The mountain was isolating. Out of a sudden, there was a sound of an starting engine from a far. Unfamiliar waves of sound followed after one another, overwhelming my eardrum. A sense of nausea kicked in as a result of the growing noise with the massive wind. Fatah jumped off his body suddenly, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me violently. I acted shocked and surprised.

 

Light, a sudden wave of light came, illuminating the darkness. I returned to my senses from his first violent shock, as he is dragging me away from the empty plain land by my wrist. Fatah is repeating, ‘airplane, helicopter,' and a mixture of foreign words. He squeezed both of us against the dirty, sandy rocks of the mountain, avoiding the light to touch our body. On one side, we are looking down at the valley, and on the other hand, Fatah is terrified of the light. Fear only grew, and never faded any deeper than the bottom of the valley facing us. Ghar was dangerous and we were never allowed to go up that high in the Cliff at all, except with the supervision of Papa riding on the red Sa, our family's only vehicle. 

 

The light was blinding, and the sound grew louder. There is an airplane landing only 50 meters away from us. They came in full control and power. The guard is three other planes that stare down at us like a predator crow seizes its prey. 40 men are on the front lead, running on a synchronized rhythm, making no sound, and following a hand gesture by the first man. My back is numb because Fatah is pressing me against the rock, and I can't move nor breathe. There is a massive group following up to pack up the front crew, surrounding Ghar as well the entire mountain. When you look down the valley, it is floating with black waves of fully equipped men, falling from the sky in a number too big to be normal people. They move exceptionally well in the darkness, and scarily, they conquer our homeland like otherworldly creatures of an alien kind.

Fatah is breathing so hard that I can feel the fear in his veins. I can feel the movement of his shirt that is blown by his heartbeat. It is growing more intense each time, but I don't understand why. We are in the middle of nowhere, isolated at the edge of a mountain, and it is too late to be out at this point of the night. We should have been back home by sunset. Papa is properly riding SA out of the best of his ability, worrying to death. Poor papa and SA can't get us out at this point, I'm sure they are too delicate and too small to defeat what's going on right here, right now, in front of our eyes. 

Fatah is acting suspicious, because he keeps looking back-and-forth. He keeps looking into the mountain, and then around to the back of the mountain, where there is no light. He is panickingly repeating, they are going into the cave. The others are in there. I don't know what he's talking about. A few days ago when Papa was sick, I had to go with Fatah and he brought me to the cave for the first time. Fatah and I took Ashar, Papa's water Koranic medicine from the friends in the cave.

Ghar is a massive cave that is part of Tora Bora. Tora Bora has been a haunted cave that kids were not allowed to go to since last week. Last week, a group of sheikhs from Pakistan rested at the mountain, and were offering Quranic medicine to families living in Al-Jabal Alif Khel. Regardless, we were always warned against going up there or walking our sheep around there. My mom always told me to take the sheep as far away from there and to never play near that cave. I have never learned what is so special about this cave. Maybe this was why. Maybe the curse comes later in the night and tonight all of it is here! I don't know if I should be excited that I am seeing what nobody was able to see. I am experiencing all of it and should I be more concerned?

Fatah's eyes are widely open, focused on the back of the mountain, and he is waving at an empty road now. He keeps exclaiming, "I see papa!" His excitement and scream almost revealed us to the entire danger. 

The second crew is acting on the command of the first crew. They ran towards the cave and attacked with weapons out and triggered. Fatah pushed me off the cliff and we both landed in the dust of white ash, the kind of sand that blinds you in the autumn.

 

At least we are under the dark shade of the cliff and no one can come this far in the cliff. It was too risky down here. Despite my blindness from the dust, I can vaguely see that the airplanes left. They are now following the second crew of men that just missed us. All force is now on the cave, and they all gathered around it like a group of predators circling around the last one of their prey on a desert. They are entering Ghar now. Fatah is whispering to me, "Papa has to know the Americans finally arrived." Fatah grabbed my arm, swinging me in the air until I almost broke it, at the elbow. We left everything behind, even my precious blue little turban. He didn't let me get a second glance back. It was really important to me. It was my only gift from uncle Salah. He brought me in his last visit to Jabal Alf Khel. That was the only turban I had since last winter, now that Fatah is getting married and everything was gifted to him and his wife. I am frustrated, and Fatah is furious. He is screaming at me quietly. His nagging whispers were harsh, while we ran. Together, we ran as fast as we could, until we no longer could. 

Finally, I saw Papa riding, the red Sa, and pulling the reins twice in a second. Together they move like a finely engineered vessel, released at a full force by the hands of a master scientist. Papa is quick with his controlling technique, and Sa turns quickly in the crooked rocky hill, on command. They move faster than the wind, and in each mark, they leave a wave of dust with every stride. This is certainly another thing I've never seen before. I've never seen papa ride Sa like this before. 

We started running towards papa and he rushed  towards us, a strong, stoic figure, drenched in sweat. He raised his hands up in the sky, and said "Alhamdulilah! You are alive." He grabbed my arm and a second later, it all went down. The extremely loud sound echoed from Ghar, and I found myself losing consciousness completely, one last time. I could last hear Papa shaking my arm and repeating "he is gone!" 

I woke up on the other side, where it was sunny. Suddenly, the warmth of the newly risen sun fell gently across my face. I was alive and I was awake. I still had my backpack and boots on. Mom was in the kitchen and the smell of freshly baked eggs with Lahooh was the first thing to fill my nose. Mom was yelling, "Time to go to school! I told you to take your shoes off last night." "It seems like you're ready to go, to me, so go ahead, have breakfast and get going!" she adds while snapping.