The Haha Man Read online

  For Bob & Fiona

  Epigraph

  The true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.

  Faiz Ahmed Faiz

  Hazaran qaul — e khob — o naghz — o barik,

  Azo yaband chon tar-e Hazara.

  It is from wisdom that spring thousands of fine and

  thoughtful words,

  As does music from the strings of a Hazara lute.

  Nasir Khusrau Balkhi

  Contents

  Cover

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Author

  ALSO BY SANDY McCUTCHEON

  Copyright

  They were the children of the Great Khan. Sweeping in with the Mongol hordes, they stayed and settled as Ghengis Khan marched onwards into history and eventual oblivion. They were the Hazara. And, like a wind-born seed taking root in a crevice, they remained in the lands of Khorasan and made it their own. Abandoning their ancient religion and its huge stone idols, the Hazara became Shia Muslims. Their neighbours, the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks, did not look kindly on these newcomers and there was much blood shed. For their neighbours were not Shia but Sunni who launched a jihad or holy war against the ‘Mongol Hazara’, deeming that they should convert or die.

  With the bloodstained passage of the centuries came changes. Their lands gained the name Hazarajat, and with the coming of the Russians and the British, Khorasan became Afghanistan. Yet through all the changes one thing remained constant for the Hazara, and that was fear. For the Hazara remained Shia and the blades of the Pashtun remained sharp and thirsty. Thousands of Hazara were put to the sword and thousands more fled abroad, and yet a core, stubborn as mules, clung to their homes amidst the mountains.

  The years flowed past without respite. Kings were deposed. Regimes rose and fell. Armies criss-crossed the land and faded away, their red flags fluttering briefly and then tattering. And from their valleys the Hazara watched as, slow as lichen, the first faint rays of light from the modern world reached out and touched them. Now, the young men said, it will get better. But the old men counselled caution. For, from the ashes of recent conflicts, something evil was rising, ready to plunge the country back into the past. And those that arose nurtured the ancient hatreds of the Hazara. The old days had returned, wrapped in the robes of the Taliban.

  The first politician to be struck down was the Minister for Education. During the two-week parliamentary break he had been on a family holiday on the Gold Coast. About three in the afternoon his wife and children headed down to the beach for a swim but the minister opted to stay and watch the cricket. He had been complaining of a headache for almost two days and decided that the last thing he needed was more sun.

  When his family returned an hour and a half later they found him on the floor of the bathroom, racked by pain and fever. Even more worrying, he was bleeding from his gums and nose.

  It was over a month before the disease was diagnosed accurately. But the minister was dead long before that. He was the first, but there were plenty to follow.

  PART ONE

  It wasn’t the heat but the humidity that hit him hard. The heat he could endure, but the airless oppressive atmosphere was debilitating. Since early morning the oxygen had been drained from the air and replaced with a sticky liquid which seemed intent on clinging to him like a blanket. Within minutes of leaving the house he was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his back, the collar irritating his neck. He had considered rescheduling his meeting, postponing it until an evening when at least the temperature would have dipped below thirty. But it was too late. The contact had been made, the time and place set. Changing things now would have increased the risk and necessitated just as much effort. He couldn’t use the phone in his house — he never did these days — and taking his own car to a public phone was just plain silly. Anyway, at this stage there was no way he could contact the man he was meeting. Long ago they had decided that their own phones were too risky, so now they stuck to encrypted email. Having planned this day so well he would go through with it.

  He sat alone in the shade of the bus shelter and waited. Despite the heat he had walked fast and now had ample time to catch his breath and allow the doubts to subside. It was not that he hadn’t hesitated about committing to the meeting in the first place, his better judgement urging caution, but after a year of acquiescence he felt the need to take command of his own life. So much had happened in the last two months and by boarding the bus into the city he was moving towards a career he had never envisaged. It was as though the old Fossey had died and the new one was only partially emerged from the chrysalis, still encumbered by old habits, old ways. His new skin was alien to him, stiff, unyielding. And, he conceded, it might never — probably never — feel entirely comfortable, for he was stepping not only outside his own comfort zone, but into a life that was far removed from anything most people would call acceptable.

  He glanced back up the road, looking for the bus. No, he told himself — looking for the police, or at least an unmarked car that would confirm his paranoia. But there was nothing other than a couple of women struggling home, loaded down with plastic supermarket bags, their dresses stained with perspiration on their backs and under their armpits. He watched as they paused in the shade of a straggly jacaranda and rubbed their hands where the bags had cut in. Someone should invent a handle for those bags, he thought. Probably had. Silly that they … He stopped the thought and considered the way his mind had taken the first available exit from the real purpose of his trip. Coward. But still he admired the jacaranda’s vivid flowers, which hung like overripe grapes over the women’s heads. Above the tree, dark clouds were massing.

  He had worked his movements out with great care. First leg was a bus ride into the city, followed by a taxi heading in the direction of St Lucia. Then, if everything went according to plan, he would have the one and only face-to-face meeting he had committed to. It was not that he didn’t understand the task he had set himself, but rather that there were subtleties that he didn’t comprehend; things that needed teasing out. Email, for all its convenience, had certain drawbacks … His musing was interrupted by the arrival of the bus. With a casual glance over his shoulder, he boarded and took a seat at the rear.

