My Name Is Parvana

by Deborah Ellis

  Parvana opened the door. Then she paused and turned.

  “I guess this is goodbye,” she said. “I …”

  “Of course, you could stop being a fool and just do the fractions.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Really, Parvana, you already know how to do them. You can multiply in your head. I’ve heard you do it often enough.”

  “But this is different!”

  “No, it isn’t. You’re just telling yourself some stupid story about not being able to do them. Just like you are telling yourself some stupid story about being able to dress like a boy and pass for a boy — at your age! Some religious fanatics will kill you before the week is out. They’ll stone you in the street. You say you saved my life? All right. Let me return the favor. Let me show you that you already know how to do the fractions so you don’t have to leave and end up dead.”

  Parvana started to answer back. She hesitated. Admitting that Asif was right would be almost as awful as admitting that Nooria was right. But she remembered the angry men in the market. She knew what such men were capable of.

  Maybe she could head out on her own again and be all right. Maybe.

  Maybe she didn’t really want to try.

  Parvana knew then that she had to make a real choice. If she stayed tonight, she was staying, period, through multiplying fractions and whatever fresh horror was ahead. And if she was leaving, she wouldn’t be coming back.

  She was about to choose her future.

  “You are the most awful boy in the world,” she said, tossing the shalwar kameez onto the cot.

  “And you are the most awful girl.”

  He waggled his fingers for the sheet of fractions. Parvana handed it to him. He unfolded it, smoothed it out, and handed Parvana a pencil.

  Parvana moved in closer to the workbench, looked down at the fractions, and let herself be taught.

  SEVEN

  Parvana woke up on her cot to the sound of someone opening a metal flap at the bottom of her door and sliding something inside.

  She lay still. She could tell that someone was still outside the door, watching her.

  She was glad to be lying down. She was so completely tired she didn’t think she would ever get up off the cot again. All she wanted was to stare up at the ceiling and not think about anything.

  “It’s all right.”

  The person watching whispered to her through the little screen. The whisper sounded like it came from a girl.

  Parvana started to sit up. Her brain was too foggy at first to remember that she wasn’t supposed to be able to understand English. She remembered when she was halfway up and lay back down on the bed again.

  Her heart started pounding in her chest.

  She had given herself away! The sound of her heart filled the little cell, making the walls shake and loosening all the screws so properly checked by Inspector 247.

  “The food,” the whisper said. “It’s all right. It’s an MRE, the same food we get. You’ll have to eat yours cold because we had to take out the thing that heats it up. But it’s okay. Just open the packets.”

  “Have you delivered that meal yet, Private?” Parvana heard someone yell.

  “All done, sir.” The voice was definitely young and female.

  The soldier moved away from Parvana’s cell.

  Parvana forced herself to stay on her cot. She went through all the multiplication tables from one through twenty-five. Then she recited the first surah of the Qur’an to herself.

  Finally she could stand it no longer. It was quiet in the hall. No one was watching her. She got up, went over to the door and picked up the tray. She put it down on the little table and inspected it.

  It was a bag.

  They had already opened it for her.

  She looked inside.

  More bags.

  She took one out and read the label. Cheese Tortellini in Tomato Sauce.

  She didn’t know what tortellini was, but she liked cheese, and she liked tomatoes.

  There were lots of words on the bag and Parvana read them all. She learned where the meal had been made, what the ingredients were, and what the expiry date was. She learned how to open it, what the vitamin content was and that it contained no trans- fats.

  It was dull reading, but any reading was better than none.

  They should print poems on these packages, Parvana thought. Soldiers on a battlefield would probably like to have something to read. And a good poem at the right time could change a person’s life.

  Who would want to shoot somebody after reading “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “Casey at the Bat”? She’d read both in her book of American poetry and loved them.

  “Hey, you!” the soldier would shout out to whoever they were supposed to be killing. “I’ve just read a great poem. Let me read it to you. You’re going to love it!”

  The army could put jokes on the food bag, she thought, or short stories. Or chapters of novels, and the soldiers could swap until they had all read the whole book.

  She could picture them sitting on top of their tanks, having a meal break.

  Maybe a bunch of them would get chapters from Little Women, and they’d be eating and sniffling when Beth died. Or they would laugh when poor Anne of Green Gables dyed her hair green.

  I should send a letter to the army, she said to herself. This is a good idea. Maybe they could hire me to choose the books.

  She put that thought away to amuse herself with later and looked at the rest of the bags. There was a plastic spoon, bread, sliced Georgia peaches and a chocolate brownie.

  It’s a trick, she thought. Why would they give me so much food? And such fancy food!

  Maybe she shouldn’t eat it.

  The girl at the window had said it was okay. And she had whispered, which meant she probably wasn’t supposed to be talking to the prisoners.

  If I don’t eat, I won’t have the strength to get through this, Parvana told herself.

