The Quiet Afghan

It had been eleven years since Afshin had journeyed out of Mazar-i-Sharif, through the stony deserts and forbidding mountains of the Hindu Kush, to meet the friend who put people to sleep by looking at them. News had travelled from beyond the tribal lands to the East that he'd died.

It stirred potent memories of when he met him those long years ago. He’d shuttered up his shop, happy to leave. Business was poor, few people wanted to buy watches since fighting had broken out again. Even his supplier, keen to travel anywhere for the black market dollar, chose to stay in Kabul rather than risk long journeys.

Afshin's concerns were more immediate, would the ancient National Service bus, with its faded blue deeply scratched paint, fluorescent lights and stripped down metal interior, make the 300 mile journey without breaking down?

The engine and gears held tight. It was the roads that alarmed him. Too many times the bus swung perilously close to the edge of the mountain roads. The twisted wrecks of those that had plunged over the edge were clearly visible at the foot of the dizzyingly steep, mud brown, ravines.

In the sandy flatlands the bus rattled and coughed its way along the dirt tracks. To avoid being choked by the ubiquitous clouds of swirling dust, he’d covered his mouth and nose with the loose cloth tail of his turban for almost all of the journey.

He sighed as he passed rusting tanks, chewed up remains of what looked like artillery guns from another age, and the bare metal frames of Toyota pickups, the aftermath of the zealots’ fighting. Among the rusting debris he’d sometimes see bleached white bones poking out of mounds of windblown sand.

The fiery fanatics had risen from the villages and set the country alight, destroying anything and anyone who they thought subverted the Qur’an. The many checkpoints on the journey were testament to the fact that fighting hadn't finished, that the fundamentalists would rather die than give up their beliefs.

Certainly, they'd imposed their harsh ways on the people. But despite their efforts they couldn’t annihilate a mythical culture that stretched from Baghdad to Lahore, from Herat to the borders of the Hindu peoples’ country. But they'd largely silenced their own people.

Reciting mythical stories that had passed down through generations led to execution. No one would dare whisper of the revered Sheiks who it was said had descended from the highest heavens to learn how to be human so they could gather up lost souls. Tales that spoke of the mythical bird, who had led other birds on an arduous journey to heaven would lead to death by a bullet.

Qawwali singers who threaded beautiful harmonies to sing of the magical wonders of the world without time, its djinns, beings of light, the meeting of the the sun and the cave, and skulls whose ears are joined to the heart, simply invited death into their homes. A famous Qawwali singer, wildly popular across many countries, had already been slaughtered.

If Afshin hadn’t known what he knew now his heart would have pined for the crowded tents decorated with blue, red, green, white fairy lights and silver and gold tinsel, alive with mythical stories, the elaborate poetry of ghazuls, and fervent joyous singing. None of which existed any longer. But now, after meeting the friend, he looked upon these things as the pale reflection of the sun in a pool of muddy water.

When he’d arrived at his destination, a distant village beyond Kabul, no one was to be seen. Silence cloaked the streets. Even the ubiquitous wild stray dogs, ribs poking through skinny bodies always snuffling at mounds of rubbish, were absent. He was confused. Along with the bus driver he looked around for someone. Anyone. Suddenly a small boy, with thick matted black hair, appeared from an alleyway between the brown baked mud dwellings.

The boy waved at them shouting, “Pardesi, pardesi,” foreigner from another land, and running back into the alley beckoned them to follow him. Beneath a clutch of trees a large yellow and red shamiyana tent had been set up. It seemed like all of the villager were there sitting in hushed stillness. The way in which the foreigner tied his turban told Afshin that he was from beyond the Eastern mountains. There was a lightness and power about him. Afshin was captivated.

He was quoting the poetry of Rabia al Basri, the greatest of female Sufis. Afshin remembered the verses from childhood. His mother often sang them around their home, her melodic voice saturated with poignant longing. The manner in which the foreigner, as he was known to Afshin then, explained the verses in a way that he’d never understood as a child.

The friend spoke quietly but forcefully, “Love is an ineffable mystery, a river that never stops flowing, a light that is always shining, the sweetest of scents that only gives up its secrets to those who lay their heads on the altar of self-annihilation. It is beyond time yet closer to you than your lips. Rabia says that time is like a curtain which love draws back…” The air around him shimmered and rippled.

On the third day of sitting beneath the shamiyana slowly and almost imperceptibly a gentle pulsating feeling beat rhythmically in Afshin’s forehead. The friend glanced at Afshin, and the throbbing gave way to a powerful and irresistible suction, pulling his attention inwards until he collapsed, asleep to the world.

He awoke several hours later. Yet he felt he'd only been gone for a moment. Lightness and joy flooded through him. The burdens of his life, like a pack mule’s load, now felt no heavier than a winter shawl. The foreigner had become the friend.

The next day he beckoned Afshin forward. As Afshin approached he was stilled by reverential awe. The friend smiled warmly, “Soon, I have to leave, and I won’t be able return. You are like a ripe watermelon but listen closely, use this time to digest everything you have been shown.” Afshin was hypnotised by his luminous eyes.

“Time is like the curtain which hides the women in purdah. Take to this practise that I am revealing and gradually the curtain will be pulled back.” Afshin knew there was nowhere in the world and nothing so important in that moment, as sitting beneath the shamiyana.

When the friend made ready to leave, his companion handed out bags of sweet, puffed rice to the people. The friend gave Afshin a metal cup engraved with swirling lines. As he handed it to Afshin he gently said, “You cannot fill the cup of love if it is turned upside down. Never forget the zikr I have revealed for a day, an hour, and the curtain will be drawn back slowly, but it will open.”

