The Bookseller of Kabul

The Carpenter

Mansur runs panting into his father’s shop. He is carrying a little parcel.

‘Two hundred postcards,’ he puffs. ‘He tried to steal two hundred postcards.’

Drops of perspiration pour off his face. He has run the last stretch.

‘Who?’ asks his father. He places his calculator on the counter, enters a figure in the accounts book and looks at his son.

‘The carpenter.’

‘The carpenter?’ Sultan asks, astounded. ‘Are you sure?’

Haughtily, as though he has saved his father from a dangerous mafia gang, the son hands the brown envelope to the father. ‘Two hundred postcards,’ he repeats. ‘When he was about to leave he looked rather embarrassed. But as it was his last day I thought nothing more of it. He asked if there was anything else he could do. He said he needed the work. I said I’d ask you. After all, the shelves are finished. Then I spotted something in his waistcoat pocket. “What’s that?” I said. “What?” he said and looked confused. “In your pocket,” I said. “That’s something I brought with me,” he said. “Show me,” I said. He refused. In the end I pulled the packet out of his pocket myself. And here it is! He tried to steal postcards from us. But that one won’t work, I was keeping an eye on him.’

Mansur has embroidered the story considerably. He was sitting dozing as usual when Jalaluddin was about to leave. It was the cleaning boy, Abdur, who caught the carpenter. Abdur saw him take the cards. ‘Aren’t you going to show Mansur what you have in your pocket?’ he said. Jalaluddin just kept on going.

The cleaning boy was a poor Hazara, from the lowest ethnic group on the Kabul social ladder. He rarely spoke. ‘Show Mansur your pockets,’ he called after the carpenter. Only then had Mansur reacted and pulled the postcards out of Jalaluddin’s pocket. Now he is yearning for his father’s approval.

But Sultan continues to leaf slowly through the bunch of papers and says: ‘Hm, where is he now?’

‘I sent him home but told him he would not get off lightly.’

Sultan is silent. He remembers when the carpenter approached him in the shop. They were from the same village and had been practically neighbours. Jalaluddin had not changed since those days; he was still thin as a rake, with large, frightened, protruding eyes. He was possibly even thinner than before. And although he was only forty, he was already stooped. His family was poor, but well regarded. His father had also been a carpenter, but his sight failed a few years ago and he could no longer work.

Sultan was happy to give him work; Jalaluddin was clever and Sultan needed new shelves. Up until now the bookshelves in his shop had been of the normal variety, where the books stand straight up and down with the title legible on the spine. The shelves covered the walls and in addition there were freestanding bookcases on the floor. But he needed shelves where he could display the books properly. He wanted sloping shelves, with a thin bar across, in order that the whole front cover of the book could be seen. His shop would be like a western shop. They agreed on a fee of £3 per day and Jalaluddin returned the next day with hammer, saw, ruler, nails and some planks. The storage room at the back of the shop was turned into a carpenter’s workshop. Jalaluddin had hammered and nailed all day, surrounded by shelves and postcards. The cards were an important source of income to Sultan. He printed them in Pakistan for next to nothing and sold them at a large profit. Usually Sultan chose images he fancied, without ever thinking of crediting the photographer or painter. He found a picture, took it to Pakistan, and had it reproduced. Some photographers had given him pictures without asking for money. They sold well. The best customers were soldiers from the international peacekeeping force. When they were on patrol in Kabul they dropped in on Sultan’s shop and bought postcards: postcards of women in burkas, children playing on tanks, queens from bygone days in daring dresses, the Bamiyan Buddhas before and after they were blown up by the Taliban, buzkashi horses, children in national costume, wild scenery, Kabul then and now. Sultan was good at choosing images and the soldiers often left the shop with a dozen postcards each.

Jalaluddin’s daily wage was worth exactly nine postcards. In the back room they were stacked up, hundreds of each image, inside bags and out of bags, with rubber bands The Carpenter 211

and without rubber bands, in boxes and cartons and on shelves.

‘Two hundred, you say,’ Sultan said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think this is the first time?’

‘I don’t know. He said he was going to pay for them but that he had forgotten.’

‘Yes, he can try and make us believe that.’

‘Someone must have asked him to steal them,’ Mansur stated. ‘He’s not smart enough to sell the cards on. And he certainly hasn’t stolen them to hang them up on the wall,’ he said.

Sultan swore. He had no time for this. In two days he was off to Iran, for the first time in several years. There were many things to do, but he would have to handle this one first. No one, but no one, was going to steal from him and get away with it.

‘Keep the shop and I’ll go to his house. We must get to the bottom of this,’ said Sultan. He took Rasul with him, he knew the carpenter well. They drove out to the village Deh Khudaidad.

A dust cloud followed the car through the village. Then they came to the path leading up to Jalaluddin’s house. ‘Remember, no one needs to know about this, it is not necessary for the whole family to have the shame hanging over them,’ Sultan said to Rasul.

At the village store on the corner, where the path led to Jalaluddin’s house, stood a group of men, amongst them Jalaluddin’s father Faiz. He smiled at them, squeezed Sultan’s hand and embraced him. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea,’ he said cordially. He obviously knew nothing about the postcards. The other men also wanted a few words with Sultan – after all he had pulled himself up and achieved something in life.