  Mazar-i Sharif, Afghanistan, 8 August 1998

  In the mornings, when the sun, still low, threw flat shadows across the land, swallowing the dryness, softening the rocks and painting the trees in a gentle glow, it looked like paradise. The man stood at the second-storey window and gazed out over the groves of almonds. He had other trees, figs, plums and apricots, but it was the almonds, planted by his grandfather over a hundred years before, that he loved. Each March, as they flowered, he would walk up and down the long rows, savouring his first memories, of being a child gazing up at the sprays of blossom. Now, in August, the nuts had formed and yet still he remembered the flowers and his father’s remark that they were the sweetest gift of God. Those memories were now years in the past but still they never failed to draw him at this, his favourite time of day, when he’d completed his sunrise prayers and was enjoying a cup of tea. The view from the window was one he had grown up with and in all his fifty-eight years he had never tired of it.

  This year the spring rains had been kind, the trees had blossomed heavily and the limbs were now bowed under the weight of nuts. Last year had been lean and if he only had that crop to depend on he would have been suffering. But Ahmed Mazari was a man of substance whom friends and neighbours respectfully addressed as Ahmed Khan or Ahmed Beg. His nuts, fruit and honey melons represented only a small part of his wealth and it was in another area entirely tha
t his family’s fortune had been made. Allah had been good to Ahmed Mazari. During the time of the Russians he used his brother’s contacts in Pakistan to bring in trucks and spare parts. And his customers, the Mujahedin, had pipelines into which flowed the American money that had sown the seeds of Ahmed Beg’s prosperity; it had also educated Karim, his eldest son, in England.

  Karim Mazari had studied English language and politics at the London School of Economics, the LSE, but on his return had thrown himself into the family business and become an expert mechanic. Afghanistan was a country that needed mechanics more than it needed politics. It was, after all, politics that had brought them to the edge of ruin time after time, and politics seemed destined to do so again. A mechanic, on the other hand, was someone useful. There were few who could afford the modern trucks and cars that the Mazaris had at their disposal, and the old vehicles needed every bit of Mazari know-how to keep running. Karim displayed an uncanny ability to diagnose a problem in a matter of minutes and then, often with great ingenuity, fashion parts from whatever was on hand. Shell casings, wrecked Russian armoured vehicles, all yielded up the precious metal which he fashioned to his needs. As the locals told it, if Karim Mazari can’t fix it, it’s dead.

  All in all, Ahmed Mazari had reason to be proud of his family’s accomplishments. He turned from the window and crossed the room to the back of the house. Opening a shutter, he looked out towards the city just a few miles away to the north. Earlier, just after dawn, as he completed his prayers, he had heard gunfire coming from the northwest of the city. It was a worrying development, for rumours had already reached him of the growing tensions between the various factions of the United Front. Ahmed Mazari had argued with the commanders that division meant death and thought he had been listened to. The gunfire from Qala Zaini was an ominous sign. The Taliban had taken Shiberghan and there were reports they had moved on Balkh. The one comforting thought was that as long as the main Hizb-I Wahdat force was encamped at Qala Zaini, the walled area west of the city, then Mazar-i Sharif was safe.

  Ahmed Mazari was tired of the fighting and felt a sudden premonition that he should have taken his family to the West before now. It was not a question of money. He had enough safely over the border in a Pakistani bank. No, it was this place. He knew that leaving the almond groves would be, at least for him, a one-way trip. This was his heritage and the repository of his life and memories. What would his wife have counselled? He knew the answer. Saleema would have told him to take his son and his family as far from Mazar-i Sharif as possible. He drained his tea and glanced at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. Karim should be here. Then, as if the power of his thought had summoned it up, he saw the telltale plume of dust that signalled his son’s arrival. Years before, he had purchased part of his neighbour’s land in order to give Karim the adjoining property to set up his workshop.

  Ahmed Mazari went downstairs, slipped into his sandals, crossed the courtyard and unlocked the gate. Above his head a hen made its way cautiously along the wall, as though it believed its weight would somehow collapse the thick mud-bricks. As he swung the gate wide his beautiful bushkashi stallion, Sultan, eyed the opening but made no move towards it. On the days when there was a bushkashi match things were different and from early in the morning he would have been pampered, but on this morning, realising his master was not about to take him anywhere, he snorted once and ambled back into the shadows. The chickens scattered as the Toyota Hilux turned in front of the house and came to a stop. Ahmed noted with satisfaction that the reconditioned engine that had been in the rear of the vehicle the night before was gone.

  ‘No problems?’

  Karim stepped from the cab and embraced his father. He was a tall man who looked younger than his thirty-three years. On occasion his father joked that Karim’s time out of the country had corrupted him and that he was no longer a pure Afghan. ‘You have breathed in too much British air. Eaten too much English food.’ Karim secretly agreed. He did feel different, but it was not the food or the air that had corrupted him, it was the inescapable understanding that there was another world outside of Afghanistan. He had travelled to Pakistan, of course, accompanying his father on his business trips, but neither Peshawar nor Quetta had struck him as being ‘foreign’. It was his time in England that had formed much of his character; not just his formal education, but his warm relationship with English friends, one of whom had earned Karim’s deep respect by rescuing him from what might have been a nasty racial incident.

