Translated from the Dari by Dr. Zubair Popalzai
When the word “Ajah” is used as a person’s name, everyone knows that it refers to the woman called Ajah Ayyub. Ajah means “grandmother,” but Ajah Ayyub had no children. She was given the title “Ayyub” because—like the Prophet Ayyub who resisted Satan’s temptations in the face of God’s trials—Ajah’s determination saved her village from drowning.
She was descended from the line of Ibrahim, the bull rider, who, a century earlier, rose up against Amir Abdur Rahman Khan’s oppressive rule. The amir banished Ibrahim from Daikundi, one of the central provinces in Afghanistan. Ibrahim traveled four hundred kilometers north to Balkh province, on the border of Uzbekistan, and settled in the district of Chimtal.
In spring and summer, the weather in Chimtal is scorching. In autumn and winter it is freezing. It is in this place of extreme weather, at the foot of Shah Alborz mountain, that Ibrahim, Ajah’s grandfather, settled.
After Abdur Rahman Khan died, his son, Prince Habibullah, sought to make amends for his father’s injustices. He gave land to all those whom his father had exiled. That was how Ibrahim’s two sons, Alidad and Muhammad Ali, became landowners after the death of their father, Ibrahim.
Ajah was Muhammad Ali’s daughter. She was born in 1905, a pale-skinned child with dark brown eyes and hair, and a small, determined mouth. She was about seven years old when tuberculosis broke out in the district. Ajah’s uncle and his wife perished immediately from the disease.
People began to avoid each other for fear of contracting the sickness. When Ajah’s parents also fell ill, she had only the imam of the mosque to help her care for them.
Grief-stricken after her parents died, the child visited their graves at the end of every week. She would stand at their graveside, silent and alone, oblivious to the heat or cold until the imam came to fetch her. He took care of Ajah for two years.
One morning the imam took Ajah to survey the land that now belonged to her. Most of it was covered in weeds. The villagers had let their cattle graze there.
“I’m too old to help you farm this land.” The imam sounded sad. “I can try to sell it for you…”
Ajah shook her head. She looked into the old man’s face. “Are you too old to help me plant an orchard?”
The imam rested a hand on Ajah’s head and smiled down at her. “An orchard is a good idea. The trees will grow with you. They will be bearing fruits by the time you become a woman. You’re a very clever girl; you know what you want and you think ahead. It is your gift.”
It was a stormy winter’s day with waist-level snow piling up outside when the imam died. By then Ajah knew what it meant to live with grief and she bore the pain of her loss without a word. She had learned to love the imam. He’d rescued her when she was left an orphan, and was the only one in the village who was brave enough to help her bury her parents when they died from tuberculosis.
“You’re the daughter I never had,” he had told her once. “God did not bless my wife and me with children.”
Sha Hussain, the village chief, who had three wives and nine sons, took in the nine-year-old. He would buy her clothes and toys and trinkets and take her everywhere with him. It was probably because he had no daughter that he loved Ajah so much. Eventually, his wives became jealous of the affection he showed the girl. They were too resentful to obey the chief’s instructions to treat Ajah as their own daughter.
They forced her to knead the dough for the baking. She milked the cows and cooked for the entire household. She also looked after the three women’s nine sons. Yet Ajah never complained.
One afternoon Sha Hussain asked Ajah to bring him tea. When she placed the tray before him, he noticed her hands were chapped and red with blisters.
“What’s happened to your hands?” he asked.
Ajah did not answer.
The village chief got up and led the girl out to the women. He took her hands in his and raised them. “Why are her hands like this? What work have you been giving her?”
“She does nothing but play and sleep,” one of the wives replied.
Sha Hussain looked down at the girl. “Is that so?”
Ajah remained silent. The chief let her leave, but he was not satisfied.
Early next morning, he made his way to the kitchen. Ajah was in there, struggling to knead one sair of dough—that was seven kilos! He marched over to the girl, placed a hand on her shoulder, led her out to the courtyard and called his wives.
