My parents were very pleased with the move to Naw Abad-e Deh Afghanan as it represented living in their own home in Kabul. I remember the house very well. It was quite spacious. You entered it from an alley leading up to some other homes along the northern foothills of Asmayee. Ours was the second from the main street and about twenty yards uphill. At the entrance, you faced a room with two large windows, a door and a small window bringing in outside light. It was probably the servants' quarters. A flight of stairs went up to the apartment above the entrance. It was a complete residence.

Depending on how big a family was, the apartment could either be used as an addition to the family residence or rented out as an extra source of income.

As you entered the second door, you found yourself in a large yard. Immediately to your right was a raised platform that contained the tanoor, (a vertical oven) where the family bread was baked. Straight ahead across the yard were two storage rooms for food items, wood, charcoal and the like. A stairway, immediately to the left the entrance door, led up to a veranda and two double rooms used as living-dining-sleeping-storage rooms, a small kitchen and a small bath room for washing only. Yet another flight of stairs led to the roof where the water closet was located.

As our family consisted only of three adults and two children, we did not need the apartment for ourselves. So we rented it to some family friends of ours. In late spring and fall we generally sat and ate at the veranda and we sat and ate in our parents' rooms at other times. My sister, about two, slept in my parents' back room and grandmother and I slept in the front room of the other two rooms of the house. Our back room was a general store room for bedding, boxes of clothes and other items.

We lived in this house for about ten years. It was while we lived there that one morning Father instructed me to go with him to the local masjid (mosque). It was only a block away. On the way there, I was told that the mula would start teaching me to read the Holy Qur'an. He would also teach me how to read and write Dari, our own language in Kabul.

The first thing the mula taught me was the alphabet. I mastered it within days. He then instructed me to read the Qur'an.

By the time I had read three or four pages of the Qur'an, Father informed the family that he intended to enroll me in school. Grandmother was dead set against it and I understood that she had resisted this for the last two years saying I was too young to go to school.

She contended that perhaps reading with the local mula would be more than sufficient.

But Father would not hear of it and stated that I had already lost two years of schooling.

He even doubted that the school authorities would accept me in the first class at my age which was eight.

One morning some ten days after my first introcuction to the mula, Father came to the masjid and asked the mula to let me go home, change my clothes and come again as he was taking me somewhere with him.

At home, I got a change of clothes. No one said anything. Grandmother helped me put on a white muslin turban, a black jacket of Father's which was altered for me, white shirt and white trousers and my new paizars (footwear). I thought I looked quite decently dressed for wherever it was that Father was taking me. Back at the masjid, the mula goodbye to us as we left and walked in the direction of the city.

The road was new to me but Father was saying nothing about it. We must have walked for about half an hour when we reached and entered the irongate of a building which was opened for us by a guard in a special uniform without a gun or bandoleer. We headed for the main building closest to the gate. We were soon ushered into a huge room, by another uniformed man.

Sitting behind a large desk was a tall, very severe-looking man. He half rose from his seat and shook hands with my father and pointed him to a nearby chair. I was ignored. I remained standing as the man did not shake hands with me or point me to a chair. After several minutes of conversation with Father, the man looked at me as if for the first time and, with a faint smile, asked if I knew my alphabet by heart. I said I did. He then asked how many pages of the Holy Qur'an I had read. I told him. He said, "Good." The next thing I heard was the sound of a bell coming from his desk. Thereupon, a uniformed man came into the room. The man behind the desk looked at him and pointing to me, ordered him, "Bebaresh." This simply meant 'take him away.' At this, the soldier-- for so I thought him to be-- bent down, took my hand and said softly, "Burame." This meant 'let us go.' Just then I began to cry in sheer fear and tried to pull away from the man in the direction of where my Father was sitting. As I was screaming " I want to be with my father," the man literally pulled me out of the door and down the stairs and out of the building. Once in the courtyard, he told me not to be afraid and assured me that I was now in school and he was just taking me to my class. I was led 'sobbing' to a room full of boys sitting on rows of chairs. There was a short, bearded man with a bluish turban and a gray overcoat standing near a black board. None of the boys had a turban. The soldierman said," Muallem Saheb, I have brought you a new shagird." Only then did I become certain that Father had really brought me to school as he had so emphatically stated some days ago and that this bearded person, standing at the far end of the room, was my teacher and all these rows of boys were students. What a relief! The teacher said, "You did all right, Chaprassi, but I have no more chairs." So this man, too, was not a soldier. He was a chaprassi, an orderly, a peon. And the severe-looking man at the office was the principal of the school. When the chaprassi was gone, the teacher asked the class to welcome their new classmate. He said I had to sit on the window ledge, for the day. He asked me what my name was and announced it to the class and introduced himself as Abdul Ghiath.

