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Five Mujahedeen fighters were crouched in a line behind their leader, Ramin. Ramin’s band was hunkered down just inside the tree line. They had finally reached the most dangerous part on their long trek home. Stretched out before them was a snow covered, steep hill with no trees, no bushes, and no rocks, nothing that offered cover. Adding to the danger that faced them, the late morning sun hovered in the east above the hill’s summit. That meant the Afghans were heading into an open expanse of blinding white. As Ramin and everyone else who fought in Afghanistan knew death struck from above.
Those who held the high ground killed; those below died.
Ramin had spent nearly half of his twenty-nine years at war: first with other tribes, and now with the mighty Soviet Union. If there were Russians hiding atop the hill, then he would be leading his people to slaughter. But his case-hardened and battle-tested men were anxious to get back to their home village of Godri. They willingly risked an early entry into Paradise to be with their families. Although willing to die, Ramin was not ready to die. Not when there were so many Russians and their go khors (shit-eaters) to send to Hell.
The Mujahedeen had to reach Godri before nightfall. That meant they had eight hours left to complete a journey that these tough fighters could ordinarily finish in less than three. But Ramin’s men had a drag line attached: a pregnant woman, her three-year-old son, and her elderly father-in-law. Bad enough the final stage of their trek would be stop and go; but Ramin’s latest sortie into the Panjshir Valley had been a complete failure. They had left Godri five weeks ago with full magazines rammed into their AK-47s. And now they would return home still fully loaded. Not a shot had been fired because not a single Russian or go khor had been spotted. Ramin’s sense of failure had drained him emotionally, so that he did not listen to a little voice inside his head that warned: There are Russians up there. Watching. Waiting.
Ramin’s insides churned, but his guts were not the only ones that roiled. A long, loud, wet fart escaped from someone behind him.
“The Russians are trying to gas us, brothers,” one of the men joked.
“They want to kill us with an awful stink,” added another, laughing.
Black humor helped ease the tension.
Ramin felt a tap on his shoulder. Ebrahim was crouched directly behind him. Ten years older and far more experienced than even Ramin, Allah had blessed him with the eyes of a hawk, and then cursed him ugly with a nose like a hawk’s beak. He pointed to an almost invisible boot trail in the snow. If the trail led uphill, then Russians waited to greet his people with a hellfire of lead; if it pointed downhill, then the Russians were gone and it was safe to proceed.
Earlier, on this frigid morning the sun had begun its ascent above and across the eastern Hindu Kush. It had cast the snow capped, granite peaks in an orange hue before it dropped its light into the Panjshir Valley; also called the Valley of the Five Lions. Dawn had rolled across Ramin’s eyelids in shades of pink and yellow. The sun’s soothing warmth kissed his red-brown, weather-beaten face. Ramin not only looked, but felt older, than his years. His thick black beard was flecked with gray. He’d arisen with stiffened joints after enduring another night of shivering cold. He woke the others to break fast.
Ramin loved the Hindu Kush. The range ran for 800 km (500 miles) along the Afghan-Pakistan border. With elevations between 6,200 and 7,700 meters (20,000 to 25,000 feet), the Kush was one of the mightiest mountain ranges in the world. Pride and love for its green valleys and soaring snow-capped peaks, Ramin fought fiercely to kick the infidels out of his paradise on earth. Let the Russian maggots keep to the mounds of dung that had spawned them back in the Soviet Union.
After eating, his band began a forced march home to Godri. The village was nestled in foothills along the Valley’s eastern slope. Although an Afghan warrior whose duty was to protect the young, the old, and women, resentment festered in Ramin — especially towards the pregnant woman who had been holding them back. She’d put his whole band at risk. Once they left the cover of the trees, not only would the climb grow steeper, but the landscape would be wide open and desolate. And although early spring, when night fell frigid winds howled up from the Valley below. If they did not reach home by sunset all three stragglers would surely die of exposure.
And cold is such a cruel death.
“Stupid Hamdast,” Ramin growled to himself.
Hamdast, a nineteen-year-old idiot with wisps of fuzz on his chin, had the audacity to insist his wife and child accompany them on the trek home. And she seven months pregnant! Ramin had warned Hamdast to leave his wife in her family’s village of Barkah until June, after she delivered their second child. Barkah was twenty-two kilometers (fourteen miles) northwest of Godri, and Godri was two-hundred thirty-seven kilometers (one-hundred forty seven miles) east of the Soviet airbase at Bagram — short flights for Hind helicopters.
Death from above.
