Free Refugees by Catherine Stine

her ankles, cooled like a canary left by an open window. She hung up.

run
Baghlan, Afghanistan,
September 9, 2001
    J ohar pushed through the carpet layers.
Khub ast!
he thought frantically. Flames were curling around the door to the front room. He was almost to the storage room door. “Am I such a coward, Allah,” he said aloud as he stepped into the blazing front room, “that you wish me dead?” Johar strained his eyes for shapes. On a square of overturned bedding, flames jumped. Around the circle of logs on the hearth a fire danced. Smoke poured from the ceiling bricks. He took a hurried breath in and out. The hairs inside his nose scorched.
If I burn,
thought Johar numbly,
Bija and Aunt Maryam will have no family. No food.
    “I'm braver than you think!” he yelled to the fire as he tripped through the smoke to search for his pack. It was lodged in the crevice under the floor with the singed wool.Johar stuffed it full, then shot through the door to the sheep paddock, escaping flames hotter than the hellish sands of Rigestan.
    “Come,” Johar commanded his sheep. He lured them from the stone enclosure behind the house, prodding the skittish ones along the path and toward his neighbor's house as they bleated with terror. “Zolar!” He beat on her door until she opened it.
    “My brother,” Johar cried. “They took my brother, and now the men may be headed for my aunt Maryam's!”
    Zolar wept at the sight of Johar's house in flames. She was thankful for the sheep he gave her, and so moved by his worry for Bija and Maryam that she offered him her donkey. “Protect what you can. My beast will get you to your aunt's faster than on foot.”
    Johar uttered grateful thanks, took one last look at his burning hut, and flew like a free-tailed bat to town.
    He guided the donkey onto a back path, praying he would not run into guards. Where would Naji take Daq, and what did these Pashtun Taliban want with a Tajik like Daq, anyway? It would be absurd for Daq to fight against the Alliance—against his own Tajik tribe in the north. And Farooq was not as tough as Daq—Farooq's would be a swift decline. These thoughts drove Johar to Maryam's, more fearful than ever for her safety.
    Spotting men up ahead, across from Maryam's hut, Johar took cover behind an old Soviet rocket that had pierced the hill like an ogre's arrow. His breath came in sharp stabs. In the darkness it was impossible to tell whether the men were Taliban or not. They prattled on. While Johar was devising an alternative route he heard the rumblings of a truck, and the men drove away.
    Maryam's door was open. Johar leaped off the donkey and tied it to a post. He trembled as he eased in the door. Neither Maryam nor Bija was anywhere in sight, but the house! The house had been torn apart! Fabric was ripped from the wall. The flower pots and dishes lay in shards. Books had been trampled. The samovar was gone from its perch. What had they done with his family? Kidnapped them? Or, pray not, murdered them?
    Johar shuddered with a rising hysteria as he scrambled into the courtyard and around the village lanes. “Bija! Maryam!” he called, splitting apart the silence. Oil lanterns lit behind curtains, and faces peered out.
    “Johar!” a woman's voice called from a nearby shed. “Johar, is that you?”
    The burqa-clad figure was hazy in the dark. As he hurried toward her, he saw that she stood a head shorter than Maryam. “Who are you?” Johar asked.
    “Shh.” The woman pulled him inside. “It's
    Ramila.” “Ramila, what happened? Where did they go?”
    “Soldiers took your aunt.” Ramila's eyes, through the burqa's opening, had a stunned look. “They're searching for you too, Johar. You must leave!”
    “But my aunt, my cousin—” A catch in Johar's throat would not let him continue.
    “Come.” Ramila lit an oil lamp and motioned Johar to a corner where a sleeping child lay curled on a quilt, stalk doll in hand.
    “Bija!” Johar leaned over and