CHAPTER 17
NORTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN
Atrip to Nangarhar Hospital in Jalalabad confirmed what Elam Badar already suspected—his son’s jaw was broken. Though it was difficult for the boy to speak, Elam Badar had coaxed from Asadoulah what had happened. When the boy explained that Mullah Massoud’s retarded brother, Zwak, had attacked him without provocation, the father was incensed.
He had always thought it ridiculous that the elders of Massoud’s village allowed Zwak, the halfwit, to run around with a rifle, even if the barrel was taped at the end. The man should have been kept indoors. Allowing him to roam the streets of his village accusing visitors of being spies or having come to poison the village well was asking for trouble. And now trouble had come.
Asadoulah told his father how he had made the hour trek to the neighboring village to visit friends. While there, the boys told him about the American that Massoud’s men had taken hostage. Like many Afghan boys, Asadoulah had never seen an American woman before. His friends offered to show her to him.
Asadoulah told his father that Zwak must have been on the other side of the hut they were using to hold the woman because no sooner had he begun peering through a crack in the wooden door than the retarded man appeared, called Asadoulah a spy, and clubbed the boy in the jaw with the butt of his rifle.
Elam Badar knew that Zwak had a difficult time remembering the faces of those from even neighboring villages. He himself had been called a spy many times by Massoud’s brother and had been prevented from even walking past their well on more than one occasion. Zwak took his mock duties seriously, but in this case he had gone entirely too far. And so had his brother.
If the Taliban commander was holding an American woman hostage, that was bad enough, but to put Zwak in charge of guarding her seemed downright foolish. The halfwit was incapable of responding appropriately. The fact that he had countered a bunch of boys peering through a crack in a door with violence proved what a danger he was. His attack on Asadoulah couldn’t be ignored. Zwak and his antics had been tolerated for far too long. Now a boy’s jaw had been broken. Enough was enough.
Elam Badar parked his truck on the edge of the village and walked toward its center. He was not a particularly big man, nor was he particularly brave, and he did not relish the idea of having to deal with a Taliban commander like Mullah Massoud. But this was about honor, and the Pashtun code was very clear about how such things must be handled, specifically when it came to an assault on a family member.
In the center of the village, built into a small copse of trees, was an elevated wooden structure with a wide veranda. It was here that the council of village elders, or shura, conducted all of the affairs for the village. Elam Badar mounted the structure’s stairs and removed his shoes before stepping inside.
One of the villagers sitting on the floor inside recognized him and stood to greet him. They touched hearts and embraced. “It is good to see you, brother,” said the villager.
“And you,” replied Elam Badar, who, though anxious to speak with the village elders, quieted the anger in his heart and chatted with the man for several minutes before requesting to be seen.
“What has happened?” asked the man.
Elam Badar forced a smile. He knew all too well how quickly gossip spread, and he didn’t want Mullah Massoud or his halfwit brother to have time to concoct a story to explain away the attack. He wanted to take them completely by surprise, and so said, “Nothing of great importance. I have a small matter that concerns both of our villages that I need to discuss.”
He was shown to a small room off to the side where the village elders had just finished a meeting with a handful of men on another subject. After the greetings, the village elders ushered the other men out and invited Elam Badar to take tea with them.
As he had done with the villager at the door, Elam Badar kept his anger in check and adhered to Pashtun etiquette. They talked about several different subjects of mutual interest before arriving at the true reason Elam Badar had come.
“I understand you have an American visitor,” he said. “A woman.”
Of the four elders in the room, it was customary for only one to speak. The man who did was in his sixties with an ash-colored beard and a stern disposition. He had a thick scar that began at the bridge of his nose and traveled downward across the left side of his face to just beneath his ear. Elam Badar knew that the scar was a souvenir from one of the many battles the elder had fought against the Soviets. His name was Baseer.
“Our village is often blessed with visitors,” replied the chief elder with a motion of his hand that indicated he considered Elam Badar’s visit a blessing.
Elam Badar nodded politely and kept going. “She must be very important if she is being kept guarded.”
An uncomfortable silence descended upon the small room. Elam Badar allowed it to linger for several seconds before continuing. “Are you aware that while he was guarding her, Zwak assaulted my son?”