  That settled it. She opened up the tortellini. She saw red tomato sauce and little round balls of pasta. She dipped her little finger in the sauce and tasted it. The tomato and spices on her tongue kicked her appetite into high gear, and she couldn’t spoon the food into her mouth fast enough.

  When the tortellini was all gone, and she had scraped out as much of the sauce as she could with her spoon, she opened the edges of the bag and licked up all the rest of it.

  She sat back and sighed. She could feel the energy coming back into her body. She’d be all right. She could do this.

  She took a closer look at the ripped-open bag. If she took the plastic foil lining away, she would have a sheet of paper. Although she had no pen — and no way of even imagining how she would get one — it felt good to know she had some paper.

  She stacked the remaining food on the little shelf above the table to eat later and got to work taking apart the bag. It was delicate work. She didn’t want to rip the paper. It kept her calm and busy, and for a while she was something like happy.

  They didn’t come for her again. They left her alone for some time.

  Meals came now and then, and once, a soldier came right into the cell and took away the remains of the old meals. By then, Parvana had four sheets of bag paper smoothed out and hidden under her mattress. She expected them to find the paper and take it away, but it gave her something to do.

  Parvana kept track of the days by watching the light change through the little window high up on the cell wall.

  This window was wider than it was high and not much of either. Most of it was covered with narrow metal slats that were tilted in a way that made it hard for anyone to see in or out. A bit of fresh air got in, making the cell cold at night.

  Parvana discovered that by standing with her right foot on the cot and her left foot on the table, she could see o
ut the window. Her view was chopped up by the shutters, but she could see the sky and the rocky hills in the distance. Close up, she could see trash bins, sheds and several layers of razor wire to close everything in. She could stick her fingers through the gaps in the shutters and wiggle them in the sunshine. She stood there for as long as she could keep her balance, looking out at the world.

  On the third day of being left alone, the cover over the door grate slid open.

  “Come over to the door.”

  It was the young private again, but this time she spoke loudly.

  “Prisoner, come to the door.”

  Parvana was sitting on the side of the bed. She did not respond.

  The door was unlocked. The young private had another female soldier with her. They each took one of Parvana’s arms.

  They tried to lift her to her feet. Parvana gripped the side of the bed. She felt safe in her cell. She did not want that man to yell at her again.

  “Drag her,” one soldier said.

  “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s not a kid. She’s a terrorist.”

  One of the soldiers knelt down beside her.

  “We’re just taking you to get a shower,” she said quietly. “It’s just a shower. I’ll be with you the whole time. Don’t worry. I’m the woman who brings you your meals. You know you can trust me.”

  “She doesn’t speak English. You gotta talk to her in Arab.”

  “Shut up. If she doesn’t understand the words, she understands the tone.”

  The two soldiers kept up their arguing while they led Parvana out of the cell and to a small shower room at the end of the row of cells. She was handed a bit of soap and some shampoo and told to go behind a curtain and shower. They also handed her clean clothes — a pair of green army pants, green T-shirt and a long-sleeved green shirt.

  “Your clothes will be washed and returned to you,” they told her, but she didn’t care. Her school was gone. She didn’t need her school uniform anymore.

  Parvana took as long in the shower as she dared. The water was cool, the soap smelled good, and the lather felt soft in her hair.

  She rinsed off and put on the clean clothes. Then they led her back to her cell.

  The cell had been cleaned. The floor was still damp from the mop and the medicinal smell of disinfectant hung in the air. Clean sheets and blankets were folded and stacked on the end of the bed.

  Her pieces of paper were on top of her bed.

  She got the message.

  Nothing was safe.

  EIGHT

  “When someone is cut, there are three important things to do. Put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, clean the wound and cover the wound. This is to prevent infection and promote healing. To clean the wound, place the injury under clean running water…”

  Parvana stopped reading. If that was the only way to clean a wound, all of Afghanistan was doomed to die of horrible infections.

  She looked up from her page of notes and out at the faces of the thirty-six girls crowded into Nooria’s classroom. Most were crammed in two to a seat. Parvana and the other older girls had begun to receive instruction in first-aid and basic nursing from a Canadian army nurse. They had been told to share what they had learned with the younger students.

  Nooria’s class was listening politely, but Parvana was boring herself, and she was sure she was boring the students as well.

  “They won’t remember much,” the nurse said. “But they’ll come away with the idea that there are things they can do to keep themselves healthy. That’s a good first step.”

  Plus, there were stories in the newspapers about schools being attacked by the Taliban, bombed or burned down. If that happened at Leila’s Academy of Hope, Parvana wanted everyone to be all right. That meant everyone had to know how to take care of themselves and each other.

  The school had been open for a few months. Every day more families tried to enroll their daughters. Community members came in to teach cooking and embroidery and how to dry herbs for teas and seasonings. One of the teachers had a relative who knew how to distill rose petals into perfume. Another knew something about keeping bees for honey.

