When my father received an invitation to the marriage of two cousins of the Karzai family in Kandahar, he was in no condition to make the difficult trip and asked me to go in his place.
I was not prepared for the difference between Kabul and Kandahar. At our engagement party in Kabul, men, women, boys and girls, ate together and danced together. In Kandahar men and women celebrated the wedding on different floors of the hotel. Wedding guests in Kabul wore suits and dresses. In Kandahar they wore gebis and burkas. This I would have expected in Pakistan but not Afghanistan in 1972. It was like visiting a foreign country.
After I graduated from Habibia High in November 1972, I should have attended Kabul University at the beginning of the New Year—March on the Muslim calendar—but I had failed to take the qualifying exam. When Baba found out, he said, “You must do something with yourself. You should go to India and study English.”
India! I loved Indian music, which I had grown up listening to—especially the sitar. And I could improve my English. “Baleh, Baba. That’s a good idea,” I said.
“Bari!” he said with delight, “this is the first time in the whole of my life that I have heard you agree with me when I suggested something that would be good for you. Nothing pleases me more than to hear you say this. English is the language of the future.”
Before I left for India in 1973, our son, Walid, was born. I went to India alone because Afsana did not want to take care of an infant so far from her mother and family.
The college was in a nondescript old building in a poor section of Bombay—very different from what I had dreamed it would be. Three beds were crammed into my tiny, shabby room; the paint on the classroom walls was peeling; and I found it impossible to concentrate in the oppressive heat and humidity.
Over five million people filled the streets of Bombay with congestion and noise. A thick haze hung in the air. It turned the sky white during the day and hid the stars at night. I missed the streets of Kabul and the clear blue sky that turned into a canopy of stars in the pure darkness. Soon after I arrived, I was walking through the school’s large courtyard crowded with students. Weaving my way through the crushing mob, I saw an Indian student my age towering above the others like a mountaintop above the clouds. His eyes suggested an inner peace, a confidence, as if he were above the crowd spiritually as well. He strode along, unaffected by the sea of people around him. For a moment his eyes met mine, but he seemed to look right through me, as if I didn’t exist. I took an immediate dislike to him.
With the arrival of the month-long school holiday, all of the Indian students went home. I was alone in my room. I heard footsteps in the hallway and went to investigate. There stood the tall, arrogant Indian student I had seen in the courtyard. “I thought everyone went home for the holiday,” I said.
“I chose to stay,” he said. Then he added in classical Dari, “You are from Afghanistan.”
It took me a moment to recover from the shock of hearing him speak the ancient language of the Afghans and speak it so well. “Baleh, my name is Bar. It seems we are the only ones here.”
“I am called ‘The Wind.’ I stayed because I prefer this quiet time so I can meditate and grow my mind. I could sense your presence and sought you out.”
“How is it you speak Dari so well?”
“I studied Dari so I could read the original words of the great Afghan poets. Why? Because I want to come to my own understanding of their poems as they wrote them. It is very important to find things out for yourself and not rely on what others tell you.” He regarded me as if waiting for his words to take hold. “You are Muslim.”
“Baleh, that is true.”
“Do you yourself believe in Islam, or do you believe because you were born into it?”
I realized I had never thought about this before. Islam had always been part of my life, the life of my family, my friends, and neighbors. I knew nothing else, as if no other possibility existed. “I believe because my mother and father believe,” I answered.
“You know what is the difference between you and me? I accept something because I believe it. You accept something because someone else believes it.”
I had always felt so sure of myself, but what The Wind said was true. I hadn’t chosen Islam—Islam had chosen me. “Listen! Do you hear that?” he asked. I listened but heard nothing. “Listen again,” he said. Still, I heard nothing. “Go down the hall and look out the window.”
“You are joking with me.”
“Nay. I have never joked in my life. I am giving you a lesson in believing and accepting.”
I left him and wandered through the hallways until I came to a window. I looked down and saw a baby crying in its mother’s arms.
When I returned, The Wind said, “Did you hear the baby’s cries? I wanted to show you part of what I can hear. What I can feel. I sense you have a need for this. I can teach you to listen to the sounds around you—teach you to hear what I hear, feel what I feel, know what I know. The mind is like a muscle. Exercise your muscles, and they get stronger. Don’t exercise them, and they become weak. Don’t use them at all and they become useless. You have the power in you. It is only a matter of acceptance and training. I can be your guide.”
Wasn’t this the real reason I had come to India? I had found what I was searching for in this tall stranger who had at first seemed so repulsive. I imagined the look on Baba’s face when I showed him how I could hear things he could not. I would prove to him that there’s more to the world than what we can see, feel, hear, taste, and touch.
Two days later I found myself in an auto rickshaw (a small, motorized, three-wheeled taxi) traveling through villages and past farmhouses with The Wind until there was nothing but impenetrable jungle. “Stop here,” he told the driver. Now I was worried. “Indians hate Afghans, you know,” Uncle Ali had warned me. “Be careful. They will rob and kill you whenever they get the chance.” If I were killed, what would my family think? “How could Bar have been so stupid? We warned him. Going off into the jungle with an Indian stranger! He has only himself to blame.” As if he could read my thoughts, The Wind said, “Don’t be afraid. I don’t ask you to trust me, only yourself.”
After some time walking through thick jungle, we came upon a round fieldstone house in a clearing, where two men in white robes sat meditating on a stone patio.
“Join them,” The Wind said, “and listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“Listen to the silence. Forget about time. Do not move until I return.”
I sat and listened. I sat until my body went numb and all sense of time disappeared. Suddenly I heard a sound. The soft beating of a bird’s wings in the treetops? Or just the breeze teasing the leaves? A drumlike beat filled my ears—the rhythmic pounding of my heart. I could feel its steady pulse in my wrists.
When The Wind returned, I was almost too stiff to stand and only did so with a great effort. I looked at my watch. I had been sitting for six hours.
“If you are ready,” The Wind said, “I will take you to a village high above a valley. There you will spend a month in a small room, and your mind will learn to walk. You won’t have to ask people how they feel; you will know how they feel because you will feel what they feel. Your mind will become like your eyes, and you’ll see and hear what is now invisible to you.” He paused, then continued. “I see you are skeptical, but you can do this. It won’t be easy, but if you follow my path, you will be rewarded. Each day a plate of food will be placed in a circle of sunlight. Each day that place will be different, so you will never eat in the same place twice. This will break down the body’s power over the spirit. The spirit will no longer be the body’s servant, and you will be in touch with your true feelings.”
All my life, it seemed, I had been attracted to the mystical: the One Who Knows the Stars; the Mystic. Now I had a chance to experience this world for myself, something of which I had always dreamed. But if I were to follow The Wind, I would not learn English. And I had a wife and child now. “I can’t do this,” I told him, the words sticking in my throat. “I have other responsibilities.”
“Don’t think about what your family or others will say. Think of yourself and your spirit. Whatever you decide should be your choice.”
That night back in my dorm room, I slept on all The Wind had said.
In the morning my feelings had not changed. I searched for The Wind everywhere, up and down the corridors and throughout the whole dorm and campus. But he was nowhere to be found. It was as if he’d never existed—as if I had only imagined him.
I never saw The Wind again.
When I returned to Kabul, my father wanted to hear everything about India. I told him the story of The Wind. “Thank God you did not accept his offer,” he said.
“You should not dismiss The Wind so easily,” I said angrily. “He is a very powerful man.”
Baba gave me that look of his. “There are many powerful men in this world, Bari,” he said, “but that does not mean you should follow them.”