  ‘No problems.’ Karim took a wad of notes from his pocket and thrust it into his father’s hands. ‘Amin Khan complained about the price.’

  ‘The old goat. We agreed.’ Ahmed Mazari glanced at the notes and started counting them.

  ‘It’s all there. He complains, but in the end he pays, otherwise I would have brought the engine back.’

  ‘And he insists his son can install it?’

  Karim shrugged. ‘If not we charge him twice what we quoted.’

  Ahmed Mazari tucked the wad of money away. ‘Come, I don’t want to be all day.’

  The trip into Mazar-i Sharif took fifteen minutes. Following his father’s instructions Karim parked the Toyota outside his cousin Khidhar’s house in the shade of the tree that hung gracefully over the thick mud wall. Through a well-worn gap in the wall Karim’s two young nephews appeared, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to be of service. They called their dog and took up guard in the back of the pickup and, knowing they would be well rewarded, promised to remain there until the men returned.

  As Karim and his father walked towards Rouza-e Mubarak, the shrine in the centre of Mazar, they passed through lines of beggars: women, old men, victims of landmines and horrific war wounds. Ahmed Mazari had a reputation as a hard man for whom compromise was normally not an option, but those close to him knew that he was also a man of generosity and kindness. He would bargain hard and where he was owed would take what was his down to the last pul. Yet when he came across hardship he was the first to give succour and it was well known that his home was open to the stranger and the needy. Ahmed Mazari pulled a few notes from his robes and handed them to Karim. ‘I swear there are more beggars every day,’ he said quietly.

  Karim had never really understood the modest streak in his father that made him feel uncomfortable with public displays of charity but he knew better than to question it. He took the money and distributed the notes as they walked.

  Even as they entered the bazaar Ahmed Mazari realised something was wrong. He sensed it. Instead of the usual cacophony the bazaar was silent, and for a moment he thought his hearing had gone.

  Karim reached out and grabbed his father’s arm. ‘Wait.’

  Ahmed Mazari stopped, alert. Vendors and shoppers alike were turned towards the western end of the bazaar. But he didn’t get a chance to see what they were looking at.

  At that moment, the first of the mortar shells exploded, shattering the silence and propelling the crowd into wild panic. A second and then a third mortar exploded and from somewhere he heard machine-gun fire.

  He turned to push Karim back, but as he did he felt a sudden shocking pain in the side of his head and then nothing.

  Karim, shielded by a group of men in front of him, was more fortunate. The men fell like mowed grass, leaving him standing. It was then that he saw what had silenced the crowds and demanded their attention.

  Streaming in from the western entrances were trucks and pickups. He only needed one glance to understand. The black flags and black turbans of the men in the trucks were instantly recognisable.

  The Taliban were returning to Mazar-i Sharif.

  Karim spun around, reaching for his father, but he was gone. Then he saw him, sprawled on the paving stones, blood flowing from his head. He bent down to touch him but around him the initial shocked inaction was replaced by a stampede, as people, galvanised by fear, attempted to escape. On the far side of the bazaar the Taliban opened fire with machine guns mounted on the truck
s and Karim was knocked backwards by the surge of people desperately trying to flee. In their panic people kicked and screamed, pushing forward heedless of what lay beneath their feet. Knocked onto the pavement, Karim realised he could die there, trampled by the mob. In desperation he rolled sideways and flailed with his arms, trying to grab onto something, anything, to drag him up from the ground. But it was hopeless; feet and legs knocked him, sending him stumbling and reeling over the bodies of two men, unconscious or dead. Karim didn’t know which.

  For a moment the people flowed around the bodies like water round stones in a stream. It was only a moment, but it was enough for Karim to get to his knees and reach out with his arms. Knowing his life depended upon it he lunged forward and, grasping at a leg, at the hem of a garment, clawed upwards, bringing down another man as he did so. The man yelled abuse at him, but Karim was gone, pushed forward by the crowd.

  Outside the bazaar it was pandemonium. The streets were blocked with cars and wagons attempting to turn and leave the area. Women and children were running towards the safety of the side streets and alleys where the larger trucks could not enter. Behind them the machine-gun fire was still reverberating around the bazaar. Where were their own troops?

  Karim remembered his father commenting on the shots coming from the direction of the Hizb-I Wahdat camp at Qala Zaini earlier in the morning. With a sinking feeling he knew that if the Taliban had reached the centre of the city, then the United Front must have been overrun. He turned the corner to the street where he had parked the truck and stopped dead. A Pajero bearing the black Taliban flag was parked across the road, its motor running. On either side of the street heavily armed Taliban were moving from house to house. Two of them were examining his pickup.

  Karim felt a ghastly sickness in his stomach as he recognised the bodies of his young cousins bleeding in the street.