‘We only wanted to see your son,’ said Sultan. ‘Can you fetch him?’

The old man went off. He returned with his son following two steps behind. Jalaluddin looked at Sultan. He was shaking.

‘We need you in the shop, could you come back with us for a moment,’ Sultan said. Jalaluddin nodded.

‘You’ll have to come for tea another day,’ the father called after them.

‘You know what this is all about,’ Sultan observes drily when they are sitting in the back seat of the car being driven by Rasul. They are on their way to Wakil’s brother Mirdzjan, who is a policeman.

‘I only wanted to look at them. I was going to give them back. I only wanted to show my children. They are so beautiful.’

The carpenter cowers in the corner, shoulders sagging, trying to make himself as small as possible. His fists are clenched together between his legs. Now and again he sinks his nails into his knuckles. When he talks he looks quickly and nervously at Sultan and resembles nothing but a frightened and dishevelled chicken. Sultan leans back in the seat and questions him quietly.

‘I need to know how many postcards you took.’

‘I only took the ones you saw.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true.’

‘If you won’t admit that you took more I’ll report you to the police.’

The carpenter snatches Sultan’s hand and showers it with kisses. Sultan snatches it back.

‘Stop that nonsense; don’t behave like an idiot.’

‘In the name of Allah, upon my honour, I didn’t take any more. Don’t throw me into jail, please, I’ll pay you back, I’m an honourable man, forgive me, I was stupid, forgive me. I have seven little children; two of my girls have polio. My wife is pregnant again and we have nothing to eat. My children are fading away, my wife cries every day because I don’t make enough to feed us all. We eat potatoes and boiled vegetables, we can’t even afford rice. My mother begs leftovers from hospitals and restaurants. Sometimes there is some boiled rice to spare. Sometimes they sell the leftovers in the market. These last days we haven’t even had bread. And I also feed my sister’s five children, her husband is out of work, and I also live with my old mother and father and grandmother.’

‘The choice is yours. Admit that you have taken more and you’ll be spared jail,’ says Sultan.

The conversation goes round in circles. The carpenter bemoans his poverty and Sultan wants him to admit to a larger theft. He also wants to know to whom he has sold the cards.

They have travelled through Kabul and are out in the country again. Rasul drives them through muddy roads and past people hurrying to reach home before nightfall. Some stray dogs fight over a bone. Children run around barefoot. A burka-clad woman balances on the crossbar of her husband’s bicycle. An old man is fighting a cart full of oranges; his feet sink into the deep ruts caused by the recent days’ downpour. The hard mud road has been turned into an artery of shit, garbage and animal waste, forced into the road from alleyways and verges by torrential rain.

Rasul halts in front of a gate. Sultan asks him to go and knock on the door. Mirdzjan comes out, greets them all and invites them in.

When the men stomp up the stairs they hear the quiet hiss of skirts. The women of the house hide. Some stand behind half-open doors, others behind curtains. A young girl peeps through a crack in the door to see who might be visiting them so late in the day. Outside the family no men must see them. The older boys serve the tea the sisters and mother have prepared in the kitchen.

‘Well,’ says Mirdzjan. He sits cross-legged wearing the traditional tunic with balloon trousers, the dress forced on all men by the Taliban. Mirdzjan loves it. He is small and podgy and feels comfortable in the loose-fitting clothes. Now he has to wear an outfit he likes little, the old Afghan police uniform which the police used before the Taliban. After hanging in the wardrobe for years it is now somewhat tight. It is also warm, as only the winter uniform, made of heavy homespun, has survived the storage. The uniforms are made to a Russian pattern, and are more at home in Siberia than in Kabul. Mirdzjan sweats his way through the spring days when the temperature can reach thirty degrees.

Sultan quickly explains their business. Mirdzjan lets them talk in turn, as though they were being cross-examined. Sultan sits at his side, Jalaluddin across from him. He nods understandingly and keeps a light, easy manner. Sultan and Jalaluddin are offered tea and cream toffees and talk over each other.

‘For your own sake it is best that we sort it all out here, instead of going to the real police,’ says Mirdzjan.

Jalaluddin looks down, wrings his hands, and stutters out a confession, not to Sultan but to Mirdzjan. ‘I might have taken five hundred. But they’re all at home. I’ll give them all back. I haven’t touched them.’

‘Well I never,’ says the policeman.

But that is not enough for Sultan. ‘I’m sure you’ve taken many more. Come on! Who have you sold them to?’

‘It is to your advantage to admit everything now,’ says Mirdzjan. ‘If it comes to a police interrogation, it won’t be quite like this and there won’t be any tea and cream toffees, ’ he says enigmatically and looks at Jalaluddin.

‘But it is absolutely true. I have not sold them. In the name of Allah, I promise,’ he says and looks from one to the other. Sultan insists, the words are repeated; it is time to go home. Anyone around after curfew is arrested. People have even been killed because the soldiers felt threatened by the passing cars.

