Thousands died that year. Her family’s losses were notches on the epidemic’s belt.
One week after her three children were buried, Shafiqa began to whisper to herself when no one was looking. She asked Tariq to help her with the water pails. She warned Munis to eat all his food so that he would grow up to be as tall as his brother. Her fingers moved through the yarn of the blanket as if she were braiding Aqela’s hair.
Then Shafiqa started sitting idly, plucking individual hairs from her head, one by one, until her scalp was bare; then her eyebrows and lashes disappeared. With nothing left to pluck, she resorted to picking at the skin of her arms and legs. She ate her food but gagged on pieces that she had forgotten to chew. Her whispers became louder and Shekiba and her father pretended not to notice. Sometimes she would listen and then giggle with a lightheartedness alien to their household. Shekiba slowly became her mother’s mother, making sure she bathed and reminding her to go to sleep at night.
A year later, in the same dismal month of Qows, Shekiba’s languishing mother decided not to wake up from sleep. It came as no surprise.
Ismail held his wife’s hands and thought how tired they must be from all the wringing they had endured. Shekiba brought her cheek to her mother’s and saw that her eyes had lost their desperate glassiness. Madar-jan must have died looking at the face of God, Shekiba thought. Nothing else could have brought the look of peace so quickly.
The house sighed in relief. Shekiba bathed her mother one last time, taking care to wash her bald head and realizing that her mother had even plucked the hairs from her womanly parts. The weight of sadness lifted. Her corpse was shockingly light.
By the following day, Shekiba and her father were back in the field to open the earth once more. They did not bother to tell the rest of the family. Her father read a prayer over the mound of dirt and they looked at each other, quietly wondering which of them would join the others first.
Shekiba was left with her father. A cousin stopped by to tell them of an upcoming wedding and took back news of the new widower to the rest of the clan. The hawks descended on the house within days, extending their condolences, but only after they advised Shekiba’s father that he now had the opportunity to begin again with a new wife. They named a few families with eligible daughters in the village, most of them only a few years older than Shekiba, but her father was so heartbroken and fatigued that his family could not manage to arrange a new wife for him.
Shekiba came of age with only her father to turn to, his sparse words, his lonely eyes. She worked beside him day and night. The more she did, the easier it was for him to forget that she was a girl. He began to think of her as a son, sometimes even slipping and calling her by her brothers’ names. The village chattered about them. How could a father and daughter live alone? Sympathy gave way to criticism and Ismail and Shekiba grew even more distant from the outside world. The clan did not want to be associated with them and the village had no interest in a scarred old man and his even more scarred daughter-son.
Over the years, Ismail lulled himself into believing that he had always lived without a wife and that he had always had only one child. He managed by ignoring everything. He was the only person who did not see Shekiba’s marred face and did not notice that, as a young woman, she might need some direction from a female. When she bled every month, he pretended not to smell the soiled rags that she would keep soaking and hidden behind a stack of logs in their two-room home. And when he heard her shed tears, he shrugged her sniffles off as a touch of flu.
Shekiba’s father took his daughter-son to the fields to help him manage their small plot of land. She hoed, she slaughtered and she chopped as any strong-backed son would do for his father. She made it possible for Ismail to go on believing that life had always been father and son. Shekiba proved to be able-bodied, affirming her father’s confidence in her ability to manage the farm. Her arms and shoulders knotted with muscle.
Years passed. Shekiba’s features grew coarser; her palms and soles were thick and callused. Every day, Ismail’s back hunched more, his eyes saw less and his needs grew. There were days Shekiba was left to run the entire farm and house on her own.
Had Shekiba been any other girl, she probably would have felt lonesome in this solitary life, but her circumstances were different. The children nearby would always point and tease, as would their parents. Her appearance was shocking everywhere, except at home.
People who are beset by tragedy once and twice are sure to grieve again. Fate finds it easier to retrace its treads. Shekiba’s father became weaker, his voice raspier, his breaths shallower. One day, as Shekiba watched from the wall of stone and mud, he grabbed his chest, took two steps and crumpled to the ground with a sickle in his grip.
Shekiba was eighteen years old but she knew what to do. She dragged her father’s body back to the house on a large cloth, stopping every few steps to adjust her grasp and to wipe away the tears that trickled down the right side of her face. The left side of her face remained stoic.
She laid his body in the living room and sat at his side, repeating the four or five Qur’anic verses that her parents had taught her until the sun came up. In the morning, she began the ceremony she had performed too often in her short life. She undressed her father, careful to keep his private areas hidden beneath a rag. The ritual washing should have been done by a man but Shekiba had no one to call on. She would rather have invited Allah’s wrath into her home than turn to those vile people.
She bathed him, turning away as she poured water onto his man parts and blindly wrapping his stiff body in a cloth, as she and her mother had done with her sister. She dragged him back outside and opened the earth one final time to complete her family’s interment. Shekiba chewed her lip and debated digging one more spot for herself, thinking there would be no one left to do so when her turn came. Too tired to do anything more, Shekiba said a few prayers and watched her father disappear under clods of earth—disappear like her sister, her brothers and her mother.
