Free The Bard of Blood by Bilal Siddiqi

didn’t want to be working under the Taliban indirectly. And I didn’t want to be looked upon as a fool for working under a man who faked the existence of ballots, which got him more votes than the turnout itself!’
    Kabir scratched his beard thoughtfully on hearing this sadly amusing piece of news. It was true, the actual voter turnout in some regions like the Pashtun south was around 5 to 10 per cent. But the ballot stuffing done for Karzai at some polling stations, which didn’t even exist as such, recorded more than a 100 per cent turnout!
    ‘So Karzai’s presidency has run its course now,’ Kabir replied. ‘Will you go back?’
    ‘If Abdullah Abdullah wins, I might. He was a friend of Ahmad Shah Massoud. He believes in fighting fire with fire and won’t hesitate to take action against the Taliban,’ Saleh said. ‘I don’t agree with some of Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai’s policies, on the other hand. With Abdullah there’s still a ray of hope for Afghanistan. He might just be the saviour we need. Having said that, Ghani is a smart man, too.’
    Saleh paused. And then as if remembering something important, he spoke again. ‘Karzai had very smartly asked Omar to run for presidency too! He made a public announcement of the same just recently. He made it look as though he’s asking Omar to leave the gun and run Afghanistan peacefully. Omar obviously declined. He wasn’t going to fall for this. He has his aims, both short and long term, in place. And he wants to achieve them violently.’
    ‘What you’re saying is the Taliban initially wanted fragmentation in a government they wanted to overthrow eventually anyway,’ he said.
    Saleh nodded, adding, ‘In many ways, this situation is similar to the Hezbollah in Lebanon. And to top it all, since Mullah Omar and bin Laden had forged forces early on, a government with the Taliban at its helm will mean a government with elements of al-Qaeda itself.’
    Kabir took a while to process this. He let out a deep breath. It had been so long since he had been part of a discussion as heavy as this. He instantly recalled an apt Shakespearean line.
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
    ‘I thought Karzai was anti-Taliban, and that they weren’t too particularly fond of him either,’ Kabir said. ‘But he’s played a smart political game thus far. President Obama had made it clear through his actions that he wanted little to do with Karzai on the personal front, unlike Bush. I believe Bush and Karzai used to chat regularly over videoconferencing.’
    ‘The rest of the world thought Karzai is anti-Taliban too. Till he started his slimy appeasement policies. He tried to keep America happy. He tried to keep India happy. He tried to keep Pakistan happy. And to top it all, he tried to keep the Taliban happy! I don’t know about the others, but he succeeded in keeping the Taliban happy. And since he’s kept them happy, Pakistan seems content. As for me, I’m happy there will be a change soon.’
    Kabir countered, ‘But then there are innocent Pakistanis being killed in the tribal regions, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas! What’s worse is that the Pakistani government encourages it.’
    ‘Yes, but let me explain it this way. The tribal areas are the servants’ quarters of a palace. If a fire breaks out in the servants’ quarters, the rest of the palace will take notice of it for certain, but be thankful that the fire didn’t break out under their asses. The FATA are the servants’ quarters. Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi are the royal quarters of the palace.’
    ‘Hardly, if the palace is a place like Pakistan,’ Kabir said sarcastically.
    A pregnant silence followed. Both men lost in deep thoughts of their own. Kabir had learnt more by looking at the situation from Saleh’s point of view. Saleh, himself, began to reminisce about how his short-lived dream of a perfect Afghanistan had been realized under Ahmad Shah Massoud and then subsequently