Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield

job for her at the store.
    “So, where is Spandi?” I asked.
    “At the other end of the street selling his cards,” Jamilla revealed. “He’s looking so much better now that your friend Haji Khan took away his can.”
    “Yeah, fuck me, Fawad,” Jahid joined in. “Haji Khan. You’re playing with the big boys now.”
    “Do you know him?” I asked.
    “Yeah . . . well, no, not personally, but I’ve heard of him. He’s a real Afghan hero!”
    “Not a drug dealer, then?”
    Jahid shrugged. “Show me a rich man in Afghanistan who isn’t mixed up in drugs. It doesn’t make him a bad man, does it? This ‘stop growing poppy’ shit is the West’s problem, not ours. It’s all their people who are injecting the stuff and catching AIDS off each other. We’re just trying to get by.”
     
    “So, how do you know Haji Khan is into drugs?” I asked Spandi as we walked back home from Chicken Street.
    “It’s just something I heard.”
    Spandi was counting his dollars as we walked, separating his money from Haji Khan’s and placing the notes in different pockets. He did look better, cleaner and younger. If only his face hadn’t been chewed away by the sand flies disease, he might even have been called handsome now.
    “My father has some contacts in the east, some truck drivers who bring diesel over the border. They spend quite a bit of time in Jalalabad, and I’ve heard them mention Haji Khan once or twice.”
    “And they say he’s a drug dealer?”
    “So they say, but it’s only a rumor. He’s never been arrested or anything.”
    “And what do you think?”
    “Me?” Spandi shrugged. “I think it’s hard to arrest a man who’s fought for his country—and lost his family doing so.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “My father says Haji Khan used to be married to quite a woman, but the ISI killed her and their eldest daughter, shot them both as they lay in bed sleeping.”
    “No!” A twist of guilt pulled at my body as I pictured Haji Khan leaning over what was left of his wife and daughter, darkness and death drowning him in tears. “Why would they do that?”
    “He was fighting the Taliban, Fawad. It was probably a warning to him, but if that’s what they intended they fucked up badly because he fought like a madman after that. My father says some of his missions from Peshawar into Afghanistan were legendary because they were largely suicidal, but I guess Haji Khan didn’t care about dying after what happened. I don’t suppose he cared about anything.”
    I said good-bye to Spandi at the corner of the British Embassy in Wazir and popped by Pir Hederi’s shop to beg for a job for Jamilla. He told me he’d think about it, despite all women, no matter how young they are, being a curse to every Afghan man of sound mind, and I thanked him for his consideration, knowing full well he would help her, because otherwise he would have just said no.
    As I walked the long way home, past the large homes ofNGO workers, ministers, and businessmen and the laughter-filled grounds of the Lebanese and Indian restaurants, I thought of Jamilla and how happy she would be when I told her about Pir Hederi’s job. And as I got closer to my house I thought of how utterly destroyed Haji Khan must have been when he returned to his own home to find his family asleep forever, their bodies wet with blood.
    His pain was real to me. I could almost taste it.
    Amazingly, when foreigners visit this country, they can’t help but go on about its “breathtaking beauty” and how “noble and courageous” its people are, but this is the reality of Afghanistan: pain and death. There’s not one of us who hasn’t been touched by them in one way or another. From the Russians to the mujahideen to the Taliban, war has stolen our fathers and brothers; the leftovers of war continue to take our children; and the results of war have left us poor as beggars. So the foreigners can keep their talk of beautiful scenery and traditional goodness