By then I had quieted down considerably even though there still were signs of tears on my face. He helped me climb up to the ledge and sit there facing the class. Soon everyone's attention was drawn back to the day's lesson and I stopped being the object of curious looks with my white turban, black jacket and white shirt and trousers as the boys seemed to be dressed in some khakee uniform that made them look alike. They also had special peaked caps of the same material which they kept by their side. I was the only one dressed like the mula of our masjid.

The teacher had written something on the black board and was helping the students read it. I noticed I could make out the forms of the letters and as the students read it, I found I could also read it.

During the first recess, a few of the students came up to me and introduced themselves.

The teacher had asked all of them to do so. They said I could also go into the courtyard with them and play for the ten minutes of recess we had. We soon became friends, and, before I knew it consciously, the school day was over. I was told I could now go home.

The teacher asked if there was someone outside the gate who could take me home. I said I did not know and, immediately, began to worry about my ability to find my way home.

Having asked where I was living, the teacher asked if any of the students was going my way. Someone said he was going home to Deh Afghanan and maybe I could find my way from there. I said, I might as I knew that part of town better. The teacher was not totally happy with the situation but said that perhaps it would be all right.

When finally I came out of the school gate with some of my Deh Afghanani classmates, I saw Father standing under a tree near the gate. That was wonderful. I ran to meet and greet him. At that moment, the teacher also appeared and told me of his decision to walk home with me. Father then introduced himself and thanked the teacher for his kindness and they became friends from that day on.

On the way home, Father asked how the day had gone for me. I told him about my fear of detention by the chaprassi whom I had mistaken for a soldier. We both laughed at that at first. But then he wondered how on earth I could even think that he, my own father, would let someone take me, his own son, to some prison for no reason at all! He assured me that the school was the best place for me and that in a few days I would come to like it very much, even better than home.

That proved to be a fact. On the fourth day I asked Father not to accompany me to school in the morning or come to get me in the afternoon any more.

We had five classes every day except Friday, which was our weekend. We had two tenminute recesses. Then at 1:10 P.M. we, the Abjad (ABC) class students, were allowed to come out ahead of the rest of the school and the rest would be let out at 1:20 P.M. Most of the students walked home to different parts of the city. Our school was Habibia, named after its founder Amir Habibullah Khan, the father of Amir Amanullah. It was located next to the Prime Minister's office. We were also told that during the reign of Amir Amanullah Khan our school was the official guest house for the members of the Loya Jarga of Afghanistan.

Then one day I broke my leg.

"Uncle", a close acquaintance of my parents, who had actually sold us our first-ever house in Naw Abad, was building two residences for himself at the back of our house.

For this purpose, he had purchased many donkey-loads of soft earth. This was heaped into a mound. One afternoon, I noticed some of the neighborhood boys jumping on this mound from a rock that stood behind it at a height of nine or ten feet. They all encouraged me to join them and stressed that the earth was really soft. My little sister, then about 3 or so, would not let me. She just clung to my legs and beseeched me not to jump for she was afraid I might get hurt. I pointed to the other boys and assured her that, just like them, I would not be hurt and that she will see that every thing will be all right.

