by Ava Homa
“Everybody’s dead!” I shook Joanna, my tears soaking her blanket. She startled awake, squinted at the television for a few seconds, jumped up to turn it off, and held me tight under the bedsheets. Shiler still slept soundly beside her.
“Are we going to die, Auntie?”
“Hush, my darling. You’re safe. You are safe with me.” Joanna patted my hair, dried my tears.
“Baba said TVs are liars.”
“Yes, they are. Yes, they are.” She gently rubbed my back, singing a lullaby: Ly-ly-ly . . . Her velvety voice gradually soothed me to sleep.
That night I dreamed that the butterflies I had seen earlier arrived in Halabja, only to be gassed to death. Millions of them lay dead on top of each other, a hill of multicolored wings.
CHAPTER TWO
The stars glittered on the long skirt of the sky, indifferent to the knots that snarled inside Chia and me as we waited on the staircase outside the kindergarten, waited to be missed, to be remembered, to be picked up. We remained in the yard, bored and cold, bundled up, peering at the asphalt, leaning against each other’s arms. Chia was in the glorious kingdom that four-year-olds saunter in, drumming on a paper cup and muttering a song. I smiled to myself at the silly lyrics, but they couldn’t ease the deep pit in my stomach.
Shiler stuck her tongue out at me when her mother arrived to take her home. I held my fists before my face, pretending they were gripping prison bars and that I was crying behind them. Shiler whipped her head away to feign indifference, but I knew that being called a prison child needled her. Kids also mocked her for her chubbiness, but she didn’t care about that. Shiler wiggled her bum at me in revenge.
A week after Chia was born and Mama came home from the hospital, she had forced Joanna and Shiler to leave our basement because she said she couldn’t trust the “ghahba”—whore. They’d left quietly, despite my father’s attempt to placate Mama and to get Joanna to ignore “the bitch.” I had decided it was better to be a whore like Joanna than a bitch, if I had to be one or the other when I grew up. I’d begged Mama to reverse her decision, but she had banned me from speaking to Shiler or her mother ever again. When we began school, Mama couldn’t keep me from sitting with Shiler in class, but I had to steal small moments to remind Joanna that I still loved her, that it wasn’t my fault Mama had cast them out.
I played with the spotted green ribbon tied on my short pigtail beneath my headscarf. Now that my corkscrew-curly hair, which grew upward instead of down toward my shoulders, had finally grown long enough to be tied back, I was told that I had to hide it under a headscarf. God would monitor my every move from now on, because I had turned nine, and He would hang me by my hair in hell if I failed to cover it.
“Chia, if God doesn’t start punishing girls until grade three, why did I have to wear hijab starting in grade one?” The manteau—the loose, long coat I’d been wearing for two years already—was heavy and uncomfortable, making it hard to run around and play. The compulsory hijab was a shackle on my childhood. “Why can’t our headscarves at least be a happy color? Like green?” We girls got into trouble if we wore colorful shoes or socks, if our ponytails made bumps under our scarves, or if our headscarves were not long enough to cover the bosoms we hadn’t developed yet.
“Five, six, nine . . .” My brother’s almond-shaped hazel eyes—everybody called him Chawkal, “Bright Eyes,” and loved him because of them—looked up toward the twilit sky as he counted the stars.
“And what’s wrong with laughing, Chia? Why shouldn’t good girls laugh?”
My brother didn’t have to cover his hair or body—not when he turned nine, not ever. During the day, every chance I got, I peeked into Chia’s kindergarten, which was attached to my school. I made sure that he was happy, that no one was picking on him, because if someone did, I’d hit them later. All the kids knew this.
It grew colder and darker, and there was still no sign of my parents. The school’s hallways had emptied; it was the first time I’d seen them without their usual bustle of students and teachers. The principal beckoned us inside to wait in her office. We sat beside the alphabetized filing cabinet while she balanced on the edge of her plastic chair and shuffled the papers in our file. She made a noise of exasperation. “Strange! No home phone number, and there’s no answer at the emergency phone number either.” She turned to hide her half-pitying glance.
