Nobility

His mom was always proud of her heritage. She was "noble by birth". She was a sardar. He saw that. When she spoke of her mother and her nobility, or when she spoke of her father, the deposed mayor of the summer capital of the deposed King Amanullah, her eyes sparked. It wasn’t false pride.

And her stories…he loved them. They were stories from not too long ago. They were full of proud and beautiful women, funny cousins, loving nannies, loyal servants and goofy carriage drivers, patriotic uncles, good and bad kings and queens, and noble and vicious sardars. And they seemed to have happened centuries ago.

Sometimes she recited a poem or two by Saa’di saheb. He didn’t really understand the verses, but he wondered why she was calling this Saa’di, a poet, not a sardar or holy man, always saheb.

The storytelling took place in his mom’s tailor shop. The shop was on the street level, adjacent to the apartment they had built and lived in. She used to work until late hours of the night, her store windows being sometimes the only illuminated ones in the whole block.

After finishing his homework and supper, he would go down to the shop to bring his mom her can of strong, hot black tea, and to listen to her stories. By then, her two employees had gone home. She was working on this wedding gown that had to be done by the next day or that dress that needed the last corrections. He helped her sometimes and pretended that holding a side of a gown that she was zipping through the machine, or holding the candle so she could burn the corners of a dress to give it the new fashionable curly style, made him an indispensable aide to her. She didn’t mind. And he was rewarded with her stories.

When his hand on aid was not needed, he read to her from the new issues of the two or three Iranian and Afghan magazines, Zan-e Roz, Etla’at Haftagee and Jowandoon that his sisters had subscribed. She corrected his many mispronounced words with a warm smile and without interrupting her work.

He didn’t mind her corrections.

He loved those moments…..in those moments he had his mom all to himself.

Sometimes his youngest, not by much older than him, sister annoyed him with her visits, usually to discuss her next birthday party with his mom or to get money from her for the notebook she needed for school, and sometimes his other, the little older, sister came running down to share the latest Indian song broadcast from Radio Ceylon on her transistor radio, to which she seemed to be glued since he was old enough to become aware of her existence. But, they usually left as abruptly as they had come down to the store. Soon the youngest sister would be on the phone anyway, humming and reciting the poem of the latest Ahmad Zahir song with one of her many classmates.

He didn’t mind his siblings being busy with their own lives.

During the day his mom was occupied with her, at times, crowded store. The customers were almost all women. Some had their cars with husbands or chauffeurs waiting outside, and some were women who could finally afford their first hand-tailored dress. And then, there were the block night watch, the shopkeepers, the beggars, and the many, many salespersons who were coming to the store to conduct their businesses, or who were just peeking through the door curtains to say salaam bibi.

His three uncles often came by the store to say hello, before or after visiting his dad at the apartment. They checked on their younger sister whom they always addressed respectfully with shoma, instead of too which would have been more customary when older siblings addressed their younger ones.

He also thought about those uncles in another regard. While his family car, driven by his older brother, a Kabul University law student, was an English Vauxhall, one of only two Vauxhalls in Kabul as far as he knew, two of the uncles rode bicycles. They drove bicycles and they were 'sardars'? he wondered.

His mom used to buy a lot. Most of it was some sort of food; as if she was afraid her family would run out. Rice from a semi nomadic woman from the Laghman province who not only tended her herd, but also delivered the sacks full of rice with her sons to Kabul customers on her spring visits, dried meat from another nomad, vinegar from a man who had his commodity in a sheep skin bag on his back, quroot from an Hazara woman, cheese from an old man shouting aashawa paneer, aashawa paneer, fresh tomatoes, eggplants and other vegetables and fruits from man who had their products on the back of donkeys or on hand or donkey driven carts. They always stopped at the store, sometimes just to chat for a little while with his bibi. They were offered a cup of tea or a glass of cold water and kept moving, singing aloud their products’ praises for the next customer.

She also had to keep an eye on the house, tell the cook what he should prepare for lunch or dinner, or go to the kitchen herself for half an hour to quickly cook something when the cook wasn’t there, or if they had no cook at that time. Then the kids would come from school, college, or work, joining their dad who was now retired; they would all be hungry soon and want a warm meal on the large dinning table. His mom usually ate lunch at the store with her employees. She sometimes joined the family at the dining table when the store wasn’t very busy, and her longtime assistant Mehrohjan was in a good mood and didn’t mind being left alone with the teenage Hossain, the shop intern.

His mom was a noble and smart businesswoman. Noble because she treated all her customers and business partners with the utmost respect, regardless of who they were, a respect that perhaps only hard working people have for each other. And smart because she got the best deals and prices for the clothes she made and the things she bought from others. The best deals sometimes included price discounts she gave certain customers who otherwise could not have afforded hand-tailored clothes for the regular, higher prices.

Yes, that was his bibi, a woman proud of her heritage, he saw now, because she herself had a proud, noble and self-conscious soul.

He remembered one occasion when his mom took him along to a visit to the Laghmani rice woman. The women had kept inviting his mom to her tent. His mom was a very busy wife, mother of nine demanding teenage and adult children, a respected host or guest of many and never ending extended family gatherings and events, and a busy tailor shop owner, but she could no longer deny her equally proud and noble Laghmani rice woman a visit.

The Laghmani rice woman lived with her family at a nomad’s tent camp outside of the Taimani district. He couldn’t recall now if they drove there or if they took the long walk to the campsite, but he vividly remembered the visit.

The tent was a usual, old, black, and patched Kochi tent. The small camp was clouded in a fog of smoke from burning branches, smells of animal wastes, of boiling milk and fresh chapatti bread.

He was mesmerized by that wild and crystal clear symphony of plants, animals, and humans.

The Laghmani rice woman’s eyes were sparklingly thankful for his mom’s visit and she and her family welcomed them inside the tent.

Of all the palaces and castles his mother had built in his young imagination with her noble stories, this tent was the most majestic place. This tent was the most real palace the queen, his bibi, and he, the prince had ever entered in their lives.



The End