Allah’s rules are established on this earth, the blessings and abundance of God will fall on all of humanity.’

Having witnessed more than two years of ethnic violence between the Hazara and Pashtun in Kabul between 1992 and 1994, just a few years earlier, the idea of ‘no race’ struck me hard. I stood up and screamed, ‘We want Sharia!’ Everyone followed my words.

Nasir gave a big sigh. ‘Today, the Americans padlocked Dawat University. Next, they will lock our madrassas and our mosques. They look upon us Muslims as sheep, killing us in Bosnia, in Kashmir, in Palestine. This all happens because today’s Muslims have neglected jihad and Quran’s orders which say, (O ye who believe!) in Muhammad and the Quran takes not the Jews and Christians for friends …’

He paused, pushing his turban up higher on his forehead. ‘No! Today’s Muslims adopt a Western lifestyle, and Muslim leaders have become subservient to Jews and Christians, exchanging their pride and independence for Western comforts.’ His voice rose again. ‘Theinfidels shut our religious institutions using the excuse of terrorism only to replace them with secular institutions that corrupt our youth. Have you seen the British Council library in the university town, Peshawar? What is the purpose of the British Council?’

Peshawar was about twenty kilometres away from Shamshatoo refugee camp, where I lived with my family. I had never met an infidel and often wondered what they looked like.

‘Brothers, wake up!’ Nasir roared. ‘The British Council Library has been built for the propagation of British culture and the annihilation of Islamic values. It is built to promote vice over virtue and to destroy Islam. The British ruled the entire world, but our ancestors smashed their skulls to the ground in the Battle of Maiwand. So they are not here to help, but to take revenge.’

I cringed as I heard my name and remembered my father’s words: ‘You don’t deserve this name.’

Nasir sighed deeply. ‘Allah orders women in the holy Quran, And stay in your homes and do not deck yourselves with brazenness, the way you would do in earlier times of ignorance … (Quran 33:33). Can you ignore Allah’s order and still claim to be a Muslim?’

The crowd shouted, ‘NO!’

He shook his head. ‘Brothers, go outside this camp and see the filth going on around us. Women have discarded the hijab. They wear Western clothes and go shopping without a male guardian. Today’s Muslim men have lost control of their women. They accommodate television, the eyes of Satan, in their houses.’ He waved his fist in the air. ‘Men who keep televisions are nothing more than pimps, because every time their mother and sisters watch those clean-shaven, handsome boys on television, they imagine having sex with those boys.’

With these words about television, I felt unmoored. Last week, Tariq, my older brother by some twenty years, had bought a black-and-white television in Peshawar. I swore that I would smash it when I went home.

Nasir’s face contorted. ‘Brothers, today’s Muslims are so absorbed in worldly pleasure that they have forgotten about jihad and Islam.This life is temporary. We’re soon heading to the Akhera, our eternal life, and Allah will hold us accountable for our cowardice.’

The memory of all the times I had fled from the bullies in Kabul flashed before my eyes. I felt like a coward.

Nasir’s voice became thick. ‘Death is better than this subjugation. A Muslim dying in jihad loses nothing. Allah says in his glorious Quran: Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties in exchange for paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed …’

A young lad stood up and shook his fist in the air. ‘Inshaallah, soon we will liberate Jerusalem and fly the green flag of Islam over the Kremlin and the White House.’

Roars of ‘Allahu Akbar’ rose again. I burst into tears, but they were honest tears. After years of fear, humiliation and rejection, I’d finally found something to live for. My only desire in life was to achieve the highest honour in Islam: martyrdom.

After the jalassa, my thoughts were like a collision of galaxies, and I arrived home enraged. ‘I don’t want the television in this house anymore.’

Father was reclining on an Afghan rope bed near the chicken coop. He did the worst thing he could: he ignored me. I strode into the room. My sisters were watching a Pakistani drama on our new black-and-white television.

I turned it off angrily. ‘You aren’t allowed to watch this.’

My older sister Husay tried to turn it back on, but I grabbed her wrist and slapped her on the shoulder. She screamed, ‘Dad!’

Dad rushed over. ‘What’s the matter now?’

‘Television is against Islam,’ I said. ‘The men they watch on television are not Moharram.’

‘Go fuck yourself. It’s not against Islam.’

Dad’s swearing shocked me. He hadn’t spoken like that since we lived in Kabul.

I recovered quickly. ‘You know nothing about Islam.’

‘I know more than you.’

