Juma Gul
tied the mule to a beam partially buried under rubble created after a missile
struck a school. Ghwazz would have to wait for the water he needed. The boys
sprang from the cart and ran hard down the lane to the street which led to the
front of the police station. Many people crowded the walkway. Several small
boys were playing tag, making it difficult for burka clad women to get by.
Aga was
not keeping up. He had one hand in his pocket holding something heavy. He lost
his chitrali in the crowd, and found
it only after it had been stepped on by many shuffling feet. He planted it
awkwardly on his head with one hand.
“Come on
Aga, hurry. We have to find her.”
When Aga
looked up, he saw Juma Gul running down the street. He took several steps
before freezing. It was him. He saw enough of the beard to know. Hate welled up
in him, born of pain and degradations which had been thrust upon him. He
remembered the rough hands, and how the man always demanded his money back. The
man would growl that it was Aga’s fault for letting it slip out. It was always
his fault because he was loose and used up. His dancing was so horrible, the
man would claim, it never got hard anyways. But it did. The pain proved the
lie.
His hand
squeezed hard on the pistol in his pocket, and everything slowed down.
He saw
himself walking to the red beard. He heard the air rush into his nostrils. The
man was squatting next to his scooter watching for Mammy’s approach. The
Kalashnikov hung from Red Beard’s neck on a jagged cord. The predator scanned
the crowd waiting to strike with violence. He believed he was defending Allah,
and all Muslims, from unacceptable behavior. Glory was to be his. He saw her
approaching from a distance. A sound, an uncertain feeling caused him to turn
toward Aga. “Ah, it is you. What is it you want? More of me? Go now. I have
business.”
Aga pulled
the pistol out of his pocket and breathed harder. He pointed it at the man. He
hated the red beard and the man it covered.
“Oh look
at you, little boy with a little gun, and a bottom too big to be a dancing
boy.” A wolf like grin crept across his face. “Do you think your little gun
scares me? I only see Paradise in its barrel. Be gone, or else I will really make
you squirm the next time we… play. You like to feel my fists on your head when
we do it. I know these things.”
After the
gun fired, it clattered from Aga’s hands onto the walkway. Smoke blew back into
his face. He smelled the gunpowder. Sounds came to him as if he had stuck his
head into a spent shell casing. Words became tinny and hard to hear. Aga felt
bodies bumping him while he watched the blood spot grow bigger and bigger. The
man that the gun shot starting making chewing motions like a camel gnawing
grass.
Red Beard
stared hard at nothing. He clutched at his chest. He stumbled backwards,
falling over his scooter. The would-be jihadist felt something sticky on his
hands before seeing the deep blue sky. Had it always been so blue he wondered?
A ring of darkness closed in on him as a crowd formed.
Some
pointed, and one skinny man under a large turban yelled that he saw it all.
Before the police arrived, the entire crowd decided that they had seen the man
trip over his scooter, and shoot himself. An unseen hand had snatched the gun from
the walk and left the area. It was good to find such a valuable item in crowded
Kabul.
Aga heard
screaming, and felt bodies bumping against him. Then he focused on Juma Gul,
who had him by the shoulders shaking him. Everything had happened so fast. Juma
Gul spun Aga around, and the boys raced to the lane and Ghwazz.
When Aga crawled up onto the wagon he was much
older.
