The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

by Nadia Hashimi

  Shahnaz seemed to pity me the following day. She must have known. My face reddened when my eyes met hers.

  My insides hurt. Raw and angry. I nearly cried when I urinated into the fancy western toilet.

  Shahnaz asked me to prepare lunch for the family. She had the children to tend to. I went into the kitchen and looked through the vegetables on the counter, almost thankful to have a task that would keep my mind off what I had endured. There were canisters of flour and sugar as well. I thought of my mother and sighed. Ever since I’d been converted into a bacha posh, I’d been relieved of all cooking duties as well. If my father had seen his “son” working in the kitchen, his temper would have turned our home upside down. I had no idea how to make even a simple meal.

  I tried to think of the foods my mother and Shahla cooked. Even Parwin could prepare a decent meal, although she spent more time sculpting shapes out of the potatoes than she did actually cooking them.

  I set out to make some potato stew. I put the rice in water, as I’d seen my mother do. I tried to focus but my eyes kept drifting to the kitchen window, with a view into the courtyard. Several boys, two of them looking to be almost my age, were kicking a ball around. They shouted and teased each other. I felt my heart beat faster, wanting to be with them instead of bent over a metal pot with potato peels stuck to my fingers.

  I wondered who the boys were. I could see they wouldn’t have been much of a challenge on the field. They kicked clumsily, barely making contact with the ball.

  “Rahima! Why are you sitting like that? For God’s sake, aren’t you embarrassed?”

  Shahnaz’s voice jolted me. I looked down and snapped my legs together, bending my knees. I’d been sitting like a boy basking in the summer sun. A bolt of pain shot between my thighs.

  “Oh, sorry, I was just—”

  “Have a little decency!”

  I hung my head, my face flushed again. I cursed myself. Thank goodness my mother hadn’t witnessed this. She had warned me over and over again to carry myself as a proper girl in my new home but I’d been living as a boy for years. There was a lot of unlearning to do.

  Our mother-in-law joined us for lunch. She hobbled in, her fingers on the shoulder of a young boy, probably a grandson. I kissed her hands and mumbled a greeting, following Shahnaz’s lead. Her visit was a surprise to me, but not to Shahnaz. I looked to her for guidance. She didn’t offer much.

  “She did the same thing to me,” Shahnaz whispered. “She wants to see if you’re being a good wife. Go ahead and lay out the food, the plates. Sit with her.” She went into the living room and spoke sweetly to Bibi Gulalai. “Khala-jan, with your permission, I’m going to feed the baby. I’m sorry I can’t sit with you but your new bride has prepared lunch for you.”

  I took out the food as Shahnaz suggested, thinking to myself that she’d just fed the baby before our mother-in-law walked in. But I quickly forgot about it as I began to put the potatoes into a serving dish. Nothing looked like the food my mother prepared. My hands shook as I laid it out on the cloth. Bibi Gulalai fingered her prayer beads while she eyed my every move. Once I had spread out the potato stew and the rice, she spoke.

  “A cup of tea would have been a nice start. Looks like you’re rushing us to lunch.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry. I can bring a cup of—”

  “Yes. Bring a cup of tea first. That’s how you treat a guest.”

  I got to my feet and went back to the kitchen to boil some water. I sprinkled tea leaves into the teapot and searched everywhere until I finally found a teacup.

  “Did you add cardamom?”

  I sighed.

  “No, Khala-jan. I’m sorry, I forgot the cardamom . . .”

  “Tea without cardamom?” She shook her head in disappointment and leaned back. “Maybe that’s how your family drank tea, but the rest of us—”

  “No, my mother always puts cardamom.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “I was saying”—she was not happy with my interruption—“that the rest of us prefer our tea with cardamom. So pay attention next time.”

  I nodded silently while she slowly sipped her unflavored tea, the disappointment showing in her eyes. I watched the steam waft from the rice.

  “All right. Why don’t we try this food that you’ve made now.”

