Afghans, already mourning their country, begin burying their dead
family trudged up the hill to the taptap of a pickaxe digging out the grave where Mushtaq would be buried.
It had been just a day since a bomb ripped through the massive crowd gathered outside the Kabul airport in hopes of being evacuated. Mushtaq was among the dead.
“No more Afghanistan,” said his 28-year-old brother, Jamil, as the harsh midday sun beat down. “We can’t live here.”
He gazed across the dustswept slopes of Martyrs Hill, where other, equally sombre processions picked their way among the headstones to where more loved ones were to be laid to rest.
More than 24 hours after the bombing, which was claimed by Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, the full measure of the slaughter was still unclear. As more of the injured succumbed to their wounds Friday, the death toll jumped from 90 Afghans to at least 169, in addition to 13 U.S. service personnel.
The magnitude of the carnage — the extremists had chosen the site for maximum damage — seemed a preview of Afghanistan’s violent future under the Taliban, despite the group’s insistence that it would bring stability and order to a country that hasn’t seen much of either in decades.
But most of all, it increased people’s determination to flee.
“All people like me, we want to leave from any border we can,” explained Jamil, who like all ordinary Afghans interviewed for this story said he feared the Taliban and spoke on the condition that his full name not be used.
The pickaxe continued its taptap.
Behind the gravedigger was a stretcher with the body wrapped in a green blanket with religious verses in elaborate gold-coloured script. Two boys held up a floral-patterned bedsheet to shield Mushtaq from the heat.
Around them, the few dozen mourners, mostly relatives, hunted for shade under the squat mausoleums sprinkled on the hillside.
Not far away, a preacher was nearing the end of his sermon and the conclusion of the funeral for Abdul Raouf.
He had received a U.S. visa just this week and was set to leave Afghanistan with his wife and daughters, ages two and four.
In recent days, messages from the U.S. Embassy warned people against heading to the airport, telling those cleared for evacuation they should wait for instructions to go to an alternate location.
Fearing his escape window was closing, Abdul Raouf went anyway.
His wife and his brother, Abdul Satar, waited with the children outside the barriers as he proceeded to Abbey Gate to talk with the American troops keeping watch over the queues.
“He wouldn’t wait. He was trying his best,” Abdul Satar said. “He told me, ‘When I get in, you should collect the family.’ ”
His family found him in the next morning, when his corpse was delivered to Wazir Akbar Khan hospital.
As the funeral ended, Abdul Satar appeared dazed, struggling to walk and slurring his words as he tried to speak about his brother.
“I am confused, just confused about everything,” he said over and over.
After well over an hour of digging, Mushtaq’s grave was finally ready.
“No one asks about us,” Jamil said.
“All the newspapers and all the magazines spoke about the American troops that were killed. It’s frustrating, because Afghan murder, Afghan dead, Afghan blood — it’s not important.”