‘Then why were you ridiculing Granddad’s Quranic stories in Kabul?’ I persisted.

‘What stories?’

‘The stories about King Solomon talking to ants, Noah’s flood and the story of the seven sleepers in the cave.’

‘God is too big for such fairy tales.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. You mock the stories, but you can’t even read Arabic.’

‘Whatever.’ Dad dismissed me with a flick of the hand and turned the television back on. ‘Those stories have nothing to do with television.’

I began to pace around the room and fought an urge to shout. How could I make him understand? ‘Brother Nasir said that Jews and Christians have subjugated us and taken control of Jerusalem because Muslims lack knowledge of the Quran.’

My father laughed. ‘Oh, great. A Pashtun man who can’t even feed his kids is talking about liberating Jerusalem. It has nothing to do with you.’

But it did. This was what I was part of now. ‘This is your problem. We Muslim ummah are an entire community—’

‘Oh, get out of here with your ummah. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, that’s all. When Arabs had power, they drove away Jews and Christians from their homelands. Now Jews and Christians have power, so they drive away Muslims.’

I could no longer hold myself back. ‘You’re a madman! You almost got us killed in Kabul with your stubbornness, and now you support infidels.’ I swung a fist at the television, but all I did was hurt my knuckles.

‘Don’t touch the television, you son of a dog!’ Father shouted.

I grabbed the television’s antenna to twist it off, but Father leaped on me from behind. I turned and shoved him to the side, but he tripped on the plastic carpet and landed on his ass, striking his head against the wall with an audible crack. My little nine-year-old sister Malala screamed. Mom and my brother Tariq’s wife ran in from the yard.

Mom glared at me. ‘You’ve turned into a mad dog, biting your own tail.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, all the anger draining from me in an instant. ‘He tripped. I’m sorry.’

When we lived in Kabul, Mom always defended me against Dad. Now, when I finally refused to submit to his abuse, she sided with him. All my life I’d tried to win my father’s approval, but that day I only saw him as a frail old man. I’d just found a sense of belonging and identity in the madrassa, and my father was trying to snatch that away from me. But I didn’t have the heart to defy him. My sisters continued watching their Pakistani drama, and I sulkily went to the other room to pray.

To explain a mindset that accepts life as an illusion and heaven as a place with 72 virgins, I must say more about my life back in Kabul before I reached this terrible and dangerous crossroads.

Chapter 2

A HEAVY BURDEN

I was born in Kote-Sangee, an inner-city slum in western Kabul filled with crumbling closely built mud houses, where most latrines opened onto the street. The alleys often reeked of garbage dumps and open sewers. I don’t know the exact day of my birth, nor have I ever celebrated my birthday. We Afghans don’t celebrate our birthdays; we only commemorate our death days. But my mother said I came into this miserable world around the time when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1980. She would recall, ‘Your dad held a radio to his ear, listening to the news and walking around the courtyard, rambling and cursing. Then he came back into the house and said, “We should name this child Maiwand.”’

Maiwand is a village in Kandahar, Afghanistan, that had hosted a pivotal battle during the second Anglo-Afghan war in 1880. Malala, an eighteen-year-old Pashtun girl and a shepherd’s daughter, took part in the battle. Like other Afghan women, Malala went to the battlefield to help the wounded. But when the Afghan army lost morale and began retreating, she dropped her head shawl and shouted:‘Young love! If you don’t fall in the battle of Maiwand, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!’ Her chants shamed the Afghan forces back to action. When the British killed an Afghan flagbearer, Malala hoisted the fallen flag and chanted still more. The British struck down Malala, but her poetry and bravery inspired Afghans to a historic victory. Ever since that battle, the names Malala and Maiwand have been synonymous with bravery and pride.

Dad took too much pride in his Pashtunwali code of honour, and he believed the Pashtun tribe was superior to other tribes in Afghanistan. For as long as I could remember, the name Maiwand has been a burden on my shoulders. Dad always said, ‘Maiwand is a heavy name. You must live up to it.’ That was an expectation I was never able to fulfil.

My father used to be a brigadier in the Afghan army, but he was kicked out of the military because he’d spoken against the Russian occupation. In his late fifties, he still looked fit with his well-defined jawline, pointed nose, brownish skin and full head of peppery hair. When he was deployed to GardezProvince to fight the American-backed mujahideen, he was shot above his kneecap. The bullet was never removed and looked like an almond under his skin. When I was very little, I’d often ask Dad if I could touch the bullet bump on his knee. He would smile and let me touch it. One day I enquired, ‘How did the mujahideen shoot you?’

