Dancing in the Mosque

by Homeira Qaderi

  Baba-jan was the first to apologize.

  The next Monday, I had to pass Maulawi Rashid, who was standing at the top of our street. He started walking toward me. I crossed over to the riverbank, leaving the entire street to him. He crossed the street. I went in among the trees by the river. He followed me. I stopped. He stopped. There was no escape. He had his hand inside his pants between his legs, masturbating. He called out, “Every Monday, without a mahram, you go to see a na-mahram, don’t you? Are you trying to bring disrepute to this neighborhood?”

  I was paralyzed. I could see the knuckles of his fist beneath the fabric of his trousers as his hand stroked the swelling in his pants. He came closer, his unblinking eyes staring at my burqa-covered head. I wished a wall would appear next to my shoulder so I could lean against it. Or a tree would take root behind my back to keep me from falling. The maulawi’s rancid breath surrounded me. Pushing his bulging trousers up against my burqa, he exhaled a foul question beside my ear: “Do you want to become mahram with me, so I will keep my mouth shut? Do you remember, my little beauty? That last time we met, I left my work unfinished? How about I finish it with you today? Your breasts are like two birds fluttering under your burqa. Do you want me to free them?”

  Suddenly, the maulawi’s hands were beneath my burqa, pummeling my breasts. He had glued himself to me. I didn’t know where I was, in what part of the world . . . It felt as if I were being crushed between Maulawi Rashid and the tree trunk. His hand crawled from my breasts up to my mouth. I opened my mouth. He thrust two fingers inside. At that moment, I became Baba Ghor-ghori, chewing the bones of the city’s men.

  Maulawi Rashid screamed. I wanted him to scream so loud that his cries would be heard in hell. I clamped my teeth down on his fingers as hard as I could. He howled in pain. I hoped people would run into the street and see him pressed up against me. I bit down so hard that I thought my eyes would pop out of their sockets. Nobody came. I spit out his fingers and ran toward Leila’s house.

  My legs were shaking. I had to stop to compose myself. My teeth hurt, my head ached, my eyes were blinded by my tears. I hadn’t taken a step into the dead-end alley when a wall crashed down on me. Panting, the bicycle man wrapped himself around me like a snake. I looked at the end of the alley, at the green door to Leila’s house. The end of the alley was at the other end of the world . . . I knew that if I ran until the end of my life, I would never reach it. I collapsed to the ground. The bicycle man tried to push me onto my back, tried to force his knee between my legs. His hand was tugging at the hem of my burqa. I wrapped my burqa around my legs, holding it tight against my body so he couldn’t put his hands inside. For once, my burqa was my honor.

  The bicycle man hunted for my lips beneath my burqa. I wanted to chew his face off. Over and over he kissed me through the fabric, slobbering through the eye mesh, panting and grunting.

  Clutching my burqa to keep his hands off my body, I couldn’t fight him. I was like a trapped bird, without wings or feathers. I wished that my burqa had a thousand times more folds . . . I wished that my burqa’s folds would turn into the wings of a bird to fly me far, far away . . . away from Herat . . . away from Afghanistan. I wanted to become one of those migrating birds in Afghan women’s mournful songs. I wished I could turn into a water droplet and get soaked in the ground.

  Hoarse, gasping breaths issued from the giant snake’s foul mouth. Finally, he spat me out damp with his fetid body odor.

  I sat stunned through the class, like a bird that had flown into a windowpane. Professor Rahyab looked at me and said, “Homeira, this week it’s your turn to read your story.”

  “Homeira?”

  My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. I looked at Professor Rahyab. My bag had fallen off my shoulder somewhere on the way to class. My story was lost in the dust of a Herat street. My book bag must’ve fallen as I had struggled to free myself from the grip of the bicycle repairman. I had been so distraught and distracted that I didn’t notice the missing book bag.

  My words had dissolved into the parched ground. My voice had disappeared down my throat. I said nothing.

  Professor Rahyab furrowed his brows. “Homeira-jan, it is not easy to become a Shahrazad. You must write when it’s your turn to write.”

  Professor Rahyab took me aside at the end of the class. “Tomorrow, your other story—the one about the bakery in Iran that would not sell bread to an Afghan refugee boy—will be published in the newspaper.” I was so upset about what happened in the street that I could barely take in this good news.

  It was very warm that night. Madar kept asking me to come up on the terrace and sleep outside with the rest of the family. But I couldn’t be with anyone, even my own family. And I couldn’t sleep. Nanah-jan’s room was always empty in the summer. I crawled into her room and cried for the entire night. Maulawi Rashid’s hoarse gasps filled my ears. The foul odor of the bicycle man coiled around me like a burial shroud. The world had become an enormous wall that had collapsed on me and crushed my bones. That night, I wanted Baba Ghor-ghori to come and throw me into his saddlebag and eat my bones one by one; to grind them into dust so fine that no mushroom could ever grow from what remained. My grief was so crushing that I hadn’t told anyone that my story was going to be published the next day.

  But in the morning, I had collected myself enough to tell Agha about the newspaper. “Agha, my story is going to be published today.”

  Everyone looked at me. Agha stood up, his face breaking into a smile. “Homeira, why didn’t you say anything last night?”

  He hurried out to find a newspaper. Tariq and Jaber ran out after him. Agha returned with ten newspapers under his arm. The grief of the past days had vanished from his face. His eyes were laughing. Holding out an open newspaper, he hugged me, saying, “Homeira! Look! Here!”

  The words danced before my eyes: A story written by Homeira Qaderi, “The Little Man with Empty Hands.” I read it again: Homeira Qaderi. My full name was there.

