Azlam’s eyes roved over us possessively and then settled on me. “If you’re learning from the book, why is he instructing you all the time?”
“The book’s in English and Babur reads it better than we do,” Parwaaze said without looking at me.
“Even if you found a c-copy all you can do is look at the drawings,” Qubad added, smiling at him without any humor.
Azlam gunned the bike. “My team will still win, even without the stupid book.” He laughed and raced away.
We waited until the sound of his bike had faded and started again. When the light began to wane, with nine days left, we set off homeward. I prayed with each step that the letter, the package, was waiting for us.
“Which of the two is younger?” I heard Parwaaze ask Qubad.
Two women approached us.
“The one on the left,” Qubad said. “She walks straighter. Maybe she is pretty.”
“Which one do you think, Babur?”
How could one tell? Did men make those remarks about the hidden me too, trying to guess my age, my looks, my shape? Of course, long ago, I noticed other women—the style of clothes, the colors, the patterns. Now I was expected to make a quick, male judgment on the women who could not be seen but only fantasized about.
“Qubad’s right,” I whispered. “The one on the left.” Her ankles were neat and straight; the other woman had fatter ones, partially twisted by her weight.
“The younger one’s looking at you.” Parwaaze laughed. “See the quick glance?”
“You’ve sharper eyes than I do,” I said. “I think she’s looking at Jahan.”
“No, you,” Namdar insisted in a teasing voice.
“How can you tell a glance from behind the mesh?” I demanded. “She could be looking past you.”
“You dream you did.” Royan spoke in a longing voice. “Once, when we passed on our streets, I caught the glances of beautiful girls, some not that beautiful, and we exchanged those glances and smiled to ourselves as went on our way. Kabul women were once bold and fashionable, now they are cowed and covered by the edicts of the Taliban. I miss them, they have become invisible.”
“That’s your problem.” Qubad laughed. “You d-dream too much.”
“And you don’t dream at all,” Atash mocked.
“This is why I sleep well.”
When we heard a woman’s scream, we were a hundred yards from the hospital. At first, in the press of people, carts, and cars, I couldn’t see who had cried out. Parwaaze pushed forward through a knot of men, clearing a path for us behind him. Across the street, a religious policeman was beating a woman with his cane. He was shouting, “Where is your permit to leave the house? Where is your mahram’s letter?” The woman was screaming, weaving away from the blows. Then I saw that she clutched something in her arms, wrapped in a bright blue shawl embroidered with silvery stars. “My baby is ill, she is vomiting. I must get her to the hospital . . . emergency . . .” She clutched her baby as she twisted away from the policeman. He tried to grab her burka, but it slipped from his grasp. “Return to your home,” he shouted at the woman and swung his cane, striking her back. Stubbornly, she ducked in the crowd and ran with her precious burden toward the hospital. We watched, frozen, unable to move. The policeman unslung his machine gun, and the people fell to the ground. The woman was thirty yards away from the hospital now.
I knew what was going to happen and opened my mouth to scream. Jahan saw and clamped his hand quickly over my mouth.
The policeman aimed and fired a burst of terrible consecutive cracks, like sticks breaking, and the woman staggered, tumbled, and fell. She lay half on the pavement, half on the road. She still clutched the baby in her arms and, in the silence, we could hear its mewling. The policeman slung the weapon back onto his shoulder. He looked around—a young man, heavily bearded, smirking and threatening anyone who dared to block his passage as he swaggered away. People who had fallen to avoid the bullets rose slowly to their feet and kept their distance, afraid the religious policeman would return. They stared at the body with that impassive, stoic look of shock and fear. I looked at the body as if hoping she would stir, get to her feet, and keep running. The baby still mewled, and I pushed through to reach it and picked it up, cradling it to stop its crying. The team followed me to kneel by the woman. At one time, they would have stayed in the crowd. Qubad looked around, as if searching for her family, and I saw the tears glisten in his eyes. He, Atash, Namdar, and Royan lifted up the woman between them, walking in the direction she had run from, in search of her home. Then another woman screamed. She came stumbling out of a side street and reached up for the body, weeping and crying out. She was elderly, perhaps the dead woman’s mother. An elderly man, his face scarred with sadness, took the baby from my arms. He spoke to the woman, and then he stoically carried the baby toward the hospital. Stumbling and crying, the woman led the way for the team to the house the dead woman had lived in.
