The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari Page A

ran up the stairs. I looked in on Mother, who appeared to be asleep, and went to my room. I struggled out of my burka and dropped it on the floor. Then I stripped off my wet jeans and panties and hurled them in a corner. The elation I felt at teaching them cricket evaporated in an instant. I hated the man who had frightened me enough to wet myself, and I wanted to burn my clothes to erase the memory. I peered at my shoulders in the mirror, expecting to see bruises from the gun barrels, but the skin was not marked though I still sensed their weight.
    I managed a cynical smile to myself. Cricket? We were not an athletic or sporting nation. As the turnstile for invading armies over the centuries—Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, the Persians, the Mughals, the British, the Russians—we didn’t have the time to cultivate a national sport apart from buzkashi . In buzkashi a headless goat is the ball and two teams of horsemen battle to carry the corpse through distant posts to score a goal. Other sports use balls of different sizes, we use dead goats. Only men played it, even before Alexander, until the Taliban banned the game.
    But that the Taliban would choose this sport made it all the more insane. I could not imagine a Taliban cricket club. They would stroll onto the field wearing yellow-and-red-striped ties under their beards but, instead of cricket bats, they would carry guns as they inspected the pitch on a sunny morning. No, they could not have picked a worse sport, and that advantage was one Jahan and I could use. I dressed quickly in a shalwar before returning to the garden. The boys sat down in front of me.
    â€œWhy is the Taliban promoting cricket?” I said, thinking it through aloud. “You can’t play cricket without understanding the essence of the game. Do the Talib know that they’re encouraging the kinds of behavior they have been trying to suppress all these years? Because they are presenting us with the freedom to express who we are, to discover ourselves, to express our defiance on a playing field. It’s a game that takes time, a few hours, even days, not just ninety minutes like in football, and we can roam in our thoughts and feelings without them being aware of what we’re thinking and doing, even if they watch our every move. We’re out of their reach on the cricket field, and when I played, I loved the freedom of a huge space with only the sky watching us. Each one is alone, yet part of something larger. It’s a game that promotes individual excellence and depends on the actions and the confidence of each player. You have a captain but he isn’t a dictator ordering what you must do. Cricket is a democracy of actions and reactions, and every player can question their captain’s suggestions and counter them. You have a constant dialogue on the field and any player can even change the course of the game midway.”
    â€œBut how do we play it?” Parwaaze asked, impatient with my introduction.
    â€œYou must understand the rules first, and the codes of behavior. For example, you can’t disobey an umpire’s decision—right or wrong—which is another way the sport encourages individualism over team spirit. When you play the game, the two most important individuals are the two ‘warriors’ battling it out on the pitch.”
    â€œIt sounds like a war g-game,” Qubad said warily.
    â€œBut no one’s killed, of course,” I said impatiently. “The two warriors are the bowler and the batsman—they are pitted against each other and only one can win. You define yourself at the batting crease or as the bowler running up to defeat the batsman.” I paused, lost for a moment in thought, wanting them to fall in love with the game as I had. “Think of cricket as theater in which an action repeats itself over and over again until one character is defeated.”
    â€œSo now it’s like theater?”