From time to time we were questioned and told that we would be released once the military Komissyon – the Taliban council – had finished its investigation.īilal came in the late afternoon to tell us our release was imminent, but two hours later we were told the area was not safe because of drone activity. They answered that they were fighting the holy war. I asked some of the students why they were here in the madrassa. He started fiddling with it, trying to cock it and lift it but the gun was too heavy, so he rested it on the desk, closed an eye and whispered tatatatatata at an imaginary enemy on the wall. Then he picked up a Kalashnikov that was laid against the wall and rested it on the desk. One eight-year-old boy crouched in front of the desk reading a book about fasting and prayers. ![]() Students came in and out of the classroom, picking up books to kiss them, read, then talk and joke. There was a soiled mattress, a very low desk and a bookshelf lined neatly with copies of the Qur'an covered in green embroidered fabrics. Its walls were mottled with patches of paint and chipped plaster, the floor covered with torn bits of carpet. The second room resembled the type of classroom I have seen all over the developing world. One of the small boys started sweeping the yard while the rest moved into another room of the madrassa. When breakfast was tidied away, Amanullah picked up his books and went to study with one of his teachers. The younger students didn't touch the hot buttery loaf but politely munched on the old bread. They spread the breakfast out on a cloth on the floor: tea, a cold flat loaf of bread, some smaller bits of stale bread and one warm piece of bread cooked in butter. Two of them picked up a blackened teapot while two others went outside to collect food donations. Later you study Persian language and poetry, then you go into basic Islamic law and all along you study and memorise the Qur'an and Arabic grammar."Īround 8am the smaller children left the room to prepare breakfast. You are taught the basics of belief, religious rituals and grammar. "You join at the age of six or seven, depending on your family. While he studies the texts needed for him to become a mullah he taught the younger children the essentials of the Taliban's particular brand of Islam. In the thousand-year-old madrassa system, men like Amanulah are both students and teachers. But all my brothers in the school, the teachers and students, were already fighting and they asked me if I wanted to join and I said yes." "I didn't want to be a Talib," he said in a softer voice. "We had many during the Taliban rule but they are closed now or under government control. "There are very few good schools now in Afghanistan," he said. "But here I haven't used English for a long time." He had come to the school three years ago because it had a good reputation. "I learned English for 12 years in Pakistan," Amanulah said in correct but extremely slow English. ![]() Among the embroidered words were: "By the name of God the most gracious the most merciful." ![]() His son had lost his eye.Īmanulah sat beneath the school emblem, a black curtain embroidered with Quranic verses in golden and white threads and covered with the emblems of the Taliban fighter: a Kalashnikov assault rifle with a shining bayonet, RPG launchers, grenades and knives of different shapes and sizes. One madrassa teacher had been hurt in the fighting. He and his older students had spent the night fighting with the rest of the district chief Lal Muhammad's Taliban. We were led into a room where Amanulah, a bespectacled teacher in his 30s, sat with his students, who ranged from seven-year-olds to fuzzy-bearded teenagers with turbans and guns.Īmanulah's handsome face was dwarfed by his oversized turban and his eyes were red from lack of sleep. In the courtyard there were pools of congealed blood where some of the casualties had been brought that morning. They detained us first in a madrassa – a religious school – a compound-style building flanked on one side by a mosque and on the other by a government school. Our phones, bags and cameras were confiscated. But the timing of the firefight made the Taliban suspicious and Bilal, one of the senior commanders in this district of Baghlan province, told us politely that we would have to answer some questions. We had been asleep in a guest room belonging to a man from east London who was a mullah and a fighter when the attack happened.
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