  I reached over and spooned some rice onto her plate. Large clumps stuck together. The potatoes looked more reasonable. I prayed her eyes were old enough that they couldn’t clearly see what I’d made of the rice. She took two bites and shook her head in frustration.

  “This is cold. Food doesn’t taste good cold. And we’re supposed to eat grains of rice, not balls of it. How long did you cook it for?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Too long. Too long. And the potatoes are still hard!” She sighed heavily. “Shahnaz! Shahnaz, come out here!”

  Shahnaz came into the living room, her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

  “Yes, Khala-jan?”

  “This girl cannot cook! Did you try this food? It’s terrible!”

  “No, Khala-jan, I didn’t. She insisted on making lunch so I let her. Otherwise, I would have been happy to prepare something for you.”

  I looked at Shahnaz and began to realize that she was not as benign as I had thought. She avoided looking at me. I had the urge to throw a punch at her but kept my cool.

  “That’s not true! She told me I should make lunch. And she just fed the baby! You did this on purpose!”

  “Rahima, this kind of behavior is exactly what I was worried about. You’re a wild child and not a suitable wife for my son but he’s taken you and now we have to undo what you are. Listen to me carefully. You are to behave like a proper bride and learn to keep house. That tantrum you threw in your father’s home will not be tolerated here. I’m leaving now but know that I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She got to her feet and wobbled to the door. She said nothing more and let the door slam behind her.

  Shahnaz tossed her hair back and walked to her room, a smug look on her face. She had set me up.

  Madar-jan, you were right. And this is probably just the beginning.

  I confronted Shahnaz later that day.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You could have warned me. And you lied to her. You wanted me to look bad.”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t lie!”

  I remembered one of Khala Shaima’s favorite sayings: A liar is forgetful.

  “Don’t be upset, Rahima. You’ll learn soon enough. God knows I did.”

  Shahnaz was a ball of contradictions. She was angry to have to share her home with me. It was bad enough that she had gotten the smallest of the houses. The other wives had more children and their marriages had been arranged by Bibi Gulalai. Only Shahnaz and I had been chosen by Abdul Khaliq himself and his mother clearly did not approve. Shahnaz was bitter one day but would sit and chat with me as if we were old girlfriends the next. She was lonely, I could see, and missed her sisters as much as I did mine.

  “You know why she doesn’t like you?” she asked me one day.

  “Because I’m a bad wife?”

  “No.” Shahnaz chuckled. “Although that’s not helping matters any. She hates you because she wanted Abdul Khaliq to take her brother’s daughter as his fourth wife. Instead, he took you.”

  “Why didn’t he take his cousin?”

  “He was going to. That’s what I’d heard from the others, at least. But something changed a few weeks ago and he made some excuse to his uncle’s family. Next we heard he’d arranged for a nikkah with someone else—you. And Bibi Gulalai’s brother was more than a little disappointed, since they’d already courted his daughter.”

  I knew I couldn’t trust Shahnaz or anything she said but I was lonely too. She was the only person around me most of the time. Her son, Maroof, took to me quickly and I passed my time showing him how to kick a ball. Shahnaz would watch me suspi
ciously, as if waiting for me to do something wrong.

  And somehow it seemed I did everything wrong. I sat wrong, I cooked wrong, I cleaned wrong. All I wanted to do was get back to school and back to my family, my friends. I felt clumsy in a skirt, my breasts pointy in the brassiere my mother had purchased for me before my nikkah. I wanted to tie my chest down again. A lot of days, that’s exactly what I did. I would wrap a long strip of fabric around my chest and pin it tight, trying to prevent full womanhood from setting in.

  My mother-in-law came back often. When the house wasn’t cleaned to her standards, she would pull me by my ear and make me scrub the floors while she watched. Shahnaz blamed everything on me and Bibi Gulalai was more than happy to believe anything she said.

  Abdul Khaliq returned, as determined as his mother to make me into a proper wife. I hated to feel his breath on my face, my neck. His teeth were yellowed and his beard rough on my face. I sometimes tried to pull away, to squirm from him like the fighters in the magazines. But the more I struggled, the more forceful he became. And worse than that was the smirk on his face. As if he enjoyed when I put up a fight. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a man of war, after all.

