The Somber Side of a Scientific Mind. Christian Tyoder
card was found stuck between the springs and the cushion-protecting canvas. On the back of the card were these words in Abd’s wobbly and splotchy handwriting: “Please get in touch with Hans and give him my diary.” Martine told Hans that the word diary was not fully written and that the y is represented by a long backward slash. She said she and the Rasulov brothers believed that Abd became unconscious at that point. He was found with the head drooped, the ballpoint tightly held in his hand, and the notebook by his side.
The search began for the person with the name Hans, whom nobody on both sides of the family had ever met or heard of. Given the turmoil in the country, Zekirullah knew that it would be a very lengthy and difficult task of honoring Abd’s request. The telephonic communication between Afghan cities was most of the time interrupted and that from the country to the outside world for personal use practically nonexistent. Afghanistan was ravaged by skirmishes between warlords on one hand and the Soviet annexation attempt on the other. Soviet-supported government military planes’ bombardments of tribal encampments were not infrequent. Zekirullah sent the retrieved business card and the notebook to Ali, who lived in a Western European country that had a much better telephonic system of communication, asking him to actively try to locate Hans’s whereabouts. It took almost two months for the message to arrive in Vienna. Ali started out with a phone call to Vaduz, Liechtenstein, using the telephone number printed on the recovered business card. The occupants of the house, whose address was listed on the card, informed him that nobody by that name was known to them and that they had been living in the dwelling for almost ten years. Ali got in touch with several bank managers and the high school superintendent in Vaduz, and also with the local chamber of commerce, but there was no trace of Hans. In the meantime, Martine received from Ali a package containing Abd’s notebook and Hans’s business card. She locked these items up in her safety box and hoped that someday this mysterious person would show up.
Several years had passed. Martine continued faithfully to keep in touch with the Rasulov brothers. Then in the early part of January 1997, the unconfirmed news that Hans had moved to Sweden came as a total surprise. The railroad section of Vienna transportation department just hired a trilingual office clerk who happened to be a citizen of Liechtenstein and had his office desk just a few feet away from that of Ali. The latter quickly found out that the man knew someone who might have known Hans years ago. After all, Liechtenstein is a tiny nation. A week later Ali learned from this man that Hans’s parents had passed away, and their house was sold and resold a couple of times and finally to the current Austrian couple. Hans’s sister Karolin got married then left town soon after. But the most important bit of information obtained from the third party was that they had lunch together before Hans left Vaduz for Stockholm where he was supposed to be hired by a bank. Ali called Sveriges Riksbank, one of the main banks in Sweden. They confirmed that Hans was indeed employed by the institution’s suburb branch but had left for another job with Rusam Company Ltd., Copenhagen, a few years ago. Further telephone inquiries led Ali to successfully locate Hans at his current employment in the Bronx.
Without being asked, Martine explained to Hans why she could not succeed in advising her husband not to make the trip back to his homeland. “Abd is a self-denying man who has tremendous willpower, resolve, determination, and especially self-discipline. Once he makes up his mind, nobody can change his plan. In retrospect, I think he had tried to play down the severity of his illness in order to spare me from suffering. He knew that the lymphocytic type of leukemia that he had been diagnosed with was incurable. Therefore, in his opinion, it would have made no difference whether he received treatment in a developed country like France or no treatment at all in his homeland. A few months of prolonged life through repeated blood transfusions would do nothing more than just prolong his family members’ agony and suffering. In addition to his untreatable illness, the relationship between him and his two sons became the last straw that broke the camel’s back. So, he chose to leave us behind, as little as possible affected by his ailment, to return to his homeland and spend the remaining few short weeks there. The following words found in his notebook truly reflect his intention. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Furthermore, he had on several occasions expressed the desire, when the time came, to have his body buried in his homeland, next to his parents’ tombs.”
At the end of their telephone conversation, Martine asked, “Do you know why my husband wanted us to give his diary to you? Knowing Abd, I am convinced that he must have had a solid reason to leave behind such an instruction just before he became unconscious.”
“Please let me quickly relate to you events that took place after I met Abd at the Café de la Gare in Paris, and then you will find the answer to your legitimate question.” Hans went on in length, recounting the activities of each day he was in the company of Abd back in January 1969. Very touched by Hans’s story, Martine occasionally interrupted him to ask for more details, in order to find out whether Abd had suffered with his terminal illness.
“Thank you, Mr. Reinberg, for having accepted to keep my husband’s legacy alive through your writing of his memoir. I am too old [Martine would be seventy-eight years old two weeks from that Wednesday to undertake such a demanding task]. I will mail my husband’s notebook to you the first thing tomorrow morning.” She slowly and clearly, letter by letter, spelled out to Hans her mailing address in La Rochelle and then said adieu to him after they agreed to stay in touch frequently.
Three weeks later Hans received Abd’s notebook and a copy of the business card he gave to his travel companion twenty-eight years ago. The cover of the journal was partially tattered; but there were no missing pages, except a small part of the last page was torn off. He spent that same weekend deciphering the handwritten contents of the diary and was very pleased to find out that the essence of Abd’s life was already known to him through the eight-day past conversations, except for some details from the diary which would certainly make his memoir writing more accurate and easier. Hans started to tackle the writing task the following week.
Chapter Three
Challenging Preteen Years
The years following the Afghan independence from the British and recognition by the Soviet Union and other nations in March 1919, Afghanistan continued to experience social unrest and bloody confrontations between warlords. When fighting broke out in Bamyan and other large cities, Afghan men went into hiding in isolated mountainous hamlets with their family for weeks or even months. The Rasulov family made no exception. Then, barely nine years of age, Abdulai’s father took him, his mother, his fifteen-year-old adopted sister Omira, his ten-year-old brother Zekirullah, his eight-year-old brother Faiz, his six-year-old twin brothers Ali and Aamir, and his four-year-old baby sister Nabeela to a small and narrow, rocky unnamed strip of rugged land and with hidden caves in the southwestern part of the Hindu Kush Mountains. It took them about a day and a half from Bamyan, first on foot then by rowboat on the Helmand River’s upper stream, to get to this site. Animals were usually escorted on foot by young boys or old men to the hiding place. The Rasulovs were familiar with this hideout from similar trips they had made in the past several years. Being members of small Buddhist remnants from the Mauryans’ era still living in the Bamyan province and frequently persecuted by Sunni Muslims, the location of this secret hideout was passed on from one generation to another. The preparation for the evacuation was made precipitously the night before. At dawn on the next day, with already packed belongings, including warm clothing, rice, flour, light cooking utensils, and everything else they could carry on their backs, the whole family set out on foot in the early hours of a cold late winter morning. Abd’s father and two of his brothers carried fishing rods with them.
Once reaching the foothills, they still faintly heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions. As they ascended the narrow steep path, Abd looked back toward their corrugated-roofed, single-room house made of sundried mud bricks, wondering whether it would still be there, in the outskirt of Bamyan, upon their return or burned down after looting by armed bandits. By midday the whole family arrived at the river site where their twenty-foot-long partially covered boat was moored next to a half-sunken one. In addition, a couple more wooden rafts attached side by side to a pointed rock made up the improvised marina. Abd volunteered to continue on foot, escorting the three