“I know their father, Dr. Alan Saman.” The janitor emerged in the doorway of the principal’s office from the half-lit hallway, carrying a large bin of wastepaper. He was a short, skinny man with a large eagle nose; an enormous black mustache obscured nearly the rest of his face. “I can drive them home.”
After a moment’s consideration, the principal, also eager to leave, agreed. We followed the janitor out to the parking lot, and he hoisted us into the bed of his small gray truck that was missing its front bumper. “Barkholakan, don’t forget to knock on the window when you recognize your house or the neighborhood. Sit tight.” I liked that he called us little lambs.
But that night every dark narrow street we went down, paved or cobbled, seemed unfamiliar. The windows of nearly every house we passed were illuminated, and silhouettes moved behind curtains as families ate dinner together or watched television. I held Chia’s cold hand in mine and made up stories for him, visualizing scenes and directing actors in my head.
“There was a girl whose wishes would come true. Instantly. And she wished her younger brother would be very strong, and all of a sudden he became super-gigantic.” Chia looked at me eagerly. “Another time, she saw a wolf creeping up on her brother from behind. ‘Die, bastard!’ she cried. When she and her brother went to check the wolf’s corpse, they saw their father lying on his stomach beneath the wolf.”
“Nooo!”
I was now reporting one of my recurrent nightmares. “His back had scratches from the wolf’s claws all over it, and—”
Chia peeled his pudgy little hand out of mine and hid his eyes behind it.
“—and he was unconscious, and the wolf’s blood was dripping over his face and running down his nose, and his mouth was open wide, and—”
“Leila!” he called, his eyes still covered.
“What?”
“Don’t kill Baba, Leila! Please don’t kill him.” The car lurched suddenly as it hit a pothole, shoving us forward in our makeshift seats.
“I didn’t kill Baba, idiot. I saved your little butt.” I looked deeper into a silent alleyway that twisted and turned back on itself. It felt as if the houses were huddled closer together here. I heard the call to night prayer from a nearby mosque and wished the truck would drive us toward that voice. I liked the calls, because five times a day they reminded me that God was the greatest—greater than Baba and Mama, or me and Chia, or the principal and janitor. In my head, God was a smiling moon who loved Chia and me.
The truck, to my astonishment, obeyed my wish, and finally I glimpsed the elaborate blue dome that rose above the roofs across from our house. I banged on the window behind the driver’s seat, and the truck came to a sudden halt, jolting us forward. The mustachioed man hopped out of the cab and slammed the door in his excitement. “Which one?”
I pointed, and he rang the bell. No answer. He pounded on the rusty metal gate flanked by cement walls too tall for us to climb. Nobody responded to his repeated knocks either. He paced back and forth, muttering to himself. “Man! What type of parents . . . Who could forget their kids like that? I swear they’d be better off in an orphanage.” He kicked the gate of our brick house.
He scratched his stubble, deliberating. “I have to run. My wife needs her shot. She has diabetes. I have to run to the pharmacy before they close.”
I turned my back on him and wished that he would just leave.
“Forgive me, barkholakan. Sit tight by the gate, all right? Your parents should be home soon. I will check back in a little bit, and if they’re not home yet, I will take you to my home.” He patted Chia’s head and stalked back to h
is truck, muttering, “And my wife says I’m a bad father.”
I sat down, my back against the wall. Chia did the same. We were cold and hungry, hugging our knees, staring at the pebbles on the ground. The truck’s exhaust filled my nostrils. My stomach made strange hee-haw noises. “I’ve got a donkey in my tummy.”
We chuckled.
Out of the blue, Chia said, “Save Baba.”
“You’re a fool, Chia.”
He was quiet for a while and then asked, “Will you save me next time the wolf attacks?”
“I already killed it.”
“Tell me one of your funny stories,” he demanded.
“I don’t feel funny right now.” I laid my index finger across the top of my upper lip and mimicked the janitor. “They’d be better off in an orphanage.”
“What’s an orphanage?”
“Hey.” I pointed to the smiling moon in the sky, and he followed the direction of my finger.