“Oh god” was all I could whisper as Jahan pulled me away.
ABDUL SAID, “NO LETTER, no package.” And we passed him in silence, Jahan holding me.
When we were safe in the house, with the doors locked and barred, I screamed the scream that had been choking me on the hurried walk back to the house. Its ferocity frightened even me. I erupted with rage, hatred, and heartbreak at the injustice of my world and then I wept for the woman who had died. A shapeless tangle of clothing, like discarded laundry, on a public street.
“Someone should have stopped him,” I sobbed. “Someone. Are we all such cowards that we couldn’t have stopped him from killing a woman? For what? She was trying to save her baby’s life. What kind of crime is that?”
“She was a woman,” Jahan replied bleakly. “That was all.”
He reached out to comfort me and I pulled away, as if blaming him for not saving the woman. Accusing all men for their callous indifference to a woman’s murder. He dropped his arm. I wanted to be held and comforted by a woman, by my mother, who could weep alongside me for this terrible crime against us all. But such a tragic story would break her heart.
“Rukhsana, I kept thinking of you lying in that street. If you had screamed, they would have known you were a woman and god knows what could have happened to you.”
I removed my turban, then carefully peeled off my beard. I scratched my head, touching the sweat that had dried from playing our harmless game of cricket, and rubbed life into my cheeks, smoothing away the prickly feel of the fine mesh.
“You can’t blame the men for doing nothing,” Jahan continued. “What could we do? Stand between the policeman and the woman, and get ourselves shot?”
“At least knocked his gun down, spoiled his aim. We knew what he was going to do when he swung the gun off his shoulder.”
“And be killed for doing that also.” Then he added stoutly, “You saw, we went to her body. I’m not afraid.”
“You should be.” I turned to face Jahan. “I have to help you get out of this murderous country. Even though it’s madness. I cannot sit here doing nothing while waiting to hear from Shaheen,” I said.
We sat on the divan, staring at the wall. Finally, Jahan tentatively reached out and I allowed him to drape his arm around my shoulder. It felt stiff from nervousness. I leaned against him.
“I hear your stomach rumbling.”
“We haven’t eaten since this morning,” he reminded me. “Do I need to buy anything?”
I rose. “No, we have some food from yesterday, if you don’t mind the chicken again. And we have some naan. I’ll check on Maadar.”
I went to her room; Dr. Hanifa was reading aloud from Pride and Prejudice. Mother smiled when I came in and the doctor put the book down.
“I heard someone shouting,” she said.
“That was me. I banged my toe on the door. But the toe’s not broken.”
“You look tired,” Mother said when I bent to kiss her.
“I’m just not fit, that’s all. How are you feeling?”
“The docto
r says I’m feeling fine.” They both smiled. “I had some dinner with Hanifa, but you and Jahan haven’t eaten.”
“YOU MUST WRITE A letter giving your permission for me to leave the house. I’ll carry it around in case we get separated,” I said to Jahan after dinner.
“I’ll do it now,” he said and went up to his room.
Although I was so tired, I went to Father’s office and started dialing Shaheen’s number. I would keep at it all night if necessary. After the fifth hit on redial, it connected and I heard the ringing a long distance away.
A man answered with a hello and I recognized Shaheen’s father’s voice. “Uncle,” I shouted down the line in English. “It’s Rukhsana.”
“Rukhsana! How are you?”
“I’m fine.” I hated this polite pleasantry, nervous that we’d be cut off before I could talk to Shaheen. “How are you and the family?”
“We’re very well and happy here in America. How is your mother?”
