My Name Is Parvana

by Deborah Ellis

  They would keep this up until she was so tired that her legs felt like they were full of crawling worms. Then they would take her back to her cell. She would collapse on the cot. They would leave her alone just long enough for her to be able to stop her exhausted body from twitching and slide into sleep. Then the cell door would bang open again and they would haul her back out to sit in the hard chair.

  The guards who took her from the cell were women. None of the male guards touched her, and Parvana was grateful for that. The men were large and fit and looked like they could really hurt her if they wanted to.

  The women soldiers were strong, too. Walking close to them as they gripped her arms was like walking next to creatures made of iron and steel. But she was hoping they wouldn’t go out of their way to hurt her. No woman had ever hit her. She couldn’t say the same about men. She had been hit many times by men. Some of the men had been with the Taliban. Other men had not been with the Taliban but thought they could hit her anyway.

  But she didn’t relax around the women. She had seen the photos from Abu Ghraib of female soldiers doing horrible things to Iraqi prisoners. Women could torture people as well as men if they wanted to.

  That was one of the things Parvana thought about as she sat in the chair. She grabbed hold of any train of thought that might keep her calm and entertained. Otherwise, all she could focus on was pain, fear, loneliness and exhaustion.

  Her thoughts on women and torture went like this. Women in the West could choose to do anything they wanted. So why would they choose to do that?

  And how did a woman train to be a torturer? Did she study human anatomy, the way Parvana had in science class, to learn which nerve endings were the most sensitive and which muscles could take the most beatings? Did they practice on dolls? Did they listen to recordings of someone screaming for hours on end so that they would not be bothered when they heard it for real?

  She went through that long list of thoughts, examining each one from different angles. After that, she started to wonder whether or not she would make a good torturer. Which led her to wonder what sort of information she could want so badly that it would make her deliberately hurt someone.

  Then she knew.

  “Where is the key to the library?”

  As soon as she thought of it, she started to laugh. She had to cough to cover up the fact that she was laughing.

  But even for the library key, she didn’t think she could hurt anybody directly. So how could she torture someone without actually hurting them? Thinking of ideas and rejecting them took up a long chunk of time.

  Then she hit upon the perfect torture, at least for herself. Watching her sister, Nooria, brush her long, thick hair. That always drove Parvana crazy, and Nooria knew it, so she always seemed to wait until Parvana was around to start brushing. Even when Parvana grew her hair long, it was straggly and wispy and didn’t behave. Nooria had the most beautiful hair Parvana had ever seen. When Nooria was younger, she enjoyed flipping it in Parvana’s face, taunting her with it.

  She hasn’t changed much, Parvana thought, as she nodded off to sleep again.

  As soon as her chin touched her chest, the baseball bat banged against the metal wall by her head. She jolted awake, wishing she could break that bat into a million pieces.

  They probably have more bats, she thought. They probably have a whole shed full of baseball bats that they use to keep people awake.

  To keep herself from slipping into sleep again, Parvana decided to think about Nooria, and the day the letters came.

  TEN

  The first letter came in the morning.

  The school was in the middle of Dust Duty.

  Dust Duty was the chore that involved getting the dust and sand out of the school. A never-ending chore, since the school was on the edge of a desert. Some girls were sweeping out classrooms and hallways. Others were sliding rags over windowsills and tables.

  Parvana had what she thought was the best chore — beating carpets. She would fling a rug over a clothesline and beat it with a stick. Clouds of dust and dirt filled the air. A fair bit of it landed on Parvana. She sneezed, laughed and shook it out of her hair.

  She spied Maryam off by herself, making up some kind of dance steps when she was supposed to be cleaning.

  “This is Dust Duty, not Dance Duty,” Parvana told her.

  “All the rags are taken,” Maryam said, doing some fancy little twists with her hands.

  “There’s also something called a broom.”

  “All the brooms are taken, too.”

  “All of them?” Parvana took hold of her sister’s dancing hand and led her around the corner of the school. “I am sure we can find at least one broom tucked away in the storage shed.”

  The shed was against the back wall of the school yard. It held everything from a box of donated sandals to garden tools.

  Parvana reached for the shed door. Then she noticed the padlock.

  “Since when is this shed locked?” she asked. “Who put this here?”

  “Mr. Fahir put it on,” Maryam said. “I told you there were no more brooms.”

  “Go and ask Mr. Fahir to come here and bring the key,” Parvana told her.

  “Ask him yourself,” Maryam replied. And she danced away.

  Parvana saw Mr. Fahir crossing the yard and ran over to him.

  “Mr. Fahir, do you have the key for the storage shed? My sister needs a broom.”

  “Broom?” Mr. Fahir asked. “I don’t think we have any more brooms in the shed.”

  “Well, she needs something to keep her busy. And why are we locking the shed?”

