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were urged to eat our fill, though only my grandfather shared the curry with us.
The other men and boys ate rice, explaining apologetically they had filled their
bellies before our arrival. More likely, there wasn t enough to go around. Turning a
bleating animal into edible food takes more than the hour or so one could expect a
guest to cheerfully wait.
My grandfather grunted that for all the years he had been granted to live, the
students would be welcome to their 10 percent. He recalled for us the Shuravi, who
had stolen a whole flock at a time had indeed butchered any animal they didn t
take and run trucks over the carcasses so that only dogs and evil birds might eat of
them. The youngsters eyes shone as they drank in stories of the retaliatory raids.
As mine doubtless had. Until the very end, I d been too young to join in except
to hold the horses in a safe place, out of sight. My legs had been too short to keep up
as the men flowed from nook to cranny among the rocks toward the final target, my
little-boy arms not strong enough or long enough to properly wield one of the
precious rifles.
By American standards, I d been a little boy. Here, just too small and too
inexperienced a warrior for such raids. Until that last one, the disaster.
168 Amber Green
One of the uncles explained to the youngsters that Shuravi had meant friend,
until it had come to be used for the Soviets. I wasn t sure about that, but the matter
wasn t mine to dispute.
Another cousin mentioned the neighbor s fond hopes the government would
come fix the bridge on the highway so they could stop paying a cup of barley for
every head of livestock driven over the bridge my uncles and cousins had built.
I sipped a few drops of green tea from my cup. I didn t want to be the first one
here to fill my bladder. I had to watch where someone else emptied it before I hit
that level of need.
The seeds I had brought were a paltry gift compared to the gifts I would need
to accomplish my badal. Before I asked anything of these, my people, I had to
establish bonds of a man with men, not of the shadow of a little boy who would, on a
dare, climb anything that jutted toward the sky.
One boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, held his mouth gracelessly open, displaying
canines that had grown in crooked, just like my brother Omar s, and just like an
uncle whose name I couldn t remember. He breathed harshly too, making me want
to take a look at his adenoids. But not tonight.
I took another six or eight molecules of tea and praised its scent. Now was the
time I should tell them of myself and my family. My mouth opened and closed
with nothing said.
I looked again at the bruised faces and the scraped, bruised hands and
forearms. Either they d been in a riot, or they d recently played buzkashi. A few of
my uncles had an unbounded passion for the sport. So, who among you threw the
boz into the circle of justice?
The openmouthed cousin sat up straight, his eyes glittering in the firelight. It
had been a hard-fought game. The kind of epic game that starts one morning,
restarts the following dawn, and ends just before evening prayer. Three of the boys
elbowed one another and spilled bits of stories, fragments not yet patchworked
together for the version that would enthrall generation after generation here in the
Khyber Run 169
hujra, as boys warmed their hands by the burning droppings of the many-times-
removed grandkids of the goats whose droppings warmed us now.
And maybe that s what home was. Speaking before their elders was forward of
them, a fact their fathers would no doubt let them know about later. But for now
they were vastly entertaining and were fondly tolerated.
My great-grandfather yawned and stretched. Two of the cousins hurried over,
handed him his teeth, and half carried him to the stool beside me, which an uncle
hastily vacated. I stood, touched my heart, and shook his fragile, ancient hand.
Oscar did the same.
The hajji was given a cup with maybe an ounce of tea trembling in the bottom
of it. Any more, and he would have spilled it.
The conversation took up again. Someone mentioned my cousin Bad Shoes. I
tensed, abruptly remembering his sneer. Your mother left her father s home to find a
husband.
I sipped another half drop of tea, willing the cup to hold still in my hand.
Bad Shoes had taught me a lot about fighting. When I d gone to America, I d
used those lessons, busting noses and lips with wild abandon in my first schoolyard
fight, taking out all my frustration and anger and, yes, fear on two other fourth-
graders. They d finally cowered against the fence, crying like little children, while I
taunted them to stand up as if they had balls. When big hands grabbed me, I spun,
fist cocked, and stopped dead. The old woman held me, the aide. I couldn t hit a
woman.
And putting such fear in an old woman s eyes was shameful to any Pakhtun
with a mother.
I dropped my fist and bowed, apologizing sincerely for having frightened her.
Which is probably why, instead of being expelled, I got my first round of anger-
management counseling and a full-time cultural transition aide.
But I d missed something in the conversation around me. I focused. Bad Shoes
had sponsored the game, with attendant feasts for all comers, to celebrate the
170 Amber Green
circumcision of his third son. The cost should have beggared him, yet he still had six
fine horses and his sons attended school. No one actually said anything might be
amiss, of course. It was all in the shift of eye and shoulder, the trailed-off sentences.
I emptied my cup. My great-grandfather refilled it for me, splashing only a
little on my wrist and knee. The scald was slight, and I saw it coming just far
enough to dampen any reaction.
But then I froze. His cup was still full enough to slosh way up the sides with
his hand s palsy. Was I supposed to refill it anyway, or offer to?
Doing nothing was an action, probably the wrong one, so I bowed to him over
the fire. My Baba surely taught me whether to refill the Hajji s cup, but after all
these years, the memory becomes elusive. Please, advise a traveler correctly.
He smiled kindly. My cup is far from empty. Family is the root of all good
things God the Compassionate has put on this earth, is it not?
As the wise have said, so surely it must be. In the darkness of strange places,
I often comforted myself and my brothers with the stories of our forefathers.
Who are your brothers? The crooked-toothed boy. Had he been so forward
with only his uncles and forefathers present, he would ve been promptly
backhanded. But he d asked what no man could be coarse enough to directly ask,
and their relief was palpable.
I took a gulp of tea. The air went still. My brothers were Hamid, Omar,
Mohammed, and Sorrow.
Wezgórrey! A thin, heavy-bearded man tackled me, laughing in delight,
knocking my head into Oscar s lap and kissing me right and left and right again, his
beard scouring my wind-chapped lips. It truly is you! You came home!
I grasped his upper arms, felt the knob of an old break below his right
shoulder. Recognition tightened my grip. Kam Ali! You know me still?
Khyber Run 171
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