Afshin was a simple man, illiterate, and he couldn't, nor did he want to, give expression to what he saw and felt; he locked tightly the ancient mysteries in his heart, as though guarding a precious jewel.

But he knew that if the zealots had seen what he had seen they would abandon their fiery and ignorant ways. If the arrogant white people who brought dollars, built schools and roads, killed indiscriminately and then fled, had experienced the same, they would have thrown their weapons away. If the greedy landowners had experienced what he had, they would stop uprooting farmers and making people homeless, in search of oil and metals, adding fuel to the fire of the fundamentalists.

As he journeyed back across the deserts these half formed thoughts filled his mind. Set against the ever present backdrop of the remembered friend they were like fleeting clouds blowing across the face of a luminous moon. The ubiquitous skeletal remains of rusted vehicles reinforced the inarticulate knowing that he could never give voice to. But if he could he would have said, "If we look to the past, we'll see the future, if we look inwards then we'll look out with eyes of beauty and stop destroying." To Afshin it was a simple knowing. To the world he was a backward peasant.

______________________________________________

These memories overwhelmed Afshin. He wanted to be back with the friend, not here in Mazar-i-Sharif, enveloped by the somnolent shroud that had descended on the bazaar. He wiped a tear away. Another followed. Afshin looked around.

The summer heat was like a nan oven, impossibly hot and dry. Many of the usually loquacious traders wilted and pulling down shutters, locked themselves in the dim and cool recesses of their bullet pocked cement walled shops.

They tended to ignore Afshin these days. He had become quiet. They thought he’d been touched by the sun. A few resolute traders remained sitting upright, though quietly dozing. Others clambered beneath wooden stalls or retreated into the dusty recesses of chai shops, to talk, secretly smoke and slumber.

A blue tinged smog of diesel smoke hung in the air, belched from the three-wheeled taxis that noisily rattled through the narrow coiling alleys of the bazaar, a signal that the sun was at its fierce highest point in the sky and the day was slowing to a stop. The drivers halted in shady alcoves, threw thin damp cloths over their faces, and slept. A scrawny dog limped into the shade and keeled over panting.

Afshin, wiping another tear from his eye, looked in the distance to the magnificent blue domes of the tomb of Ali ibn Abi Talib. Whispering a respectful prayer he chuckled and gathering up his watches, retreated into the sparse concrete room behind his stall, pulling the shutter down.

On a high shelf, above a small red woollen mat, was the engraved cup given to him by the friend. He picked it up and turning it around in his hands stroked it softly. He pulled out a rolled-up piece of paper from the cup, a poem he had written in memory of the friend:

Brighter than the noonday sun,

Softer than a new born baby,

Cooler than a summer moon,

Finer than pashmina silk.

Your smile spans the seven skies,

Your presence melts into the heavens,

And from that mysterious gaze,

Pearls of immeasurable knowledge fall,

Into the unfathomed depths of my being.

A loving whisper of unknown knowing caresses me,

And return to my ancient home is sealed.

Removing his turban he sat on the mat. Closing his eyes he felt the powerfully insistent suction between his eyes. The true gift from the friend. Flicking his eyes open he stretched to place the cup on the shelf.

It wasn’t balanced properly and wobbled precariously on the edge of the shelf, about to fall off. But such was the insistent beat in his forehead Afshin thought, "Let it tumble" and gave in to the pull.

His eyes flicked shut as his attention was pulled inwards. Leaving his body he immediately sped towards a shimmering moon. Bursting through the moon in a shower of sparkling stars he gazed in awe on a field of living emerald light. A surge of joy thrilled his being.

He watched a long column of unhappy people, herded by djinns, drag large bundles from one building to another across the field. Some were pulled out of the column by the djinns and sped in the direction from which Afshin had come, clutching tightly to their bundles.

At the furthest limits of the field, wisps of smoke burst from the ground. He saw a vast dark-skinned army march across a dusty plain towards a city. Subtle entities swirled around a war weary population causing unrest and civil strife.

Looking up, a luminescent sun punctured an inky black sky. He flew towards its surface. It was cool. Light encircled him in a loving embrace. It was the friend. He spoke within Afshin’s mind, “Look.” From a huge city of light silver streams of energy flowed down like a waterfall, sustaining the world’s below.

The friend took him further, into the skies far beyond the city. As they flew upwards, beings of light parted, bowing in reverence to the foreigner and Afshin. Emerging from a crooked tunnel, myriad stars burst open; cascades of blue and red tear drops tumbling down like waterfalls, forming a surging ocean spreading in every direction.

Afshin heard the beating of a drum that was outside yet also part of him. It called him to go higher. He felt a sense of tremendous conquest as though he could move a mountain. Again the friend spoke within: “The drum’s beat marks the path home, but you cannot go further yet; the curtain is not fully drawn. You must keep time a little longer.”

He didn’t want to return to the strange sad land he used to call home. But he was falling. It was inexorable . He descended along a single thread woven in the heavenly regions. The further he fell the more the thread split into strands, four, eight, twelve, and on and on beyond counting, ending in a impossibly tangled pile in the world of flesh and blood. His earthly life was the entwined threads stopping him from rising further. They could only be untangled by seeing out the rest of his life.

He suddenly felt the heavy weight of his body, the heat of the room, the choking smell of diesel smoke. Opening his eyes he glanced at the shelf above, held out his hand… and caught the falling cup.