“How about some of Rumi’s instead?” I offered. Chia loved those stories. I told him the tale of the parrot that broke the oil jar. Her owner beat her over the head for it, and old Polly lost her feathers as a result. The parrot sulked for seven days. When a bald man came into her sight, she shouted out to him, “So, whose oil jar did you break?”
Chia chuckled and rested his little head on my bony shoulder. Even I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open. I’d told him I had killed the wolf, but what about thieves? What if my wishes didn’t come true and I couldn’t defeat anyone because I had turned nine, the age when girls must start covering themselves up?
“What are you doing out here?” Mama was panting, coming up the hill from the bus stop.
“We . . . um.”
“Inside. Now.” She picked up our bags and unlocked the iron gate. It still had traces of the janitor’s shoe print on its flaking burgundy paint. We ran through the front yard and the dim garage and mounted the stairs two at a time, but we found we could go no farther, because Baba was passed out across the hallway.
“Alan. Alan.” Mama called out. Our satchels looked heavy in her hands.
Baba cracked an eyelid and rolled over a bit, making a narrow pathway for us. “Just like that,” he slurred. “Bang.”
I kicked over one of the arak bottles on the floor, pretending it was an accident. The strong scent of anise-flavored liquor had become all too familiar in our home since my uncle, Baba’s oldest brother, had been killed in the uprising last year.
Mama hugged Chia, carrying him to the bedroom on the right side of the entrance. Our main floor had two adjoining bedrooms: one that I shared with Chia, and one for our parents, though Baba had taken to sleeping alone in the attic.
“What the hell is going on here?” Mama asked me when she returned to the living room. I couldn’t answer. “What were you doing outside at this time of night?”
Then she turned to my father, still lying in the hallway. “First my mother is rushed to the hospital, then my kids are out this late, and now you. Why did you let them out? Why are they still in their uniforms?” Then back to me: “Why didn’t you two change after school?” She removed her headscarf and fanned herself with it, then turned back to Baba. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Tah . . . teror,” Baba groaned softly—assassinated. His forehead was pressed to the floor, his arms and knees curled under him like an infant.
Mama sighed and collapsed on her knees. “Mother’s dementia is getting worse. She ran into the street today. Three cars crashed because of her, and one struck her.”
“In the daylight. They shot him. Baaang,” Baba mumbled.
“Who? Who’re you talking about? Did you hear what I said? My mother was hit by a car. Who was shot?” Mama heaved herself up and crossed the hall to the kitchen. “You know what? Don’t even tell me. I know what it is. Politics again, I bet. Some Kurdish leader got assassinated—another one.” She opened the fridge; I was pretty sure she wouldn’t find anything in it. “Because that’s all you care about. And you care more about that than your kids and your wife.” She slammed the fridge shut, gave me a withering look, and retreated to her bedroom.
I felt as though the events of the night had sliced me open and my organs had dropped out of my gut. I deserved all the bad things that were happening to me, because I never completely covered my hair and body. Sometimes my wrists showed. Sometimes hair sprouted out from beneath my headscarf.
Baba tried to get up but crumpled again. Mama’s room was dark, but I could hear the low murmur of her voice, whispers that had no audience.
I stole quietly into the kitchen and groped behind the dish cabinet, where I’d hidden a bag of dried apricots I’d purchased with all the cash I’d saved up from my birthday and Newroz. I quietly soaked the apricots and added a teaspoon of salt. There was only the noisy hum of the fridge and the chirping of crickets in the backyard. I covered the bowl with one of the stained tea towels and hid it inside the grimy cabinet.
Noiseless, I then snuck into the bedroom, where Chia was already sound asleep, and climbed into the upper bunk. Baba still babbled away in the hall. My doll was tucked carefully under my blanket. Baba had wanted to name me Nishtman, Kurdish for homeland, except it had turned out to be on the long list of forbidden names the government had compiled. Nobody could prevent me from calling my doll Nishtman though. I brushed her woven hair with my fingers and whispered that Fatima’s father had brought a camera to school, and I badly wanted a camera too. She didn’t need to worry though; I had a plan to earn some money to buy one.