So saying, I handed her my gold-thread cap and prepared to jump. Sure enough, as I jumped on the mound, I heard a crack and a severe pain in my right leg between my knee and ankle. I cried in pain. The boys disappeared instantaneously. My sister ran screaming home to tell grandmother what had happened. In a moment grandmother appeared on the scene and seeing me standing alone on one leg and obviously in pain, she promptly began beating me with fists and slaps for being the fool that I always was and playing with the neighborhood kids who had not stopped to help me for one second after I had broken my leg. Those boys were big boys, she said. They could jump all right. Who did I think I was, playing with much older boys- She was beating me all the while that she was talking in anger, Neither could I run away from her nor did she realize that she was adding to my misery by punishing me so harshly. Then some older person appeared and made her realize what she was doing. At that, she let go of me and went straight to some of our neighbors to complain to them about the irresponsible behavior of their children in this case. Later, when Father came home from work, he immediately employed a man to carry me, piggy-back style, to the family hakeem, our all-purpose medical practitioner who was not a medical doctor but who treated all of us for all kinds of ailments. His shop was beyond the Puli Khishti baazaar and close to the home of Father's uncles. In fact he was their hakeem in the first place. My leg was dangling all the way to the hakeem's shop and this did not help the pain any. I had to bear it for there was nothing anyone could do to relieve it. We caught him in the act of closing his shop. But then he had to take care of me, more for fear of the senior uncle's anger than for my sake. He sat me in the shop and started pulling and pushing my leg to make sure that the bone had not been completely severed. Oh, the excruciating pain that I suffered at his hand in those moments! He told us that it was perhaps only a cracked bone and that he would take care of it right away. I lay there with my head resting in my father's arms while the hakeem prepared some concoction using raw eggs, raw animal fat and some powders. He then applied the resulting thick paste to my leg and, placing flat pieces of wood around my shank and calf, he bandaged it tightly with a coarse cotton material. Finally he tied the whole thing in place with some string and proclaimed the operation complete. He warned me, while looking at my father, that I was not to put any pressure on my hurt leg for a week and then to have someone bring me back to him for a checkup. He assured my father that no bones were broken and the crack should heal with just the one application of the medicine he had applied.

We returned home the same way we had gone earlier. My leg was not feeling any worse than when we were going to the hakeem. I stayed home for a week. Then the hakeem removed the bandage, cleaned my leg, applied some more creams and oils and using only the flat sticks, bandaged it again. He said the leg was healing beautifully and that I could now walk about the house. If by the end of the second week, I did not feel any pain, I was to remove the bandage for good.

I could hardly wait to go to school again and when I finally walked in, I discovered a lot had happened during my two weeks' absence. Our class had been moved to a much larger room underneath the Principal's office. There were a lot of new faces as some other school's Abjad classes had also joined us. Furthermore, the class was divided into three sections and I was placed in the middle one. In two or three months we would take the final exams and the graduates would go to the first grade after the winter holidays.

My stay in the Abjad class lasted a total of about four months as I had been enrolled several months later than my classmates in the first place. We went to our holidays.

When I returned to school at the end of the holidays, I was informed that I had graduated to the second grade rather than the first. So that out of about one hundred students in the Abjad class, our second class started with about forty students. We thus were the lucky ones who had saved a whole year of school while the rest had all gone to the first grade.

Father was very pleased with the news and so was I. I thought now I have recovered one of the two years of school that I lost because of grandmother's protective interventions.

I liked school and did my homework dutifully. Father supervised my work every day.

During holidays he would give me assignments in reading and writing, most often outside of my schoolwork. He would then correct or comment upon every aspect of my work. He was most unforgiving whenever I made the same mistake twice. Father made it a routine for me to do my homework and his assignments regularly. However I found ways and means to squeeze in some extracurricular activity of the kind that he did not like, and I got away with it some times.

Unfortunately, it was also during such periods that my work showed flaws. If Father knew the cause of it all, he did not bring it up. What he seemed to be satisfied with was the fact that I never failed to do any of my assignments whether they were homework or his own instructions.

In the third grade, the Education Ministry officially created the subject of teaching Pukhto in all Dari speaking regions of the country. We were told that, by the same token, Dari would be taught as a subject throughout the Pukhtoon territories. I did a lot better than most of my classmates in this new subject, for while I did not speak it at home with my parents, I knew what everybody was saying in Pukhto. I was encouraged to participate in our school's Thursday conferences for which I would prepare short articles in Pukhto, and later, also in Dari. Father would correct my articles. At the conference I would stand on the desk to read my article because I was too short to be seen by all the audience if I stood behind the desk. I also led the elementary grades' chorus in patriotic songs one of which I had written and which Father had improved upon.

