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because fear is seductive when you don’t really know what it means.
Making it clear that Afghans and Taliban are different. I want people to know this.
A lot of people think the Taliban are all Afghans, Fabio, but they aren’t. Some of them are, of course, but not all of them.
They’re ignorant, ignorant of everything, and they stop children from studying because they’re afraid those children might come to understand that they don’t do what they do for God, but for themselves.
I believed them, because I was small, and when you’re small what do you know of the world? Listening and believing were the same thing. I believed everything people told me.
I was in Shia territory now. And even though it didn’t matter that much, I felt as if I was at home, or at least hoped I was, hoped I was in a place where I would be treated well, which amounts to the same thing.
At least time is certain. No, Fabio. Nothing’s certain. Time is, Enaiat. It runs at the same speed in every part of the world. Do you think so? You know something, Fabio? I wouldn’t be so sure.
In Afghanistan, you only had to say their names to suck all the air out of a room like in those vacuum-packed bags they use for food. Clouds would cover the sun and the leaves would fall.
I’m never scared, Enaiat, he said. And I’m always scared. I can’t tell the difference any more.
Then one morning, when I woke up, Sufi was gone. I was starting to think that sleeping wasn’t a good idea, that maybe it was better to stay awake at night, to avoid people close to me vanishing into thin air.
One evening I finished work feeling really sad and sat down in front of the little black and white TV, one of those with an aerial you turn by hand, so you spend more time tuning it than watching the programmes.
How can you just change your life like that, Enaiat? Just say goodbye one morning? You do it, Fabio, and that’s it.
I read somewhere that the decision to emigrate comes from a need to breathe.
We were dumped across the border, like garbage dumped on a landfill site.
that group of people sitting on the ground. They’d be sitting there for ever. They were frozen. They were dead.
You always need new clothes when you arrive in a place where you’re a nobody.
I don’t really know how to explain it, but I felt as if it wasn’t only the blood that was flowing out of me, it was everything I’d been through, the sand of the desert, the dust of the streets and the snow of the mountains, the salt of the sea and the lime of Isfahan, the stones of Qom and the sewage from the gutters of Quetta. By the time the blood stopped flowing, I felt great. Better than I’d ever felt in my life. I wiped my face.
which way to go. Not that it made us sad. It was just that it’s strange seeing all those relaxed, calm, confident people around you when you’re the only one to feel lost. But that’s the way things are, isn’t it?
when the first one said he was French I said, Zidane. Then, when the second one said he was Brazilian, I said, Ronaldinho. That was all I knew about their countries, and I wanted them to know how much I liked them. They asked me where I was from. Afghanistan, I said. They said, Taliban, Taliban. That was all they knew about my country.
No rum. Coca-Cola. No rum. Drink. Drink. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but you should never refuse a Coca-Cola, so I opened the can and drank and it struck me that the guy was really strange, first getting angry and then treating me to a Coke.
How do you choose a place to settle, Enaiat? How can you tell one from another? You recognise it because you don’t feel like leaving. Not because it’s perfect, obviously. There aren’t any perfect places.
In June I took the middle school exam (even though the teachers at the Parini Centre didn’t want me to, they said it was too early, but that was because of that old question of time, which isn’t the same everywhere in the world).
But that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want an interpreter. If you speak directly to people you convey emotions more intensely. Even if you stumble over your words and don’t get the intonation right, the message you get across is closer to what you have in your head, compared with what an interpreter could repeat – don’t you think so? – because emotions can’t come from the mouth of an interpreter,
only words, and words are just a shell.
For a long time I had wiped them from my mind. Not out of spite or anything, but because before coming to terms with other people you have to come to terms with yourself. How can you give love if you don’t love your own life?
I replied that I’d pay for the journey and expenses anyway, even if he did consider it a duty, because a sense of duty is a good thing, but money’s important, too.
