“Just think if all the girls here had to go home right now, and never come back? They would never be allowed to learn anything more about the outside world.” She elaborated on the description, constantly checking the kids’ eyes to make sure that the class was visualizing the situation.
Then she broke the touchy part. “Now, this girl had a terrible accident last year. She fell into a big fire and got burned, very badly. She barely made it through alive, and after it was over, the scars from the burns were so bad that she had to come to America for a whole year of operations to help her get better.”
Benson asked how many of them had ever been in a hospital and counted a few hands. “This girl has been in hospitals all over the world, but she couldn’t get the right help until she came here. She’s had a whole lot of operations just in the last few months, over and over and over. And she has to have more of them, too.
“So when she comes here, you’re going to see a girl whose features are still scarred, even though she looks better now, and she is going to have to leave school sometimes, to go back and have those next operations.”
Benson asked her class to try to imagine being far, far away from everybody that they ever knew, without their family or any friends. She actually saw a couple of faces blanch at the thought.
“What we need to do is more than just help her to learn things. We need to sort of be like her family and friends, because that’s what we would want other people to do for us.” That one hit home; she saw the impact on them, on all those faces that were already so full of the world but still innocent enough to easily accept such ideas. Benson went home feeling sure that the right tone had been struck.
Within a few days, the only thing left to so was to meet with the girl. She arranged for Zubaida to come in on an off day, so that Benson could get her acclimated to the classroom without the pressure of staring eyes.
When Zubaida arrived, Kerrie Benson’s first impression was that she was about as timid as any kid would be in such strange surroundings—but that at least she didn’t shrink back into herself, the way that so many children do at such times. She appeared to be fiercely alert and seemed eager to understand what was being communicated to her, paying close attention while Benson showed her to her desk and then pointed out the various classroom displays while doing her best to communicate something about the purpose of each one.
She felt good to see that Zubaida paid sharp attention even when she probably had no idea what Benson was talking about. For Benson, this was a process that was all about tone of voice and level of spoken volume, and eye contact, and of letting the warmth show in her eyes. The real lesson was not in the words or the class displays; it was in the very fact that Benson was spending this special, one-on-one time with her.
The Taliban had imposed their world view upon Zubaida and her people all of her life. Under their dark judgment, an American adult like Kerrie Benson whose job it was to fill the heads of young girls with skills of reading and writing and with knowledge of the world was a living example of one of the unacceptable Others. But instead, here she was speaking privately with Zubaida and addressing her in terms of gentleness and respect. These were the most important messages Benson had for her new pupil on that first orientation day.
Benson was relieved to see that by this point in Zubaida’s surgical progress, her appearance was not grotesque at all, so there was no reason not to insist that her third graders handle the situation without any destructive drama. The grafted scars were obvious, but Zubaida’s features were balanced at this point and Benson had been told that Zubaida she was not nearly as distorted as she used to be. She hadn’t seen the photos of Zubaida’s condition when she first arrived, but she had been told that the situation at that time was very grim. Now, at least, there was a girl standing right here who was restored enough to go to school and learn, even though she was alone in a foreign country.
She introduced Zubaida to her alphabet book and pointed from the letters in the book to the letters on her desk chart, then to the letters on the wall. Zubaida’s face lit up. Once she grasped that she was looking at the basic pieces of written English, she stared at the book and poured over the letters as if she were running gold coins through her hands.
They spent a while playing a version of the Helen Keller story, while Benson pointed to various objects and worked with Zubaida on the pronunciations. When she produced a drawing pad and suggested that Zubaida draw a picture of the two of them, Zubaida happily went to work at producing recognizable sketches of each of them. The best thing about it was that Zubaida had shown both of them with normal features.
Benson immediately saw it—this girl was more than ready and willing, she was eager to learn. No, Benson thought. She’s more than eager, she’s hungry. She’s already soaking it up.
Kerrie Benson felt her pulse rate begin to rise. A child who is hungry to learn and devours every morsel of learning is the dream student of any good teacher; Benson was no exception. That was the primary image that she had in mind when she decided to become a teacher in the first place.
* * *
Over the week of November 19, 2002, The Los Angeles Times reported on a rash of self-immolations by young women in Afghanistan who were distressed with their complete lack of social freedom under the ruling Taliban party. More than a hundred of these self-inflicted burn victims had appeared at various Afghani hospitals, up to that point in the year, which told nothing about how many uncounted others there may have been throughout the country’s sprawling, isolated regions. With the lack of burn care and treatment in that part of the world, these severely burned women, almost all of whom would go on to die, were cited as over-burdening Afghanistan’s few existing burn hospital facilities—which was used as justification for the implied prospect of turning them away in the future so that others could be saved. After all, they did it to themselves.