  “The shed should be locked,” he replied. “Children should not go in there.”

  “The students don’t go in,” Parvana said. “It’s always unlocked and there’s never been a problem — ”

  “A letter has come,” he said, interrupting her. “I was just taking it in.”

  He held up a large brown envelope.

  Mail service had finally returned to Afghanistan after years of war, but it wasn’t common for people to get letters. Certainly Parvana had never received one. She had written plenty of letters to Shauzia over the years, but she had never mailed them. She had no idea where Shauzia was, so the letters stayed in her father’s old shoulder bag.

  “It’s from America,” Mr. Fahir told her.

  “Who is it for?” she asked. “Is it for me?”

  She allowed herself one fleeting moment of fantasy about the letter being from Shauzia, saying she had left the lavender field in France and was now sitting in a corn field in America.

  Mr. Fahir handed her the envelope.

  It was for Nooria.

  “If you will take it inside, I will find something for your little sister to do,” he said.

  Parvana stared at the envelope as she walked.

  Why would Nooria get a letter from America? Parvana was tempted to rip it open. It took every ounce of self-control to keep the envelope sealed all the way to Nooria’s classroom.

  Nooria was supervising her students on Dust Duty there.

  Parvana tapped her on the arm. “This came for you.”

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Never mind, then,” Parvana said. “I’ll toss your letter from America on the cook fire.”

  Nooria took the envelope from her and looked at it.

  “It came,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Is Mother in her office?”

  “How should I — ”

  But Nooria didn’t wait for an answer. She dashed from the classroom, taking the envelope with her.

  Parvana was stuck supervising Nooria’s class until the bell rang for recess. Then she hurried off to find her sister.

  Nooria was in their mother’s office. They were deep in conversation. Th
e envelope was open, its contents spread across the desk.

  They didn’t even look up when Parvana walked in.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s in the letter?”

  Nooria looked up. Parvana saw a joy and excitement on her sister’s face that she couldn’t remember seeing ever before.

  “It’s from New York University,” she said, jumping up and giving Parvana a hug — very un-Nooria-like. She practically squealed. “I’ve been accepted to their school! They will pay for everything. I’m going to America!”

  America! Parvana couldn’t believe it. She broke off from her sister and snatched up the letter.

  There it was, in clear type. We are pleased to tell you that you have been accepted to the Visiting Scholar Program at New York University, on full scholarship.

  Nooria grabbed the letter before Parvana could finish reading it. Parvana didn’t care.

  They were going to America! And not just America — New York. Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and brand new things to see on streets she had never walked before.

  “When do we go?” she asked. “I can be ready in an hour. Half an hour. I can be ready in two minutes!” Really, all she needed was her father’s shoulder bag. She owned nothing else that she cared about. In a city that big there would be jobs she could do that would help her earn money to buy the things she needed.

  “Will we live near the subway?” she asked. What a wonderful thing it would be to live near a subway ...

  Then she realized that Mother and Nooria were looking at her — Nooria with scorn and amusement, Mother with a combination of pity and exasperation.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Nooria said, holding the letter right up to Parvana’s face. “It’s my name on the paper. I’m going.”

  “Take me with you,” Parvana said, not caring that she was begging. “Why should you get to go and I have to stay? And how did they find out about you? What have you done that’s so special?”

  Parvana knew she was acting like a four-year-old child, but she couldn’t stop herself. She swatted away the letter, wishing she dared swat Nooria’s taunting face.

  “Mother and I applied. And I got accepted because of how I suffered in the war.”

  “How you suffered? All you ever did was wash your hair — over and over and over. I know because I had to go out and fetch the water!”

  “Girls! That’s enough!” Mother got up from her chair and closed the office door.

  That won’t do any good, Parvana thought. These walls are thin.

  She was so angry she didn’t care who heard.

  “We sent in the application months ago,” Mother said. “We had no idea that she would be accepted, and now that she has been, we are very happy.”

  “Why didn’t you apply for me, too?”

  “You’re too young, and you haven’t gone far enough in school,” Mother said firmly. “Now, stop this nonsense and tell your sister you’re happy.”

  Parvana was working hard to get to a place in her head where she could be happy for her sister, when Nooria chimed in.

  “Besides, you can’t even multiply fractions.”

  That set Parvana off again.

  “I can so!” She could, too. By now she could multiply them, divide them and turn them into decimals. And Nooria knew it.

  “Nooria will come back to Afghanistan as an educated woman,” Mother said. “She’ll be able to take over the school one day.”

  “And then you’ll be working for me!” Nooria smirked the nastiest smirk Parvana had ever seen. Nastier than the smirks of Hanifa and Sharifa combined.

  “I will never work for you! Never!” Parvana’s fists were clenched so tight she could feel her nails puncturing the skin on her palms.

