Suleiman Shahbadi

Suleiman Shahbadi is a former Afghan community leader and experienced fighter whose authority becomes crucial after Abdel Khader Khan’s death. In a mountain camp facing renewed attack, he weighs religious duty against the immediate need to survive, organizes a counterattack, and leads the final attempt to break out. His brief command gives the group a way forward, but places him at the head of the charge in which he dies.

Background and Standing

Suleiman is fifty-two and comes from a cluster of villages near Ghazni, roughly two-thirds of the way to Kabul. Before the war he was a community leader, known by the title Kandeedar; by the time he joins the unit, he has spent five years at war and has experience in sieges, guerrilla skirmishes, and pitched battles. His authority therefore rests on both local leadership and practical military knowledge.

Ahmed Shah Massoud personally appointed Suleiman to establish southern commands near Kandahar. The men in the ethnically diverse unit regard Massoud with profound admiration, and the direct connection between Massoud and Suleiman gives the latter a corresponding reverence among them. His position is not presented as merely formal: when the surviving fighters face a difficult decision, they gather to hear him, and he makes the decisions that determine their immediate course.

The narrator’s first close impression of Suleiman complicates that authority with grief. He is a short man with large hands and feet, a white turban, a trimmed beard, and a deeply furrowed brow. His eyes convey a sorrow so profound that it seems to discourage intimacy. The narrator considers him wise, brave, and kind, yet senses that the depth of his sadness keeps the men from approaching him as a friend. Suleiman’s composure is thus not the absence of feeling; it appears alongside a grief that others can recognize but do not know how to reach.

Command After Khader’s Death

After the death of Abdel Khader Khan, Suleiman becomes the most senior Afghan in the surviving group. Twenty people, including the wounded, remain with him. The burden of leadership arrives amid loss and immediate danger: Nazeer has only recently been found in the snow, and the group has reason to believe the enemy may attack again. Three days after Nazeer is recovered, Suleiman calls the survivors together in a cave to hear his report and consider what they can do.

Suleiman’s assessment is cautious rather than complacent. He believes the forces responsible for the earlier attack may return, and he considers the possibility that Russian soldiers could support Afghan government troops in a helicopter assault once the weather clears. A direct attack, he reasons, might cost the enemy heavily, but the group could still lose men or eventually lose its high ground. The fighters have few options, and waiting carries its own danger.

He decides to prepare two mortar counterattacks, but first requires reliable information about the enemy’s position and strength. While he is briefing Jalalaad for a scouting mission, Habib Abdur Rahman appears in the cave, having passed the sentries undetected. Habib claims to know the enemy camp and offers to guide the fighters to positions from which they can fire mortars. His offer comes with a condition: the survivors of the attack would be left to him. Suleiman’s plan is interrupted, but the encounter shows the kind of command he must exercise—taking information from a volatile source while the unit’s survival depends on acting quickly.

Judgment in the Hunger Crisis

The group’s military predicament is compounded by hunger. After a month of hunger followed by five days without food, the fighters confront the question of whether they may eat meat they regard as haram. Suleiman gives the decisive religious judgment: although eating forbidden food is evil for a Muslim, allowing oneself to die of starvation when food is available is a greater evil. His ruling does not erase the religious difficulty; it orders competing obligations by the urgency of preserving life.

The fighters decide to cook the discarded meat into soup before dawn and then use Habib’s knowledge to try to fight their way out. The meal is a practical and collective act: the men agree to it together, despite their reluctance, and it gives them the strength to carry out the escape plan. Suleiman’s influence therefore extends beyond battlefield command. He interprets a moral crisis in a way that makes action possible, joining religious reasoning to the immediate needs of the group.

The Final Charge and Death

When the meal and prayers are over, six men assemble at the southeastern edge of the compound, at the steep slope Habib has recommended as their best chance of reaching freedom. Suleiman is among them, alongside Lin, Nazeer, Mahmoud Melbaaf, Jalalaad, and a young fighter. The men prepare together, checking their weapons and embracing before they begin. Suleiman gives the order, and they descend the ridge at dawn.

The retreat becomes a run toward enemy positions under mortar and gunfire. Jalalaad is killed during the charge. Suleiman, running ahead of Lin, is struck and falls; Lin has to pass over him as he continues down the rough slope. The scene gives the commander's death its defining circumstance: Suleiman does not remain behind the others or direct the assault from safety. He leads them into the attack, accepting the same exposure as the men whose lives his decisions have been trying to preserve.

A later account of the unit’s formal photograph fixes that ending in the group’s memory. Suleiman is remembered as the man who died leading the fighters into the guns. The photograph cannot convey the men’s private warmth or the laughter they shared, but the names and deaths recalled around it turn the image into a record of the unit’s losses. Suleiman’s place in that recollection is both individual and representative: he is the sorrowing leader who chose the route and the fighter who entered it at the front.

Narrative Role

Suleiman’s part in the story is concentrated in a succession of decisions made under narrowing conditions. His past as a village leader and veteran gives credibility to his command; Massoud’s appointment helps explain why the men defer to him. In the camp, he assesses the likelihood of another attack, organizes a response, and settles the dispute over food. At the ridge, leadership becomes physical example: he gives the order and joins the charge.

His arc also places practical survival and moral responsibility together rather than treating them as opposites. The decision to eat forbidden meat preserves the fighters’ ability to act, while the decision to attack turns that renewed strength toward escape. Neither choice guarantees safety. Suleiman’s death makes the cost of command unmistakable, while his final action preserves the meaning of his authority: he leads not only by rank or reputation, but by sharing the danger his decision imposes on everyone else.