Free Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi

“I’m hungry.”
    You take an apple from the scarf you’ve tied into a bundle and wipe it on your dusty clothes. The apple just gets dirtier. You put it back in the bundle and pull out another, cleaner one, which you give to your grandson, Yassin, who is sitting next to you, his head resting on your tired arm. The child takes it in his small, dirty hands and brings it to his mouth. His front teeth haven’t come through yet. He tries to bite with his canines. His hollow, chapped cheeks twitch. His narrow eyes become narrower. The apple is sour. He wrinkles up his small nose and gasps.
    With your back to the autumn sun, you are squatting against the iron railings of the bridge that links the two banks of the dry riverbed north of Pul-i-Khumri. The road connecting northern Afghanistan to Kabul passes over this very bridge. If you turn left on the far sideof the bridge, onto the dirt track that winds between the scrub-covered hills, you arrive at the Karkar coal mine …
    The sound of Yassin whimpering tears your thoughts away from the mine. Look, your grandson can’t bite the apple. Where’s that knife? You search your pockets and find it. Taking the apple from his hands, you cut it in half, then in half again, and hand the pieces back to him. You put the knife in a pocket and fold your arms over your chest.
    You haven’t had any
naswar
for a while. Where’s the tin? You search your pockets again. Eventually you find it and put a pinch of naswar in your mouth. Before returning the tin to your pocket, you glance at your reflection in its mirrored lid. Your narrow eyes are set deep in their sockets. Time has left its mark on the surrounding skin, a web of sinuous lines like thirsty worms waiting around a hole. The turban on your head is unraveling. Its weight forces your head into your shoulders. It is covered in dust. Maybe it’s the dust that makes it so heavy. Its original color is no longer apparent. The sun and the dust have turned it gray …

    Put the box back. Think of something else. Look at something else.
    You put the tin back into one of your pockets. You draw your hand over your gray-streaked beard, then clasp your knees and stare at your tired shadow, which merges with the orderly shadows cast by the railings of the bridge.
    An army truck, a red star on its door, passes over the bridge. It disturbs the stony sleep of the dry earth. The dust rises. It engulfs the bridge, then settles. Silently it covers everything, dusting the apples, your turban, your eyelids … You put your hand over Yassin’s apple to shield it.
    “Don’t!” your grandson shouts. Your hand prevents him from eating.
    “You want to eat dust, child?”
    “Don’t!”
    Leave him alone. Keep yourself to yourself. The dust fills your mouth and nostrils. You spit out your naswar next to five other small green plugs on the ground. With the loose flap of your turban, you cover your nose andmouth. You look over at the mouth of the bridge, at the road to the mine. At the black wooden hut of the guard posted at the road barrier. Wisps of smoke fly from its little window. After hesitating for several seconds, you grab hold of one of the bridge’s rusty railings with one hand and grip your bundle with the other. Pulling yourself to your feet, you shuffle in the direction of the hut. Yassin gets up too and follows you, clinging to your clothes. Together you approach the hut. You put your head through the small, paneless window. The hut is full of smoke and there’s the smell of coal. The guard is in exactly the same position as he was before, his back against one of the walls, his eyes still closed. His cap might have been pulled slightly further down, but that’s all. Everything else is just the same, even the half-smoked cigarette between his dry lips …
    Try coughing.
    Even you can’t hear your cough, let alone the guard. Cough again, a bit louder. He doesn’t hear that either. Let’s hope the smoke hasn’t suffocated him. You call