He turned back around to the front. ‘But then the Russians came and they destroyed – the Russians only ever destroy. They cannot see beauty, only ugliness. Of course, there are many beautiful buildings in Russia,’ he had added, ‘but they’re from the time of the tsars, not from the Communists. I tell you, Dr Sofia, while the Communists cannot see beauty, the Taliban cannot bear to see it. Between them they succeeded in destroying our world and, of course, we had the five years of civil war. I tell you, Afghans are tired of war.’
After leaving the main roads they had passed the maze of old streets and back alleyways in the oldest part of Kabul, with its ornate wooden houses in various states of repair. Turning a few streets off the main road, they had stopped in front of a small passageway barely wide enough for a car to pass through. After Tawfiq pulled in their side mirrors they drove slowly down the alley to stop in front of a small mosque with stone steps and a beautiful domed roof, which sat at the entry to a large cobbled square with an ancient pistachio tree and fig tree at its centre. On three sides of the square were small shops and homes, but to the right, and the furthest from where they entered, was a line of beautiful old timber houses with deeply ornate and intricately carved fretwork that had long fallen into disrepair. As if to highlight their abandonment, a hen and her chicks had emerged from a broken window of one of the houses to scamper across the square and disappear around the corner.
‘Ah,’ said Jabril, slightly embarrassed to see Dr Sofia had noticed them too. ‘They’ll be someone’s dinner tonight,’ he laughed.
‘They’re beautiful houses,’ she had said. ‘Does anyone live in them?’
‘No one but chickens,’ he had said, laughing again. ‘They were originally used by the artisans who worked for the king, but no one lives in them now. I don’t think anyone knows who owns them anymore.’
‘Shame.’
Jabril nodded in agreement. ‘From time to time a family might move in, but Chief Wasim – who, by the way, will be your landlord – gets rid of them pretty quickly.’ Jabril had sighed. ‘When we have so many homeless it pains me to see these beautiful houses abandoned, but Chief Wasim is right. They are far too dangerous for people to live in. As you can see, the rest of the buildings are newer, except for Babur’s chaikhana here,’ he had said, pointing to his left and indicating for Tawfiq to drive over.
Inside could be seen Babur’s worn wooden serving bench laden with trays of tea glasses, freshly washed and draining. Beside them were stacks of mismatched plates and the chunky old teapots used to cook chainaki, the traditional goat or lamb soup loved by all Afghans. Although Babur had made the financial decision to expand the chaikhana from serving only tea and simple street food to more elaborate meals, it still looked as it might have done two hundred years before. Two raised wooden platforms covered in old Afghan rugs lined opposing walls, while between the ancient copper tea urns placed strategically along their length men were sitting smoking, drinking tea and eating Babur’s superb bolani, a flatbread stuffed with potatoes or leeks, until the car pulled up out front and the men all turned to stare, each wanting to be the first to catch a glimpse of the new woman doctor from Australia.
‘So,’ said Jabril, looking around the square, ‘this is Shaahir Square, and as we are near the oldest part of Kabul, and because Babur’s chaikhana is probably one of the oldest buildings in all of Kabul, it means that we’re in the centre of my country’s history. I like that idea.’
‘Me too,’ she had said, a smile in her voice as she looked out over the square.
She has a very promising attitude, thought Jabril, indicating to Tawfiq to move slowly forward. ‘You will rarely see cars in the square,’ he had added, ‘because they don’t usually like to come down that little road we just entered, which means we are, in many ways, also hidden from the world. I like that idea too. That’s Omar,’ he had said, waving to an old man sitting in the middle of the square on a plastic chair. ‘He’s our apothecary. And see the pistachio and fig trees?’ Jabril had pointed to the two trees behind the old man. ‘They were once part of a magnificent garden on a fine estate, but the house and most of the garden, apart from a few trees, these cobblestones and the wall and gate of where you will be living, all disappeared a long time ago. And this,’ he had said, as they pulled up in front of a high dry-stone wall with a large ornate gate, ‘is your new home.’
When Sofia didn’t move Jabril began to worry that perhaps she was not happy with the home Zahra had chosen for her. He had looked up at the house. Like many homes in Kabul, it was hidden from the world by a high wall behind which was a courtyard, but unlike many of the homes in Afghanistan, this one had a famous history, or at least the wall and gate had a famous history. Part of the old estate, the stone wall once surrounded a smaller garden called Baagh-e-shaahir or Poet’s Garden, after which the square was named. It was said that Babur’s relative, who built the house and gardens, could often be found in Baagh-e-shaahir reciting Rumi, while writing love poems to his beautiful wife.
The other thing this house had that marked it within the square was a small enclosed balcony on the first floor, which looked very much like it might have been an afterthought, which it was. Jabril well remembered the day he had come into the square to see Chief Wasim balancing on a ladder hammering wood over the balcony’s crooked timber frame before lifting windows into the space above. That had been eight years before and since then the timber underpinning the balcony had begun to sag from this unplanned weight. Not for the first time, Jabril wondered if he might come into the square one morning to find the balcony sitting in what used to be the famous poet’s garden.
Jabril inspected the house again. By Kabul standards it was a very good house, but perhaps it was too much of a step down from Dr Raso’s life in Australia?
He had turned around in the seat to look at her. ‘After a great deal of consideration, Zahra chose this lodging for you, Dr Raso, and by her own reckoning it’s a very safe house.’ Why bother mentioning the balcony when it would not strengthen his argument? ‘By the way, I would like you to know that the owner, Chief Wasim, is the chief of police of all of Kabul, but I think I already told you that. You cannot get much safer than that, can you?’
Jabril had thought about this and decided that maybe you could. What chief of police didn’t have enemies?
4
AFTER WAVING TO Jabril, Sofia wandered back into the kitchen, tipping the cold tea down the sink before heading off to the bathroom where she stripped naked before turning the shower on. When the water became mildly warm she would jump in because in slightly less than three minutes it would run cold again. On the mornings she washed her hair she would be rinsing off under cold water. Winter was not Sofia’s favourite time in her Kabul shower.
Initially she had dropped hints to her landlady, Behnaz, who was also Chief Wasim’s wife, that she might need a new water heater for her bathroom, but Behnaz had not been interested. After deciding money might be the problem, Sofia had offered to pay for it, which only provoked a stern lecture on the extravagance of heated water and the possibility that more than a pitcher of warm water to wash every day might be verging on the criminally wasteful. The memory made Sofia smile. She had fallen in love with the dusty cobblestone square with its two gnarled trees marking its centre the first time she had seen it, but life in Kabul, and the chief of police’s wife in particular, had proved to be far more acquired tastes.