‘I was surrounded,’ Dad said.

‘Why didn’t you escape?’ I said.

‘I could have.’ He paused and reflected. ‘But a real Pashtun man never turn his back to enemy.’

Whether true or not, Dad always looked for opportunities to teach me his Pashtunwali and manliness. But my mother was Dad’s antithesis. A petite, pale, moon-faced woman, she had a green dot on her forehead, an Afghan-style tattoo. Mom didn’t know her exact age but she looked many years younger than my father. Recently, she’d been dyeing her hair with henna, complaining that Dad’s abrasive behaviour was turning her grey. In 1989, when Kabul was under President Najibullah’s Communist regime, many women wore miniskirts and went around unveiled. But Mom came from a religious family and always wore a burka. Her father, a mullah in the countryside of Maidan-Shar, 40 kilometres from Kabul, often visited our house and preached Islam, albeit a non-political version. Dad enjoyed making fun of my granddad’s sermons, dismissing his Quranic stories as fairy tales, which never failed to offend my mother.

It always intrigued me to hear my parents arguing over God and religion. When thunder growled, Dad said, ‘God just farted.’ When it rained, he said, ‘God is peeing.’ In snow, he said, ‘God is taking a shit.’

Mom also knew Dad’s weaknesses. Since Dad had never got ahead in the military, she often taunted him: ‘Oh, listen to the lazy brigadier who fights dogs and who couldn’t keep his job. Look at your colleagues, they all have houses in nice areas in Kabul, but you still live in this shithole of a neighbourhood.’

‘I’m an honest man, I didn’t join the Communist Party to get a house,’ Dad would say. ‘Not like your father, who took three wives just to own their lands.’

Though Dad had given up partaking in dogfights, he sometime accompanied my older brother Tariq to watch Friday dogfight tournaments. But my mother was right about our decrepit house. Back then, the Russian-backed Afghan government gave concrete houses to members of the Communist Party, known as the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (DPDA). Since Dad never joined the DPDA, we lived in the squalid neighbourhood of Kote-Sangee. In the summers, our streets turned dusty and winds kicked up plastic litter and paper into the air. In the rain, the streets turned muddy, making walking difficult. Finally, the winter snow covered all the open sewers and mounds of rubbish, temporarily masking their stench. But winter came with its own hardships: tolerating the bitter cold; repairing the leaky roofs and shovelling the snow off the roofs so they wouldn’t collapse; and buying logs for the wood heater.

My family, ten of us including my brother Tariq, his wife and two kids, lived in a three-bedroom brick house. The windows faced a semi-circular cement patio and a courtyard crammed with apple and peach trees and enclosed by mud walls. At the end of the massive courtyard was a small barn for our chickens and one or two cows. Most mornings we woke to a rooster crowing or the calls of vegetable vendors carrying their goods on donkeys’ backs, yelling, ‘Fresh vegetables! Hurry up before they’re gone!’

Our courtyard had two doors. The front wooden double doors opened onto a dim alleyway of four two-storey mud houses, and then a narrow alley that led to a mud junction where a cement electricity pole stood five metres tall, about the thickness of an oil barrel, with numerous names engraved on its surface. The pole was a focal point where kids and jobless men would sit and chat and horse around.

A three-minute walk from the pole was a second intersection full of neighbourhood shops. Outside those shops, piled with melons, apples, grapes, leeks, spinach, carrots and coriander, a cluster of men in shalwar kameez, loose trousers and long tunic, usually huddled on mud benches. They sunned themselves, smoked cigarettes and spat green snuff on a mud-covered rock. Shopkeepers sprinkled water outside their shopfronts every morning to keep the dust down. Further on, Motorshowyee Streetran east toward the main asphalt road. At its end were three butcher shops with skinned carcasses hanging from hooks, bees and flies constantly swarming around the meat. The mean moustached butchers in their bloodstained aprons trained fighting dogs on the side, and all the neighbours said you didn’t want to cross them.

One of those butcher shops served as a venue where they negotiated upcoming dogfight match-ups and placed bets on dogs. Traditionally, the dogfighting season fell between November and March because it was assumed that animals’ wounds healed more quickly in cold weather. The asphalt road fronting those butcher shops buzzed with cars, bicycles, motorcycles and donkey-drawn carts. The roadsides teemed with vendors selling cassettes, tea, herbs and fabrics; they pushed their carts amid boisterous crowds, past smoky restaurants that clanged with Indian music, fortune-tellers who read palms and interpreted lives, and barbers who sat cross-legged on pieces of cloth. I hated those roadside barbers, to whom my father often took me to shave my head.

