The Bookseller of Kabul

Temptations

She arrives with the sunshine. A billowing bundle of charm steps into the darkened room. Mansur wakes up from his doze with a start and adjusts his sleepy gaze as he beholds the apparition stealing along the shelves.

‘Can I help you?’

He knows immediately that here is a beautiful, young woman. He sees it in her bearing, her hands, her feet, how she carries her handbag. She has long, white fingers.

‘Have you got Advanced Chemistry?’

Mansur puts on his most professional bookseller’s look. He knows he does not have the book but he asks her to accompany him to the back of the premises to look for it. He stands close to her and looks through the shelves while her perfume tickles his nose. He stretches and bends, pretending to hunt for the book. In between he turns to her and searches the shadows of her eyes. He has never heard of the book.

‘Unfortunately we are sold out, but I have a few copies at home. Could you come back tomorrow and I will bring one in for you?’

He waits for the goddess all the next day, armed not with a chemistry book, but a plan. While he waits he spins ever more fantasies. Then night closes in and he shuts up shop. The shop has metal gratings, which protect the cracked windows at night. Frustrated, he slams them closed.

The next day he is in a bad mood and sits sulking behind the counter. The room is in semi-darkness, there is no electricity. Where the sun’s rays enter the dust dances and makes the room appear even drearier. When customers arrive and ask for books Mansur answers surlily that he has not got them, despite the fact that the book is sitting on the shelf right opposite him. He curses the fact that he is tied to his father’s bookshop, that not even Fridays are free, and that his father will not allow him to study, won’t allow him to buy a bicycle, won’t allow him to see friends. He hates the dusty tomes on the shelves. He really hates books, and has always hated them and hasn’t finished a single one since he was taken out of school.

The sound of light footsteps and the rustling of heavy material wake him out of his sombre mood. She stands, like the first time, in the middle of a ray of sun that makes the dust from the books frolic around her. Mansur takes care not to leap up with joy and puts on his bookseller’s look.

‘I was expecting you yesterday,’ he says, professionally friendly. ‘I have the book at home, but did not know which edition, binding or what price you wanted to pay. The book has been published in so many editions that I could not bring them all. So if you would like to come with me and choose the one you want?’

The burka looks surprised. She twiddles her bag with an air of uncertainty.

‘Home with you?’

They are quiet for a moment. Silence is the best persuasion, Mansur thinks, quivering with nerves. He has issued a daring invitation.

‘You need the book, don’t you?’ he asks in the end.

Wonder of wonders, she agrees. The girl settles in the back seat, positioned so she can look at him in the mirror. Mansur tries to hold what he thinks is her gaze while they talk.

‘Nice car,’ she says. ‘Is it yours?’

‘Yes, but it’s not much,’ Mansur answers casually. This makes the car even more wonderful and him even richer.

He drives aimlessly round the streets of Kabul with a burka in the back seat. He has no book, and anyhow at home are his grandmother and all his aunts. It makes him nervous and excited to be so close to someone unknown. In a moment of boldness he asks to see her face. She sits for a few seconds, absolutely stiff, then lifts up the front piece of the burka and holds his gaze in the mirror. He knew it; she is very beautiful, with beautiful, big, dark, made-up eyes, a few years older than him. With the aid of the most exceptional capers, insistent charm and the art of persuasion he makes her forget the chemistry book and invites her to lunch in a restaurant. He stops the car, she creeps out and up the steps to Marco Polo restaurant, where Mansur orders the entire menu: grilled chicken, kebab, mantu – Afghan noodles filled with meat and pilau – rice with large pieces of mutton and, for dessert, pistachio pudding.

During lunch he tries to make her laugh, to feel special, to eat more. She sits with the burka over her head, with her back to the other tables, in a corner of the restaurant. Like most Afghans she ignores the knife and fork and eats with her fingers. She talks about her life, her family, her studies, but Mansur can hardly follow, he is too worked up. His first date. His absolutely illegal date. He tips the waiters exorbitantly when they leave, the student makes big eyes. He sees by her dress that she is not rich, but not poor either. Mansur must hurry back to the shop, the burka jumps into a taxi. During the Taliban that could have led to a whipping and imprisonment for both her and the driver. The meeting at the restaurant would have been an impossibility; unrelated men and women could not walk on the streets together, and far less could she have taken off the burka in public. Things have changed, luckily for Mansur. He promises to bring the book next day.

All the next day he tries to think of what to say when she turns up. Tactics will have to be changed from bookseller to seducer. Mansur’s only experience of the language of love is from Indian and Pakistani films, where each dramatic statement exceeds the one before. The films start off with an encounter, flirt with hatred, betrayal and disappointment, and finish off with rose-red words of everlasting love – useful preparation for a young lover. Behind the counter, by a stack of books and papers, Mansur dreams of how the conversation with the student will unfold.

‘I have thought of you every moment since you left me yesterday. I knew there was something special about you; you are made for me. You are my destiny!’ She would no doubt love to hear that, and then he would stare into her eyes, maybe grab her wrists. ‘I must be alone with you. I want to feast my eyes on all of you, I want to drown in your eyes,’ he will say. Or he might be slightly less presuming: ‘I don’t ask for much, if only you might drop by when you have nothing else to do, I would understand if you don’t want to, but maybe just once a week?’

