In the Sea There are Crocodiles Read Free Page B

replied, you have to obey. And he left without waiting for a reply or giving any other explanation.
    Our teacher didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just waited until the noise of the engine had petered out and then picked up the math lesson exactly where it had been interrupted, in the same calm voice and with the same shy smile on his face. Because my teacher was actually quite a shy person, he never raised his voice and when he shouted at us it was as if it hurt him more than it hurt us.
    The next day the Taliban came back, the same one, riding the same motorbike. He saw that we were in class, and that our teacher was giving a lesson. He came in and asked the teacher, Why haven’t you closed the school?
    Because there’s no reason to close it.
    The reason is that Mullah Omar has given the order.
    That’s not a good reason.
    Don’t blaspheme. Mullah Omar says the Hazara schools have to be closed.
    And where will our children go to school?
    They won’t go. School isn’t for the Hazara.
    This school is.
    This school is against the will of God.
    This school is against
your
will, you mean.
    You teach things that God doesn’t want taught. Lies. Things that contradict his word.
    We teach the boys to be good people.
    What does that mean, to be good people?
    Let’s sit down and talk about this.
    There’s no point. I’m telling you. Being a good person means serving God. We know what God wants from men, and how to serve him. You people don’t.
    We also teach humility.
    The Taliban passed between us, breathing hard, the way I did once when I got a stone stuck up my nose. Without another word, he walked out and got back on his motorbike.
    The third morning was an autumn morning, the kind when the sun is still warm, and although the first snow is blowing in the wind, it doesn’t chill the air, just gives it a certain flavor: a perfect day for flying kites. We were practicing a Hazara poem in preparation for the
sherjangi
, the poetry contest, when two jeeps full of Taliban drove up. We ran to the windows to look at them. All the children in the school leaned out to have a look, even thoughwe were afraid, because fear is seductive when you don’t really know what it means.
    Twenty, maybe thirty armed Taliban got out of the jeep, and the same one we’d seen twice before came into the classroom and said to the teacher, We told you to close the school. You didn’t listen to us. Now
we’re
going to teach
you
.
    The school was a big building and there were a lot of us, maybe more than two hundred. Years earlier, when it was built, every parent had contributed a number of days’ work, each person doing what he could, some making the roof, others finding ways to stop the wind coming in at the windows so we could have lessons even in winter, although they never really managed to do much about the wind: whenever we put up sheeting, the wind always tore it off. The school had several classrooms and a headmaster.
    The Taliban made everyone, children and adults, go outside. They ordered us to form a circle in the yard, the children in front, because we were shorter, and the adults behind. Then they made our teacher and the headmaster stand in the middle of the circle. The headmaster was pulling at the material of his jacket as if trying to tear it, and weeping and turning this way and that, looking for something he couldn’t find. But our teacher was as silent as usual, his arms hanging by his sides, and his eyes openbut turned inward. I remember he had beautiful eyes that dispensed goodness to everyone around him.
    Ba omidi didar
, boys, he said. Goodbye.
    They shot him. In front of everyone.
    From that day on, the school was closed, and without school, life is like ashes.
    This matters a lot to me, Fabio
.
    What does?
    Making it clear that Afghans and Taliban are different. I want people to know this. Do you know how many nationalities they were, the men who killed my teacher?
    No. How many?
    There were twenty of them in that