  Each time, I felt dirty and weak. I hated that I was powerless under him. I was supposed to be this man’s wife and that changed everything. I wasn’t supposed to fight back. And the look on his face told me that fighting back would only make matters worse.

  So many nights I lay curled on my side, crying quietly and waiting for morning to come so the man snoring beside me would stretch his arms and leave.

  CHAPTER 25

  RAHIMA

  “NOW TASTE THIS. SEE? It has no flavor at all. You’ve got to add some salt. Everything tastes better with a little salt. Mmm.”

  Shahnaz stirred the pot once more, the tomatoes melting into the simmering oil. She was teaching me a few basic dishes. It wasn’t easy but I realized she took well to flattery. It was much better than antagonizing her.

  “You see the difference? Now just touch the edge of the potato. It should be soft. See? It’s cooked. My God, it really amazes me that you don’t even know this much. You must have been so spoiled at home. I hope your sisters aren’t such oafs in the kitchen!”

  I wasn’t worried about that at all. Shahla and Parwin could cook nearly as well as Madar-jan. But the mention of them made my heart ache. It had been two weeks since we were taken away from our home. I wondered what my mother was doing. I could picture my father, asleep in our living room with a satisfied smile on his face, clouds of heady smoke around him and his stomach heavy with food.

  “Shahnaz, how can I see my sisters? I miss them so much! Parwin is so close by. Can I go to visit her?”

  “Not a question to ask me. Ask your husband. Or your mother-in-law,” she said. I wasn’t sure if that was really a good idea or if she was setting me up again.

  I saw my mother-in-law most afternoons. My third day at the compound, I was summoned back to the main house but this time by my husband’s first wife, Badriya. There was laundry to be done. Badriya was also Bibi Gulalai’s second cousin and, therefore, her favorite bride. Abdul Khaliq treated Badriya well, since she had been a good wife to him and because there was a family relation to respect. But as he added newer, younger wives to his compound, she spent fewer and fewer nights in his bed. This was a point of contention, though I couldn’t understand why.

  Badriya was nothing near pretty. Her cheeks hung low and she had two moles above her mouth, a constellation that looked to me like the letter tay. Her face was as thick as her hips, but she didn’t need looks. Now in her thirties, she was heavyset, her girth widened by the five sons and two daughters she had proudly borne her husband. Bibi Gulalai loved the grandchildren Badriya had given her and boasted about them to the other wives. This fed the tensions among Abdul Khaliq’s wives and kept life interesting for Bibi Gulalai.

  “Make sure she does a good job, Badriya. This girl has a lot to learn. She was a bacha posh, don’t forget. Can you believe that? A bacha posh at this age! No wonder she has no clue how to carry herself as a woman. Look at the way she walks, her hair, her fingernails! Her mother should be ashamed of herself.”

  Badriya was resentful of Abdul Khaliq taking me on as a fourth wife, but he was a warlord and this was common practice for anyone, so she bit her tongue as any good wife did. Badriya had nothing to complain about anyway. She had the best house in the compound, the one with an actual bed and sofas in the living room. She had a cook and a housekeeper to tend to all the chores in her house. She was the most esteemed wife, the one Abdul Khaliq would discuss matters with, and she made sure the others knew as much.

  There was a rhythm and routine to life in the compound. The wives tended to their children while Abdul Khaliq tended to his affairs, whatever that meant. There hadn’t been any armed fighting lately, but nearly every day he and his bodyguards sped off in his three black SUVs, clouds of dust in their wake. His entourage circled him as he walked, nodding when he gave out orders and keeping away from any of the women in the compound. The men ate meals together, served by the housekeepers that Abdul Khaliq had brought on. They ate in Abdul Khaliq’s entertaining room, a carpeted room with a perimeter of cushions and pillows on which the men reclined, licking their fingers and sipping their tea as they discussed the day’s affairs. When they were finished, the women and children ate what was left. The servants were the third round, hoping enough had slipped through the many greedy fingers before them.