The quandary for the doctors and clinics grew out of the need to show mercy and care to these agonized women, but it was also noted that this same care was wasted when it was given to someone with self-inflicted wounds who, realistically, was certain to be tomorrow’s problem for the grave digger. In that way, the region’s few resources were expended on these losing cases, creating a financial sink hole in the impoverished national medical services.
Graphs and charts fail to quantify the tremendous level of despair attacking the region’s female population. These women, within their own recent memories, had been painted into smaller and smaller corners. It was done first by the Soviet invaders, then by the opportunistic regional warlords, and finally by the Taliban enforcers, who brought with them their violent interpretations of Islam. Now the country’s women found themselves driven backward onto a tiny slice of the floor in each room’s darkest corner. More and more of these women were finding intolerable the prospect of a life spent on tiptoe in an imaginary corner so tiny that she couldn’t take a deep breath for fear of losing her balance and stepping out of her allowed space—with the dire consequences that could ensue.
Some of the self-immolating women were fully aflame before onlookers could extinguish the fires and carry the victims to the nearest aid. Those died quickly, trapped inside physical systems so heavily assaulted that they struggled to continue functioning from one moment to the next. Others were burned at about the same level of injury that struck Zubaida. Most of them would die, too, although it usually took them longer to succumb than the ones with full body burns. A lucky few were burned to a much lesser extent when passers-by jumped in and smothered the flames. But while those sorts of injuries shouldn’t have been life threatening, it was the infections that frequently set in after a burn that tended to finish the job. Even after word circulated all along the gossip trees of the villages and towns about the awful deaths that the desperate young women brought upon themselves, such a terrible means of ending their lives remained, for the most despairing among them, preferable to the thought of enduring a continued existence of rep
ression and enforced ignorance—and the only way to express their rage.
Chapter Eight
If there was any doubt in Kerrie Benson’s mind about her the ability of her students to embrace Zubaida, it was gone by the end of her first day in school. When she brought Zubaida up before the class to be introduced, she appeared a little shy, but just as she did when she first met Benson, she didn’t shrink away from the situation, either. Benson gave her the same introduction she would have done for any incoming student, then got everybody focused and back to work.
Benson assigned a rotating roster of students to partner with Zubaida each day, making sure to show her around and demonstrate how things work. The kids argued over the chance to spend time with her and pick up some of the reflected attention, so Zubaida rose to the occasion. Her cultural background placed such a high value on family and clan relationships, that the ability to see the importance of relating to other people kept Zubaida in a responsive attitude with the kids in the class. Once the students had a chance to see that this new girl might look different but that she was easy to relate to, even without language, her new place in the class was formed.
Kerrie Benson later spoke of being struck by Zubaida’s eagerness to learn her school lessons as well as her determination to relate to the other kids. She readily joined in on games and activities, and within days she was already beginning to use assorted English words and phrases that she picked up from the other kids. The result was that at the same time she was working on the difference between the words “I” and “me,” and learning not to use phrases such as me no want to, in place of I don’t want to, she also absorbed language from the other girls even more quickly, so that she rapidly absorbed their knowledge of what was and wasn’t considered “cool.”
Her natural self-consciousness was frequently over-ridden by bouts of insatiable curiosity. She seemed to find the most difficult lesson to be the one about always raising your hand and not just shouting out your answer just because you’re excited that you know it. Before long, several girls in the class began to show a level of interest in her beyond anything that they had been asked to do. And in spite of Zubaida’s rudimentary English, she managed to communicate with the others well enough that she was soon fully enmeshed in the class, as well as the girls’ social group after school.
Benson knew that Zubaida’s life had completely lacked any regular form of daily mental discipline, which made it a concern as to how well she would fit into the structure of classroom life. Another personality with a background like Zubaida’s might find that the social challenge of entering school as a cold plunge would be more overwhelming that the lessons themselves. Zubaida thrived under the daily structure. One game that made her blossom was the point system that Benson used with all of her students, letting them win stars-stickers next to their name on the name board.
Although Zubaida lacked all of the rudimentary skills, Benson was impressed by her native intelligence and by her natural abilities with social behavior. The high regard that she had come to feel for Zubaida’s inner strength was cemented in place when she saw how Zubaida related to Emily, one of the other girls in the class. Emily had been attacked by a dog some time before, and had a scar across her forehead that made her self-conscious about her appearance. She worked to keep it covered with her hair as well as she could.
Benson didn’t know just when Zubaida spotted Emily’s scar, but she watched her go over to Emily and put her arm around her. Zubaida’s manner of relating to Emily expressed what her language wasn’t developed enough to do, making it clear that she didn’t have to fear any sort of judgment from her—and that she knew all about what it means to be afraid to look in the mirror.
And so it went for the foreign girl who had been assigned to Kerrie Benson in the hope that Benson could find a way to help her adapt to an American school room and avoid being a social outcast. Zubaida proved eager to learn, and went on to make it a point to take one of the other girls under her own protective wing. Zubaida and Emily became inseparable friends.
