Chapter 21.

The driver pulled his taxi over to let pass another long convoyof Soviet jeeps and armored vehicles. Tariq leaned across thefront seat, over the driver, and yelled,"Pajalmia! Pajalmta!"A jeep honked and Tariq whistled back, beaming and wavingcheerfully. "Lovely guns!" he yelled "Fabulous jeeps! Fabulousarmy! Too bad you're losing to a bunch of peasants firingslingshots!"The convoy passed. The driver merged back onto the road"How much farther?" Laila asked"An hour at the most," the driver said. "Barring any moreconvoys or checkpoints."They were taking a day trip, Laila, Babi, and Tariq. Hasinahad wanted to come too, had begged her father, but hewouldn't allow it. The trip was Babi's idea. Though he couldhardly afford it on his salary, he'd hired a driver for the day.
He wouldn't disclose anything to Laila about their destinationexcept to say that, with it, he was contributing to hereducation.
They had been on the road since five in the morning.
Through Laila's window, the landscape shifted from snowcappedpeaks to deserts to canyons and sun-scorched outcroppings ofrocks. Along the way, they passed mud houses with thatchedroofs and fields dotted with bundles of wheat. Pitched out inthe dusty fields, here and there, Laila recognized the black tentsof Koochi nomads. And, frequently, the carcasses of burned-outSoviet tanks and wrecked helicopters. This, she thought, wasAhmad and Noor's Afghanistan. This, here in the provinces,was where the war was being fought, after all. Not in Kabul.
Kabul was largely at peace. Back in Kabul, if not for theoccasional bursts of gunfire, if not for the Soviet soldierssmoking on the sidewalks and the Soviet jeeps always bumpingthrough the streets, war might as well have been a rumor.
It was late morning, after they'd passed two more checkpoints,when they entered a valley. Babi had Laila lean across the seatand pointed to a series of ancient-looking walls of sun-dried redin the distance.
"That's called Shahr-e-Zohak. The Red City. It used to be afortress. It was built some nine hundred years ago to defendthe valley from invaders. Genghis Khan's grandson attacked itin the thirteenth century, but he was killed. It was GenghisKhan himself who then destroyed it.""And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, oneinvader after another," the driver said, flicking cigarette ash outthe window. "Macedonians. Sassanians. Arabs. Mongols. Nowthe Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, andnothing pretty to look at, but still standing. Isn't that thetruth,badar?'
"Indeed it is," said Babi.
* * *Half an hour later,the driver pulled over.
"Come on, you two," Babi said. "Come outside and have alook."They got out of the taxi. Babi pointed "There they are. Look."Tariq gasped. Laila did too. And she knew then that shecould live to be a hundred and she would never again see athing as magnificent.
The two Buddhas were enormous, soaring much higher thanshe had imagined from all the photos she'd seen of them.
Chiseled into a sun-bleached rock cliff, they peered down atthem, as they had nearly two thousand years before, Lailaimagined, at caravans crossing the valley on the Silk Road. Oneither side of them, along the overhanging niche, the cliff waspocked with myriad caves.
"I feel so small," Tariq said.
"You want to climb up?" Babi said.
"Up the statues?" Laila asked. "We can do that?"Babi smiled and held out his hand. "Come on."* * *Theclimb washard for Tariq, who had to hold on to both Lailaand Babi as they inched up a winding, narrow, dimly litstaircase. They saw shadowy caves along the way, and tunnelshoneycombing the cliff every which way.
"Careful where you step," Babi said His voice made a loudecho. "The ground is treacherous."In some parts, the staircase was open to the Buddha's cavity.
"Don't look down, children. Keep looking straight ahead."As they climbed, Babi told them that Bamiyan had once beena thriving Buddhist center until it had fallen under Islamic Arabrule in the ninth century. The sandstone cliffs were home toBuddhist monks who carved caves in them to use as livingquarters and as sanctuary for weary traveling pilgrims. Themonks, Babi said, painted beautiful frescoes along the walls androofs of their caves.