It was obvious from the look on Baseer’s face that this piece of information took him by surprise. Elam Badar allowed his eyes to shift to the faces of the other three elders and he saw that they were equally shocked. Feeling the wind at his back, he removed from his pocket the paperwork that the young doctor at the hospital in Jalalabad had given him. Carefully unfolding them, he handed the pages to the elder. “With the butt of his rifle,” Elam Badar, asserted, “Zwak broke my son’s jaw.”
The elder studied the paperwork and then handed it to his colleagues to read. “You have four boys, correct?”
“Yes,” replied Elam Badar.
“Which one are we talking about?”
“My oldest. Asadoulah.”
“I am sorry for his jaw being broken and for your family’s trouble in this matter,” said Baseer.
“Thank you,” Elam Badar responded.
The elder stroked his beard as his mind processed what he had heard. “Zwak is a simple man, we all know this, but he has never before been violent.”
Elam Badar’s eyes widened. “He accuses everyone who enters your village of being a spy and prevents those he doesn’t recognize or cannot remember from walking anywhere near your well.”
Baseer shrugged and raised his palms. “Yet still, he has never harmed anyone. Let me ask you. Your son can speak?”
Elam Badar nodded.
“What did he tell you happened?”
“He said that he had come to your village to visit friends. They told him about the American woman and asked if he wanted to see her. He agreed and they took him to where she was being held. While he was trying to see her through a crack in the door, Zwak came from the other side of the building and struck him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle.”
Once again the elder was silent. Elam Badar watched him as he stroked his beard and wondered if they truly grasped the seriousness of the situation. The Pashtun code was on his side in such a matter. No longer able to contain his anger over this situation having even been allowed to develop in the first place, Elam Badar opened his mouth and his ill-chosen words burst forth. “I know the American woman is not a guest in your village. She is a hostage, and you know it too. Have you any idea how dangerous this is for us? It’s not just your village that will suffer repercussions for this. If word gets out, we’ll all suffer because of what Mullah Massoud has done.”
Baseer held up his hand. This man was getting away from himself very quickly. The other village was nearly five kilometers away. Whatever Mullah Massoud had done, it wouldn’t affect them.
That said, Baseer was not happy that word had spread about the American woman. He had warned Massoud against bringing her back to the village. He had suggested they find someplace else to keep her, but Massoud had insisted. No doubt his decision came in part at the behest of the Russian, the one they called Bakht Rawan.
The Russians had never had the Afghans’ best interests at heart, and the elder doubted that much had changed since their “departure” from Afghanistan. The elder had seen far too many of them in recent years to believe they had given up wanting a stake in his country.
But as much as the elder didn’t trust Bakht Rawan and the rest of his countrymen, the matter before him had to do with Mullah Massoud.
It sounded as if the Taliban commander had placed too much confidence in his brother and though the elder had not yet heard Zwak’s side of the story, so far it was a very unpleasant situation that had the potential to get much worse. Elam Badar’s son had had more than his pride wounded. Something needed to be done. Villages had gone to war against each other over less, and while Massoud could summon hundreds of battle-hardened soldiers, Elam Badar’s village possessed guns and experienced mujahideen as well.
“We will speak with Mullah Massoud,” said Baseer.
“But he was not there to see what happened to my son,” protested Elam Badar.
The elder held his hand up again. “We will also speak with Zwak,” he added.
Once more, Elam Badar’s passion flared. “There can be no excuse for what happened to my son.”
Smiling, Baseer signaled that the meeting was over. As Elam Badar embraced him, the elder held on for a little longer than normal. “We will make this right. I promise you. Your family and your village are important to us.”
Elam Badar felt indignant, but he tried to push the emotion back down into the pit of his stomach where it had begun. “Thank you,” he replied.
The other elders embraced Elam Badar and summoned the villager he was friendly with to walk with him back to his truck.
When they stepped outside, the sun was already slipping behind the mountain peaks that surrounded the village and the temperature had begun to drop.
Baseer watched Elam Badar descend the wooden stairs and disappear from sight beyond the copse of trees. Beneath his breath, he silently cursed Mullah Massoud. He and all of his Taliban brothers were going to be the death of Afghanistan.