Free A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar Page B

Noor Sher, discussing something with him. When Haji Noor Sher went upstairs to his room, I ran down from the rooftop to ask my father what was happening. He told me that Haji Noor Sher was having some foreign guests for dinner, people who were working for the United Nations. I ran up and told Wakeel.
    Haji Noor Sher loved having guests, especially when he could show off his garden, and his wealth, and how many servants he had.
    My father went inside our rooms to take a shower. My mother started ironing his best
shalwar kamiz
. Wakeel and I went down to the courtyard to help the servants.
    Two servants carrying shiny silver trays with tea and glasses entered the courtyard. They asked us to carry them upstairs, to Haji Noor Sher’s rooms. I took the tray that had two pots of tea on it. I could smell the strong scent of cardamom coming from their spouts. Wakeel took the tray of glasses and walked ahead of me, climbing the stairs to Haji Noor Sher’s apartment.
    When we reached the top, Wakeel carefully pushed the door open with his foot and went in without knocking. Haji Noor Sher had just finished having his shower. He was standing in the middle of the room, drying his head with a small blue towel, but otherwise completely naked.
    When he saw us, he gasped and hurriedly looked for something with which to cover himself. I was horrified. It is very shameful to be naked in front of someone else, and even more shameful to look at someone naked. I quickly placed the tray in front of the door on the floor and ran back down the stairs. Wakeel ran after me, laughing, and nearly knocking me over as he raced down. I started to laugh, too.
    Haji Noor Sher shouted at us. We did not hear what exactly hesaid, but we knew that he was very angry that we had not knocked on the door before we came in. But how could we? Our hands were full.
    Wakeel and I ran out of the door, across the courtyard, and back up to the roof terrace. There we collapsed into embarrassed laughter. Wakeel asked, “Did you see them?”
    “What?” I asked, still giggling.
    “Did you see that he had five testicles?” Wakeel asked.
    “Five?” I asked in disbelief. “How could he have five?”
    “I counted them very carefully,” Wakeel said seriously, then fell into a heap as he exploded laughing. And each time that the laughter started to ease, we would look at each other and Wakeel would say “Five,” and it started even fiercer than before. When Wakeel laughed, his eyes glowed and his brilliantly white teeth shone.
    Several minutes later, we saw Haji Noor Sher, now very nicely dressed, coming out of his door into the courtyard. We peeped from behind a low wall in a corner.
    Haji Noor Sher was standing in the middle of the courtyard, in a white
shalwar kamiz
and a black waistcoat, ordering his servants to lay carpets on the paths around the courtyard, and to bring the peacocks from the garden. He wore a small, round red hat with a tassel.
    A group of musicians walked in through the low door and greeted him as if he were a prince. He directed them to sit on a platform in the middle of the courtyard that had been covered with an old Bukhara rug made soft and shiny from years of use.
    The musicians were dressed very elegantly with beaded black waistcoats. Each wore a brightly colored turban. One started tuning the twenty-two twangy strings of a
rabab
. Another was blowing the Kabul dust out of his flute-like
ney
. The oldest one sat with a
tambour
rising from his lap, running his fingers up and down its long neck, playing silent music that only he could hear in his mind. And the fourth had a shining pair of brass
tabla
drums that he kept tapping on the sides with a small hammer to tune them, and put a snap into their sound. After a few minutes, they finished their preparations, and the courtyard was filled with their soft, sweet music.
    When my unmarried aunts and my cousins heard the music, they joined us on the rooftop, watching everything from there. By now, it