"At one point," he said, "there were five thousand monksliving as hermits in these caves."Tariq was badly out of breath when they reached the top.
Babi was panting too. But his eyes shone with excitement.
"We're standing atop its head," he said, wiping his brow witha handkerchief "There's a niche over here where we can lookout."They inched over to the craggy overhang and, standing sideby side, with Babi in the middle, gazed down on the valley.
"Look at this!" said Laila.
Babi smiled.
The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields.
Babi said they were green winter wheat and alfalfa, potatoestoo. The fields were bordered by poplars and crisscrossed bystreams and irrigation ditches, on the banks of which tinyfemale figures squatted and washed clothes. Babi pointed to ricepaddies and barley fields draping the slopes. It was autumn,and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofsof mud brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry. The mainroad going through the town was poplar-lined too. There weresmall shops and teahouses and street-side barbers on eitherside of it. Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams,Laila saw foothills, bare and dusty brown, and, beyond those,as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the snowcappedHindu Kush.
The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.
"It's so quiet," Laila breathed. She could see tiny sheep andhorses but couldn't hear their bleating and whinnying.
"It's what I always remember about being up here," Babi said.
"The silence. The peace of it. I wanted you to experience it.
But I also wanted you to see your country's heritage, children,to learn of its rich past. You see, some things I can teach you.
Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well,you just have tosee andfeel.""Look," said Tariq.
They watched a hawk, gliding in circles above the village.
"Did you ever bring Mammy up here?" Laila asked"Oh, many times. Before the boys were born. After too. Yourmother, she used to be adventurous then, and…soalive. Shewas just about the liveliest, happiest person I'd ever met." Hesmiled at the memory. "She had this laugh. I swear it's why Imarried her, Laila, for that laugh. It bulldozed you. You stoodno chance against it."A wave of affection overcame Laila. From then on, she wouldalways remember Babi this way: reminiscing about Mammy,with his elbows on the rock, hands cupping his chin, his hairruffled by the wind, eyes crinkled against the sun.
"I'm going to look at some of those caves," Tariq said.
"Be careful," said Babi.
"I will,Kakajan," Tariq's voice echoed back.
Laila watched a trio of men far below, talking near a cowtethered to a fence. Around them, the trees had started toturn, ochre and orange, scarlet red.
"I miss the boys too, you know," Babi said. His eyes hadwelled up a tad. His chin was trembling. "I may not… Withyour mother, both her joy and sadness are extreme. She can'thide either. She never could. Me, I suppose I'm different. Itend to…But it broke me too, the boys dying. I miss them too.
Not a day passes that I…It's very hard, Laila. So very hard."He squeezed the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb andforefinger. When he tried to talk, his voice broke. He pulled hislips over his teeth and waited. He took a long, deep breath,looked at her. "But I'm glad I have you. Every day, I thankGod for you. Every single day. Sometimes, when your mother'shaving one of her really dark days, I feel like you're all I have,Laila."Laila drew closer to him and rested her cheek up against hischest. He seemed slightly startled-unlike Mammy, he rarelyexpressed his affection physically. He planted a brisk kiss onthe top of her head and hugged her back awkwardly. Theystood this way for a while, looking down on the BamiyanValley.
"As much as I love this land, some days I think about leavingit," Babi said.
"Whereto?""Anyplace where it's easy to forget. Pakistan first, I suppose.
For a year, maybe two. Wait for our paperwork to getprocessed.""And then?""And then, well, itis a big world. Maybe America. Somewherenear the sea. Like California."Babi said the Americans were a generous people. They wouldhelp them with money and food for a while, until they couldget on their feet.
"I would find work, and, in a few years, when we hadenough saved up, we'd open a little Afghan restaurant-Nothingfancy, mind you, just a modest little place, a few tables, somerugs. Maybe hang some pictures of Kabul. We'd give theAmericans a taste of Afghan food. And with your mother'scooking, they'd line up and down the street.