The women hurried into the courtyard to face a livid husband. “If you are forcing this child to make bread single-handedly for a family of thirteen, then you are no use to me. I’m divorcing you all this very day.”
Hearing the word “divorce,” the women panicked and began to wail. Ajah tugged at the chief’s shirt and knelt before him. “I asked them to give me work because I had nothing to do.”
Sha Hussain knew that Ajah was trying to protect his wives. He shook his head at the women. “Don’t you have a conscience? How could you ask this child to do the work of all three of you?”
Everything seemed fine after this but the chief knew the resentment of his wives would get worse as time passed so as soon as Ajah turned twelve he wed her to Hakim, Mirza’s son.
Mirza, a literate man, had already married off his five daughters. Hakim was his only son.
Ajah learned midwifery from her mother-in-law, Humaira—the only person in the village who delivered children. Whenever a woman was about to give birth, they would call on Humaira at any hour of day or night. Ajah sometimes accompanied her to help.
Humaira desperately wanted grandchildren. She worried when she saw that Ajah was not conceiving. “When will you have a baby?” she chided her. “What’s wrong with you? I deliver other people’s children day and night and my own son’s wife has not yet given him an heir. He’s all I have. If you don’t conceive, I will find him another wife.”
“Where can I get a baby from if God is not giving me one?” Ajah said.
“Well, I’m not going to wait until God gives you a child. I will take another wife for Hakim if it continues like this. Understand?”
It upset Ajah to see other women having babies so easily, and when two years passed without her conceiving, her mother-in-law took another wife called Leila for her son.
Leila was very beautiful. Hakim now spent most of his time talking and laughing with his new wife. Sometimes Ajah heard them from her room and would weep into her pillow at night.
Not a day went by without Leila taunting her about her infertility but Ajah never argued or answered back. Three years passed and Hakim’s second wife did not conceive. Now they knew the problem was with Mirza’s son. His mother, Humaira, could not bear the taunting and humiliation. She took ill and, soon after, died.
Within the first year of Humaira’s death, Hakim decided to go to the mountainous district of Charkent for treatment. There was a traditional healer there who was believed to have the cure for every ailment. He left home one morning to visit the healer and was brought back paralyzed from the shoulders down. He’d slipped off the narrow mountain trail, fallen down a cliff and had broken his neck.
When Leila saw there was no hope of him ever fathering children, she gathered the villagers, demanded a divorce in their presence, and left.
Mirza turned to Ajah, his voice soft with sadness. “My son is of no use to you either. Don’t waste your life with him. If you want a divorce, I won’t stand in your way. Go get married and have children. You are still young.”
“No,” Ajah said. She stood up straight and pulled her shoulders back. “I do not want another husband. Besides, you’re my family; you’re all I have. Who abandons their family in difficult times?”
Ajah cared for Hakim for seven years until he died. Again Mirza told her that she should remarry.
“I’m too old for that now,” she said. She was just twenty-seven, but her hair had gone gray at the front. Now, children called her Ajah, or Grandmother. She did not mind that; in fact, it pleased her very much. Soon, everyone referred to her by that name.
Mirza divided his wealth among his children and gave Hakim’s share to Ajah. She planted more trees on the hectares of land she had inherited. She filled her orchard with every variety of fruit tree in the province. Her almonds, peaches, nectarines, and apples grew fat on their branches, and alongside them she grew all kinds of berries, black and red and white. Ajah’s orchard became famous throughout Balkh province. It could be clearly seen from the very top of Shah Alborz mountain.
In July 1940, around the time that the government had announced that every able-bodied man must serve in the army, an earthquake struck the district. The village had almost been emptied of men. Children, old men, and the women had been left to tend to the animals and farm the land. It was a terrible time for everyone.
Her orchard was not destroyed but many of her fruit trees were damaged. Her beloved walnuts now stood with their roots exposed. She had wanted to grow old with them.