After a five-minute walk you would reach the Kote-Sangee roundabout, the main city centre. People from all directions came toward the roundabout. It had no traffic lights, but a policeman in a white shirt and blue jeans always stood on a raised metal box in the middle and directed the traffic. The cinema south of the roundabout had a billboard on its entrance advertising the latest movies and displaying pictures of beautiful Indian actresses in skimpy dresses.

West of the roundabout was the posh neighbourhood of concrete houses and paved streets where the rich and fashionable Kabulis lived. They wore Western clothes – skirts for the women, jeans for the men, along with Elvis Presley-style sideburns and haircuts. They ate with knives and forks, had flushing toilets and toilet paper, drank alcohol, played jazz and rock music, and kept dogs and cats as pets.

My primary school, Rahman-Baba, was located in that rich neighbourhood. In those days we wore Western school uniforms, and our female teachers wore skirts or jeans. I was the only Pashtun in our street. The other kids hailed from either the Hazara or Tajik tribes and spoke Dari, a dialect of Persian. Hazara people had wider facial bone structure that resembled that of Mongolians and Central Asian Turks. The origin of Hazara people is unknown, but a popular opinion was that they were descendants of Genghis Khan’s army who’d invaded Afghanistan in the twelfth century. Unlike Pashtuns and Tajiks, who practisedSunni Islam, Hazara practiced ShiaIslam.

I was told that Hazaras held and still hold an ancient grudge against Pashtuns, claiming that a Pashtun ruler had massacred thousands of Hazaras a century-and-a-half ago. No wonder all the Hazara kids on our street called me Afghani Ghool, meaning stupid Pashtun. I wanted to call them flat-nosed mice-eaters in return, but I was alone and scared.

Then there was Ali, our next-door neighbour, my age, maybe nine or ten, and my personal nightmare. He was stocky with a flat nose, narrow eyes, a broad and pale face, high cheekbones and the wide jaw of a Hazara. Despite being my age, Ali appeared way bigger, built like a tank and meaner than a rottweiler. When the local boys played marbles, if his marble slipped into the open sewer, he’d force me to search for it with my bare hands. One time, showing off for his Hazara cousins, Ali shoved me down, knelt on my neck and stuffed my mouth with waste from the street while his cousins towered over me, laughing and finding it funny as hell.

Anyhow, Ali owned the street. He was a terrible harasser. No one, including his cousins, could stand up to him. Even if other kids wanted to play with me, they kept their distance for their own survival, instead following Ali’s lead in bullying me. I’d grown used to Hazara kids slapping the back of my head, spitting in my face or throwing mud at me.

Not being called by my real name always pained me. One day, noticing all the carved names on the surface of the electricity pole, I thought I’d carve my name on it, just like the other kids. I picked a rock from the rain-sprinkled dirt and began hammering the pole’s surface, chipping away at the cement bit by bit. I’d just carved ‘M’ (), the first letter of my name, when I caught sight of Ali swaggering down the street with his cousins.

‘What are you doing, Afghani Ghool?’

My jaw began to quiver. ‘I’m carving my name.’

‘You’re not allowed, you faggot.’ All his cousins laughed. ‘If I ever see you carving your name here again, I’ll strip your ass naked and wrap your trousers around your head.’

Ali grabbed the neck of my shalwar and dragged me down the street. Despite my best efforts to get away, my legs turned to jelly. He swung me around and shoved me toward the slimy open sewer. My knees buckled, and I fell into the black slime, my clothes covered in mud and dirt and worse. I staggered to my feet, sobbing, and ran home dirt-splashed and in tears.

When I got home, my mother was squatting on the patio, handwashing clothes in a metal basin. Dad was watering the flowers surrounding the patio, fetching water in a bucket from the well in the middle of our courtyard. Mom dropped the sheet that she was scrubbing and rushed over to me. ‘Who did this to you? Was it Ali again?’

‘No, other kids,’ I lied. The last time she had spoken to Ali’s mother, he’d beaten me for snitching.

Dad plodded toward the patio, carrying a black plastic bucket in his hand. ‘Who drenched you in the dirt? What were you doing?’

‘I was carving my name onto the pole.’ I couldn’t hold back the tears.

The muscles in Dad’s neck stood out. ‘Stop whining, you sissy.’ He slammed the bucket down on the patio, water splashing everywhere. ‘If a man can’t stand up for his own name, he’ll never stand up for anything in life.’

