Kids of Kabul Read Online Free Page A

Kids of Kabul
Book: Kids of Kabul Read Online Free
Author: Deborah Ellis
Tags: Children—Afghanistan—Juvenile literature. Children and war—Afghanistan—Juvenile literature. Afghan War, 2001Children—Juvenile literature
Pages:
Go to
person who has accomplished this phenomenal task is called a hafiz. It is a revered title, one worthy of respect. The Qur’an is more than 86,000 words long, and it takes, on average, three to four years to memorize the whole thing. Anyone who has tried to memorize a poem for school will understand the concentration and dedication such a task takes! The children who accomplish this are said to be an extra special blessing to their parents.
    Becoming a hafiz is a goal of Sadaf’s.
    I live with my mother and three sisters. My father was killed in a rocket attack a few years ago.
    We were in our village, which has the name of Kolach. It was an ordinary place, not a special place.
    My father liked to pray outside. He liked being under the sky instead of under a roof. So he was outside of the house, kneeling on his prayer mat, saying his prayers. And a rocket came down and killed him.
    The rocket blew my whole house apart. There was nothing left of it. Maybe scraps of things. Nothing we could use. Nothing of value.
    I was in my grandfather’s house at the time, with my mother and sisters. My grandfather’s house was right beside my house, so when the rocket hit my house, we felt it at Grandfather’s.
    It was very, very bad, so bad that you cannot even imagine it, like a nightmare. But worse than a nightmare. When you are next to a rocket exploding, you see it, you feel the ground shake, you hear the noise like a big animal roaring, and you smell it, too, the fire, the dust.
    I did not want to believe that my father had been killed. I wanted to dig through the yard, through everything that was broken, to see if we could find him. But my grandfather took me away. It would not have helped. Of course he was dead.
    I don’t know who fired the rocket. Maybe it was the Taliban. Maybe it was the foreign soldiers. You think they would tell me? You think the Taliban would come to me and say, “Oh, we killed your father but we didn’t mean to. The rocket went the wrong way.” No, they don’t do that. Nobody explains anything.
    My father was a good man, a kind man. He liked his daughters to be smart and to learn things. He was proud when we learned how to read.
    After the explosion my uncle took us away to another village to live with him. He is my mother’s brother. We lived with him for a few years. My grandfather was too poor for us to stay with him. Now we are here in Kabul, trying to make a new life.
    My two older sisters are married now, and they share everything with my mother and me. When they get some food, we get some food. My mother is jobless. She gets a bit of money from her brother, but not a lot. He is a laborer and does not make a lot of money.
    The thing I most like to do is study the Qur’an. My father was killed while he was praying, and I think that makes his death holy in some way. I like to think so, anyway. By studying the Qur’an I feel that he is not so far away from me.
    It is my dream to one day memorize all of the Qur’an. It was the wish of my father that all his girls be able to do this. I want to become a hafiz, which is what people will call me when I have memorized the whole Book of Allah.
    It will be a big job. The Qur’an has 114 surahs [chapters] and over six thousand verses. But others have done it and I will be able to do it. Then the message of the Prophet will be inside me, and I’ll always have it, even if all the Qur’ans disappear. And when I have a problem, I can know what part of the Holy Qur’an will help me solve it.
    I haven’t started to memorize it yet. I am still learning to read it, and I make a lot of mistakes. When I stop making mistakes, then I will start to memorize.
    There is a television show on Afghan TV called Qur’an Star, for those who memorize the Qur’an, a kind of competition. I want to go on this program and do well. That is one good way I can help my family. The last winner was a sixteen-year-old girl. She won 150,000 afghanis ($3,000 US). My family will be
Go to

Readers choose