Whenever my father talked about his childhood memories, it was impossible not to mention the word “war.” The memories were so strong he always ended up talking about them. I knew exactly when it came. My father would let out a sigh, and say, “You know, my son, I was just a child back then. Not more than ten years old. My uncle was a carpenter. He used to go to his carpentry shop early in the morning and return home in the evening. One day, he came home with a beautiful wooden toy car he had made for me. He had painted blue birds and trees on it. I loved that car. One night my uncle didn’t return home. We found his corpse thirteen days later, in a dry stream, three villages far from us. Such tragedies were common back then. The government and Soviet forces arrested innocent people, submitted them to intense torture, and then they killed them.
“Exactly two months after we found my uncle’s corpse, the nightly air bombardments grew so intense that people stored all their valuables in a box, and buried it somewhere below the floor of their house. I clearly remember everybody running to the shelters, afraid not only of dying, but of what might be stolen from their homes while they were gone. The blue-eyed and blonde-haired military men would often break doors down and steal our valuables. Nobody dared to take anything back. The Soviet forces only knew how to say ‘friend’ in Dari, and many people saved their lives by repeating that word to them.
“Your grandfather bought a red box. My family, like the many other families who had to leave their houses for hours for shelter or because Soviet forces demanded to inspect their houses, put all his money along with several documents inside. My mother brought her jewelry from the closet and put it in the box as well. Nothing was more valuable to me than my wooden toy car, the only memento I had of my uncle, so when my parents weren’t looking, I quickly put it in the box, below some documents so they wouldn’t see it. When we were done, my father told us to stay put. Then he took the hoe and went to bury the box. Our house was enormous, with many interconnecting rooms, so neither I nor my mother knew where my father had buried it.
“My father reassured us our possessions were safe. The planes appeared a week later, at night. A bomb fell on our house. I woke up scared, but I knew I had to run to the shelter. I heard my mother’s breath and footsteps behind me as I ran. The last thing I heard my father say was, ‘Hurry up! Go to shelter!’
“It was dark in the shelter. Our neighbors were already there. The planes continued bombarding us. My mother cried and kept praying. My father hadn’t come with us. We all hoped he had taken shelter somewhere, that he was safe. Nobody dared to leave the shelter to go and find him. It is so strange that even the most horrible and darkest of nights come to an end.
“When morning came, the tension we felt began to leave us. We felt safe enough to leave the shelter. With several neighbors, we began searching for my father. We found blood on the ground, but no sign of him. We started following the traces, and soon we found him in the barn, injured, half-dead.
“My father had fought death for three days. He was in agony. There were no doctors and medicine. There was only one hospital, but it was far away in the city center. We couldn’t carry him all the way there. So my father died at eight thirty on a Tuesday. Our life has changed completely. Our days were miserable.
“My mother, with the help of her brothers, searched everywhere for that red box, but they didn’t succeed. I never saw my car again. It was buried with my uncle and father.”
It has been eight years since my father died. I had inherited his childhood home, but I didn’t want to live there. Instead, I wanted to build a complex on the property so I could make some money renting out apartments. On a chair in the yard, I watched the bulldozer tearing down the house. It took out dirt from one room after another. Then, in the middle of a dirt hill, I noticed something red, shimmering in the sunlight. “Stop,” I cried to the bulldozer, and I walked over.
The memories that my father had so often recounted to me, of the hidden money and jewelry, of his toy car became more vivid with each step I took. I reached over and took the red thing out of the dirt. It really was the red box. It was a lot older than I imagined, and heavier too, but there was no doubt that this was it.
Back on my chair, I cleaned the box with my scarf. It was closed with a large, yellow padlock. I took a rock from the ground and hit the lock a few times with it. Then it sprung open. The box contained a lot of money from the Taraki government, enough to buy a few fields and houses with, even if the currency was no longer in use. There were several bangles, a necklace, a few rings, as well as yellow and dusty documents that seemed important. But I wasn’t looking for them. Then I found my father’s blue toy car, and I felt happier than I had in a long time.
It was strange to touch something I had heard so much about. My throat tightened with emotion. I worried the workers would see me cry. If my father were still alive, he would have been so happy to see this box. I looked at the destroyed house before me and instantly regretted my choice. I should have never torn it down. It had been my father’s childhood home. But then again, destroying it had given me the red box instead.