One day our Pukhto teacher, who was also our class supervisor, handed me a magazine, published in Kandahar, which had printed my patriotic song with my name on the top of it. He congratulated me in front of the class. I could not believe my eyes when I saw my name there. I was in the fourth grade then. That evening a proud son showed his father the magazine opened on to the page where the poem was. Father expressed his joy by hugging me and expressing a wish to see more of the same in the months and years ahead, without his own literary input involved. That put me in my real place. I felt deflated. But it also gave me a new sense of direction. I knew I was a good student. During the years that I was in school, I was most often among the first five top students in my class. I had every intention to improve upon this. So it was also probable that one day I would be able to present my father with my very own 'independent' work published in some magazine.

It was around this time that, either as a result of some of my hurriedly prepared home assignments with more flaws, or a disclosure by grandmother, of the fact that I spent some time out in the street after school, Father arranged with the school authorities to have me kept on for the afternoon Fourth grade class also. This was basically a repeat of the morning classes for me as I was then in the Fourth B section and all C sections would come in at one thirty in the afternoon. In staying on at school, I had a unique advantage: I was treated to free lunch along with the school's upper-graders who had free lunch and studied from 8 A. M. until 3:30 P.M. every day.

Just before lunch, the upper grade students were all required to make preparations for, and attend, the afternoon prayer at the masjid adjacent to the school. There were also school teachers who supervised students in performing their religious rites. Since I stayed on for lunch, I, too, had to attend the afternoon prayer even though by religious law I was not yet required to perform the five prayers every day.

As for schoolwork, most of what I did in the afternoon class was a repetition of my morning class. There were instances when the same teacher taught the P.M. students. In such cases the teacher would remember that he had already seen my homework in the morning and would not ask for it again in the afternoon. There was, however, one instance when I deliberately kept quiet as the teacher, who had seen home work that morning, asked me for it again. He believed that I had actually not done my homework and promptly punished me with a cane lash to my palm. This hurt and I told him then that he had seen my homework in the morning and had put his initial on it too. When I showed him my notebook, he was all the more angry and punished me with some more cane lashes for playing a trick on him.

There was another case when I got punished through no fault of mine. Our mathematics teacher had just taught us the solution of a problem that morning. And I had already done an example of the same problem on the black board. In the P.M. class, the same teacher taught us the same thing and then asked a student to do an example of it on the blackboard. He could not do it. The teacher asked if there was anyone else who could do it. I raised my hand and was told to go to the board and do it. I went and did it. The teacher then asked me to pinch that student's ears as I stood on the dais and he on the ground in front of me. He was taller and stronger than I and, fearing the consequences during the recess, I barely touched his ears. The teacher noticed it and was angry that I was befriending the student. Thereupon, he reversed his order. The student bent down and dealt me a very painful and undeserved punishment. He almost literally lifted me from the ground by pulling my ears. For a moment I thought he had torn my ears off my head. The teacher was content that we both had been taught proper lessons that afternoon.

I remember an episode in connection with my literary writings. Indeed, how can I forget it- Father had given me the assignment to write a patriotic piece one day. I had no time for it because of my morning and afternoon classes. So I wrote a short piece and, upon review, considered it worthy of reading before the Thursday conference audience at school. When I showed it to Father, he took out his favorite fountain pen and literally crossed out line after line of my text and replaced every line with something of his own creation. By the time he reached the last line, I saw that except for some words of mine, which he had to use in his own text, everything else was his and not mine. It is impossible for me to describe in words the extent of my dismay and discouragement at his ripping my brainchild apart. He handed me my, now his, paper and said," There. That ought to be acceptable for your Thursday conference." All I could do then was to run to my room, close and bolt the door and cry my eyes out in utter frustration. An hour or so later he came to the room after he had me open it for him and consoled me and told me that my original work was also acceptable. He said he just wanted to show me that even a good piece of writing could still be improved when revised a bit seriously.

Father stopped his close supervision of my school and home work by the time I reached the fifth grade. He said that I had reached the limit of his own knowledge in my school subjects. Beyond that, he said, I was my own supervisor. I could consult him only in my writing, and only if I chose to.

