The Telephone Wire Kiss
In Kabul in the 1950s, my maternal grandfather, Mohammad Salihjon, owned a radio store — a dukaan-e radio furoshi — on a bustling commercial street that was later converted into a royal park. The businesses were given very short notice to move and make room for the park. They had given my grandfather a letter in Farsi and he had signed it with a thumbprint.
He ended up losing his entire business. He went from living very comfortably, with a car, a rare thing in Kabul in those days, and a nice house, to moving to Old Kabul near the hing (asafoetida) factory. It was a drastic move. He had lost his business and his livelihood.
Among the Turkestan community in Kabul, he was known as Salihjon Sarigh, or "blond." Sarigh was used for people with light hair; here we might call his hair light brown.
His children and his wife read signs for him, and everyone believed he was illiterate. He later became a real estate agent for the Uzbek and Turkmen community and made a precarious living this way.
During the Soviet-Afghan War, the family migrated to Pakistan. And suddenly there, my grandfather was the one who could read the signs in English, write addresses, and communicate in broken English.
I remember receiving a letter from him in Brooklyn, written in neat cursive, with our address and a short greeting.
What we never knew was that he wrote in Latin-alphabet Uzbek.
He was Qipchaq Tatar from Turkestan, later Uzbekistan. He had fled to British India and had some primary schooling in Bombay. He came to Kabul after Partition and married my grandmother.
This is one of the few photographs I have of my grandfather. I think it is perhaps from the time before his luck fell and he lost his business.
For me, my grandfather was my first caretaker. My mother became ill after my birth and we didn't bond. It was my father and maternal grandfather who cared for me.
Still to this day, when I am extra affectionate, I use my grandfather's "telephone wire kiss." It was a kiss he transmitted to my cheek through an open hand. He would kiss his thumb and place his pinky on my cheek so I would receive it. This is my main memory of his grand love for me.
He passed away in Islamabad, Pakistan. He had been going from camp to camp looking for his son, who had been kidnapped and held for ransom. If the warlords knew someone had family in America or Europe, they would kidnap their son to get a ransom.
The ransom didn't come, and my grandfather was exhausted from asking for his son back. He came home from his search, knelt down to pray, and passed away on his prayer mat.
Later, it was announced that his son had been killed.
My sweet grandfather, Salihjon Sarigh of Kabul.
This essay was written by Zohra Saed as a tribute to her maternal grandfather, Mohammad Salihjon.