She walked back to the hollow house and sat silently—afraid, angry and calm.
Shekiba was alone.
CHAPTER 3
RAHIMA
“WE WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST. It’s been done before.”
“You’re listening to that lunatic Shaima and that story about your precious grandmother.”
“It wasn’t my grandmother. It was—”
“I don’t care. All I know is that woman makes my head ache.”
“Arif-jan, I think it would be wise for us to consider this. For everyone’s sake.”
“And what good will come of it? You see everyone else who has done it? They all have to change back in a few years. It doesn’t help anything.”
“But, Arif-jan, she could do things. She could go to the store. She could walk her sisters to school.”
“Do what you want. I’m going out.”
I listened carefully from the hallway, just a few feet from the bedroom we all shared. Our kitchen was behind the sitting room, a few pots and a gas burner. Our home was spacious, built in a time when my grandfather’s family had more. Now these walls were bare and cracking and looked more like those of our neighbors.
When I heard Padar-jan strain to get up, I quickly tiptoed off, my bare toes silent on the carpet. When I was sure he was gone, I came back to the living room to find my mother lost in thought.
“Madar-jan?”
“Eh? Oh. Yes, bachem. What is it?”
“What were you and Padar-jan talking about?”
She looked at me and bit her lip.
“Sit down,” she said. I sat cross-legged in front of her, careful that the hem of my skirt reached over my knees and covered my calves. “You remember the story your khala Shaima told the other night?”
“The one about our great-great-great-great . . .”
“You’re worse than your father, sometimes. Yes, that one. I think it is time we change something for you. I think it would be best if we let you be a son
to your father.”
“A son?”
“It’s simple and it’s done all the time, Rahima-jan. Just think how happy that would make him! And you could do so many things that your sisters wouldn’t be able to do.”
She knew how to pique my interest. I cocked my head to the side and waited for her to go on.
“We could change your clothes and we’ll give you a new name. You’ll be able to run to the store any time we need anything. You could go to school without worrying about the boys bothering you. You could play games. How does that sound?”
It sounded like a dream to me! I thought of the neighbors’ sons. Jameel. Faheem. Bashir. My eyes widened at the thought of being able to kick a ball around in the street as they did.
Madar-jan wasn’t thinking of the boys in the street. She was thinking of our empty cupboard. She was thinking of Padar-jan and how much he had changed. We were lucky when he brought home some money from an odd job here or there. Every once in a while, his mind focused enough that he was able to tinker with an old engine and breathe life back into it. His small earnings were spent, unevenly, on his medicine and keeping us clothed and fed. The more Madar-jan thought about it, the more she realized how desperate our situation was becoming.
“Come with me. There’s no reason to delay anything. Your father is taking more and more . . . medicine these days. Your khala Shaima is right. We need to do something or we’re going to be in real trouble.”
We girls were nervous about getting sick. We worried that if we did, we would have to take the same medicine that Padar-jan took. It made him do funny things, behave in funny ways. Mostly he just wanted to lie about the house and sleep. Sometimes he said things that didn’t make sense. And he never remembered anything we said. It was worse when he didn’t take his medicine.
He had broken nearly everything in the house that could be broken. The dishes and glasses survived only because he lacked the energy to pull them from the cabinet. Anything within reach had already been thrown against a wall and smashed to pieces. A ceramic urn. A glass plate that Madar-jan had received as a gift. They were casualties of the war inside Padar-jan’s head.
Padar-jan had fought with the mujahideen for years, shooting at the Russian troops that bombarded our town with rockets. When the Soviets finally slinked back to their collapsing country, Padar-jan came home and prayed that life would return to normal, though few people could recall such a time. That was 1989.
In that year, he returned home to his parents, who barely recognized him as the seventeen-year-old boy who had left home with a gun slung over his shoulder in the name of God and his country. His mother and father hurriedly arranged a marriage for him. At twenty-four years old, he was long overdue and they thought a wife and children would bring him back to normal, but Padar-jan, just like the rest of the country, had forgotten what normal was.
Madar-jan was barely eighteen when they were wed. I imagine she must have been as terrified on her wedding night as I was on mine. Sometimes I wonder why she did not warn me, but I suppose those are not things women should speak of.
As the country planned for new beginnings, so did my parents. My sister Shahla came first, followed by Parwin and me. Then came Rohila and Sitara. We were all a year apart and close enough in age that only our mother could tell us apart once we were walking. But with one daughter after another, Madar-jan did not become the wife that Padar-jan expected. Even more sorely disappointed was my grandmother, who had respectably borne five sons and only one daughter.
Things fell apart at home, just as they did across the country when Russia left. While the Afghan warriors turned their guns and rockets on each other, Padar-jan tried to settle into life at home. He tried to work alongside his father as a carpenter but a man who had been taught only to destroy found it hard to create. Loud sounds jarred him. He grew frustrated and drifted back to the warlord, Abdul Khaliq, he had fought under.