Later that month Ajah traveled to Shah Alborz to collect badrah. Every year, she would climb its slopes to harvest the medicinal plant. She had come to know the entire Alborz area like the back of her hand.
She was halfway up the mountain when she paused to look down on her orchard. It was then that she saw that the earthquake had split the slopes. A fissure now ran all the way down from the foot of the mountain to her village. She realized immediately what would happen to her beloved orchard when the melting snow turned to water and flowed into the ravine created by the earthquake. That water would go straight down to their village and destroy their crops and homes.
On her return, she called everyone to her house and pointed at the long gully that the earthquake had made from the mountain to the north side of the village. It was just visible from where they stood.
“Look up there,” she said pointing towards the slope. “Imagine what will happen when the snow melts and the water runs off the slopes into that gully.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Khalil, the village chief.
“That gully,” Ajah said, “will direct a flood straight towards the village.”
“Are you out of your mind, Ajah? What flood? My hair turned gray here and I do not remember the village flooding even once.”
“The bottom of the mountain is not like before! I saw it myself when I went up Shah Alborz to collect badrah. If you think me a fool and don’t believe me, go and see for yourself.”
Khalil irritated her. He was so different from Sha Hussain, who had been kind to her when she was a child.
“So, what do you suggest we do now?” the old man said with a sneer.
“We should dig a diversion channel to redirect the water and prevent the flood from entering the village.”
“But who will dig the channel? There are no men left. The government enlisted them all. Do you think these kids and old men should pick up shovels and pickaxes and dig?”
“But the women are still here. We will do the digging.”
“And who will work in the farm, look after the kids and cook?”
“We will take turns.”
“Ajah, you’re uttering nonsense. Can these women pick up shovels and pickaxes and dig the ground?”
“Of course they can! You just said they work the farm and look after the children. Why then can’t they use a pickaxe and a shovel to dig a swale?”
“It’s men’s work, Ajah Ayyub.”
“Is it?” Ajah adjusted her scarf and returned to her house.
The next day she made her way to the north end of the village where the gully reached her orchard. She started digging, ignoring Khalil’s sneers and jibes. She pretended not to hear the women who joked among themselves that she had grown old and had therefore lost her senses.
Ajah dug for a month until she connected her swale to the river.
The heavy rains began falling in November. One day it rained all afternoon, then late into the night. They were in bed when the water struck the village. Walls and houses crumbled under the weight of the tumbling flood. Women and children were washed away along with the livestock. Only Ajah’s house and orchard stood untouched.
A couple of days later, the weather was still brooding. The dawn light filtered through the hole in the ceiling of the room. All the houses in the village were made of mud, with semi-circular ceilings. In the dim light Ajah Ayyub stood before a large square mirror with grass stalks beautifully etched around its edges. She combed her hair and noticed that she had many more gray strands at the front of her head than at the back. She divided her hair into two equal parts, brought them to the front and started braiding them. When she finished, she flipped them back behind her head.
She had a beautiful araqchin hat woven in green and yellow. She put it on, her gray hair still showing, covered the hat with her red floral linen scarf and left the room. The chickens had come out and were strutting in the courtyard, pecking at everything.
Ajah went to the kitchen, picked up two pateer breads from the tablecloth, poured water into a jar, and tied a piece of leather around the head of the vessel. She put them both on the patio before entering the wheat storage room. Ajah returned with a shovel and a pickaxe and placed them next to the water and the bread. Then she brought out the donkey from her barn, secured the items from the patio in her saddlebag and laid it on the animal’s back.
The village was still asleep when she walked down the alley. She looked at the walls of the houses on either side, damaged by the floodwater, and sighed. Some of the trees were partially uprooted. In the dim light of the early morning, the farmlands lay flat and empty. Everything had been washed away. Ajah headed for the mountain, guiding the animal with caution because the path had become a mud track.
Ajah dismounted at the foot of the mountain and measured with her eyes the distance between the village and where she stood. She lifted the saddlebag off the donkey and picked up her shovel and pickaxe. Tightening her scarf around her head, she rolled up her sleeves and walked towards the end of the slope. Ajah began to dig.
