Kabul’s Shahre Naw area didn’t prove as safe as my family had hoped.

A two-ton bomb hit so close to us that the shockwave shattered every window in the apartment building. From then on the windows weren’t covered with glass but with plastic tarp stapled in the window pane. Plastic tarp could handle shockwaves that made glass shatter. The plastic let light in, but wasn’t fully see through. I couldn’t even look outside anymore. Driven by frustration I poked holes into the plastic, consistently drawing in soft corrections and loving lectures. To this day, I remember how the sharp cold felt from the holes I made to look outside. In those early days of plastic windows, there was still a sense that this was temporary, an inconvenience to endure. But the temporary stretched into weeks, then months, and finally into the warped reality of everyday life in a war zone. Being stuck like that drove me restless. Besides my vendetta against the plastic tarp, I snuck onto the balcony unsupervised, an act of rebellion that made my grandmother’s face pale with fear, terrified a stray bullet or piece of shrapnel might catch me. She would scold my cousins, my mother, anyone in earshot, for not keeping a closer eye on me.

The only good thing about that cramped Share Naw apartment was Amina. She was our next door neighbour, slightly older than I was and a whole 6 years old. She wore traditional Afghan dresses in differing colours and her jet black hair contrasted sharply with the vibrant green of her eyes. I’m still teased that she was my very first love. Since neither of us were allowed to go outside we just had each other to play with. We were small enough to fit through the fence separating our balconies and we spent all day together, if possible. My family was relatively well off compared to hers, so she was usually the one crossing the fence to our side. We played with the few toys I had laying around. Miniature race cars, blue and yellow blocks and  a purple squishy plastic ball I was occasionally allowed to play inside with. Amina was especially fond of the bread we had. While her mother baked bread at home once a week, we had bread delivered daily from a nearby bakery. The amazing smell of fresh Afghan bread never failed to lure Amina to the fence and I would run to my mother to acquire a piece for my greeneyed best friend. The narrow hallway of our apartment became our own secret world. Some days, the intricate red and black carpet patterns would transform into a vast desert we had to cross, dodging bandits or searching for treasure. Other times, we’d build tiny buildings from blocks, with Amina carefully laying down strands of yarn into fences and roads for our village.
“Careful!” Amina’s voice always held a note of playful command.
“You almost stepped on the Bazaar! We need the shops to buy food later.”
I carefully sidestepped her yarn fence, laughing. “Where is the palace? That’s where I was going.”
She pointed excitedly at a crooked tower of blue blocks. “Hurry! The king and queen are waiting for you!”
It didn’t matter what little toys we had. Together, our imaginary games sparked magic. Even the constant backdrop of gunfire and the thud of explosions became part of the landscape of our adventures.
Slowly but surely, the funerals outnumbered the weddings 10 to 1.
My family decided that it was time for us to leave Kabul for the time being. Since all of us were leaving, no one could take care of the livestock we had back at our family home. All of them were sold to a butcher. Even the very highly sought after Frisian cows, the very best dairy cows you could get in Kabul, “you could buy a small house for the price of those cows”, I was told later by my father. 

Back then none of us had an idea that “Frisian” meant from Friesland, a province in The Netherlands, let alone that any of us would ever set foot in The Netherlands. 

“My mom said, you’re leaving,” Amina shouted to me from her side of the balcony. There was a tiny wobble of sadness in her usual bossy voice.

I stared at her for a moment.
“That’s not true! I am staying here.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, holding the fence. “But my mom said it’s dangerous here and you are leaving,” a bright yellow block slipped from her fingers and clattered against the railing.
After asking my mother, then my Madar Jan and Bibi Jan if it was true, it gradually dawned on me that Amina was right. I felt an ache in my heart whenever I pictured our block village without her. I loved her like a little boy loves a little girl and I wasn’t leaving without her, so I took matters into my own hands.
“Can Amina come with us?”
“Come eat with us?” My mother replied.
“Come to Pakistan, with us.”
“Why would she come to Pakistan with us?”
“So we can play together.”
My mother, starting to understand where this was going, said: “Amina’s parents will miss her if she comes with us.”
“Her parents can come too,” I said matter of factly. 

“Don’t worry, we are not leaving forever. We’ll return when the war is over and then you and Amina can play outside,” she assured me while giving me a hug. 

My mother recalls that on the day of our departure, while eating our last breakfast, I kept asking: “are we finished?”
When finally, the answer was, “yes”, I collected all the leftover bread as fast as I could and  ran over to give it all to Amina. I hugged her goodbye through the fence and said: “my mom says I can come back soon so we can play outside.” She nodded silently while slowly chewing on a piece of bread.
I never saw her again.