They get into the car in silence. Rasul asks the carpenter to tell the truth. ‘Otherwise this will go on and on, Jalaluddin,’ he says. When they reach the carpenter’s house he goes in to fetch the postcards. He returns quickly with a small bundle. The cards have been wrapped in an orange and green patterned scarf. Sultan unwraps them and looks admiringly at his pictures, which are now back with their rightful owner and will be returned to the shelves. But first they will be used as evidence. Rasul drives Sultan home. The carpenter is left standing shamefaced on the corner, where the path leads to his house.

480 postcards. Eqbal and Aimal sit on the mats counting. Sultan is trying to assess how many the carpenter might have taken. The postcards depict various subjects. In the back room there are hundreds upon hundreds. ‘If the whole package has gone it will be difficult to assess, but if only about a dozen are missing from several of the packages, it is possible he has just opened a few packages and taken a few cards from each one,’ Sultan reasons. ‘We’ll have to count tomorrow.’

The next morning, as they are counting, the carpenter suddenly appears at the door. He remains on the threshold and looks more stooped than ever. Suddenly he rushes over to Sultan and starts kissing his feet. Sultan drags him off the floor and hisses: ‘Pull yourself together, man. I don’t want your prayers.’

‘Forgive me, forgive me, I’ll pay you back, I’ll pay you back, I have hungry children at home,’ says the carpenter.

‘I’ll say the same as yesterday, I don’t need your money, but I want to know who you have sold them to. How many did you take?’

Jalaluddin’s old father Faiz is there too. He too tries to get down and kiss Sultan’s feet, but Sultan catches him before he gets down on the floor; he doesn’t like anyone kissing his shoes, especially not an elderly neighbour.

‘You must know I’ve beaten him all night. I am so ashamed. I’ve brought him up to be an honest worker, and now! My son’s a thief,’ Faiz says and scowls at his son who is cowering in the corner. The stooped carpenter looks like a little child who has stolen and lied and is about to be spanked.

Sultan calmly tells the father what has happened, that Jalaluddin took postcards home with him and now they want to know how many he took and who he sold them to.

‘Give me one day and I’ll make him admit to everything, if there is more to admit,’ begs Faiz. The seams in his shoes have come undone, he is not wearing socks and his trousers are held up with a piece of string. The jacket sleeves are shiny. He looks like his son, just a bit darker and smaller and caved in. They are both thin and frail. The father stands in front of Sultan, passive. Sultan does not know what to do either. He feels embarrassed by the old man’s presence, a man who could have been his own father.

At last Faiz moves. He walks resolutely over to the bookcase where the son is standing. Like a flash his arm whips out. And there, in the shop, he thrashes his son. ‘You scoundrel, you cad, you are a disgrace to your family, you should never have been born, you’re a loser, a crook,’ his father cries whilst kicking and hitting him. He rams his knee into his son’s stomach, his foot into his crotch, beats him over the back. Jalaluddin just stands there, stooped, protecting his chest with his arms, while the father lays into him. Then he suddenly breaks loose, and runs out of the shop. He’s out in three long strides, and disappears down the steps and out on to the street.

Faiz’s lambskin hat lies on the floor. It fell off in the heat of the battle. He picks it up, straightens it out and puts it back on his head. He stands up, bids Sultan farewell and walks out. Through the window Sultan sees how he totters on to his old bicycle, looks left and right and cycles stiffly and quietly back to his village.

When the dust has settled after the embarrassing scene, Sultan continues to count. He is unruffled. ‘He worked here for forty days. Let’s say he took two hundred cards every day; that makes eight thousand cards. I’m sure he’s stolen at least eight thousand cards,’ he says and looks at Mansur, who shrugs his shoulders. It had been agony to watch the poor carpenter being beaten by his father. Mansur couldn’t give a shit about the postcards. He thinks they should forget the whole damn thing, now that they have got them back. ‘He hasn’t got the nous to sell them on, forget it,’ he begs.

‘It might have been done to order. You know all those stallholders who have bought postcards from us. Some of them haven’t been for some time. I thought they might have bought enough, but look, they’ve bought cheap postcards from the carpenter. And he is stupid enough to have sold them for a song. What do you think?’

Mansur shrugs his shoulders again. He knows his father and knows that he wants to get to the bottom of it all. He also knows that he will be given the task. His father is off to Iran and will be away for a month.

‘What if you and Mirdzjan make some enquiries while I am away? Truth will out. No one steals from Sultan,’ he says, staring fixedly at Mansur. ‘He could have ruined my entire business,’ he says. ‘Just imagine, he steals thousands of postcards and sells them to kiosks and bookshops all over Kabul. They sell them a lot cheaper than me. People will start going to them instead of to me. I’ll lose all the soldiers who buy postcards – all those who buy books too. I’ll get the reputation of being more expensive than anyone else. In the end I might have gone bankrupt.’

Mansur listens with half an ear to his father’s predictions of doom. He is cross and irritated that he has been given yet another task to complete in his father’s absence. In addition to having to register all the books, to fetch new crates of books sent from the printers in Pakistan, to sort out the red tape which is the consequence of owning a bookshop in Kabul, and to act as chauffeur and run his own bookshop, he now also has to take on the role of police inspector.

‘I’ll look after it,’ he says abruptly. He could not very well say anything else.

