A Fort of Nine Towers Read Free Page B

strength: he was always a reader. For his age, he had more information than he needed. He had a good mind for memorizing, too. That turned us even more against him.
    Wakeel teased Jerk all the time when we were at home playing with our cousins. Outside, though, Wakeel would not let anybody bother him. Wakeel was like an older brother to all of us. When Jerk got into fights with the neighbor boys, which happened a lot, Wakeel defendedhim. When we were playing football in the park, Wakeel always made sure that Jerk and I were on his team, so he could protect us.
    Our neighbors were like us, quiet and educated people. When there was a wedding or engagement party in one of their houses, everyone in the neighborhood was invited, along with their kids and servants.
    Every week my grandfather talked for ten minutes in the mosque after Friday prayers about how to keep our neighborhood clean, or how to solve water and electricity problems, or how to take care of the public park and create more facilities where the kids could play together. He had never been elected to any position, but people listened to him.
    When a family was having financial problems, one of its older men would quietly speak to Grandfather and ask for the community’s help. Then, after Friday prayers, Grandfather would explain to the other men in the mosque that some money was needed without ever saying by whom. It was important to protect the dignity of the family in need.
    One Friday after the others had left the mosque, I saw my grandfather giving the money he had collected to a neighbor whose wife had been sick for many months. The man kissed Grandfather’s hands, and said, “You always live up to our expectations. May God grant you long life, health, and strength.” When Grandfather noticed that I was watching him, he scowled at me, and I quickly turned away. This was something I was not meant to see.
    Grandfather’s house was his great pride, and the McIntosh apple trees were his great joy. He was in his late sixties when I was born, and soon after became a widower. By then he had retired from the bank, and busied himself in the courtyard, planting roses, geraniums, and hollyhocks or watering his McIntosh apple trees, always singing in a whispery voice under his teeth, or quietly reciting the ninety-nine names of God.
    And for hours he would sit reading, surrounded by his books. His favorite, in two beautiful leather-bound volumes, was
Afghanistan inthe Path of History
by Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar. The title was embossed on the cover in gold. Sometimes he read to me from it.
    He also had the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
, which had beautiful covers as well; but he did not read those to me. When I asked about them, he said he would give them to me when I was old enough.
    In winter, he studied the poets Rumi, Shams Tabrizi, Hafiz, Sa’adi, and Omar-e-Khayyam. Sometimes he invited his friends to discuss the political affairs of Afghanistan and the world. But before long, the talk would turn to poetry. He always wanted me and my boy cousins to listen to what was being said, and to ask questions.
    My sisters and girl cousins were never part of those discussions. Their lives moved on a different path from those of the boys, but they were always allowed to read Grandfather’s books. Indeed, Grandfather always encouraged them to do so. “Education,” he would say, stressing the word, “is the key to the future.” They read lots of poetry, as well as novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and some Afghan and Iranian novelists whose names no one knows in the rest of the world. All these books were in Dari.
    Some of the older girls, including Wakeel’s sisters, read Grandfather’s books by Sigmund Freud long before I did. We could hear them whispering about something called “the Oedipus complex,” and then laughing. As soon as any of the younger cousins got too close to them, though, they stopped talking and looked at us in a way