My Name Is Parvana

by Deborah Ellis

  She clapped her hands to get them busy. She held Ava back a moment to give her a hug. She wasn’t sure how many words Ava understood, and she didn’t want the little girl to think she was mad at her. Ava gave Parvana one of her bright smiles, then skipped into the kitchen to help the others.

  A short while later they all sat down in a warm dining hall to hot tea, boiled eggs and leftover nan.

  “Where’s Mama?” Maryam asked, chewing on nan drizzled with honey.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Parvana told her.

  Maryam swallowed. “Did something happen to her?”

  “Mama did not come back last night and it’s a good thing she didn’t,” she said, sternly. “Do you not see what a mess this school is in? Dust everywhere, laundry to be done, a filthy kitchen. Today is going to be a cleaning day!”

  She barked out work orders and the kids hustled off.

  “You sound just like Nooria,” Asif teased.

  Parvana threw a piece of bread at him. He had the good grace not to throw it back.

  In truth, the school was already clean, and by the time the sun was ready to set, Parvana had run out of made-up chores. She declared a study hall, but no one was studying. They sat in silence at their books, straining their ears for the sound of Mother’s taxi.

  It was a night without wind, so every sound could be clearly heard inside.

  “She’s home!” Maryam said, but when they all rushed to open the gate, “Mother” turned out to be a small flock of flat-tailed sheep herded by a lone shepherd.

  The next time they heard a noise it was a pick-up truck full of melons, on its way to the next village. When Maryam said, the third time, “Someone’s coming,” Parvana told them to stay in their seats. All this dashing to the door wasn’t doing them any good.

  Then she heard a vehicle pull up to the gate and honk its horn to be let in. They all jumped up.

  But it wasn’t Mother. It was the police.

  Parvana pushed the younger ones back behind the gate and stayed back there with them. She peered out to watch as Asif greeted the two policemen with a respectful “Salaam alaikum” as they got out of the car.

  “Can we help you?” Asif asked.

  “This man has reported that his wife is missing,” the officer said. “He thinks she may have come here.”

  “There’s no one here but us,” Asif said. “We are only young. The head of the school is at a meeting and will be back soon. Perhaps you could return tomorrow.”

  “She has to be here,” came a voice from the back seat. “She’s not in the house and there’s nowhere else she knows of to go.”

  Out of the back seat came a very tall, very old man.

  Parvana gasped. It was the old man from the market.

  “I am sorry to hear about your missing wife,” Asif said. “She is not here. I swear to you. I have been keeping watch all day at this gate, and no one has come here.”

  “She went missing two days ago,” the tall man said. “Her name is Kinnah.”

  “She is not here,” Asif repeated firmly.

  “Are you going to take the word of a crippled boy?” said the man. “I should have gone to the Taliban. They know how to deal with wives who don’t behave.”

  “That’s enough,” the officer said. “We can handle this.” He turned to Asif. “We need to come in and look.”

  “Of course,” said Asif. “You are welcome.”

  Asif fumbled with the gate latch, giving Parvana time to get everyone out of the way and into the shadows.

  Finally, out of frustration, the old man knocked Asif into the dirt — Parvana heard him fall — and yanked the gate open.

  “Tear the place apart!” the old man roared.

  The police and the tall old man went from room to room in the school. They moved fast. Asif, on his crutches, had to hustle to keep up. Parvana was afraid of what the old man might do to Asif, so she followed at a little distance. She kept her face covered by her chador so the old man would not recognize her.

  “This is your liberation?” the old man said, as they left another empty room. “Where girls are allowed to do as they please? She belongs to me. Her father gave her to me to pay off his debt. If she does not come back to me, I will go to the Taliban and her father will pay me — one way or another.”

  He turned on Asif again. “Have you hidden her? Has she become your wife now? I will kill you both!”

  “No one is here but us,” Parvana said, stepping forward. She wanted to take his attention off Asif.

  “Who is this? Another one of your girlfriends?”

  “She is my sister,” Asif said. “Our mother runs this school.”

  “You should teach her to keep silent. Women with big mouths. This is what Afghanistan has come to.” He looked beyond Parvana to the children behind her. In steps he was at Hassan’s side and had scooped the little boy into his arms.

  Hassan screamed.

  “My wife has my child. It’s a girl. Either I get my wife and daughter back or I will come back here and take this boy. One boy is easily worth the two of them. One healthy boy, that is,” he added, sneering at Asif.

  “But your wife is not here!” Asif said, reaching for Hassan. The old man held the little boy too high for Asif to grab him.

  “I’m talking to the police,” the man said. “I’m letting them know what I will do. And they will be responsible, not me.”

  He gently put Hassan back on the ground. “One week! Then I will be back for you.”

