9/11: A Short Story Of The Taliban

SHORT STORY
The sun’s rays beamed upon Kabul. It had not rained for many months now. The grass had almost vanished and any remaining patches of grass looked rough and shaggy like uncombed hair that felt coarse as my feet brushed across a patch of dried grass along the ground. The heat was particularly unbearable this morning as I was drenched with sweat. It trickled down my down my face and back like a waterfall and made a puddle on the ground, almost as if I was being teased by Mother Nature. I couldn’t stop pondering about the heat. It rained down on the village like a breath from hell. As I scanned across the ground it was as if the scorched sand shimmered in the penetrating white rays of the sun. I remembered my mother warning me that the
As Hazaras, we had waited for the day that we would be treated as equals. I recalled the day that the Taliban moved in and put an end to all the fighting and my mother telling me “Afrooz we are going to be safe.” The expression on her face, I remember fondly the hope that sparkled in her eyes, she radiated this excitement and feeling of hope. Things however turned sour very quickly after the Taliban had took over, the group that we thought off as saviours, began massacring Hazaras like us. Kabul had become a dangerous place for Hazaras like us. The Taliban would knock on doors demanding any Hazara servants to be released so that they could publicly execute us. Hazara villages would be torched until nothing but ashes remained while they stood with around, shooting anybody trying to
Neither of us had spoken about what had happened and I was happy that we didn’t, I needed to get the awful image out of my head. We walked a few more kilometres and then our luck changed. We were greeted by a young woman, initially mum didn’t trust her but after pondering on the idea that we could be saved, she eventually agreed to go with the woman. Thankfully, we ended up in a refugee camp. Over the next few weeks we were nursed back to health, we were so thankful that he had been given a second change to life, we had escaped the cruel clutches of the Taliban and finally it appeared as if that luck was for once on our