‘Don’t be too hard on the boy,’ Mom said, wiping my face. ‘It’s Ali, I know it. I’ll speak to his mother again.’

‘Yes, keep knocking on people’s doors, begging for mercy for your poor boy rather than teaching him how to defend himself.’

‘I just thank God he’s not as stubborn as you.’

‘Shoes are tested on feet. A man is tested in a fight,’ Dad said, gesturing toward me. ‘I’d rather say you had just farted than gave birth to this … sissy.’

Mom glared at him, furious. ‘Shut your stinking mouth.’

Dad came over and squeezed my face with his palm. ‘Next time anyone picks on you, you grab a rock and split his head open with it. Then they’ll never pick on you a second time.’ He shoved me away. ‘Don’t ever come to me again, crying like a girl. You need to fight your own battles in life.’

‘Animal!’ Mom shouted. ‘Is that what you teach a child?’

‘Power beats power.’ Dad walked away. ‘If you don’t stand up for yourself, people will devour you.’

I lay awake most of that night, filled with hurtful thoughts and hate for Ali. From that day on, I suffered Ali and his gang’s torments in secret. I hid my pain from my dad and never went to my mom for comfort. In the meantime, Ali and his cohorts amped up the harassment, punching me and cursing me. I’d curl into a ball when they came at me with a barrage of kicks and punches. They’d surround me, calling me a sissy or coward, and always an Afghani Ghool. Mostly, I’d hang my head and walk away. Occasionally, I summoned the courage to fight back, but every time I buckled under my fear and gave up.

Then, one day, my father caught me when Ali and his gang were chasing me and throwing rotten fruit at me. Once I was in the house, Dad slapped me. ‘You’re a shame to the family and to your name! You sissy! How could you let them do this to you?’

I ran into the room and Dad, infuriated, came after me. He spanked and then grounded me. I screamed and covered my head under a pillow, but he kicked me in the midriff. Unable to endure the pain, I ran out to the patio, shrieking. Mom was baking bread in the tandoor-khana, a small mud room adjacent to our neighbour’s mud wall. She rushed to help and screamed at Dad.

My parents bickered for a few minutes. Then my mother took me to the tandoor-khana. The tandoorwas cooling, so she dropped more logs and cow dung into the fire. Afterwards, she washed her hands and waited for the tandoor to heat up again. To prevent her hair from burning, she covered it with a red scarf and began flattening balls of dough on a disc made of fabric. She stuck the flattened dough inside the tandoor’s walls.

Her face flushed from the heat, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Son, don’t go out to the street again,’ she said.

‘Fine, Mom.’ I hated myself and felt like most of the fights between my parents were my fault.

The next morning, I refused to eat breakfast in protest, or perhaps to prove that I was tough and could go without food. The sun shone bright that day, and I climbed up on the roof. From the rooftop, I watched Dad and Tariq demolishing Baryal’s wooden pigeon coop atop the tandoor room for firewood.

Baryal was my other older brother, a few years younger than Tariq. He had fled to the countryside a year ago to avoid military conscription. Since leaving, most of his pigeons had flown away. Some had been eaten by cats, others wandered farther afield, merging with other people’s birds or being lured by other pigeon keepers. I remembered how Baryal used to stand on the rooftop each morning, flying his pigeons. They flew in tight flocks, flapping their wings, circling and soaring above our house. Unlike Dad and Tariq, Baryal had a softer side and loved his birds. I liked pigeons too, so I felt guilty for not looking after them.

In the ensuing days, I avoided Ali as much as possible, only leaving the house through the back door. There was a peephole on our front door, through which one could see the alley. I usually checked if Ali was around.

Chapter 3

DOGS FIGHT OVER ANCESTRAL PRIDE

Dad never stopped hounding me for my softness, and Tariq, my older brother, often joined ranks with him. Tariq was in his thirties, but he and his family lived with us. Tall and slender, he wore a moustache without a beard. Since Dad’s retirement from the military, Tariq had become the family’s sole breadwinner, working in the Afghan military as a driver, carrying material to the Russian-backed Afghan armed forces. While he was on duty, mujahideen often ambushed his convoys hauling food and weapons. Every time he returned home from a deployment, he brought stories of gore and killings. One time, he drove his Russian Kamaz truck over a landmine that the mujahideen had planted in the road. The explosion destroyed most of his truck, and Tariq barely survived.