  Mother was starting to think that one day the school could earn money to cover at least some of its costs. For now it was enough that the students came, learned something and went home well fed.

  There were a few problems. They had a generator but very little fuel. The power was severely rationed and revolved around when Mother needed to recharge her cell phone, not when Parvana wanted to read. Many of the students only ate at school. Their families were poor and at home the food went to those who did not get to eat in school. The children were always ravenous when they arrived back in class after the weekend.

  Mother was trying to stretch the food budget so they could send a bit of food home with the girls at the end of each week.

  But the Wall of Achievement was getting crowded, with perfect arithmetic papers, samples of good calligraphy and a new section, Student of the Week, for a student who had worked really hard or done a good deed. The student got her name on the wall, and Mother sent a glowing letter home to the girl’s family.

  Vegetables were growing in the garden, the hens were laying eggs, and when the Afghan flag was raised each morning, the girls belted out the national anthem in loud, clear, proud voices.

  As she stood in front of Nooria’s classroom, Parvana could see that reading from her notes wasn’t teaching anybody anything. The girls were polite, but she was putting them to sleep. Even Nooria was nodding off.

  Parvana shook her head and laughed out loud. She put her notes face down on the desk.

  “Who here has had a cut?” she asked.

  The students woke up and put their hands in the air.

  “And what comes out of your body when you have a cut?”

  “Red,” said one student.

  “Blood,” said the girl beside her.

  “Red blood.” Parvana put the two answers together. “Some people panic when they see blood, but we won’t, will we? Because we will know what to do. Who here would like to know what to do when they see someone with a cut on their hand and blood coming out?”

  All the hands went up.

  That’s when Parvana decided to enjoy herself.

  “I’m going to ask your teacher to be the patient.” She put a chair at the front of the room and motioned to Nooria to sit on it.

  Nooria glared at her, but she didn’t know how to refuse.

  Parvana lifted her sister’s hand and drew a mark on it with a felt pen.

  “Your teacher has cut herself,” Parvana said. “Everyone gather around and I’ll show you what to do.”

  She had her practice first-aid kit with her, with hand-made gauzes and bandages. She showed the students how to clean the wound and wrap it with a clean piece of cloth.

  With her hand wrapped up, Nooria started to rise.

  Parvana put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. She was just getting started.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Your teacher has broken her arm.”

  The girls watched in fascination as Parvana folded a large square of fabric into a triangle and knotted it into a neat sling.

  “But what if you don’t have a large square?” Parvana asked them. “Maybe you just have a narrow scarf. Here’s how you can use the scarf to make another type of sling.”

  Parvana used the scarf from around her own neck to bind up Nooria’s other arm.

  “Oh, dear,” Parvana said. “There’s been a terrible dust storm and your teacher has injuries to her eyes.”

  “That’s enough for today,” Nooria said, but she was drowned out by the enthusiasm of her students.

  “You can keep the injuries from getting worse by binding the eyes shut until you can take her to a doctor,” Parvana said, happily plo
pping a square of gauze over each eye and winding bandages around her sister’s head.

  “The more secure the bandages, the better,” Parvana told the students, criss-crossing the bandage so that Nooria could not move her jaw.

  For once, her sister could not utter a word.

  It was a most sublime moment.

  The bell rang for morning break.

  “There’s the bell,” Parvana said. “Who wants juice?”

  The girls bounced out of the classroom. Parvana lingered in the doorway for a moment.

  She knew she’d pay for this later. She might even regret it.

  But, for the moment, she felt like dancing.

  And dance she did.

  She danced all the way out of the school and into the courtyard, and she kept dancing, in her head, all through the lecture from Mother, the fury from Nooria, and the chore upon chore she was made to do as punishment — the hours of gardening, cleaning the latrines, scrubbing the kitchen and shoveling out the hen-house.

  She worked and sweated and strained and ached, and for two whole weeks she didn’t have a moment to call her own.

  But she didn’t regret a thing.

  NINE

  Parvana struggled to keep track of the days.

  It was difficult. The bright ceiling light was on all the time. Meals came and went at weird intervals — sometimes after a brief time, sometimes after a long stretch.

  She was taken out of her cell at all times of the day and night. One day she was made to sit in the little room with a guard watching her for what seemed like a very long time, taken back to her cell for a short while, then bang! They burst through the door to take her out again, back to the same little room, the same silent guard, the same endless, dragging hours.

  Parvana suspected she had been taken back to her cell so that the guard could eat some lunch and go to the latrine, but of course she could never ask anyone about it.

  She would sit on the hard chair in silence for such a long time that she started to nod off. Then the guard would bang a baseball bat against the wall next to her head. She would jolt awake and open her eyes, her heart pounding in her chest.