But these are the very things I was thinking about when I was having that nightmare! And that means, I’m simply repeating my dreams. My mind has gone completely blank and I am taking my nightmare for reality …
Ah, but in fact, there are other things I can remember! My mother’s name is Humaira. She has three children. My sister Parwaneh and I, and my brother Farid. Two years ago my father took a second wife, younger than my mother. Then, after the coup, he fled to Pakistan. He never divorced my mother, he simply abandoned her … Today’s date is 24 Mirzan 1358 [October 16, 1979]. Not long ago, Hafizullah Amin, that faithful student of Taraki, murdered his own dear teacher and put himself in power … What else?
No, my memory is intact! I’ve never been married, nor had any children. So far — other than in my intense fantasies when I masturbate — I’ve yet to experience the delight of a woman’s tender embrace …
So, I’ve got no reason to think I’ve lost my memory! Nor to question my identity or doubt my history. No. Something has happened. Probably a mistake. Well, we’ll see. Maybe I drank too much again — so much that it’s poisoned my mind and made everything seem like a very vivid nightmare.
“Brother, you must be hungry. Would you like something to eat?”
The woman stands in the doorway holding an oil-lamp. The lamplight throws the pleats of her skirt into sharp relief, but her face is concealed by the darkness of the corridor.
Yes, I am hungry. But I can’t face eating any food. I’m hungry to know where I am and how I got here.
“No, thank you, Sister … but …”
Suddenly, the ghost whose shadow I saw a few minutes ago, walking across the room, emerges from the darkness behind her, moaning. At the sight of his two bowed arms, like withered branches attached to his body, my question dies in my mouth. The woman, unmoved by his arrival, takes the strange phantom’s hand and leads him back down the corridor.
Once again I’m left alone with a hundred-and-one unanswered questions, helpless in the house of a stranger.
My best friend, Enayat, and I decided to pay a visit to Moalem’s shop. There, as always, we found the old man with his misshapen figure and his long, flowing hair wedged behind a counter laden with potatoes and chickpeas. And, as always, he winked at us, shooing off the two children who were haggling over a sack of beans. Then his smile broadened into a grin, his eyes twinkled with mischief and he announced in a quavering voice that echoed all around his humble little shop, “The Daughters of the Vine await your command!”
Tottering gingerly to the back of the shop on his unsteady legs, he tugged back a black-and-white curtain and invited us into his den.
“Always drink in secret, for those they find they punish cruelly!”
He laughed loudly, closing the curtain behind us to hide us from sight, then plumped himself down in front of two clay pitchers.
“Do you fancy the blonde or the redhead?” he asked, turning to me.
“The redhead.”
“Well chosen!”
He poured red wine from the pitcher into a cheap metal cup and, taking the first mouthful himself, shook his old head and said, “Oh, if only Hafez were here, he’d dedicate a poem to me! Drink deeply and see what miracles can be found in the world.”
He refilled the cup with red wine and handed it to me. Then he turned to Enayat.
“Redhead or blonde?”
“The blonde.”
“Another excellent choice.”
He poured out white wine from the other pitcher, drank it himself, as before, and shaking his head again said, “Oh, if only I’d lived in the time of Babur, he would have planted half of Kabul with vines just for me!”
Then he refilled the cup with white wine and handed it to Enayat. We drank until nightfall, then we took Moalem home, holding him up between us. His sleepy wife opened the door and swore at her husband, and us. She told us to dump him on the terrace, grumbling, “I can never tell whether you go around there to buy drink from him or just to get him drunk.”
Moalem’s laughter floated over his small backyard.
“There was a man … a rotten drunk … who traded wine …”
“Like Shams,” his wife shouted back at him, “God will never let you rest on this earth!”
But Moalem continued his slurred performance:
“Someone asked … That’s strange … If you’re selling wine … what could you want in return?”
Moalem’s wife threw us out of the house and we fetched up near Enayat’s place, in the middle of the garden belonging to the Party headquarters. It was pitch dark. Enayat decided we should piss on the roots of this big cherry tree, so our piss would find its way into the red cherries. So we pissed at the tree, and pissed ourselves laughing.
But the night watchman spoiled our fun and, waving his gun at us, chucked us out of the garden. I parted with Enayat by the gate and he vanished off into the night. The curfew went clean out of my head. Halfway home, a soldier’s command froze me to the spot.
“Stop!”
I’m running. I’m running through the night. Quick as a breeze. Carbonized trees bearing desiccated cherries line both sides of the road, leading me on. The road is endless. I run. A soldier runs after me, pounding the ground with his big heavy boots, bellowing, “STOP! STOP!”
But I do not stop. I run. Faster than an arrow. I grow bigger with each stride. Bigger and bigger. I’m taller than the trees. The soldier dwindles away. He gets smaller and smaller. I stop to piss on the soldier. But, as I piss, the soldier starts getting bigger. Bigger and bigger! I can’t piss anymore. The soldier is laughing at me. I am crying. My sniveling sounds as though it’s coming from somewhere small inside my chest. The soldier’s laughter booms through the night. He claps his big hand on my shoulder. My shoulder feels paralyzed. He shakes me like a doll.
“Brother!”
The night is even darker than when my eyes are closed. I move my head in the direction of the sound. Then, out of the dark, suddenly lamplight illuminates strands of hair that have fallen in front of my face. I pull back my head. And, once again, I see the same woman whose child calls me “Father.” I look around. I’m where I was before. On a small terrace under a window.
The woman tucks her hair behind her ear. The lamplight reveals her face.
“Brother, get up! Quick!”
“What …”
What should I say? The woman wants to tell me something.
“Quick, get inside! The soldiers have come back!”
A sudden cacophony of slammed jeep doors, barked military orders, and jackboots hitting the cobblestones ricochets round the street below. The mother of the child whose name I still don’t know extinguishes the lamp. Crouching down beside me, she goes completely still. In the dark, in agony, I try to heave myself onto my feet.
She rises up next to me and, gingerly, silently, glides toward the entrance to the house, beckoning me with the two fingers that had scooped back the hair from her eyes. I stagger to my feet and drag my broken body along after her, into the absolute darkness of the corridor. She closes the door behind us and is lost in the dark.
“Come in here!”
Blindly, I follow the rustle of her skirts. The sound moves into a room. And stops. A struck match flares up, canceling the dark. She lights an old candle whose wax has spilt an extravagant fringe all over the windowsill. It is a small room with a black-and-red carpet and two big floor cushions, one by the door, the other under the window. I kick off my shit-caked shoes and lower myself onto the cushion by the door as the woman goes back to the corridor.