“Deep Twin over the Hindu Kush”

By Cathleen With
www.cathleenwith.com

I can hear them in the fields, the swish of their clothes against the opium stalks. The hum of their language, against the grate of the Afghani guide screaming at me in Dari, “Come now, you little shit, come!”
His voice then gentles down to a murmur of seller-talk to the others. I try not to move with noise, my clothes are but little. I know the fields well, my family from Jalalabad… and long ago they worked the wheat fields, when the wheat was prosperous to us. This was before the opium, before my grandfather went blind from the bomb some years ago. This bomb blast, that left shards in his eyes, his mouth still half open in talk with his good friend, Alam.
I can see that time, Grandfather and Alam, resting outside our home, sitting on a corner of rug. They were making like their own chaikhana outside our home, and the sun was blazon red. Then I ran to the window after the blast, it came from nowhere.
This is how it seems, a blast and a racing jeep, my grandfather’s eyes bits of shard in them. And we run with him, to the tent-clinic.

            “Mahmud!” the Afghani guide screams at me, and he is closer, closer to me in the fields.
“Come now, you are promised to these American doctors.”

After the bomb-blast, they gave my grandfather shots-- those American doctors-- and picked out the shards, sewed his lids up into a half-smile. And then, looking from him to me, the American doctors started asking my mother about my belly. I shied from them.
There are those who are new to our street in Jalalabad who ask, sometimes. There are those who buy the chai from me, mornings, before I am out in the fields in the afternoons, cutting small slices to let the opium bleed.
They say, Boy, why does your belly protrude?
 I duck my head and smile at them, hand them their chai, say, No one knows.
 I don’t tell them about my brother swimming inside me, the brother who I speak to at night, my Rumi. This good brother, who grows and feeds within me, who has been with me since we were both in my mother’s womb. And then, while we swam in her warmth, he deciding to become one with me, inside my body.
Rumi whispers me small songs when the bombs are blasting in Jalalabad, and the guns are going off deep into the night. Layer, when Mama, and Grandfather and all my sisters are sleeping under the gauzy veils, and I cannot sleep.
They are after my belly brother now, those American doctors, with their guide. They are after me now, stalking me through the opium fields, the long gone wheat fields of the precious bread. I can hear them, close. The Afghani guide screams in Dari, “There you are!”
Nam man Mahmud, Rumi.
Nama-shuma cheast?

At the hospital now. The American doctor says, “When did you know you had this tumor inside of you?”

I do not know. I tell him.
Do you think me stupid? Do you think I don’t know you want him? To pull my dear brother out from me, away from me-- to cleave, to destroy?

“Does it move?” the doctor asks.

No. It does not move.
Rum, he  moves every day, every hour.  When the afternoon sun is hot down on us in the opium fields, as we cut the pods to make the sheera flow---not too fast or all is lost, they tell us this when we are very small---- And the morning, I feel my Rumi. He is whispering to me when my hands are sticky with the opiate resin, and as I  collect the taryak onto my tool,  put it into my bag.

 In the fields, Chela beside me, humming that sad song of hers, and her eyes dart fearfully at Hussan, who watches us, makes sure we do not put the opium taryak into our own bags. The way he brushes against her little buds of breasts when he checks her body, to see if she has hidden away any apeen, and….. what can I do? I am only her brother of three more years to her---- I am  thirteen years in this world to her ten----
 I put my hand to my little Rumi, and squeeze, just so, and I can hear him sigh against my belly---, for he sees…. don’t you know, you can’t know…. he sees through.
Rumi, it is always Rumi who is within me, like the sage he is named after, our most precious poet.

The American doctor says to me: “Mahmud, we have asked your mother if we may scan your belly with ultrasound. It does not hurt, we will just put this jelly on…”

And then I feel my dear Rumi.
 He lies still as if holding his breath, and covering his face--- as we must do when the fields are burning--- lest we breathe in too much opium smoke, and fall sleeping where we work--- our brains addled forever. The scientific thing moves across my belly. The American doctor’s eyes look with wonder at the growth, Rumi… their mass that they see on the screen. I turn my face. Because it has been so long, me, and this brother inside me.      It has been so long with running, and hiding.
It is hard to hide when your belly is big with brother.
And now, I have betrayed him. This dear one, my good, deep twin.