“If you bring your family with you,” Ramin had warned Hamdast, “your wife, young son and unborn child will not survive; some of our brothers might not either.”
Did the young fighter listen? Of course not; Hamdast may have the heart of a lion, but inside his skull grazed the brain of a mule.
Hamdast’s grizzled father, Hamza, though brave, was well past his prime. He was armed with an ancient Afghan shotgun. The quiet joke among the other Mujahedeen was that the rat-ta-tat-tats of a Kalashnikov automatic would cause what few teeth the old man had left to pop out of his mouth. But Hamza was a brave Afghan; he stayed by the woman’s side to protect and encourage his daughter-in-law. If it wasn’t for the old man, Ramin was convinced the woman would surely have given up less than a kilometer from her mother’s village. Women were weak-willed by nature and needed a strong man’s guidance, even one as old as Hamza.
Three hours later, the Mujahedeen had finally reached the tree line when Ebrahim spotted the boot trail.
Emotions and a sense of failure were like a blizzard in Ramin’s mind, overwhelming logic and sound judgment. If he could only close his eyes for twenty minutes, then perhaps the storm in his head might blow itself out. He had already made a mistake by allowing a woman and her child to accompany them, although none of his fighters complained. Instead the men doted on Hamdast’s family like kindly uncles. After all, it was the Afghan women and children who were the future of the Islamic state they all wanted to build.
A tired, “Go see what gifts those brave Russians have left us,” Ramin ordered.
Ebrahim grinned. “Probably loads of shit dropped out of their pants.”
After checking the boot trail, Ebrahim came back and told Ramin it was safe to proceed. The Russians were headed in the opposite direction, down the hill and back into the forest. Ramin’s mind sighed — Praise be to God! His relief was shared by the fighters behind him; except for Hamdast. The young fighter anxiously looked to the rear. That meant the stragglers had not caught up yet. The youngster’s eyes pleaded with Ramin to wait for his family.
Ramin nodded to Hamdast. To the men: “We’ll rest here and eat.”
No one argued. The men welcomed a break.
***
ANEESA DID NOT SEE the tree root buried in the snow that arched across the trail. She stumbled forward, fell to her knees, and nearly dropped her three-year-old son, Hamayoon. Jarred awake, he began to fuss. She screamed at him to shut up. Her ankles swelled tight in her boots; her shoulders ached from fatigue; her arms and feet felt leaden; her thighs burned with each exhausting step; her body sweated beneath layers of clothing, both chilling and then overheating her in intervals; her face grew beet red from the exertion of trudging uphill; and finally her back ached from the child she carried nestled against her left shoulder and the one she carried in her belly. Today was the third day of an awful journey from Barkah, the village where she was born, to Godri, her husband’s village.
Aneesa remembered a holiday she had taken with her family to Kabul when she was a little girl. They had watched a game of Buzkashi, (which means goat-grabbing). Two horse-mounted teams tried to carry, drop, or throw a headless goat’s carcass across a goal line. Three days ago, in Barkah, another contest had played out: Aneesa, her mother and her father-in-law, Hamza, on one side and Hamdast and her own father on the other. She felt like a headless carcass being tossed back and forth; she had no say in the matter. And according to which faction threw her across the goal line, she would either stay in her mother’s village until June, or make the trek to Godri. In the end, being an obedient Afghan wife, she bowed to her husband’s wishes. He wanted his son to be born in his village; so she joined his Mujahedeen band on their journey back to Godri.
A smile meant to reassure, “Don’t worry, Mama, I will be well protected,” she’d told her weeping mother before the band left.
And Hamza promised he would sacrifice his life to protect Aneesa and her born and unborn children.
Still on her knees, Aneesa bowed and touched her forehead onto the cold snow. Then she sat up on her haunches again, raised her fists over her head, and shrieked, “Aaa-yaa!” in defiance to an uncaring, merciless God. Then she screamed her husband’s name: “Hamdast!” because he was the true cause of her suffering. “Spuck shay!” (May you be disrespected!)
Hamayoon, still sitting next to her in the snow, reached up for her with tiny arms, but she was in no mood. She was the one who needed comfort!
Her father-in-law, Hamza (the Lion in Pashto), ran back and kneeled beside her. “Aneesa! Aneesa! What’s wrong? Is the baby coming? It’s too soon!”
“No, not yet, dear father,” she sighed, clasping onto his forearm. “We must go on. Please help me up.”