As a kid, Tariq had been the alpha male in the street, his generation’s Ali. He often bragged about how he’d dominated Ali’s older brother Amir, who had a reputation for being a gangster and was later hanged in Iran for drug trafficking. Tariq liked to show off the scars on his abdomen from a clash with knife-wielding thugs. At times, I feared Tariq more than Dad. Lately, he’d beaten me up twice for playing with my female cousins, Sabir’s daughters, who were around my age, about ten years old. He’d also barred me from chatting with Mom and my sisters for any length of time because spending too much time around women is seen as weak in Pashtun culture.

In those days, my entire being seemed to revolve around masculinity. Even my aunt Halima, a short, moon-faced old widow whose husband had been killed in a Russian bombing, taunted me for my softness because I couldn’t eat raw chillis.

One day, she visited us from the Maidan-Shar countryside around lunchtime. Mom had cooked shorba, a meat-and-vegetable soup with crushed bread. Before lunch, I passed a pitcher of water and a basin round for everyone to wash their hands. Then we spread lunch over a red vinyl tablecloth on the floor and sat around it, five people to one huge bowl, and ate with our fingers, using flatbread as a scoop. In Afghanistan, shorba is often served with raw leeks, onions, lemons and chillis.

While we were eating, Aunt Halima threw a red chili my way. ‘Eat this, tough guy.’

‘I don’t like chilli.’

She laughed while staring at me. ‘This kid has no manliness in him. A man isn’t a man who can’t eat chilli.’

Just so she would stop badgering me, I took an entire chilli with a mouthful of shorba and shoved it into my mouth. Within seconds, I sneezed and my eyes watered. I dashed toward the sugar jar at the window and drank endless glasses of water. Toward the end of lunch, when the little meat available was being divided up so that everyone could get a hint of its flavour, my aunt said I couldn’t have any meat unless I ate another chili. No way; I was not having another chili.

‘Stop it, Haleema,’ Mom intervened. ‘You are grilling the boy.’

I thanked heavens and had my share of meat. After lunch, Aunt Haleema drew a snuffbox from a side pocket, placed a pinch of snuff under her lip, and reclined on a pillow against the wall. ‘Boy, you’re just a girl,’ she said to me. ‘Tariq should take you to the dogfighting tournaments so that you learn some manliness.’ Which, apart from anything else, sounded rich and hypocritical. I wanted to say, ‘Real men don’t torment innocent defenceless animals,’ but didn’t have the guts in the moment.

Perhaps my old aunt only meant it as banter, but Tariq took her words seriously. Over the next few days, Dad and Tariq discussed rumours of a dogfight that was to take place next Friday on the outskirts of Kabul. The fight was between two popular dogs, Zanbour (Stinging Bee) and Palang (Tiger). Zanbour’s owner and entourage hailed from the Tajik tribe, while Palang’s were Pashtuns. As a retired dogfighter, Dad had a good knack for picking winners. Of course, as a Pashtun he favoured Palang’s victory, but he felt that Palang might not win after he’d seen Zanbour training. ‘Zanbour was made to run over the mountain, and he’s been trained by pulling a car tyre along the road.’

When the much-anticipated Friday arrived, Dad fell ill with a severe stomach bug, so only Tariq and I headed to the dogfight. The ground was covered with frost when we left home, but by the time we’d made the two-hour walk to the dirt amphitheatre across a barren landscape, it had become warm and sunny. Hundreds of people were already there. The vendors had set up their food stalls around the fighting pit, selling chickpeas, butter beans, chewing gum, cookies and sugared green tea.

A handful of large dogs, including big-headed mastiffs and Afghan Alabai (Central Asian shepherds used as guard or farm dogs), all with missing ears and tails, were brought to the pit. The dogs were leashed by chains or heavy ropes. My heart thudded when I saw the dogs barking from a distance, wanting to free themselves from the chains. They all had the same raw savagery I had seen in Ali.

Within a few minutes, a big crowd of men formed a circle around the amphitheatre’s boundary, marked with white chalk. A committee of mediators matched up the fights and negotiated the bets. While the high-profile fights had been arranged in advance, lesser bouts were decided on the spot. A toothless old man with a turban and a limp oversaw it all. He held a staff in his hand to prevent spectators from spilling into the ring.

As soon as the two dogs were unleashed, they stormed into the ring and tore each other apart while the crowd roared and cheered. Some fights lasted a long time, whereas others lasted only a minute. A dog was declared the winner when it established clear dominance over the other animal, either by pinning it down or forcing the other dog to turn its back. It was brutal. Thank God they pulled the dogs apart before they could kill each other. Seeing how fiercely the dogs fought one another, I felt so inferior. These dumb animals were braver than I was.