“Not any better, Uncle.” We could continue all night like this! I plunged in. “I must speak to Shaheen, it’s very urgent.”
“He’s not home, but I’ll tell him you called and he will call you back. I know he wants to speak to you. He’s tried calling, but there was no answer.”
I managed a smile. “You know our phones, Uncle.”
“In America the phones always work and the calls are cheap,” he announced proudly.
“When will he be back?”
“Soon. He’ll call you.”
“Tell him I’m waiting and it’s very urgent.” I hurried on, “Do you know if he’s sent—”
The line disconnected.
I sat in the chair, staring at the phone, waiting for Shaheen to call back. I fell into a sleep of confusing images: cricket, a woman screaming, a motorbike passing. I was there in the morning, stiff and still tired, as the light slipped through the cracks in the shutters. I checked the phone and heard the stuttering dial tone.
I scratched another day off the calendar, trying not to look at the shrinking numbers. Maybe Shaheen had tried to call and couldn’t get through. And if he had my letter, he would be arranging the transfer through the hawala dealer. I washed in cold water and that revived me, and I went down to make breakfast. Jahan appeared in the kitchen, sleepy and shuffling, but I didn’t tell him I had spoken to Shaheen’s father. What was there to tell? We took the tray up to Mother and ate with her, not saying much, as she looked as if she’d had a restless night too. When Dr. Hanifa joined us, I went down to the kitchen.
I heard the soft knocking on the back garden gate and reflexively looked at the battered clock on the table. It was nine thirty—I had forgotten about the girls.
Over three years ago, Mother and I had started clandestine classes for girls in and around Karte Seh. They came once or twice a week, or sometimes not at all, depending on whether or not they were free of their chores. Only a few came these days—Raishma, a cheeky girl with an impish laugh and lovely green eyes was the oldest at eight; the youngest, Sooryia, was only four, a shy, thin girl.
They broke the monotony of our restricted lives with their eagerness to learn and their gossip. It was Raishma who had told me about the woman whose fingertip, with the nail varnish, was chopped off. And a girl named Louena told me about her brother, who was given an electronic game the size of a playing card, a magical gift for his eighth birthday that he took to show off to his friends on the street. The religious police caught him. They first smashed the toy, then beat him and broke his right arm. I wrote that story too after talking to the depressed and frightened boy, his arm in a sling.
When Mother could no longer teach the classes, I continued alone. I taught them to read and write and then some geography, science, and arithmetic. We used small slates that they brought with them, hidden under their shalwars. Because they were that young, they could go out alone, as they didn’t have far to travel. They were so proud of their skills. I thought of the priceless value of the written word. Without reading, how would they find where they were in a country, how could they read signs on a bus, read the instructions on a packet? To read a language, any language, is a wonderful gift that I had taken so much for granted. I remembered my own excitement at discovering the alphabet—first the letters formed words and then sentences, paragraphs, and pages, and ultimately they provided the pleasure of reading a whole book, even a child’s story.
On two occasions women banged on our gate and told us they wanted their little girls to join the classes. As I suspected they were informers, I would blandly deny teaching any girls.
“Jahan, the girls are at the gate. I can’t teach them and they mustn’t see me. Tell them I’m away.”
Jahan took the keys from the hook and went to the back door. I watched from the kitchen window as he opened it and stepped out—there were three here today.
Jahan closed the gate and returned to the window. “I told them you were away and they want to see Maadar,” he said.
“I’ll go up and hide.” I retreated up the stairs as he let them in. Raishma, Sooryia, and Louena trailed after him. I ducked into Mother’s room. She was propped up on pillows, and Dr. Hanifa was reading to her.
“The girls want to see you,” I said and went into my room, leaving the door open just enough to listen.
They went in quietly and I heard Mother say, “Come and give me a hug.”
“You look so beautiful, Maadar,” they chorused.
“Never as beautiful as any one of you. I’m sorry Rukhsana’s away, and I don’t have the strength to teach you. Are you reviewing your lessons every day?”