‘Don’t be too soft, don’t be too soft,’ are Sultan’s last words before he gets on the evening plane to Teheran.

When his father has gone Mansur forgets the whole thing. His sanctimonious period following the pilgrimage to Mazar is well and truly over. It lasted exactly one week. Nothing was improved by his praying five times a day. The beard got itchy and everyone told him he looked scruffy. He didn’t like the look of himself in the loose tunic. ‘If I can’t think permitted thoughts I might as well forget the whole thing,’ he said to himself and gave up the piety just as quickly as he had started. The pilgrimage was nothing more than an outing.

The first evening of his father’s absence he was invited out by some friends. He said he would come, not knowing they had bought Uzbek vodka, Armenian brandy and red wine at exorbitant prices on the black market. ‘This is the very best available, everything is 40 per cent proof, actually the wine is forty-two per cent,’ said the vendor. The boys paid forty dollars per bottle. Little did they realise that the vendor had drawn in two thin lines on the label of the French table wine: it was now increased from 12 to 42 per cent proof. It was all about strength. Most of his customers were young boys who, away from their parents’ strict control, drank to get drunk.

Mansur had never tasted alcohol, Islam’s most taboo substance. Early in the evening Mansur’s two friends started drinking. They mixed brandy and vodka in a glass and after a few shots reeled around in the shady hotel room they had hired in order to escape their parents’ wrath. Mansur had not yet arrived as he had to drive his younger brothers home, and when he turned up his friends were yelling and screaming and wanting to jump over the balcony.

Watching the scene, Mansur made up his mind: if alcohol made you so ill he might as well not touch it.

No one can sleep in Jalaluddin’s house. The children lie on the floor and cry quietly. The last twenty-four hours have been the worst in their experience: to see their kind father being beaten by their grandfather and called a thief. Everything had been turned upside down. In the courtyard Jalaluddin’s father walks around in circles. ‘How could I have had a son like that, bringing shame upon the whole family? What have I done wrong?’

The oldest son, the crook, sits on a mat in the one and only room. He can’t lie down because his back is full of bloody streaks after having been beaten by his father with a thick branch. They had both returned home after the blows in the bookshop. First the father on his bicycle, then the son, walking all the way from town. The father had continued where he left off in the shop and the son had not resisted. While the flogging stung his back and the curses rained down over him, the family had watched in horror. The women had tried to get the children away, but there was no place to go.

The house was built round a courtyard; one of the walls was the fence to the path. Along two of the walls were platforms behind which rooms with big windows covered in oilcloth faced the courtyard – a room for the carpenter, his wife and seven children, a room for the father, mother and grandmother, a room for his sister, her husband and their five children, a dining room and a kitchen with an earthen kiln, a primus and a few shelves.

The carpenter’s children slept on mats made up of a hotchpotch of rags and scraps of fabric. Some areas were covered in cardboard, others in plastic or sacking. The two girls with polio wore splints on one foot and used crutches. Two other children suffered from a virulent type of eczema; they were constantly scratching the scabs, which bled.

As Mansur’s two friends were puking for the second time, the carpenter’s children, on the other side of town, fell asleep.

When Mansur woke the first morning after his father had left, an intoxicating feeling of freedom overwhelmed him. He was free! He donned the sunglasses from Mazar and tore off at 100 kilometres per hour down Kabul ’s streets, past laden donkeys and dirty goats, beggars and disciplined German soldiers. He stuck a finger in the air at the Germans while he bumped and scraped over the endless holes in the tarmac. He swore and cursed and pedestrians jumped out of the way. He left behind district after district of Kabul’s confusing mosaic of riddled ruins and tumbledown houses.

‘He must take the consequences, that’s character-building,’ Sultan had said. Mansur pulls faces in the car. From now on Rasul can hump cases and deliver messages, from now on Mansur is going to enjoy himself until his father returns. Apart from the lift to the shops every morning, so his brothers won’t grass on him, he’s not going to do a damn thing. The only person Mansur fears is his father. In his presence he never dares protest, he is the only person he respects, at least to his face.

Mansur’s aim is to get to know girls. That is not easy in Kabul where most families guard their daughters like treasure. He has a brainwave and starts an English course for beginners. Mansur’s English is good as a result of his Pakistani schooling but he reasons that he will find the youngest and prettiest girls in the beginners’ class. He’s not wrong. After only one class he has spotted his favourite. Carefully he tries to talk to her. Once she even allows him to drive her some of the way home. He asks her to come to the shop, but she never does.One day the girl stops coming to the English course. Mansur cannot contact her. He misses her but first and foremost feels sorry for her sake, that she stopped coming; she wanted so much to learn the language.

The English student is quickly forgotten. Nothing is real and nothing is eternal in Mansur’s life this spring. Once he is invited to a party in the outskirts of Kabul. Some acquaintances have hired a house and the owner is standing guard outside in the garden.

‘They smoked dried scorpion,’ Mansur tells a friend enthusiastically the next day. ‘They crumbled it up into powder and mixed it with tobacco and got completely high, a bit angry too. Cool,’ boasts Mansur.