The main fight was to take place after lunch. During the lunch break, Tariq bought chickpeas soaked in vinegar from a wheeled cart. We ate them, headed back to the pit and squatted at the edge.

‘Why do dogs fight each other?’ I asked.

Tariq shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘Dogs fight for a reason. Do you know what dogs say to each other when they bark?’

‘Dogs don’t talk.’

‘Dogs have their own language. Through barking, one dog tells the other that his father and ancestors were stronger. But the other dog disagrees, so they fight with each other over ancestral pride.’

Tariq’s answer came from a myth common among the dogfighting community in Afghanistan. However, I took his answer like a dagger in my heart. I’d already felt the dogs were braver than I was, but now they stood up for their ancestors. I was so useless. Ali and his gang would call my father ‘fox-faced’ and my mother ‘a sack of potatoes’, but I always just walked away.

When the main event kicked off, the two dogs were brought to ringside, restrained by several ropes and three handlers. Zanbour was a beautiful creamy-white shepherd adorned with a glittery red sash around his belly, while Palang had a black coat and was bigger, nearly the size of a giant goat. Both dogs barked at each other from a distance as their owners sneered and pointed at each other.

Once the dogs were unleashed, they charged toward the centre, reared up on their hind legs like wild horses, and clamped their teeth into each other’s faces. The crowd went wild. The dogs struggled against each other, looking for leverage. Out of nowhere, Palang caught Zanbour’s neck in his wide mouth, sending Zanbour onto his side and holding him down. Zanbour struggled to break free. In panic, Zanbour’s team jumped into the ring, raising a large cloud of dust, but the referee lashed them out. A few minutes into the struggle, Zanbour freed himself from the chokehold. The crowd burst into a frenzy of applause, whistling and yelling. Blood gushed from the poor dog’s neck and stained the earth, while Palang’s muzzle was red. Upon release, the brave Zanbour leapt and buried his teeth in the back of Palang’s head, but with a swift twist Palang loosened Zanbour’s grip, dropping him on his haunches. A tuft of Palang’s hair tore off, but there was no blood.

I couldn’t take my gaze away from the blood or the blind ferocity of the dogs, but I hid my fear and pity and did my best to imitate the crowd, shouting and stamping my feet. All the while, the dogs reared up again and again on their hind legs, jostled and wrestled for a few minutes, then dropped back on all fours.

With a sudden move, Zanbour gripped Palang by his back leg. Palang twisted and fought to pull loose, but Zanbour worked his jaw this time, deepening and holding his grip. After a while, his jaw grew tired, but by then he’d already inflicted much damage. Palang now limped, was out of steam and unable to continue fighting. So the fight was stopped and Zanbour declared the winner. In celebration, his entourage swarmed the ring, showering him with Afghani banknotes. Palang’s owner threw his hat to the ground and dropped down in the dirt.

As Tariq and I walked home from the dogfight, I tried to see how I could ever fit into a crowd like that. This was something Tariq and I were to have done together, yet I’d never felt more alone. The only thing that struck me was how cruel and violent people could be, torturing poor helpless animals. I was about ten years old then and found the whole thing torturous. I hated the fights, but not a day passed that I didn’t think about Ali as if I were attached to him by some invisible chain. I had to be brave and stand up to Ali.

Over the next few days, I joined a local taekwondo dojo in the Pole-Sokhta area. The dojo was in a damp roadside basement that received little light through the tiny windows facing the main road. Its instructor was a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man named Naeem. I took an immediate liking to instructor Naeem and would soon develop an emotional attachment to him.

Chapter 4

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN, KABUL, 1991

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians stopped funding Dr Najibullah’s government, so it lost whatever credibility it had left. Meanwhile, the mujahideen had encircled Kabul and blocked food-supply routes, forcing the country into submission. Back then, thousands of active and retired government employees depended on monthly coupons for food rations, which in turn depended on Russian funding. The result was widespread famine in Kabul. Teachers, doctors and government officials stopped receiving their salaries. Millions were cut off from supplies. With no wheat left and no money to buy food, hunger loomed everywhere. Kabulis had no clue where their next meal would come from. The roads teemed with beggars, and children died of starvation.