She returned home late at night when the village was asleep, and rose with the morning call to prayer. Ajah packed her donkey with her tools, along with a small meal of bolani, and headed for the mountain.
A few days later, the villagers noticed Ajah’s absence.
“What’s happened to Ajah Ayyub? Where is she?”
“We saw her at the base of Shah Alborz,” Shabir, a young shepherd replied. “She’s been up there for a couple of days.”
“What’s she doing there?” the women asked.
“Digging,” the boy replied.
“Digging what?”
“A big drain.”
They remembered the flood that had done so much damage to the village, sparing only Ajah’s orchard and her house.
“Maybe she’s right,” Fazila, Shabir’s mother, said.
When Ajah arrived home, several women were sitting on her patio. She greeted them and tied the donkey.
“We hardly see you these days,” Shabir’s mother said.
Ajah seated herself among them. “I go to the mountain every day. I have work to do.”
Fazila put a cup of tea in Ajah’s hand. “I will join you tomorrow.”
Ajah shook her head. “No. You have to plow the land. I know what to do.”
“You are just one woman. How can you dig such a big drain on your own?” Fazila said.
Ajah did not answer her. She looked around her kitchen. The women had tidied it. They’d also prepared food and tea for her and left them on her stove.
Ajah set out earlier than usual the next morning. She was busy working when she heard voices. She turned and saw that Fazila and two other siah sar had come along with their cattle. There was no sign of their sons whose job it was to tend to the animals. “Where are the boys?” Ajah asked.
“We left them to plow the land,” one of the women replied. “We appointed the elderly men to teach them.”
The women left the animals to graze and, pickaxe in hand, they placed themselves behind Ajah and started digging.
By the second week, fifteen more women had come to join them. By then, they’d managed to widen the channel, and it was now many times longer than when they’d started. At lunchtime they spread a big cloth on the ground on which they laid yogurt, chakka, roghan-e zard, and boiled eggs. They sat around the food and chatted and laughed while they ate.
Fazila went quiet for a while. She was staring at the work they’d just completed. “How much have we dug so far, Ajah?”
“About six hundred meters,” Ajah said.
“We did all this!” Fazila said. Her eyes were wide with disbelief.
“We all did this! Old Khalil said we couldn’t,” Ajah laughed. “I would like to see his face when it is finished.”
She loosened her scarf and smiled at the group. “Imagine how much more we can do together.”
It was mid-November when the heavy rains began again. Aware that they had not completed the digging, Ajah saw the dark clouds gathering and ordered her companions to hurry back to the village because the downpour would not stop anytime soon. They grabbed their tools, loaded them onto the donkey, herded their cattle and hurried back to the village.
“Will all our hard work pay off?” The woman who spoke sounded worried.
“We must wait and see what happens,” Ajah replied calmly.
It was early afternoon when they arrived in the village. The rain had got heavier and the flooding had already started. They watched the thundering water sweep down through the channel they had cut, diverting part of the flow towards their agricultural lands. Their channel was not enough to turn away all the water, but most of it was redirected towards the river. So forceful was the flow, both sides of the channel were eroded, making it wider.
After the flood, almost every woman in the village joined the digging. They divided the work and took turns. Some stayed behind to look after the cattle and the children and cook for everyone, while others accompanied Ajah, who was there every day guiding them.
They were driven on by the outcome of the most recent flood. And in a couple of months, they had completed the excavation so that when the next great downpour came, they watched and celebrated as the rushing water, contained by the swale, missed the village completely and spilled into the river.
More floods came, and each time the water flowed straight into the river.
When the men returned to the village, they were astonished to see the women’s work.
They could not believe that Ajah and the women had built such a huge diversion channel by themselves.
“And why not?” Ajah said, with a quiet challenge in her voice. “They till the land; they raise your children. They lift buckets of water from the well every day. How difficult is digging a tiny channel when we women come together?”