Then one day Sultan sends a message that he will be home the next day. Mansur snaps out of his intoxication immediately. He has done none of the things his father asked him to do. Not catalogued the books, tidied the back room, made new order slips, fetched the book crates that by now have piled up at the transport depot. The matter of the carpenter and the investigations he has not even given a thought.

Sharifa fusses around him. ‘What is it, my boy, are you ill?’

‘Nothing,’ he hisses.

She continues to nag. ‘Keep your trap shut – go back to Pakistan,’ Mansur shouts. ‘Since you came everything has been shambolic.’

Sharifa starts to cry. ‘How could I have such boys? What wrong have I done when they don’t even want their mother around?’

Sharifa howls and yells at her children, Latifa starts to cry. Bibi Gul sways from side to side; Bulbula stares out into thin air. Sonya tries to soothe Latifa and Leila washes up. Mansur bangs the door into the room he shares with Yunus. Yunus is in bed snoring. He has hepatitis B and lies in bed all day swallowing medicine. His eyes are yellow and he looks paler and sadder than ever.

When Sultan returns the next day Mansur is so nervous that he avoids his sharp eyes. But he need not be so worried because Sultan is mostly preoccupied with Sonya. Only the following day, in the shop, does he ask his son if he has done all he asked him to do. Before Mansur has had time to answer the father is already issuing new instructions. Sultan’s trip to Iran was very successful. He has linked up again with his old business associate and soon crate upon crate of Persian books will arrive in Kabul. But one thing he has not forgotten: the carpenter.

‘Have you discovered nothing?’ Sultan regards his son in astonishment. ‘Are you undermining my work? Tomorrow you go to the police and report him. His father was going to give me the confession within a day and now a month has gone by! And if he’s not locked up by the time I return from Pakistan, you are not my son,’ he threatens. ‘Anyone found helping themselves to my property will not be happy,’ he says ominously.

The next morning, while it is still dark, two women carrying two children are found beating on the Khan family’s door. Leila opens up drowsily. The women cry and remonstrate and after a time Leila realises that it is the carpenter’s grandmother and aunt standing there with his children.

‘Please, forgive him, forgive him,’ they say. ‘Please, in God’s name,’ they cry. The old grandmother is close to ninety; small and wizened with a face like a mouse. She has a sharp, hairy chin. She is the mother of the carpenter’s father, who has been trying to beat the truth out of his son for the last weeks.

‘We have nothing to eat, we’re starving, look at the children. But we’ll pay back for the postcards.’

Leila asks them in. The little mousy grandmother throws herself at the feet of the women of the family who have been woken by the wailing and enter the room. They look deeply embarrassed at the misery, which has entered the room like a rush of cold air. The women have a two-year-old boy with them and one of the polio-stricken girls. The girl sits down on the floor with great difficulty. The stiff polio-leg with the splints sticks out beneath her. She sits solemnly and listens to the conversation.

Jalaluddin was not at home when the police came, so they took his father and uncle instead. They said they would come and get him the next morning. No one slept the whole night. Early in the morning, before the police came back, the two old women set off to beg Sultan for mercy and forgiveness on behalf of their relative.

‘If he stole anything it was to save his family. Look at them, look at the children, thin as rakes. No proper clothes, nothing to eat.’

The Mikrorayon hearts melt, but the visit leads to nothing but pity. When Sultan has decided upon something there is nothing the women in the Khan family can do. And especially not if it has any bearing on the shop.

‘We would love to help you, but we can do nothing. Sultan decides,’ they say. ‘And Sultan is not at home.’

The women continue to wail and cry. They know it is true but cannot afford to give up hope. Leila enters with fried eggs and fresh bread. She has boiled milk for the two children. When Mansur comes into the room, the two women rush over and kiss his feet. He kicks them away. They know that he, as his father’s oldest son, has power in his absence. But Mansur has decided to do what his father asked him to do.

‘Ever since Sultan confiscated his tools, he has not been able to work. We haven’t eaten for many weeks. We have forgotten the taste of sugar,’ the grandmother cries. ‘The rice we buy is nearly rotten. His children are getting thinner every day; look, they are all skin and bone. Jalaluddin is beaten up by his father every day. I never thought I would raise a thief,’ the grandmother says. The women in Mikrorayon promise to do their best to persuade Sultan, knowing all the time that nothing will help.

By the time the grandmother and the aunt have made their way back to the village with the two children, the police have already been to pick up Jalaluddin.

In the afternoon Mansur is called in as a witness. He sits on a stool by the chief constable’s table, legs crossed. Seven men listen to the chief’s interrogation. There are not enough chairs and two of them have to share one. The carpenter is squatting on the floor. They are a mixed bunch; some of the police wear thick, grey winter uniforms, some traditional clothes, others green MP uniforms. Nothing much happens at this station, so the postcard theft is an important matter. One of the policemen is standing by the door, without quite deciding whether he belongs in or out.

‘You must tell us who you sold them to, otherwise you’ll end up in the central prison,’ the chief constable says. The words central prison send a chill around the room. Central prison – that’s where all the real criminals go. The carpenter sags on the floor and looks hopeless. He is wringing his carpenter’s hands; they are full of thousands of tiny cuts, scars criss-crossing his hands. In the strong sunlight that shines through the window, gashes and incisions from knives, saws and awls are easily visible. It is as though his hands represent him, the carpenter, not his face, and it is they who are now dully watching the seven men in the room; as though the matter does not concern him. After a while they send him away, to the tiny metre-square cell. A cell where he cannot stand up, but only crouch, squat or lie doubled up.