Although she could no longer endure for her own sake — she wanted to lie down in the snow and die — the lives of Hamayoon and, hopefully, the daughter she carried, all they had was her strength and her will to survive. As she struggled to her feet, she asked Hamza to help her off with her coat. Aneesa’s layers of insulation had left her sopped with sweat.
“Aneesa,” pleaded the old lion, “you’ll catch cold; that will be bad for my new grandchild.”
“I said help me get this damn rag off! I’m burning up!” Damn these men who believed it was their duty to tell her what she could and could not do! Then she remembered that she must not take it out on her poor father-in-law. After all, he had taken her side. She was really angry at herself because she had not resisted Hamdast’s demand that his son be born in Godri. She had asked him what if the baby was a girl. He grumbled that he made boys not girls.
Aneesa had held her tongue. But in the privacy of her mind: Fool! Without women and girls there would be no boys!
After helping her out of her outer garment, the old lion roared: “Hamdast! Hamdast!” To Aneesa, “He should be here with us! Damn the one who has raised such a selfish son!”
Aneesa gave him an exhausted grin. “That’s you, Hamza, you curse yourself.” She tossed the coat into the snow.
“He takes after his mother. She spoiled the boy.” He picked the coat up and wrapped it around his shoulders.
The trail left by the fighters began to slope downhill, so the stragglers moved quicker. The old lion carried his grandson on his shoulders; Aneesa trudged behind them.
“Hamza!” she called. She felt chilled again, so they stopped. “Give me my coat, please.”
When they finally rejoined the five fighters, Aneesa staggered to where her husband sat with his back leaned up against a tree. She let herself drop into his strong, young body. He was still her rock and her protector whom she loved despite his obstinacy.
“Oh Hamdast, I’m so tired. It’s been so hard.”
He offered her soft encouragement: “I know, I know, dear wife. We’ll rest here and eat, but we can’t stay long. We must get home before dark.”
Your home not mine! Again she pushed anger back down her throat. Then Aneesa closed her eyes and nodded off. Her son’s whining woke her. Hamayoon squirmed when his grandfather tried to force him to eat something.
“He’s exhausted, Hamza,” she told her father-in-law. “He doesn’t want to eat; let him sleep.”
Hamza took his grandson and cradled the boy in his lap. Hamayoon’s eyes fell shut and his breathing deepened. Then she noticed Hamdast direct his father’s attention to the hill that lay in front of them.
Alarmed, “What Hamdast, what? Russians?”
Hamdast replied, “They’re long gone, Aneesa.”
“Probably crawled back into their rat holes,” snickered the old lion.
Despite her husband’s and father-in-law’s attempt to downplay the threat, Aneesa was struck by a dreadful premonition:
None of them would ever see Godri again.
***
LIKE SPRING’S RUNOFF, swift, fresh, and clear, confidence surged in Ramin. Judging by the sun, he guessed it was still mid-morning. They had enough hours of daylight left to reach Godri. What a joy to be alive! Soon he would be home with his beloved family. He smiled as he watched his Mujahedeen tenderly share their food and comfort Hamdast’s pregnant wife. The woman had transformed these hard men. Because of her, they had kept a small piece of their humanity. For that he praised God.
He finally asked Ebrahim, “What is Hamdast’s wife’s name?”
“Aneesa. It means companion in Arabic.”
“Aneesa,” he repeated softly. She was no longer the woman. She was now a human being with a name.
A half hour later, Ramin gave the signal to move out. The slow climb began. Ramin and three fighters took the lead, followed by Hamdast carrying his son on his strong shoulders, while the old lion and Aneesa brought up the rear. Ramin stopped and was pleased to see that the entire group still hung together in a line.
Suddenly, as he turned to lead his band forward, cracks of gunfire and white hot lead streaked down upon them. Two thuds smacked into his chest. One lung burned as if pierced by a red hot spear, and then he felt his heart explode. A bullet smashed into Ramin’s face and pushed jagged shards of his lower jaw and teeth down his throat.
Ramin felt his soul begin to detach from its earthly body while his mind’s eye began to free-float away from the scene of the massacre. He saw his own corpse and those of his brothers lying in heaps of red snow. Figures in white camouflage descended the hill, firing weapons that tore his people to pieces.
Higher and higher he soared until the human drama below was reduced to a spec being swallowed by the majesty of the Hindu Kush. Never again would he stand in awe of their beauty, never again would he smell the springtime scents of pine forests or meadows of mountain flowers.
Was he making a final journey to be with God in Paradise? Or was he being damned to Hell for letting his people be butchered?
Allah, forgive me! his spirit pleaded.
And then, like a switch, his consciousness clicked off.