A few alleys from our house stood a mud shack where a mysterious man, nicknamed Baba-Sagha (‘dog father’), lived. He was an unkempt, wild-looking man with long, matted grey hair and beard. A pack of dogs always sat around his hut. Everywhere Baba-Sagha went, his dogs followed him, and everyone around the neighbourhood fed him and his dogs. But when food became scarce, each morning I noticed his dogs and other desperate strays waiting before one of the raised drop latrine outlets to feed on morning shit.

Poverty and fear of the mujahideen takeover had filled everyone’s imagination. To avoid starvation, the government began subsidising local bakeries to distribute eight platter-sized flat naans to each family. This bread became a lifeline for many, so people rose early in the morning and queued up for hours to receive the bread. I was eleven then. Mom would send me and my sisters to get free bread. Several days we queued from morning until lunchtime, but returned home emptyhanded.

The situation in our house turned chaotic. As a logistical convoy driver, Tariq used to bring home cans of lard, sacks of flour and sugar, and barrels of cooking oil, but he’d fled to Iran, deserting his military career. Just in time, since the American-backed mujahideen were inflicting severe damage on the Afghan government. Most of Tariq’s comrades had been killed, so he’d opted not to die for a lost cause. Dad’s retirement coupon was our only source of food.

I was eleven when the freezing winter of 1991 started. Like most Afghans, we could hardly afford to buy firewood. Dad thought at first he would set up a sandali (a pit of burning coals) beneath a small table in the main room covered by a heavy blanket, under which a family could put their feet for warmth. But to save money, he waited until the temperature dropped below zero. My three sisters and I shared a communal blanket, sleeping side by side. Dad usually slept in the first room to take care of my disabled sister. One morning, I rose early but stayed under the blanket because the room felt ice cold. As usual, Mom woke at dawn, spread her prayer mat toward Mecca and prayed until sunrise.

As Mom was folding up her prayer mat, Dad slammed the door and strutted inside, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. ‘How was Gul last night?’ she asked.

‘We were both awake almost all night,’ he said, looking worried. ‘She’s badly bedridden. I have to turn her every few hours.’

In her twenties, my oldest sister, Gul, had developed a malignant red lump above her right eyebrow that had affected her brain, leaving her paralysed. With each passing day the lump grew until it covered her entire right eye and extended down to her left cheek. Now she was a prisoner to her rope bed, needing constant care. We would place a cushion against the wall to prop her up for spoon-feeding. At night, she needed to be turned from one side to another to relieve the pain from her bedsores. My parents and my sister Husay took turns looking after her. Gul had a low tolerance for noise, so whenever I made any she screamed and cursed me.

‘God is merciful,’ Mom said.

‘No, God is a tyrant and a gangster,’ Dad replied.

‘One day you’ll face God!’ Mom screamed. ‘He’ll burn you in the fire of eternal hell!’

‘If I ever meet your God, he’ll owe me an apology for all the miseries he’s inflicted.’

The quarrel woke up my three sisters. Mom ordered Husay, then sixteen, to fold the mattresses and blankets and prepare tea for breakfast. Husay rolled the bedding away, piling it in the corner while Mom set the mattresses along the walls. My sister Heela, who was a couple of years older than me, brewed tea in a black-stained aluminium kettle on a pit fire. Mom went to fetch flatbread and teacups from the back room. Dad spread the vinyl tablecloth and asked Husay to help him transport Gul’s bed into our sleeping room. Meanwhile, Tariq’s wife and her two toddler sons came from across the room for breakfast. In those days, our breakfast often consisted of sugared tea with flatbread. Mom opened the sugar tin, looking annoyed. ‘Someone has used up the little sugar that was left.’

My heart raced because the day before I’d eaten some of that sugar with a spoon. I hadn’t finished it, though.

‘Okay,’ Mom said, ‘we’ll do without sugar today.’

My youngest sister, Malala, then seven, cried that she wanted sugar in her tea. Despite my parents’ best efforts to calm her, she kept screaming.

‘Is there any candy left?’ Mom asked.

‘A week ago, the jar was half full,’ Husay said. ‘Now it’s empty.’

I shuddered again because I’d eaten most of that candy and hidden the rest under the blanket in a plastic bag.

Husay accused Tariq’s wife of stealing the candy, which turned into another loud argument. In the meantime, Malala’s crying got louder; she was still demanding sugar in her tea. As much as I wanted to tell them where I’d hidden the candy, my fear won over my conscience.

Amid all the shouting and crying, Dad suddenly sprang to his feet. ‘Enough! I’ll borrow some sugar from Kokoo’s family.’