Jalaluddin’s fate is in the hands of Mansur’s family. They can withdraw or uphold the complaint. If they choose to uphold the complaint, he will be passed on along the system and it will be too late to acquit him. Then the police decide. ‘We can hold him for seventy-two hours, then you’ll have to make up your minds,’ says the chief constable. He is of the opinion that Jalaluddin must be punished; poverty is no reason for stealing.

‘Many people are poor. If we do not punish crime, society will become completely immoral. It is important to set an example when the rules have been broken.’ The loud-spoken chief constable argues with Mansur, who has begun to question the whole affair. When he realises that Jalaluddin might be sent down for six years for the postcard theft, he starts thinking about his children, the hungry looks, the poor clothes. He thinks of his own life, how simple it is; he, who in one day can spend as much money as the carpenter’s family does in one month.

An enormous bouquet of artificial flowers takes up half the table. The flowers acquired a thick layer of dust ages ago, but nevertheless brighten up the room. The police at Deh Khudaidad’s police station obviously like colours; the walls are mint green, the lamp red, very red. On the wall hangs a picture of the war hero Massoud, as in all other official offices in Kabul.

‘Don’t forget, under the Taliban he would have had his hand cut off,’ the chief constable emphasises. ‘That happened to people who had committed lesser crimes than this one.’ The constable relates the story of a woman who became a single mother when her husband died. ‘She was very poor. The youngest son had no shoes and cold feet. It was winter and he could not go out of doors. The oldest son, scarcely a teenager, stole a pair of shoes for his little brother. He was caught red-handed, and his right hand was chopped off. That was taking it a bit too far,’ the constable thought. ‘But this carpenter has shown himself to be a bad lot. He’s stolen several times. If you steal in order to feed your children, you only steal once,’ he maintains.

The chief constable shows Mansur all the confiscated things lying in the cupboard behind him. Flick-knives, kitchen knives, pocket-knives, knives with large handles for hitting, pistols, torches, even a pack of cards have been collected. To gamble for money qualifies you for six months in prison. ‘The pack of cards was confiscated because the losing player floored the winner and stabbed him with this knife. They had been drinking so he was punished for stabbing, drinking and gambling,’ he laughs. ‘The other player was let off, because he was now an invalid and that’s punishment enough!’

‘What is the punishment for drinking?’ Mansur asks. He knows that according to Sharia law drinking is a gross sin and severely punished. The Koran recommends eighty lashes.

‘To be honest, I normally close my eyes to such things. When there is a wedding I tell them that this is a holiday, but that everything should be in moderation and kept within the family,’ says the chief constable.

‘What about infidelity?’

‘If they are married they will be killed by stoning. If they are unmarried the punishment is one hundred lashes, and they must marry. If one of them is married, and it is the man, and the woman is unmarried, he must take her for his second wife. If she is married and he is unmarried, the woman will be killed and the man whipped and put in prison,’ the constable says. ‘But I sometimes look through my fingers with that too. It might be widows, who need the money. Then I try to help them. Get them on an even keel again.’

‘Yes, you’re talking about prostitutes, but what about normal people?’

‘Once we surprised a couple in a car. We, or rather the parents, forced them to marry,’ he says. ‘That was fair, don’t you think? After all, we’re not the Taliban,’ says the constable. ‘We must try to avoid stoning people. The Afghans have suffered enough.’

Mansur leaves the police station deep in thought. The chief constable gave him a three-day deadline. He can still pardon the sinner, but if it goes further, it’ll be too late. Mansur is not in a mood to return to the shop, but goes home for lunch, a very rare occurrence. He throws himself down on a mat, and thank God, for the sake of peace, food is ready.

‘Take your shoes off,’ his mother says.

‘Go to hell,’ Mansur answers.

‘Mansur, you must obey your mother,’ Sharifa continues. Mansur does not answer but lies down on the floor, one foot in the air, crossed over the other. He keeps his shoes on. His mother pinches her mouth tight.

‘We must decide what to do with the carpenter,’ Mansur says. He lights a cigarette, and his mother starts to cry. Mansur would never, ever, light up in front of his father. But as soon as his father is out of the house, he not only takes pleasure in smoking but also in irritating his mother by smoking before, during and after the meal. The little room is thick with smoke. Bibi Gul has been complaining for a long time how impolite he is to his mother. But this time desire takes over, she stretches out her hand and whispers: ‘Can I have one?’

Silence descends. Is grandmother starting to smoke?

‘Mummy,’ Leila cries and tears the cigarette out of her hand. Mansur gives her another one and Leila leaves the room in protest. Bibi Gul sits happily puffing away, laughing quietly. She even stops the rocking to and fro and holds the cigarette high up in the air, inhaling deeply. ‘I’ll eat less,’ Bibi Gul explains.