Shortly afterwards, I was taught another unforgettable lesson by him in this connection: My new-found freedom permitted me to prepare a special scrapbook in which to copy some of the best poetry and prose that I came across in my readings. These were either in Pukhto or Dari. At the time, Father was working at the Royal Secretariat. He would bring home some papers, magazines and books to read at night. Some of the papers came from Iran and, Farsi being the same in written form as our Dari, I enjoyed reading some pieces of poetry in them. There was one poem in one paper which I particularly liked. So I copied it in my scrapbook. The poet's name, which appeared in the last verse, rhymed with my name and as I was writing it down and reciting it at the same time, I read my name instead of the author's when I came to it and it got copied with my name. I noticed it, but to correct it meant to blacken that section and thereby make the page appear ugly and I did not want my scrapbook to look ugly. So I left it as it appeared in my scrapbook.

One day, Father arrived home when I was out. He happened to see my scrapbook on top of the box where I usually kept all my belongings under lock and key. Well, he took the scrapbook and started reading the various items which I had copied in it. Upon my arrival home, he summoned me to his presence and instructed me to read the very poem that contained my name instead of the original author's. I immediately knew what he wanted.

I read it and when I reached the last verse I voiced the author's name that I remembered.

He asked me to read that verse again and then he took the scrapbook from me and looked at the last verse and asked me to read what was really there. I told him the truth and blamed it all on the man's name rhyming with my second name.

His next instruction was to make a charcoal fire in our portable fire container, called manqal, and bring it to him. This I did all the time fearing some dreadful thing was about to happen. I saw it right there when I entered the room. Father had torn every leaf of my scrapbook with even one line of writing in it and had then cut every leaf into strips. Upon my arrival with the manqal of live charcoal, he proceeded to burn every shred of my writing saying this was punishment for what he called outright stealing of other people's honest endeavor in original work. I was never to borrow any kind of writing by anyone without giving the author the proper credit due him for his creation. And this was a lesson taught me by my father when I was still quite impressionable.

It was around this time that I chose a pen name for myself. My Pukhto teacher had asked me for one soon after he showed me my printed poem in the Kandahar magazine under my real name. In fact he had chosen the word 'Charee' for me which meant a pupil of an imam or mula. But I had not liked it. Afghan names generally had two parts. The first part usually had relation with Prophet Mohammed's names and attributes and the second part had the same kind of relation to God's name and attributes. In practice, friends called each other by their second names and strangers simply added Aaqa or Jenaab or Shaghalai in front of the second name when addressing someone. Women's names were not generally mentioned in public even if they worked as medical doctors or nurses or teachers. They were addressed by their nicknames and rarely and officially by their husbands' names such as Mrs. so and so. In written documents women's names appeared as so and so daughter or wife of so and so.

Most male names were selected by an elder in the family, from the First word he came across at the top of the page opened at random. Female names were chosen from amongst the names of the women mentioned in the Holy Qur'an and/or from amongst the names of the Prophets wives and daughters. Women then also gave their female children a nickname either just after their birth or later in life. Sometimes women were given a nickname out of respect only.

This caused some mix-ups from time to time as there were not enough names to go around and in any group of men or women there would invariably be some who had the same first or second name or the same nickname. Especially the first names were generally the same for a good number of men. That was why people called friends by their second names which were not that common by comparison.

Almost all literary personalities and rarely some religious individuals used pen names in addition to their given names. These pen names sometimes depicted people's birthplace.

At other instances they were just picked up for a word that someone liked. Some people chose their father or grandfather's second name as their family name, and some chose their tribal origin and so on.

I asked Father's advice on the matter of a pen name late in the Fourth grade (around 1935). He referred me to a Pukhto dictionary that had just been published in Kabul and of which we had a copy at home, signed and given to my father by the compiler, a famous Pukhtoon personality known as Mohammed Gul Mohmand. I was told to select ten words that I found most interesting and to show him the following evening for a final decision. I did so. When he asked me which of the ten appealed to me most, I told him and he forthwith shook my hand and became the first person to call me by my new name for the first time. My name has been Roashan since then.

A rather surprising development occurred many years later in connection with my pen name which deserves mention here. I was working in London, England, as the information officer of the Royal Afghan Government when my four brothers wrote a joint letter, signed by them all, asking me to allow them to use my pen name as a family name for everybody in our household. The letter assured me that Father had already given the matter his formal blessing provided I had no objection. I had none. Thus began the official existence of our family under a single surname, or family ,or last name. This was the year l959 A. D.