  Hassan ran to Asif and buried his face in Asif’s remaining leg.

  One of the policemen moved the beam of his flashlight across the yard.

  “What’s in that shed back there?” he asked, shining his flashlight.

  “Nothing,” Parvana replied. “School supplies. I mean, cleaning supplies. Brooms. Nothing.”

  The men were already walking toward it.

  “Unlock it,” they ordered Parvana.

  “I don’t know where the key is,” she said. “Our old chowkidar kept it, but he quit and took the key with him.”

  “What is his name? Where does he live?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Parvana said.

  One of the police officers took his gun out of its holster.

  “Hey!” Asif shouted. Hassan and Maryam screamed.

  But the officer didn’t shoot Parvana. Instead, he shot off the padlock.

  We should all run, Parvana thought, as the men entered the shed, flashlights blazing.

  “Nothing but boxes of pencils and notebooks,” Parvana heard them say.

  In a moment they came out again.

  “We will be watching,” the police said. “If we find out that you are hiding her, the school will be closed and you will be arrested. Do you understand?”

  They got into the police car.

  “We will be back,” one of the officers said.

  Then they drove away.

  Parvana grabbed a lantern from the dining room and went out to the shed. At first all she saw were boxes stacked neatly against one wall. She opened one up. Pencils. She put that box on the floor and opened the next one.

  Grenades.

  “Parvana?”

  Asif was calling to her.

  “I think we have a problem,” she called back out to him.

  “I know we do,” he replied.

  She stuck her head out. “My problem is in here.”

  “Mine is out here,” he said. “And I guarantee mine is bigger.”

  And then Parvana heard a baby crying.

  She held up her lantern. From behind the latrine came the girl Parvana had talked to in the market. Her face bore the signs of a vicious beating. In one hand she held a baby. In the other she held a can of kerosene.

  “Let me stay or I’ll set us both
on fire,” the girl said. “I’m not scared to die. I’d rather die than go back to him.”

  No one moved a muscle. Parvana drew a slow, deep breath.

  “What did you find in the shed?” Asif asked.

  Parvana shook her head.

  The grenades could wait.

  She knew what to do with scared girls and babies.

  “Hello, Kinnah,” she said softly. “My name is Parvana. Of course you can stay with us. This is where you belong. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be all right.”

  She talked quietly until the fear slipped from the girl’s face.

  As the exhausted girl put down the kerosene and handed over the baby, Parvana wondered again when her mother would return.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mother returned in a fast-moving car with squealing brakes and spinning tires that sent dust through the open window of the guardhouse into the eyes of Asif, who was keeping watch.

  She returned in the company of men with covered faces and big guns.

  She sprang from the car as if from a catapult and landed in the dirt with a thud. Asif watched her roll three times before she came to a stop.

  He was too scared to move. He stayed in the shadow of the guardhouse until the car had gone, and he could no longer hear the chug of its motor.

  Only then did he hobble out to where Mother’s body had come to a stop in the weeds.

  He could only stand and look at it and will it to move on its own.

  “I heard a car,” Parvana said as she stepped through the gate. “Is Mother …”

  Her eyes followed Asif’s.

  And she, too, was frozen.

  Somehow, she made herself move.

  She walked over to the body and drew back the cloth that covered her mother’s head. She stared at the mess the men had made of her mother’s face.

  There was a note pinned to her mother’s clothes.

  This woman ran a school for evil girls.

  Now she is dead. Her school will be closed.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dear Nooria:

  Parvana was sitting at her mother’s desk. She hadn’t slept in a long time.

  In front of her was Nooria’s most recent letter. Someone in America had offered to pay for her flight home during school vacation, and she had written to ask Mother’s opinion.

  Dear Nooria:

  I am writing this instead of Mother because …

  Parvana scratched that out.

  She tried again.

  Dear Nooria:

  Please come home right away. When you get here, I will have some news for you that I would rather not have to tell you.

  That didn’t seem right, either.

  Dear Nooria:

  Yesterday, before the sun set, we laid Mother to rest in the most beautiful place on the school grounds …

  She scribbled through that as well.

  The family photos were all in Mother’s office. The taped-up photo of Parvana’s father with the pieces missing, the photo of her dead older brother, killed by a land mine a long time ago, the photo of Mother graduating from university with her degree in journalism. There was no photo of Parvana’s baby brother, Ali, who died during the time of the Taliban.

  All these people from one family, all dead.

  I’m not dead, Parvana thought. And then she did the bravest thing she could think of.

  Dear Nooria:

  Mother asked me to write to you because she is very busy trying to set up a new college for women. She says she misses you and is very proud of you, but to please stay in New York for your vacation. She also wants to know if there is any way you can take care of Maryam if we can find a way to send her to you. She says Maryam is getting to be even more trouble than me!

