The Fifth Of December [Me, Emma & Afghanistan]

The fifth of December

[Me, Emma and Afghanistan]

Ahura Chalki

Copyright © 2012 Ahura Chalki

All rights reserved.

ISBN-10: 1986810666

ISBN-13: 978-1986810661

DEDICATION

To my daughter Feren and my son Joseph , my only pure loves

Content

i- Acknowledgments

being confused

childhood

adolescence, changing, suffering

stay or leave? hard decision

crossing the border

unknow country, new challenges!

new journey

the rebels are always abnormal

love, logic or emotion

reallity or invented understanding?

unknow world of us intelligance service, part one!

locked myself in freedom..

unknow world of us intelligance service, part two!

being confused

live the moment.

darkness before dawn.

the last portrate of you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to all my friends who helped me by their amazing ideas before publishing this book. And special thanks to Mr. Alexander Hay, who always was ready to give me the time to seat down on table and discus about different ideas and chapters.

1 Being confused

18. DECEMBER, 2014. hATCH café, kONYA, TURKEY, 5 A.M

Pale lamp light, old style wood stove, sandy floor with wooden chairs and tables, all make the café look eighteenth century. Next to the wood stove, a Belgian girl, smoking Marijuana and shaking her head slowly by hooded eyes and amazing guitar music of a Turkish young man. The young guitarist was playing a special dervish song on other side of the stove, while a young Turkish couple, sang a Sufi song, full of emotions and mysticism.

A young British guy with short fawn beard, small and white face, observed everything there, his face showed clearly that he couldn’t understand or recognize a single word of the song, but he was trying to enjoy it.

Only a few meters away, Emma was talking to a young Australian couple about different terrorist attacks which were going on all around the world because of ISIS.

The subject changed to the negotiation between the United States and Cuba, with its unprecedented talks. It was the first time this was happening after years of no political relation between them. And it’s happening these days, joined the British guy.

Putting my head between my hands, sitting in a corner, I couldn’t understand what was going on. My eyes were closing, I was so tired. Demonic laughing, sighing, and moaning echoed off the columns and walls of the café. It blew my mind like an exploding bomb. At the same time a scary continuous voice was asking me, Why? Why? Why?...

Awaking from my nap, opening my eyes, nothing had changed. Moving my head and eyes, they stopped on Emma. She is speaking so passionately. Excitement and amazement filled her voice. I could feel her energy hitting me even through the moving of her facial muscles five to six meters away.

Trying to close my eyes again and smell the maddening aura of her hair. Short brown hair, round face, pointed eyebrows, brown loose jacket, and medium sized body, all mad, she could have been my twin that is if I were a girl.

Not just that, not just the warmness that I was getting from her simple and friendly combination of winter shoes and black sport pants. But even her thoughts and her dreams were driving me crazy, as crazy as when you forget where you are and what is going on around you, as crazy as when you have those feelings so deep that you can feel nothing else. As much as she was trying to talk about all serious topics, politic, economy or whatever, I could remember when I was twenty and even younger, in university getting political protests organized and trying to challenge the government about all things that they were doing, never mind if they were good or not, everything they did was wrong to us just because we did not like the government. She and I shared those feelings, they were part of me, they defined me, they defined her, and they were our feelings. It’s what brought us together in the middle of nowhere in Turkey...

Now the music had changed. Some tall, young, thin girl started playing her harmonica, all the others were high on marijuana, moving around, hands shaking, all were out of their mind. I do not know why they think they must be that way to be a Sufi, that they have to be completely drunk and lose themselves in emotion that way,... yes Rumi was drunk and lost himself in the world of emotion and energy, but wasn’t he also high, out of his mind, when he thought of himself as a creator, as a truth, as a god!...

The rusted stove looked red from the intensity of the heat; I moved my eyes from the stove to its pipe, long, dark, as dark as my unknown future and as tall as my unlimited feelings. I followed the pipe to the roof, to where it was going out,...

Head bent backward, stiffening my neck, closing my eyes, opening, over and over... I could still feel my body, my legs imprisoned in pants for more than two days...

I turned my head again to the wooden table, with six wooden round chairs, it seemed there was nothing else than tea on the bar. Being so early in the morning, however, it was probably the best option to feel warm, as warm as that eristic talk about, Sufism, politics...., there was still one chair free on the table, right next to her, I still cannot understand, was it the gravitation of body or soul and feelings? Whatever it was, it was amazing, warm and so powerful, attracting me to get there, to move myself towards her...