‘Release him,’ she says after having enjoyed the cigarette. ‘He’s had his punishment, his father’s beating, the shame, and anyhow he gave the postcards back.’

‘Did you see his children? How are they going to manage without their father’s income?’ Sharifa supports her.

‘We might be responsible for his children’s death,’ says Leila who has returned once her mother has stubbed out the cigarette. ‘What if they get ill and cannot afford a doctor, then they’ll die because of us, or they might die of starvation,’ she says. ‘And anyhow, the carpenter might die in prison. Many never make it through the six years. It’s riddled with infection, tuberculosis and lots of other illnesses. ’

‘Show mercy,’ says Bibi Gul.

Mansur phones Sultan in Pakistan on his newly acquired mobile phone. He asks for permission to release the carpenter. The room is silent; everyone is listening to the conversation.

They hear Sultan’s voice shouting from Pakistan: ‘He wants to ruin my business, undermine prices. I paid him well. There was no need to steal. He’s a crook. He’s guilty and the truth will have to be beaten out of him. No one, but no one will get away with destroying my business.’

‘He might get six years! His children might be dead when he gets out,’ Mansur shouts back.

‘If he gets sixty years, I couldn’t care less. He is going to suffer until he tells me who he has sold the cards to.’

‘That’s something you can say because your tummy’s full,’ Mansur yells. ‘I cry when I think of those scraggy children of his. His family are finished.’

‘How dare you contradict your father!’ Sultan screams down the line. Everyone in the room knows his voice and knows that his face is puce with anger and his whole body shaking. ‘What sort of a son are you? You are to obey me in everything, everything. What’s wrong with you? Why are you rude to your father?’

Mansur’s face shows the inner battle he is fighting. He has never done anything but what his father demands of him. That is, of the things his father knows about. He has never faced him in open confrontation; he quite simply does not dare incite his father’s wrath.

‘All right,’ he says and puts the phone down. The family is silent. Mansur swears.

‘He has a heart of stone,’ Sharifa sighs. Sonya is silent.

Every morning and every evening the carpenter’s family arrives. Sometimes it’s the grandmother, other times the mother, the aunt or the wife. One or two of the children are always with them. They get the same answer each time. Sultan decides. When he gets home all will sort itself out. But they know that is not true; Sultan has already passed his verdict.

In the end they can take it no longer. They do not open the door but sit quietly, pretending they are not at home. Mansur goes to the local police station to ask for a postponement; he wants to wait for his father’s return; he will take care of it. But the chief constable cannot wait any longer. The metre-square cell cannot house prisoners for more than a few days. Once again they ask the carpenter to admit that he took more postcards and to tell them whom he sold them to, but he refuses. Jalaluddin is handcuffed and led out of the little mud hut.

As the local police station has no car, it falls on Mansur to drive the carpenter to the central police station in Kabul.

Outside are the carpenter’s father, son and grandmother. When Mansur arrives they approach him hesitatingly. Mansur hates every moment. In Sultan’s absence he is having to act as the callous judge.

‘I am only doing as my father has told me,’ he excuses himself, puts on his sunglasses and sits in the car. The grandmother and the little son return home. The father mounts his rickety bicycle and follows Mansur’s car. He is not giving up and wants to follow his son as far as he can. They see his upright silhouette disappear behind them.

Mansur drives slower than usual. It might be many years before the carpenter sees these streets again.

They reach the central police station. During the Taliban era this was one of the most hated buildings in Kabul. Here, at the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Extermination of Sin, better known as the ministry of morality, the religious police had their headquarters. Men were brought here whose beards or trousers were too short, women who had walked down a street with men other than their relatives, women who had walked alone, women who wore make-up under the burka. For weeks on end they might languish in the basements before being moved to other gaols, or acquitted. When the Taliban left, the remand cells were opened and the prisoners freed. Cables and canes were found which had been used as instruments of torture. The men were beaten naked; women could drape a sheet around themselves when being tortured. Before the Taliban, first the brutal Soviet intelligence service, then the chaotic police force of the Mujahedeen had occupied the building.

The carpenter mounts the massive steps to the fifth floor. He tries to walk beside Mansur and looks pleadingly at him. His eyes seem to have grown during the week he was incarcerated. The beseeching eyes seem to bulge out of his head. ‘Forgive me, forgive me. I’ll work for you for nothing for the rest of my life. Forgive me.’

Mansur looks straight ahead. He must not buckle now. Sultan has given his verdict and he cannot contradict Sultan. He might be disinherited, thrown out of the house. He feels already that his brother has become Sultan’s favourite. Eqbal can learn computing, Eqbal has been promised a bicycle. If Mansur opposes him now Sultan might sever all ties with him. However much he feels for the carpenter, he cannot risk that.

They wait for the interrogation and registration of the report. The system is that the person reported is imprisoned until innocence or guilt has been proved. Anyone can report anybody and have the person in question imprisoned.

Mansur puts his case to the interrogator. The carpenter squats on the floor. He has long, crooked toes and the nails have thick black edges. His waistcoat and jumper hang in shreds down his back. The trousers hang about his hips.

The interrogator behind the table carefully writes down the two declarations. He writes elegantly and uses carbon paper for a copy.