  Your sister,

  Parvana.

  She started to fold up the letter. Then she picked up her pen again and added something at the bottom.

  P.S. I’m proud of you, too.

  She sealed the letter.

  When Maryam goes, I’ll be all alone, she thought.

  Asif chose that moment to hobble into the office on his crutches.

  “The police will be back,” he said. “And I took a look inside the shed. Did Mr. Fahir do that?”

  “I think he was forced to,” Parvana said.

  Asif sat down across from her. “Do you think those weapons belong to the Taliban?”

  Parvana shrugged. Afghanistan had so many armies now — the foreigners, the Taliban, the people who hated both the Taliban and the foreigners, the drug people and the people who had their own private armies just because they could.

  “I’m going to bury them,” Asif said. “Out beside the latrines. And then maybe it’s time to leave. We could leave tonight and get as far away as we can before the sun comes up.”

  “But where do we go? Do we just start walking? We could end up in worse trouble.”

  “What about going to the foreign army? We’re kids. They might protect us.”

  Parvana considered that for a moment, then shook her head.

  “They might help us and they might not, but I don’t think they would even let us get close enough to explain ourselves or ask for anything. And even if they helped us, they might make Kinnah go back to her husband.”

  “We have to do something.”

  Parvana looked past Asif out into the hallway at the Wall of Achievement.

  She had an idea.

  “I’m calling someone more powerful than the police, and more powerful than the army,” she said, picking up Mother’s cell phone.

  “Who’s that?” Asif asked.

  “I’m calling Mrs. Weera.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “It takes us a while,” the major said.

  They were all back in Parvana’s cell. She had finished reading Jane Eyre and was fifty pages into reading it a second time. The language was difficult, but the more she read, the easier it got.

  The questioning man tossed his Constant Gardener book onto the bed beside her.

  “A reward for saving that soldier’s life,” he said. Then he started his speech again.

  “It takes us a while. Our communications networks aren’t as reliable as they could be. Power cuts on and off. That’s war for you. But eventually, we always get to the bottom of things. In this case, the explosives and bomb-making equipment buried on the school grounds. Would you like to tell us what that stuff was doing there?”

  Parvana concentrated on the cover of the Constant Gardener book and wondered if the man had liked it.

  “What were you doing at that school?” he shouted.

  Parvana could sense him standing beside her, not moving, his frustration coming off him in waves.

  “Fine,” he said finally. “I’ve given you every opportunity to talk. Every chance to tell us who you are and what you are up to. Do you understand that I can have you locked away? Locked away without a trial! And you will stay that way for a very long time.”

  He moved to the door.

  “There really is nothing more I can say. The path you are on is one you chose for yourself.”

  He was halfway out the door when he came back in.

  “One question — and I’m really curious about this. You have obviously been educated. You have been given opportunities that my countrymen and women are all here fighting and dying to give to everyone in your country. With all the things you could have chosen to destroy, why did you blow up your own school?”

  Parvana decided, this one and only time, to break her silence.

  She turned her head, looked the man straight in the eye and spoke in perfect English.

  “I didn’t blow up my school,” she said. “You did.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Is this the office of Mrs. Weera?”

&nb
sp; Parvana shouted into the cell phone. The connection was bad, and the war planes that zoomed over the school didn’t help.

  “I need to speak to her right now. My name is Parvana. She knows me. I need her help. I’m at the Leila Academy of Hope. My mother has been murdered, all the other adults have run away and the Taliban or someone is coming after us. I’m here with a bunch of little kids and I don’t know what to do. I need her help … well, get her out of her meeting!”

  After many phone calls to finally get the number of Mrs. Weera’s parliamentary office, Parvana was in no mood to be polite.

  She gave the woman her phone number and the school’s location, then hung up.

  “Adults are always in meetings,” she fumed.

  Asif stuck his head in the door.

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “I left a message with someone.” Parvana pushed the hair out of her face.

  He sat down in the chair across from the desk.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Old,” Parvana said. “And tired. It feels like this is never going to end.”

  Three days had passed since they had buried Parvana’s mother. Today would have been a school day, but none of the students showed up. Word must have spread.

  At least we don’t have to pretend everything is all right, Parvana thought.

  “We weren’t able to keep the school open,” she said. “They won.”

  Asif didn’t say anything.

  “It was great while it lasted, though, wasn’t it?” Parvana said. “We really started to build something here. It was like Green Valley, only a thousand times better. Green Valley got destroyed, too.”

  “What do you mean, too? This school isn’t destroyed.”

  “It is! Mother said that as long as we were open, we were winning. The gates were closed the last time I looked.”

  “You are such a fool,” Asif said, getting out of the chair. “You are the biggest fool that ever lived.” He left the office.