The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari Read Free Book Online Page A

there? Even if I had stayed, I’d have to come home once India orders our embassy closed. Padar and Maadar and Jahan will have to return to Kabul soon anyway. Besides, Kabul is my home. This is my country. And right now they need journalists and reporters like me.”
    â€œIf you are even allowed to write,” Grandmother said.
    My grandfather ignored the interruption. “We could all have fled when the Russians came and now where would we be? Living in tents in refugee camps in Pakistan with Rukhsana and Jahan carrying water every day for miles. I had hoped for better times, but that isn’t to be.” He sat behind his desk, on his throne of authority, a round-backed rosewood chair. “I’ll miss you very much. But it won’t be safe here for any woman. You’ll be a virtual prisoner in this house.”
    â€œPadar-kalaan, you must be exaggerating.”
    He blew out a loud sigh of smoke to the ceiling and turned to my grandmother. “I have warned you, and God knows you make up your own mind. But I think Rukhsana must leave. I’ll take her to the airport.”
    â€œI’m staying. I came here to work and not run away because of a couple of slaps—”
    â€œAnd a bloody arm,” he cut in.
    â€œAnd what’s waiting for me in Delhi?” I had not told them the real reason for fleeing the city—the heartbreak was painful enough to make the Talib seem, at that moment, tolerably less painful in comparison. “I’m not a package you can just send off somewhere,” I protested. “I’m going to keep working here. There’ll be a lot to write about.”
    â€œAnd a lot of danger when you do. Rukhsana, please be realistic—listen to what these jihadists want and look at the violence they are using.”
    â€œDanger! What about you? The Talib must know about your work in the old government.”
    â€œThere’s no question of my leaving. I have my transport business, my legal practice. This is my khawk . I will live and die in my sacred land and not in a foreign country.” He rose and came around to hold me gently, making sure he didn’t press on my tender arm. “But, Rukhsana, you must take a wise old lawyer’s advice. Leave now, don’t go to Delhi, go to Pakistan instead, it doesn’t matter, just let us get you out while we can.”
    â€œWhen Padar returns I’ll do whatever he wants me to do. Meanwhile, we’ll order burkas from our tailor,” I said and walked out of my grandfather’s office and up to my room, trailing a hand against the blue tiles in the hall, as I had done since I was a child, tracing them from Jahan’s bedroom on the top floor to my father’s office, below my room. The stairs were in the exact center of the house.
    On my wall were two large posters, side by side, my act of defiance against this regime. Like all who inhabit a police state, we live bland and obedient outer lives, while our inner ones seeth in rebellion. On the left was a color photograph of the Long Room of the Trinity College Library in Dublin, lined from floor to ceiling with shelves of ancient books. I longed to visit it and roam among those shelves, reading as many books as I could. The other photograph was black and white, a view of the Taj Mahal reflected in the Yamuna River, with a rowboat, lost in the shadows, approaching the great monument. Opaque light streaked the sky. It was sometimes hard to believe that a man, with a Muslim mind, had raised such an astonishing work of art for a woman he loved.
    There was a narrow bed, a cupboard for my clothes, and a desk for the work I was supposed to never do again. And on a small bookshelf by my bed were novels, works of nonfiction, and a dozen or so well-worn books about cricket from my college days in Delhi—from Beyond a Boundary by C. L. R. James and The Cricket Match by Hugh de Selincourt to a collection of essays on cricket by Sir Neville