Maybe he could make a few promises: ‘When I’m eighteen we’ll get married.’

He must be Mansur with the expensive car, Mansur with the posh shop, Mansur with the tips, Mansur with the western clothes. He must entice her with the life she would lead together with him. ‘You’ll have a big house with a garden and masses of servants, and we will go on holidays abroad.’ And he must make her feel special, handpicked, and aware of how much she means to him. ‘I love only you. I suffer every second I do not see you.’

If she does not agree to his wishes, he must become more dramatic. ‘If you leave me, kill me first! Or I will set fire to the whole world!’

But the student does not return the day after the visit to the restaurant, nor the next day, or the next. Mansur continues to practise his speech, but is becoming increasingly more dispirited. Did she not like him? Did her parents discover what she had done? Is she grounded? Did someone see them and spill the beans? A neighbour, a relative? Did he say something stupid?

An elderly man with a walking stick and a large turban interrupts his churning thoughts. He greets Mansur with a growl and asks for a religious work. Mansur finds the book and throws it angrily on the counter. He is no longer Mansur the seducer. Just Mansur, the bookseller’s son with the rose-red dreams.

He waits for her every day. Every day he locks the grating over the door without her having visited. The hours in the shop are increasingly dreary.

In the street where Sultan has his bookshop there are several other bookshops and shops that sell writing materials, bind books or copy documents for people. Rahimullah works in one of these stalls. He sometimes drops in on Mansur to drink tea and gossip. This time Mansur slips over to him to pour out his troubles. Rahimullah just laughs.

‘You mustn’t try it on with a student. They are too virtuous. Try someone who needs money. Beggars are the easiest. Some of them are not too bad. Or go to where the UN doles out flour and oil. There are lots of young widows there.’

Mansur gapes. He knows the corner where they distribute food to the most needy, primarily war widows and little children. They get a ration every month and some of them stay standing on the corner trying to exchange part of the ration for money.

‘Go there and find someone who looks young. Buy a bottle of oil and ask her to come here. “If you come to my shop I will help you in the future,” I usually say. When they come I offer them some money and take them into the back room. They arrive in a burka, they leave in a burka – no one is suspicious. I get what I want and they get money for the children.’

Mansur looks at Rahimullah with disbelief. Rahimullah opens the door to the back room, barely a metre square. On the floor lie several cardboard boxes, dirty and trodden down. Dark blotches stain the cardboard.

‘I take off the veil, the dress, the sandals, trousers. Having got there it is too late for regret. It would be useless to scream, because if anyone came to the rescue, the fault would lie with her, no matter what. The scandal would ruin her for life. It’s easy with the widows. But if they are young girls, virgins, I do it between their legs. I just ask them to press their legs together. Or I do it from, well, you know, from behind,’ says the merchant.

Mansur looks at the salesman in disbelief. How could he talk about things like that in such an easy and casual way?

When he stops by the mass of blue burkas that same afternoon, he realises it is not as easy as all that. He buys a bottle of oil. But the hands selling it are rough and worn. He looks around and sees only poverty. He throws the bottle on to the back seat and drives off.

He has given up swotting words from Bollywood. But one day he thinks he might need them after all. A young girl enters the shop and asks for an English dictionary. Mansur puts on his most charming manner. He finds out that she has enrolled in English classes for beginners. The gallant bookseller’s son offers his help.

‘Very few people come in here, so I can examine your homework, now and again.’ But the girl never returns.

‘My heart is dirty,’ he confides to his younger brother. He knows he should not think about girls.

A little girl comes into the shop. Maybe she is twelve, maybe fourteen. She reaches out a dirty hand and looks pleadingly up at them. Over her head is a dirty-white shawl with red flowers. She is too young to wear the burka. That is only donned once the girl has reached puberty.

Beggars often come into the shops. Mansur usually sends them packing. But Rahimullah remains standing and watches the childish heart-shaped face and takes ten notes out of his pocket. The beggar girl looks at them wide-eyed and grabs them greedily. But just as she is about to get them Rahimullah’s hand slips away. He makes a large circle in the air with his hand and holds her gaze.

‘Nothing is free in life,’ he says.

The girl’s hand freezes. Rahimullah gives her two notes.

‘Go to a hammam, wash and come back, and I’ll give you the rest.’

She quickly puts the money in the pocket of her dress and hides her face behind the dirty shawl with the red flowers. She looks at him through one eye. One cheek has smallpox scars from old sores. Sandflies have left their mark on her forehead. She turns and leaves; the slim body disappears down Kabul ’s streets.

A few hours later she returns, clean.

‘What the hell,’ says Rahimullah, in spite of her wearing the same dirty clothes. ‘Come with me to the back room and I’ll give you the rest of the money.’ He smiles at her and they go into the room.

Mansur is uncomfortable, left on his own in the shop – he doesn’t know if he should leave. Suddenly the salesman comes back out.

‘She is yours,’ he says to Mansur.

Mansur is frozen to the spot. He stares at Rahimullah. He glances at the door to the back room, then tears out of the shop.