“Oh yes,” Sooryia said. “But we miss you teaching us.”
“Isn’t Rukhsana a good teacher too?”
They giggled. “But not as good as you. When will you be teaching our classes again?”
“Soon,” Mother said. “Very soon. Once I get my strength back, I will teach you all everything I know so that you will be full of learning and will do wonderful things in your lives. You’ll become engineers and doctors, scientists and journalists, film stars and biologists. You’ll be whatever you want to be.”
I knew they loved hearing her say those magical words, although they already knew that they would never fulfill those dreams. I imagined each one leaning over to kiss her and then quietly filing out of her room. They would soar on her imaginings until they reached home to crash in their prisons.
“When will Rukhsana come back?”
“Oh, in a week or two,” Jahan told them as they went downstairs.
“And then she’ll marry Shaheen?”
“Yes.”
They always asked that question, concerned for my future. I was not just old but ancient, and still unmarried.
“He’s in America,” I would reply. “We’ll marry when he returns here. And that could be very soon.” It was a hope, of course, that instead of sending money he would send himself.
“But why would he return here? Everyone is trying to leave.”
“He’ll return just to marry me, and then I’ll be leaving for America with him.”
A dozen pairs of eyes lit up, their faces took on a dreamy look, and I felt myself reduced to their ages when we believed in fairy tales. Like them, I imagined Shaheen racing across the sky to Kabul, racing along the roads to this door, snatching me up, and racing us back to the plane and flying away. It was fairy tales that sustained us in childhood, filling in the nooks and crannies of our imaginations and soaring us into enchanted worlds, and we believed they could keep nurturing us when we became women, but we know now that those stories belonged only to that age, and that life has shorn away dreams. There are no princes riding to the rescue; there are only ferocious dragons guarding us against them, and the princes haven’t the weapons or the powers to strike them down.
JAHAN AND I LEFT for practice a half hour earlier than usual to pick up my new beard at Noorzia’s. While she whisked me inside, Jahan stood outside “Don’t be too long,” he warned. “And d
on’t leave without me. I’ll buy the naan and vegetables and be back.”
“I worry about you all the time,” she said, closing the door behind us. To my surprise, she continued in English. “Safe still you are?”
“I’m still alive, yes. But why English suddenly?”
“Some English. You speak. I understand need to.”
“If you want me to.” I followed her into her salon. “Tell me why.”
“Remember, I told you about my friend in Melbourne? I have the visa and now I wait for the air tickets. I practice must my English.”
It was a broken dialogue, but I felt my envy slip through the gaps in her words. She was escaping; she would be free. I imagined Australia from seeing it in my atlas, a vast island on which a hundred Afghanistans could fit with ease. A safe, peaceful land so far from our bloody turmoil and fear. I knew its cricketers—Ponting, Warne, Gilchrist, McGrath, strong young white men—and caught glimpses of those cricket stadiums when India toured. I had also seen Melbourne when the cameras panned away from the Australian Open tennis tournament to reveal the Yarra River, tall buildings set against a clear azure sky, and a pale silvery sea.
“Who is this friend?”
“Dead husband friend,” she began in English, determined to master it.
“Tell me in Dari first, and then we’ll speak English.”
She slipped back into her native language. “Hussein was the producer I worked for when I was a makeup artist in Beirut. Somehow, he found his way to Melbourne, and he owns a video store. He cannot work as a producer, as his English isn’t good.” She smiled happily. “He wants to marry me and sponsored my visa. He will send the money to pay for the smuggler to take me to Karachi. From Karachi I’ll fly to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and then on to Melbourne.” She switched back to English. “I need to speak good English to understand immigration questions. I speak so little, but with you I make better.” She searched for her next words. “He make good . . . what is word?”
“Husband?”
“Husband. Yes. Say salon business good.”
“I will miss you,” I said. “I am sad.”
The Taliban Cricket Club Page 17