  The women never left the compound. The children played together and fought together as brothers and sisters but subdivided. Half brothers got along most of the time but a casual game of soccer could quickly disintegrate into a scuffle where the sons of the first wife teamed up against the sons of the second. The same held true for the girls, who could become catty in the blink of an eye.

  Badriya had no problem putting me to work. Nor did anyone else. Though they had plenty of help at the compound, the women seemed to derive a special pleasure from making me take on the most menial of tasks, especially since I fumbled with them. I swept the floors, washed the diapers and cleaned the western toilets as best I could. My hands burned at the end of the day and all I wanted to do was lay my head down. Most nights, that wasn’t possible. Abdul Khaliq called for me to join him in his bedroom to repeat what he had done the night before. And the night before that.

  My insides burned and I walked as if a shard of glass was stuck in my underwear. Sometimes I would wake up in the night remembering. It made it impossible to go back to sleep. I would pull my thighs together tight and curl up, praying he would tire of me. I wished my monthly bleeding would come more often but it had only started six months ago and came infrequently. My only escape was training my mind to wander when I was with him. I would close my eyes or stare at a stain on the wall, like seeing shapes in the clouds.

  During the day I watched the compound’s walls, hoping for a glimpse of my sister. I prayed Parwin would hobble into our courtyard unannounced and surprise me with a visit, a drawing, a smile. I couldn’t bear to think of what her days were like. I hoped she didn’t have to do all the things I had to do. Parwin’s legs moved slowly, clumsily. People didn’t like that. If the people around her were anything like the people around me, she was sure to be punished. I’d been smacked around more than once for a job not done well enough.

  I couldn’t bear knowing my sister was just over the wall. I wanted to see her. I wanted to look at a face that knew me, that loved me. I couldn’t bear it anymore and worked up the nerve to ask Bibi Gulalai when I saw her walking through the courtyard.

  “Khala-jan! Khala-jan!” I panted, running up behind her.

  My mother-in-law turned around, already displeased. When I reached her she wasted no time and slapped my face.

  “What are you doing yelling and running like that? My God! You have absolutely no idea how to behave yourself! Have you learned nothing here yet?”

  My face stung and my mouth gaped
as I searched for an apology that wouldn’t make her angrier.

  “Forgive me, Khala-jan, but I wanted to speak with you before you left. Good morning. How are you feeling?” I asked, not really caring but trying to show her that I did have some manners.

  “You came running across the yard like a rabid dog to ask me that?”

  There was no winning with her.

  “Khala-jan, I wanted to ask you something. I really miss my sisters. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen either one of them or anyone from my family. Would it be possible that I could see my sister Parwin, at least? She’s just next door and I—”

  “You were not brought here to go playing with your sister and taking her away from her responsibilities as well. It’s bad enough that you can’t manage what’s asked of you here! This is your family now. Stop thinking about anything else and go finish your chores. Your sister is hardly a help over there with her limp leg. Forget about making things even worse.”

  “But, please, Khala-jan. Just to see her for a few moments. I promise I’ll have all my work done. I’ve already washed the floors and beaten the dust from the carpets this morning. I could even go there and help her with whatever she needs to do—”

  Another slap across my face. I took a step back and felt my eyes blur with tears. I was always surprised by the amount of force her wrinkled fingers brought.

  “You had better learn to hear what I say the first time I say it.”

  She turned her back to me and walked out of the courtyard, shaking her head.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was. My sister was yards away but she might as well have been across the country. Bibi Gulalai made me wonder even more how she was doing, with her “limp leg.” I prayed the other wives had some sympathy for her, that there was at least one kind face.

  In Abdul Khaliq’s compound, there was only one person who was genuinely nice to me, Abdul Khaliq’s second wife, Jameela. While Badriya and Shahnaz appeared friendly enough, it took a half day with each to see their true colors. Badriya, with her larger, second-story home, looked down on everyone but even more so on me, the young latecomer.