Everything was like a miracle and so ironic. It was supposed to be an escape from the past, the past which was hurting me, memories which were supposed to be forgotten through me telling them to a stranger whom I would never see again. But now, that unknown person was forever there and became a part of me, a part of me that did not want to leave...

2 Childhood

1989. cHALKI VILLAGE, nORTHEAST OF iRAN.

Just few days earlier the war had finally finished between Iran and Iraq, after eight years of fighting for nothing. Revolution and then right after that, eight years of war, for the government which did not even have time to create a functioning of itself! Iraq, or better to say Saddam Hussain, was the envoy of the whole Arab world, an envoy who found himself a toy after years, because in actuality he was also part of the game. All the supporters of the war probably knew that a war between crisis-stricken Persia right after their revolution with the world’s most powerful Arab country in that time, would not have had a winner. Actually it would have winner, but it was not any of them. It was the fact that Persia for hundreds of years, or even thousands, was the most powerful country in the region. The Arabs after their Islamic Empire within the first two hundreds of their existence had never been in power. Saddam Hussain, however, could also be just as dangerous for them as powerful Persia being around. So what could have been better than annihilation of them both?

This was the conversation which I had been listening to everyday especially for the last two years since my older brother was taking part in the war. It was a war and nobody was concerned about whether is a good conversation for a five years old kid to hear or not. The television and radio, did not have a special rating, plus five or plus twelve (or whatever), for their programs about politics and war. It was on 24/7. Especially when you were around my father, who was following the news second after second. With my five years old mind I was thinking he was worried about my brother, which was my only worry. I did not know what war meant, I just knew that I hadn’t seen him for long time. Had I forgotten what he looked like? I did not know, because the last time that he was home it was only for few days. He seemed so much older than when he had left. Mozafar was good driver; he was always telling me how he was in love with driving and could drive super-fast. He was a driver in the war as well. He told me it was the only place where he never wanted to drive, especially since he had driven many dead soldiers back!

The war finished, but my father's habit of listening to news never ended. Many years after that when I was almost ten, I understood the reason. He was a security officer when he was younger in the former government, when shah was still in power. This was where my political blood came from. Then I understood why he had always kept an athletic body, sharp eyes, and a calm yet strong personality, unlike my mother, who was very emotional and religious. My body must have come from my mother’s side, medium build with black and balding hair. My character came from both mother and father; it was so easy to find out from my political articles which were mixed with a poetic and political point of view...

Since we were living in the northeast of the country, in a city furthest from the war, most of the public services started back quickly. One of them was the library; I had been waiting so long, for that. My brothers and sisters taught me how to read and write. They had told me about library, where there had been so many books and where I could read about anything I wanted. But when I went for first time, the only book that they gave me, was Miss Sun, which I finished reading by the time I had come down the stairs of library. I ran back home so excited and read the book again and again for everybody at home, especially for my brother, Vahid. I was so blessed to always have had him next to me. Two years later when I had just finished my first year of school, he had been the person who pushed my father to allow me to go to the town and study there in better schools. He was in fifth grade and knew me well enough to know that there was nothing for me to learn in that small village school. Instead of studying, I had been helping the students in second and third grade with their tests and homework, when I was still in first grade!

Finally I moved to Quchan, the nearest town to our village, it was actually very close, just about fifty kilometers. However it was a town with more facilities and better schools. It was not just that the school was interesting me; the new life was interesting me more. My father had another house there and there were just three of us, me, my brother, and sister. I liked how the house was, especially the yard with its small garden and tiny pond.

My schooling in Quchan started well, but after a few months it also started to bore me. There was nothing new that I hadn’t already read in the books at school, which was the focus of most of the teachers there in that time. So I started to find an alternative way of teaching myself. I do not know whether to say fortunately or unfortunately (I mean in how it affected my life, but generally I have to say hundred percent unfortunately). Everything was still under the influence of Islamic revolution and war. Society, in comparison to ten years ago, had changed so much. The environment had become so religious and Islamic, and it had an effect on me as well. Most of my social activities were about religion. My life until twelve had been mostly about learning the Quran and being involved in the many activities of the Mosque.

3 adolenscence, changing, suffering

1996. quchan city. northeast of Iran.

Finally my interest in writing and social research led me to the office of a weekly magazine called Payame Quchan, where I started my unofficial life of journalism. They could not trust me in the beginning, but after a few weeks when they saw the quality of my articles and research, they slowly began to print some of them and in few months I was one of their writers, and I even had my own space!  For an eleven year old kid, it was a great start (even if I was not feeling myself as just an eleven year old) and it was the start of a new life. It was also an entry gate to