“Do you know what ‘assassinated’ means?” I asked her. My doll listened to my whispers, her black-bean eyes attentive. “Listen, you must make sure men don’t see your ribboned pigtail.” Nishtman fell asleep in the middle of my lecture.
There was no school the next day, so Chia and I were allowed to sleep in. Mama boiled potatoes for breakfast and lunch and left for work early, stepping over Baba, who was still snoring in the hallway. After I woke, I checked on my treasure in the cabinet. The grease on the countertop glistened in the daylight, and cobwebs clung to the corners where the ceiling met the wall. My apricot potion, however, tasted just perfect. All I needed to do was to wait for Baba to leave the house. I started doodling in the living room across from the kitchen, where I could keep an eye on my stash. Soon Chia was up too, playing with his toys.
“Ehhhhhh!” he shrieked as one of his toy cars braked to avoid an accident, but then: “Boooom!”
“Your cars sound like horses.” I started drawing what looked like a horse, at least to me.
“Your holse looks like a chicken!” he announced, unable to pronounce his r’s.
“Roll your tongue,” I said. “Say ‘rrrrrrrr.’”
“Llllll.”
“So cute!” I splashed a kiss on his chubby cheek.
Around noon, Baba finally dragged himself up off the floor and showered. The aroma of lavender soap, which masked the strong scent of his body, filled my nostrils as he went to the kitchen to make tea, boil an egg, and gulp down an aspirin. His beige towel covered only his lower body, putting the map on his back on display yet again. I stared at the network of scars from repeated lashings. The sight of them pierced my gut like the point of a sliver blade. I looked into Chia’s eyes, and he into mine, but we never talked about the lines cut into Baba’s flesh.
He went up to the attic and came down a few minutes later, changed into his loose-fitting gray trousers and a brown sleeveless undershirt. I’d noticed that fewer of Baba’s things remained inside the bedroom he used to share with Mama. Positioning a pillow behind his back, he sat down with a steaming cup of tea in his favorite spot in the house: on the handmade rug, one of the few things of his mother’s he still had. Firm and finely woven, it was made of symmetrical knots of crimson, white, and blue thread over a wool foundation; its many hues tied together our otherwise mismatched cast-off furniture.
Baba spread a tablecloth over the rug and fed us potato salad. His face was drawn and
pale, but otherwise he looked recuperated from the night before.
“Have you had any more nightmares?” he asked me absentmindedly as he chewed. I nodded and started to reply, but he raised the old radio to his ear and turned the dial. It emitted a harsh buzz of static that bored into my eardrums. The government jammed foreign radio signals.
“Baba’s radio sounds like a flock of cicadas with sore throats,” I whispered.
Chia burst into loud laughter.
“Hush!” Baba warned.
“—Sadegh Sharafkandi, the secretary general of a Kurdish-Iranian opposition party, was assassinated yesterday in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, Germany,” a cold voice recited. Baba covered his eyes with his hairy hands; his veins stood out. “This comes just three years after his predecessor was killed in Vienna in 1989. The gunmen are believed to be working for the Iranian government . . .”
The radio droned on. I hummed a lullaby, wanting to drown out the broadcast and protect Baba from the news. He didn’t hear me, just sat motionless, jaw clenched and face ashen. I motioned to Chia, and we ran out into the backyard. The skinny cherry trees were turning orange and yellow. We wanted to get to the fruit before the birds and worms did, to bite into the cherries without washing them first and snigger at our little act of defiance. But there was no fruit left on the branches.
“Is Baba okay?” Chia asked, kicking the dust.
“I don’t know.”
“Why do they want to kill us, Leila?”
“I think they want our land.”
“But where do we go if we give them our land?” He shook his tiny fists.
“Maybe the underworld?”
“If we lived under the earth, Baba wouldn’t be sad?” Chia tilted his head, his brows rising.
“I want to empty Baba’s bottles and fill them up with water,” I whispered, and we giggled. “Hey, be careful never to mention the bottles at school, okay?”