‘Why are you so keen on postcards from Afghanistan?’ the policeman laughs and finds the matter rather curious. But before the carpenter can answer he continues: ‘Tell me now whom you have sold them to; we all understand that you did not steal them to send to relatives.’

‘I only took two hundred, and Rasul gave me some,’ the carpenter starts tentatively.

‘Rasul never gave you any postcards, that’s a lie,’ says Mansur.

‘You will remember this room as a place where you had the chance to tell the truth,’ says the policeman. Jalaluddin swallows and cracks his knuckles and breathes a sigh of relief when the policeman continues to interrogate Mansur about when, where and how the whole thing happened. Behind the interrogator, through the window, can be seen one of the heights outside Kabul. Little houses cling to the mountainside. The paths zigzag down the mountain. Through the window the carpenter can see people, they look like little ants walking up and down. The houses have been constructed with materials cannibalised from what can be found in war-torn Kabul: some sheets of corrugated iron, a piece of sacking, some plastic, a few bricks, bits and pieces from ruins.

Suddenly the interrogator squats beside him. ‘I know that you have hungry children, and I know that you are not a criminal. I am giving you a last chance. Take it. If you tell me to whom you sold the cards I will let you go. If you don’t tell me I’ll give you several years in prison.’

Mansur is losing interest. This is the hundredth time the carpenter has been asked to admit who he sold the cards to. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he hasn’t sold them to anyone. Mansur looks at his watch and yawns.

Suddenly a name escapes Jalaluddin’s lips, so quietly as to be nearly inaudible.

Mansur leaps up.

The man whose name Jalaluddin muttered owns a kiosk in the market where he sells calendars, pens and cards; cards for religious festivals, weddings, engagements and birthdays – and postcards with motifs from Afghanistan. He had always bought these cards from Sultan’s bookshop, but he hadn’t been there for some time. Mansur remembers him well because he always complained about the prices.

It’s as if a cork has been unstopped; but Jalaluddin still trembles as he talks.

‘He came over to me one afternoon when I was leaving work. We talked and he asked me if I needed money. Of course I did. Then he asked me if I could fetch him some postcards. At first I refused, but then he told me about the money I would get for it. I thought about my children at home. I’m not able to feed the children on a carpenter’s salary. I thought about my wife who was starting to lose her teeth, she’s only thirty. I thought of all the reproachful looks I get at home because I’m not able to earn enough. I thought of the clothes and the shoes I could not afford to buy my children, the doctor we cannot afford, the awful food we have to eat. So I thought if only I took a few, as long as I was working in the bookshop, I could solve some of my problems. Sultan won’t notice. He has so many postcards and so much money. And then I took some cards.’

‘We’ll have to go there and safeguard the evidence,’ the policeman says. He gets up and orders the carpenter, Mansur and another policeman to come with him. They drive to the market and the postcard kiosk. A little boy is serving from behind the hatch.

‘Where is Mahmoud?’ the policeman asks. He is in plain clothes. Mahmoud is having lunch. The policeman shows the boy his identity card and says he wants to look at his postcards. The boy lets them in at the side of the kiosk, into a narrow area between the wall, the stack of wares and the counter. Mansur and a policeman tear the postcards from off the shelves; the ones Sultan has had printed are stuffed into a bag. They count several thousand. But which ones Mahmoud has bought lawfully and which ones he has bought from Jalaluddin it is hard to tell. They take the boy and the postcards to the police station.

A policeman is left behind to wait for Mahmoud. The kiosk is sealed. Mahmoud will not be selling any more thank-you cards today, or pictures of heroes and warriors either, for that matter.

When Mahmoud eventually arrives at the police station, still smelling of kebab, the interrogations start anew. Initially Mahmoud denies ever having set eyes on the carpenter. He says he has bought everything legally, from Sultan, from Yunus, from Eqbal, from Mansur. Then he changes tactics and says, yes, one day the carpenter did approach him, but he never bought anything.

The kiosk owner, too, must spend the night in detention. At last Mansur can get away. In the corridor the carpenter’s father, uncle, nephew and son are waiting. They approach him, reach after him and watch terror-stricken when he hurries away. He can’t bear it any more. Jalaluddin has confessed, Sultan will be pleased, the matter has been solved. Now that the theft and the resale have been proved, the criminal case can begin.

He remembers what the police interrogator had said: ‘This is your last chance. If you confess we will let you go and you can return to your family.’

Mansur feels unwell. He rushes out. His thoughts are on Sultan’s last words before he left. ‘I have risked my life building up my business, I have been imprisoned, I have been beaten. I’ve worked my socks off to try and create something for Afghanistan and a bloody carpenter comes and tries to usurp my life’s work. He will be punished. Don’t be soft, Mansur, don’t you start to buckle.’

In a run-down mud hut in Deh Khudaidad a woman sits and gazes into the air. Her youngest children are crying; they have nothing to eat yet, and wait the return of their grandfather from town. Maybe he’ll have something with him. They rush at him when he enters the gate on his bicycle. But his hands are empty. The luggage carrier is empty too. They halt when they see his dark face. They are quiet for a moment before they start to cry and cling to him. ‘Where is daddy, when will daddy come back?’