* * *
In a world that was strange to her on almost every level, Zubaida fell into camaraderie with the ease of long practice. The idea of an extended group of trusted friends was a principal concept of her culture and her family background, and the interdependence of her family and their neighbors was so thoroughly interwoven, so essential to their survival, that it was her solitary existence in America which presented the strangest part of her journey.
No matter how well-meaning the adults around her might be, they were all authority figures who had the power to force any sort of awful experience on her, whenever they wanted. However, when Zubaida was in the company of other children close to her age, and those children were accepting and supportive of her, she got a sense of safety in numbers. The feeling had been missing from her life ever since the day of the fire, after which she was left to those long months of existence alone behind closed doors, living as a burned thing made of pain.
Not only did the class kids step into Zubaida’s safety zone with her, Benson was included inside of this bubble of familiarity too, even though she was also an authority figure. To Zubaida, the things that Kerrie asked her to do didn’t feel like useless chores, instead they felt like she was being given exactly what she needed, water in the desert. Her father had left a large hole inside of her with his instructions for her to learn all she could and to bring the knowledge back home to her sisters, who might never see the inside of a classroom. Now, every time she mastered another English phrase, she helped to fill that hole back up with the very knowledge she’d been instructed to bring home.
She was, in a way that she clearly understood, building her own future place in the family. After the crushing experience of watching herself go from being a real asset to the family’s daily survival to being a heavy drag on the chances of survival for all of them, she could happily picture herself occupying a valued position as a contributing member of the family. Every time she thought of it, the very idea soothed her like a kiss on the forehead.
The real problems were at home, away from school. She valued the company of other children so highly that she was able to keep the turmoil stuffed inside of herself, most of the time. School only lasted to a few hours each day, which meant that if something was really bothering her badly, she only had to hold it in until later in the day.
Then, sometimes, the turmoil insisted on boiling up out of her. It felt like millions of needle points poking her from the inside while her chest grew tight. It got hard to take in a deep breath. Sometimes the internal needles spurred her into manic fits of energy, running around the yard and banging through the house. She tried to burn it away just as she once tried to scream away the pain. That didn’t work this time, either.
Sooner or later, she had to go back inside the house and deal with people. They would start bothering her with something or other, which then made it feel like the needle pokes were coming from outside and inside at the same time. When that happened, anything could set her off. The last poke from the last needle could be tiny—insignificant, in the course of her day—but it wouldn’t matter. That last little poke would be just enough to set off the explosion and then all of the accumulated rage from all the millions of needles blew out of her at once.
Peter and Rebecca never exploded back at her, but that didn’t fool her. She could sense their recoil when she burst into tears, screaming and wailing in drawn-out fits. It was the same with them as it was back at home—no matter how calm they remained, she could sense their concern over her behavior. Nobody could hide a thing like that from her. She could practically feel them asking themselves, Is this girl losing her mind?
She asked Rebecca to call the former host family and arrange for Zubaida to spend the weekend with them. It bothered her to have left the hosts’ home under strained circumstances, so she felt happy when Rebecca came back later and told her that it had been arranged. Whether or not the family was
seeing her merely out of guilt, Zubaida was doing so well at stuffing the turmoil during school hours that she felt confident she could keep it up for a couple of days of visiting.
* * *
Peter and Rebecca were both stymied by her state of mind after the weekend visit was over. She came home acting more distant and volatile than she had ever been up to this point. She refused to take part in any activity around the house with Rebecca and would refuse to acknowledge Peter’s presence when he came home from work in the evenings. Both of them could feel the anxiety radiating off of her, and the fact that they couldn’t identify the source or figure out how to relieve her emotions caused the anxiety to infect them, as well.
Since Rebecca was at home with her far more than Peter was, she decided to enter into family counseling to try to sort out her own feelings about the strained situation, hoping to take home some measure of insight that would guide her on how to handle things. The sessions consoled her and helped to restore her confidence in the daunting task of caring for this traumatized girl, but it seen became clear that there was a limit to the amount of progress that could be made unless Zubaida was able to get into counseling and unburden some of the load that appeared to be crushing her from within.
Rebecca searched out a family counselor in Los Angeles who spoke Farsi and could appreciate the cultural subtleties involved in earning the trust of an Afghan child who was so emotionally loaded down. Zubaida barely agreed to attend the sessions and sulked on the way to the doctor’s office, but she didn’t refuse to go, and even though the idea of hiring a strange woman as a personal counselor was utterly foreign to her, Rebecca noticed that on some level Zubaida seemed to understand that the process itself was helpful to her. Here was a place where she could display any emotion or mindset that she wanted to, without being condemned or punished for it. She seemed to come home feeling a little lighter inside, but she remained so aloof that neither Rebecca nor Peter could guess at what was going on inside of her.
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