"And you, you would continue going to school, of course. Youknow how I feel about that. That would be our absolute toppriority, to get you a good education, high school then college.
But in your free time,if you wanted to, you could help out,take orders, fill water pitchers, that sort of thing."Babi said they would hold birthday parties at the restaurant,engagement ceremonies, New Year's get-togethers. It would turninto a gathering place for other Afghans who, like them, hadfled the war. And, late at night, after everyone had left and theplace was cleaned up, they would sit for tea amid the emptytables, the three of them, tired but thankful for their goodfortune.
When Babi was done speaking, he grew quiet. They both did.
They knew that Mammy wasn't going anywhere. LeavingAfghanistan had been unthinkable to her while Ahmad andNoor were still alive. Now that they wereshaheed, packing upand running was an even worse affront, a betrayal, a disavowalof the sacrifice her sons had made.
How can you think of it?Laila could hear her saying.Doestheir dying mean nothing to you, cousin? The only solace I findis in knowing that I walk the same ground that soaked uptheir blood. No. Never.
And Babi would never leave without her, Laila knew, eventhough Mammy was no more a wife to him now than shewas a mother to Laila. For Mammy, he would brush aside thisdaydream of his the way he flicked specks of flour from hiscoat when he got home from work. And so they would stay.
They would stay until the war ended And they would stay forwhatever came after war.
Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she hadmarried a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn'tunderstand. She didn't understand that if she looked into amirror, she would find the one unfailing conviction of his lifelooking right back at her.
* * *Later, after they'd eaten a lunch of boiled eggs and potatoeswith bread, Tariq napped beneath a tree on the banks of agurgling stream. He slept with his coat neatly folded into apillow, his hands crossed on his chest. The driver went to thevillage to buy almonds. Babi sat at the foot of a thick-trunkedacacia tree reading a paperback. Laila knew the book; he'dread it to her once. It told the story of an old fishermannamed Santiago who catches an enormous fish. But by thetime he sails his boat to safety, there is nothing left of his prizefish; the sharks have torn it to pieces.
Laila sat on the edge of the stream, dipping her feet into thecool water. Overhead, mosquitoes hummed and cottonwoodseeds danced. A dragonfly whirred nearby. Laila watched itswings catch glints of sunlight as it buzzed from one blade ofgrass to another. They flashed purple, then green, orange.
Across the stream, a group of local Hazara boys were pickingpatties of dried cow dung from the ground and stowing theminto burlap sacks tethered to their backs. Somewhere, a donkeybrayed. A generator sputtered to life.
Laila thought again about Babi's little dream.Somewhere nearthe seaThere was something she hadn't told Babi up there atop theBuddha: that, in one important way, she was glad they couldn'tgo. She would miss Giti and her pinch-faced earnestness, yes,and Hasina too, with her wicked laugh and reckless clowningaround But, mostly, Laila remembered all too well theinescapable drudgery of those four weeks without Tariq whenhe had gone to Ghazni. She remembered all too well how timehad dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feelingwaylaid, out of balance. How could she ever cope with hispermanent absence?
Maybe it was senseless to want to be near a person so badlyhere in a country where bullets had shredded her ownbrothers to pieces. But all Laila had to do was picture Tariqgoing at Khadim with his leg and then nothing in the worldseemed more sensible to her.
* * *Six months later, in April 1988, Babi came home with bignews.
"They signed a treaty!" he said. "In Geneva. It's official!
They're leaving. Within nine months, there won't be any moreSoviets in Afghanistan!"Mammy was sitting up in bed. She shrugged.
"But the communist regime is staying," she said. "Najibullah isthe Soviets' puppet president. He's not going anywhere. No, thewar will go on. This is not the end""Najibullah won't last," said Babi.
"They're leaving, Mammy! They're actually leaving!""You two celebrate if you want to. But I won't rest until theMujahideen hold a victory parade right here in Kabul"And, with that, she lay down again and pulled up the blanket.