Born Under a Million Shadows Read Online Free Page A

minutes, and so after I completed my homework my only real job was to run to the baker’s each evening with a handful of afs to collect five hot fresh long breads.
    Other than that, my life usually involved waiting for the foreigners.
    Georgie was normally the first to arrive home, and quite often she would allow me to sit in the garden with her as she drank her coffee. Although my mother was always invited, she rarely came to join us. She had quickly made friends with a woman across the road who managed a house for the wife of one of the Ministry of Interior’s men. Her name was Homeira and she was pretty fat, so I guessed they paid her well. I was happy my mother had found a friend, so I felt no jealousy when she spent much of her time talking to her in our rooms or at the house of Homeira’s employer. In fact, I was more than happy; I was amazed. It was as if a hidden key had turned in my mother’s head, releasing a river of words that had been locked in there for years.
    More amazing, however, was my mother’s willingness to let me stay in the house alone and to sit with the Westerners for as long as “they don’t become bored.” Perhaps she thought it would be good for my English, although James was hardly ever around, May always seemed to be crying, and Georgie and I usually spoke Dari together.
    From these little conversations I learned that Georgie came from England, the same country as London. She’d been in Afghanistan for ages and came to live with James and May two years ago because they had become friends and James needed the rent money. She worked for an NGO and combed goats for a living, and because she knew the country and traveled a lot she had made loads of Afghan friends. In that way, and many more, she was different from most foreigners I had met, and I think I fell in love with her instantly. She was gentle and funny, and she seemed to like being with me. She was also very beautiful with thick almost-black hair and dark eyes. I hoped one day to marry her—once she had given up smoking and converted to the one true faith, of course.
    The engineer, May, was usually the second one home and tended to disappear into her room as soon as her quick greetings were over. Georgie told me she came from America on a contract with one of the ministries and that she was “a little unhappy right now.” She didn’t explain further, and I didn’t ask more. I liked the mystery it gave to May’s tears.
    As a rule, James was always the last one home, and at least twice a week he would return very late, bouncing off walls and singing to himself. The more I got to know him, the more I was convinced he was related to Pir the Madman.
    “He works very hard,” Georgie explained, “and mainly with the ladies.”
    Georgie laughed at that, and I wondered how these women got permission from their husbands to work so late with aman who freely showed his nipples to the world as if they were medals of war.
    “What work does he do with them?” I asked, causing Georgie to laugh even louder. It was a good, strong sound, like thunder in summer.
    “Fawad,” she finally said, “you’d best ask your mother that question.”
    And that put a stop to that.
    And because that’s always the way with adults—they shut you out just as things get interesting—I had no choice but to carry on with my own investigations, investigations my mother might call “snooping.”
    Through much trying and failing, I found the best time to watch my new friends was at night, when the lights were on, it was dark outside, and everyone thought I was asleep. Luckily, my mother was a great help when it came to my nighttime spying, as she had chosen to sleep in the TV room, meaning I now had a bedroom to myself for the very first time, which gave me complete freedom to explore my surroundings and their strange Godless inhabitants.
    Now and again, about an hour after I’d turned out my light, my mother would open the door to my room, which