  “I think the thing that swayed the university to give me the scholarship was the part where I told them I dressed up as a boy during the Taliban and went out to work to feed my family,” Nooria told her.

  Mother intercepted Parvana as she lunged at her sister. And then Parvana found herself firmly on the other side of the locked office door.

  “That’s my life!” Parvana said, banging and kicking. “You stole my life!”

  Parvana ran outside, past a sea of students who had gathered to watch the fun.

  She went back to her carpet-beating station and attacked the carpet with fury. At one point she swung her stick so hard that it flew up over the wall of the school and fell on the other side.

  Parvana hoped the stick had landed on someone’s head. She had a deep need to hurt somebody.

  What happened, though, was that she still had carpets to clean. She had to leave the grounds, walk around the school wall and retrieve the stick. By the time she did that, her rage was gone, and she was too empty to feel anything.

  The second letter came in the night.

  Parvana was in the yard to witness its arrival, too.

  She hadn’t gone to class or supper and she certainly wasn’t about to go to bed on the toshak between the awful Nooria and the not-awful Maryam who was annoyingly making a long list of presents she wanted Nooria to buy for her in New York.

  Mother let her be. Everyone stayed away.

  Everyone except Asif. He brought her a plate of nan and chickpeas and a mug of tea, and he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

  “I never liked Nooria,” was all he said. It was enough.

  Parvana ate, then made a little bed for herself against the Leila’s Academy of Hope sign.

  It was good to be sleeping under the stars again. She knew how to sleep on the ground. A mattress was nice, but it wasn’t necessary. As long as she had a blanket.

  She thought again about just walking away.

  She could become the Wild Girl of Afghanistan. People would see her and then in a flash she’d be gone. Legends would spring up.

  “The Wild Girl was here last night,” they would say. “One of Naseer’s chickens is missing.”

  “The Wild Girl drew water from our well. We will have good luck this year!”

  Years would go by. She would become the Wild Woman of Afghanistan, then the Wild Old Woman. She would live to be a very old woman because she would get lots of fresh air and exercise and would never get married. She would be her own boss all her life. And she would be happy.

  Parvana was just starting to picture her death on the top of a hill right beneath a rising full moon, at the age of one hundred and one, when she heard the sound of a car engine.

  It stopped close to the school. A car door opened and then something came flying over the school wall. It landed in the yard near Parvana’s feet. The car door closed and the car sped away.

  It was all over before Parvana could react and call Mr. Fahir, who was sleeping in his little room by the gate.

  She looked at the object that had been thrown.

  It was a rock about the size of a brick.

  A piece of paper was bound to it with string.

  Parvana picked it up, pulled off the string and unfolded the paper. It was too dark outside to see, so she went inside to the kitchen. She took a box of matches out of the drawer, struck one and held it up to the paper.

  Close down your school, it said, or you will pay the price. Close down your school or we will kill you.

  Parvana read the words over and over until the flame hit her fingertips and she blew out the match.

  All at once, and at long last, she was glad her sister was getting out.

  ELEVEN

  “Dear Shauzia: It is getting harder and harder to remember what you look like …”

  Parvana stood and listened to the interpreter read the words she had written to her friend so long ago. She had written the letters in Dari. They sounded strange as they came out of the corporal’s mouth in English for the major’s benefit.

 
“… My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be.”

  “Whoever wrote that sounds very sad,” the major said. “What do you think, Corporal? Think this Shauzia is an actual person?”

  “The notebook could just be a diary, sir,” the woman replied. “Many girls give their diaries names. Anne Frank called hers Kitty.”

  “I read my older sister’s diary when we were kids,” the major said. “Dull reading. All about how she hated her hair and hated her legs and hated her nose and was sure no one would ever like her. I never teased her about it, though. I didn’t want her to know that I knew she felt so bad about herself. It was more information about her than I wanted to know.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Read on, Corporal.”

  The interpreter read from letter to letter. Parvana was too fed up even to be angry at this invasion of her privacy.

  “Dear Shauzia: We are back on the road. It almost feels like we never left. Maybe Green Valley was just a dream. I should stop dreaming. All my dreams turn to garbage …”

  “‘Dreams turn to garbage,’” the major quoted. “People become disillusioned, they can easily turn to violence. We’ve seen that before, haven’t we, Corporal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She turned a page and kept reading.

  “Dear Shauzia: Someone in this camp has a radio and I heard that the Taliban are gone and there is a new government in Kabul. The news is causing a lot of arguments. Some say things will get better. Others say things will get worse. Some say the foreign troops will kill all the Afghans and move into their homes. When one man heard that, he waved his arms in front of his tent made from trash bags and said, ‘They want my house? They can have it.’ Rumors are spreading faster than dysentery. No one knows what is happening. But I know. I know that whatever those important people are doing in Kabul, they are not thinking about girls like me, or about any of us who are lost and living in the mud.”