Warlords were Afghanistan’s new aristocracy. Allegiance to a man with local clout meant a better life. It meant an income when there otherwise would be none. It wasn’t long before Padar-jan had oiled his machine gun, slung it over his shoulder and gone off to fight again, this time in Abdul Khaliq’s name. He returned home every so often. When he returned the first time and found that Madar-jan had given birth to yet another girl, me, he walked out again and returned to the killing fields with fresh anger.
Madar-jan was left behind with a houseful of girls and only her bitter in-laws to turn to. We lived in a small two-room house, part of the family’s compound. War pushed families together. Two of my uncles were killed in the fighting. My uncle’s wife died giving birth to her sixth child. Until he could remarry two months later, his children were cared for by my mother and my other aunts. We should have felt like one big family. We should have been kind to each other. But there was resentment. There was anger. There was jealousy. There was, as there would be in the rest of the country, civil war.
Madar-jan’s family lived a few kilometers away, but they might as well have been on the other side of the Hindu Kush mountains. They had given their daughter to Padar-jan and did not want to interfere in her relationship with her new family. Madar jan’s deformed sister, Shaima, was the exception.
Deformities were not easily forgiven, so Khala Shaima steeled herself to resist the name-calling, the ridiculing, the gawking. Older than Madar-jan by nearly ten years, our aunt would tell us things that no one else would say. She would tell us about the war, how the warlords controlled everything and conquered without mercy, even attacking women in the most shameful way of all. Usually Madar-jan hushed her older sister with a pleading look. We were young, after all, and it wasn’t Khala Shaima who would have to quiet our night terrors. Sometimes Khala Shaima forgot we were children and told us so much that we sat wide-eyed, frightened of our own father.
When Padar-jan came home, we cowered. His moods ranged from jubilant to foul but there was no predicting where on the spectrum he would be or when he would make an appearance. Madar-jan was lonely and welcomed her sister’s visits, even if her mother-in-law griped about them. My grandmother made sure to report to her son just how many times Khala Shaima had come to visit while he was away, clucking her tongue in disapproval and inciting his wrath. It was her way of showing Madar-jan that she was in control of our home, even if it sat fifty feet away from the main house.
Everyone wanted control but it was hard to get. The only one who seemed to have any was Abdul Khaliq Khan, the warlord. He and his militia were able to gain control of our town and the neighboring towns, having pushed back their rivals. We were north of Kabul and hadn’t seen any fighting in about four years but from what we heard, Kabul was besieged. People in our town shook their heads in dismay at the news but our homes were already pockmarked and turned to rubble. It was time for the privileged in Kabul to taste what we had survived.
Those were ugly times. I can only imagine what my father must have seen from the time he was just a teenage boy. Like so many others, he numbed himself to the ugliness with the “medicine” that Madar-jan referred to. He clouded his mind with the opium that Abdul Khaliq kept around, as crucial to his men’s ability to wage war as the ammunition strapped to their backs.
Madar-jan grew weary of our father but all she could do was look after us girls. Khala Shaima brought her some concoction that she took so she wouldn’t have any more children after me. I don’t know what the medicine was, but it worked for six years. When Madar-jan felt her belly stretch again, she prayed and prayed and did all the things that Khala Shaima told her to do. Nothing worked. Disappointed and fearful, she named our youngest sister Sitara and dreaded the day that Padar-jan would come home to find out she had brought yet another daughter into his home.
Then came the Taliban. They were just another faction in the civil war but they gained in strength and their regime crept across the country. It didn’t affect us much until we were pulled out of school, windows were blackened and music was banned. Madar-jan sighed
but carried on, her daily routine largely unaffected by the new codes.
When word got out that our town had fallen to the Taliban, Abdul Khaliq brought his men home to fight back—and to defend his honor as a warlord. There were weeks of explosions, crying, burying, and then the men came home, victorious. Our town was again our own.
Padar-jan stayed home for a few months. He spent time with his brothers, tried to help his father recover some business and even helped some of the neighbors to rebuild their homes. Things were going well until the day that a young boy came knocking on our door with a message for Padar-jan. The next morning, Padar-jan oiled his machine gun, donned his pakol hat and headed back out to rejoin the war.
He came back here and there but his mood swings were worse with each visit. We saw him only two or three days at a time and we were children, too young to understand the rage he brought home. He was not the same person at all. Even Bibi-jan, my grandmother, would cry after his visits, saying she had lost another son to the war.
It was my cousin Siddiq who told us about the news. He had heard from our grandfather.
“Amrika. That’s who. They came and they’re bombing the Taliban. They have the biggest guns, the biggest rockets! And their soldiers are so strong!”
“Why didn’t Amrika come before?” Shahla had asked. She was nearly twelve years old then. Wise enough to come up with questions that made us look at her with admiration.
Siddiq was ten but had the confidence of a boy twice his age. His father had been killed years ago and he grew up under our grandfather’s wing. He was the man of his house.
The Pearl that Broke Its Shell Page 3