The use of the last or family name became fashionable in Afghanistan in the Forties.

My first lyric poem produced a shadow of a frown when I showed it to Father. By then, I think, I was in the ninth grade. He said I was too young to get involved is such poetry.

But he did not censor it. Much later, he would read some of his own poems to me before he sent them to be published. He was not a prolific writer but I do believe his literary work was of superb quality for whatever he wrote and sent out, invariably got published.

I only wish we could compile and publish his work in a book form! Alas, this treasure, too, was lost to us as so many others by the foreign-imposed communist regime in Afghanistan in the late seventies. The authorities confiscated and/or destroyed innumerable personal and private property all over the country. I was informed, five years into my exile, of the confiscation of my entire private library and papers --including my father's manuscript of his poems in Pukhto and Dari, some never published -- by the communist regime just two weeks after my 1979 escape from Afghanistan.

O, but I have strayed far away from my original story.

I was talking about the time when I was in the fourth elementary grade of Habibia. One morning after the roll call, the assistant principal got on the podium in the school yard and announced that according to a directive from the Education Ministry just received, three top students of every class were to be sent to the Ministry from where they would proceed to the Dilkusha Palace and be received by His Majesty King Mohammed Nadir Shah. The King was to award them prizes for their scholastic achievements. I was among those chosen. We were lined up separately for an inspection by the Principal.

The Principal inspected everyone's attire first and asked a few of us to step out of the line.

His assistant then told each of us to go back to our classes as we were not presentable to the King with the outfits that we had on that day. It was an autumn day and I had a topcoat over my regular house clothes and not my school uniform. I thought no one would notice as I would not be taking my topcoat off during the day. I blamed myself for choosing to come to school in what was really frowned upon by our teachers and the school staff. Now I was left behind. What a disappointment! Later that same evening, while playing with some neighbor kids in the streetnear home, I suddenly noticed the shops closing and people rushing this way and that. I heard a passerby advising someone to get home quickly as there may be danger in the streets now that the King was shot dead. We kids also ran home with the news. But neither mother nor grandmother believed it. I had not told them the story of my being left behind because of my clothes while others had really gone to the Royal Palace that day. They considered that the King was a good king and he had saved us from the Bachai Saqaw and his atrocities. Who would want to kill him- Not any man, much less a student. They said Father would know and would tell us all when he came. But he arrived much later than usual and by then both the women in our home were greatly anxious. He sadly confirmed the incident but said he did not know the details. It was a solemn evening for us all. We wondered what might happen next. I was silently fearful that perhaps all schools would be closed down.

Next morning, however, we heard that a student of the upper grades of Nejat High school had shot the king during the ceremonies. The King had died on the spot. Almost immediately his brothers had the situation in firm control. The Palace gates were locked until they arrested the culprit. Prince Mohammed Zahir was proclaimed Shah that same evening. The students were also let free later that evening and the Ministry staff and teachers had all been allowed to go home. The offices and the schools did not close next morning. There was no panic. The shops also opened, although a little later than usual.

I believe I was not allowed to go to school for another two or three days because of grandmother's fear for my safety. And then when I did go, everything was normal.

During recess, however, some of us got our classmates who were at the Palace that day to tell us exactly what they saw or heard at the time. Their story was of panic and general fear. They were far away from where the shooting had taken place, but all the students were soon rounded up and kept under guard for three or four hours. At one time someone had suggested that all the students be punished for the crime. Indeed they had heard the order that the Palace gates be locked and no one be allowed to leave. They had considered themselves prisoners. They had gone through several shocks before they were finally allowed to go home.

As I heard the stories, I was inwardly glad that I had not been among the selected ones for the visit to the Palace. I am sure I would have fainted on the spot. But, in a way, I also felt a loss, the loss of missing the opportunity to meet the Education Minister that day, to see the Dilkusha Palace and even to see the King of Afghanistan.

It was many years later when I was received in audience by the King of Afghanistan, but the excitement was not at all what it would have been if I had the opportunity to see and shake a King's hand when I was only a twelve year old boy.