Excerpt | Anthony Stone

Excerpt from the novel

Secret of the Hindu Kush

Spitting dirt, I lunged forward to untie the ropes around my ankles. Purdill spurred Arad forward and knocked me back to the ground. My head bounced along the field raising a dust storm while Baba shouted from the back of his new stallion, also named Jaheel after the previous Jaheel retired to stud. This Jaheel, his son, stood even taller.

“Purdill, I said fast. We will teach this American what it means to say no to his Baba.”

Arad snorted and dragged me around the same field where ten years ago I watched my stepmother stoned to death on a wintry September morning. Today Baba kept pace and flashed the same glare that sent me away all those years ago.

His face had not changed. He had not aged. He appeared even bigger, stronger and more determined than ever to break my will. Every summer I returned home and every fall I went back to Virginia humbled by my failure to rise to his expectations. I did not become the skilled Buzkashi rider he wanted. Nor had I become the leader and warrior he needed and wished for all these years.

“This is not America, boy. Here you are Afghan and you will do as I say. You will marry the daughter of Hassan Bey. I will not hear another no from your mouth. I am an Afghan father, not American.”

He rode at a hard gallop towards the chalk circle where tomorrow the beheaded calf would fall to begin the Buzkashi and the celebration of my wedding. He expected me to win the Buzkashi. He trained me all these summers for this day and the many to follow, so he could say to his friends, “That is my son. He is a superb horseman.”

“Pull him faster Purdill. Are you taking your grandmother to the bazaar?”

He still loved bazaar references. We did not even have a bazaar in the village. Strange thoughts go through one’s mind when digging ruts with one’s body. Thankfully, the men had cleared the field of rocks to prepare for the Buzkashi. God forbid the horses should suffer. The dirt had no pity for me as it tore my jacket, shredded my shirt, and left my naked back to fight the ground. I tried to think of something else.

Tonight, Ferooza and her father Hassan Khan would arrive and I would greet the father but not look upon the daughter for three days, until the wedding ceremony. They said her beauty could melt the sun and that she already had a thousand suitors asking for her hand. My problem lay elsewhere.

“You brought me back to marry a twelve-year-old child?”

During dinner, when I asked why he sent for Uncle and me in the middle of my second year at Georgetown University, he stood up and knocked me to the floor with a blow that I never saw coming. I should have.

“Yes, she is twelve. What of it? How dare you question me in the presence of my guests?”

“But Father,” I said.

He kicked me in the ribs.

“Father? What happened to Baba jan? I am not American that you call me father.”

He raged, his temper in full wind.

“Baba jan.” I coughed. “She is only twelve.”

“Idiot. My mother was twelve when she married. I was born when she turned thirteen. You think yourself better than your grandparents? You will marry this girl and you will live here. You will learn to protect and care for your people.”

Then Shaitan must have entered me, for I uttered the unforgivable, “No” and that Baba would never tolerate.

“No? What do you think? That you are free? You are not a free boy. You are mine, like this fortress is mine, like the horses are mine, like this land, these people, everything you see... as far as you can see, all of it is mine. If I need to make a treaty with Hassan and you are the cost, then I will give that cost to protect my people. And you will not say no.”

He dragged me to my room and placed a guard at my door. In the morning, they brought me here and now I lay on my back digging furrows through the field.

“So you learn who you are and what I expect from you,” he said.

Purdill shouted something to Baba, possibly asking that he might stop, but the dragging did not cease. I felt blood running up my back and into my hair. Soon I would lose consciousness. I looked over at Baba, hoping he might relent and call an end to this. But he did not. He had grown accustomed to death on this field.

During the Buzkashi, men whipped and beat each other, hoping to unseat an opponent. Then they trampled those unfortunate enough to fall beneath the hoofs of their ponies. Each man for himself. They rode hard and fought over the headless calf, dragging, pulling, flinging it over their saddles. One more dead would mean nothing to Baba.

After all, this was not America. Nor was my punishment unusual. I once saw a father tie his son to a tree and whip him to death. Americans would call it barbarism. We call it discipline. I wavered, teetering between two cultures, horrified and yet calm, revolted and yet accepting without question, my father’s punishment.

“Brutality is the essence of victory. The enemy must fear you or you will fear the enemy.”

His voice reverberated across time from those summers I returned from Virginia when he trained me to lean with one leg hooked over the saddle and snatch the calf from the ground. Now the image of his face contorted with fury burned into my mind as stars flashed in a black sky.

I woke to my sister’s frantic voice and her hands lifting my head from the dirt.

“Are you crazy, Baba? Do you want to kill him?”

Tears ran down Shaima’s pale cheeks and fell on me. She wiped them off and smiled. In the background, I heard Baba’s horse snorting and stomping, the clinking of his bridle and Baba twisting in the saddle. My eyes rolled around searching for him until he loomed up in the background, a massive shadow, white stallion and warrior. Had I skill, one day I might have painted them and attempted to capture on canvas the raw energy that sizzled all around him.

“You are a girl. You do not understand these things. More guests arrive soon. It is dangerous for them to see your head uncovered. You don’t know who may watch,” said Baba.

“I don’t care, Baba. Do you hear me? I do not care what you say. I’m not leaving him here.” She screamed at him and I feared for her, but he did not dismount and strike her down. Instead, he turned Jaheel and rode away.

“Stay still,” she said, “I will get help.”

Another shadow fell over me and I saw Purdill standing there. He kneeled beside me. A single tear decorated his angular face.

“I will carry him,” Purdill said.

“Nobody will carry me.” I tried to stand but fell flat on my face. Purdill turned me over and my sister brushed dirt from my eyes and mouth.

“Just stand me up.” I spit out dirt and coughed. “I won’t let him see me carried.”

“Your back is bleeding,” Shaima said.

I stumbled along between them while they held me up. I tried to focus on the fortress, but the gray stones of the keep and outer walls floated in my eyes like a mirage. I looked down at my sister, my arm slung across her too thin shoulders. She dressed in black like her mother, and I realized with a shock that I had never seen Shaima in any other color. Purdill had my other arm around his shoulder and in this fashion, we made our way towards the gate. I heard my sister crying.

“Don’t cry. It will take more than this to kill me.”

“Why don’t you just marry the girl? He will kill you if you do not.” she said.

“I don’t think he will.”

“I don’t understand it. Can’t he ever be nice to you? Every summer you come home and every summer he hurts you. One of these times he will kill you.”

In America, I did not hear the drummer and he had slipped my mind. Now I heard him once again, far off in the distance, rapping out a marching beat that helped my feet find a rhythm and my mind to clear and imagine what Baba’s life had done to him.

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