  Smiling, Mushtaq took the newspaper, and Baba-jan and Madar each grabbed a copy.

  My knees felt suddenly stronger. The scent of lilies and roses enveloped me. Nanah-jan took the newspaper, saying, “Where is your name, Homeira? Show me.”

  Mushtaq pointed at my name with his finger. For once, Nanah-jan was smiling. She stared at my name, then, smiling, looked at me and said, “God bless you, evil girl.”

  Then she touched my name.

  At noon, Agha hurried in from the street, calling out in a faltering voice, “Homeira! Homeira!”

  I ran into the yard. Agha’s face was pale. “There’s a rumor that if a woman’s name appears in the newspaper, she has disavowed the teachings of the Prophet. Taliban are calling for you to be whipped in public!” My father’s voice broke. My legs buckled. Madar dropped the bowl she was carrying. It shattered into a thousand shards.

  Agha turned to Baba-jan. “Father, would you go to the mosque to find out if this rumor is true?” Baba-jan stood up to leave.

  Nanah-jan unrolled her prayer rug and began to pray, a corner of her hijab open to the sky.

  Suddenly, a voice from the mosque’s loudspeaker invaded the room. It was Maulawi Rashid. His hoarse voice stabbed my heart. “My brothers, white-bearded believers, for the past few weeks, I have witnessed a young girl from one of these houses leaving home every Monday afternoon and not returning until nightfall. Her father is just like her; he never comes to congregational prayer. Since God the Merciful forgives mistakes and faults, I won’t mention the name of the family. But if this girl is seen again in the street and brings dishonor to our neighborhood, then we should ask the Taliban to teach the family a lesson.”

  Baba-jan returned downcast from the mosque. I was mortified for the whole family.

  I crawled into Baba-jan’s arms and my tears fell on his turban. Wiping them away with his sash, he said, “Homeira, fighting with this hateful tribe is impossible. No story is more important than your reputation. Mansour Hallaj was a ma
n. If he had been a woman, these vengeful people would have disgraced her in this world as well as the next. I am afraid for you. You are a girl. I am afraid of this city.”

  Later there was silence. No breeze rustled the mulberry leaves. The only sounds were Baba-jan reciting Surah Yaseen and Nanah-jan intoning, “Allah! Allah! Allah!”

  Agha returned home that night with a big bag on his shoulder. “I bought as many newspapers as I could. The Office of Information and Culture has ordered that every one of this edition of the newspaper must be destroyed or the sinful girl who wrote the story will be whipped in public.”

  My father put a few of the newspapers on the ground. Looking straight at me, he said, “We will bury these. Inshallah, someday the Taliban will be no more.”

  Then he piled the remainder of the papers in the middle of the yard and called for matches. Even Nanah-jan abandoned her prayer rug to come out into the yard. Agha threw a flaming match onto the newspapers. I stood there as silent as a corpse.

  The flames flared skyward. I saw Homeira Qaderi on fire. I was burning. My eyes were burning. My hair was burning. My cheeks were burning. My heart was a candle, a torch, a beacon blazing on a distant mountaintop.

  Madar threw her unfinished handkerchief into the fire: a half-sewn bird, embroidered on a patch of blue fabric. Gazing into the flames, her face veiled in tears, she said, “A wing that can’t lift women’s stories, our stories, into the world is no wing at all.”

  Dear Siawash,

  My son, on the way home I was thinking to myself: What must my boy be like now? How big are his little hands? Are his lips still a chubby little bud? I asked my friend Assila who lives near your kindergarten to check on you and see how you are. But since Assila had a big confrontation with your father after the last time she tried to take a picture of you for me, she was afraid to go there. I can understand how she feels. But it is painful for me that I don’t even have the right to see a picture of you. If you were to appear miraculously in front of me, would I even recognize you? If someday I were to watch you from behind a tree and you were to suddenly see me, would you recognize me?

  If your father hasn’t destroyed the family photo album, you could see my picture with several of my friends. In one of them, you would see me with Lida, the girl who loved to have her poetry published in Herat. But with the coming of the Taliban she became very depressed and eventually committed suicide. In another picture, you would see me with Shakiba on the day her four brothers forced her into marriage with a young man that Shakiba neither liked nor loved. I don’t have any pictures of Zarghuna and Mahjabin.

  None of my close friends has survived under the Taliban. Their deaths may not have made news in the world, but my memories of them live on in my daily life. We were like the seven sisters of Pleiades, a story Madar used to tell me.

  “They are called Khosha-e Parween, the Pleiades cluster, the Atlas Sisters, or the seven divine sister stars,” she said. “Originally, there were eight sisters who lived on one of the streets here on earth. One day, a warrior amir fell in love with all of the eight sisters. He ordered his troops to capture them. His soldiers did so and took the sisters to the amir.

  “The amir desired the youngest sister for his first night. He told his men to make her ready for his harem. When the sisters heard about his plans, they feared for their baby sister and asked God to turn them all into pigeons. And God accepted their wish—but only for seven of them. So while the youngest remained in the amir’s prison, her sisters flew away into the sky, eventually becoming seven stars shining in the farthest corner of heaven.”

  10

  The Girls Behind the Window

  Five years had passed since the Taliban conquered Herat. They didn’t mind the weather and they liked the Herati girls. Most didn’t want to be transferred to another city. If assigned to posts elsewhere, they did everything possible to return to Herat. The Taliban became familiar with the surrounding villages and small hamlets where they enjoyed unchallenged authority. In time, Taliban-style haircuts and beards, kohl eyeliner, and tightly coiled turbans became a new fashion statement among Herati men. The city tailors grew skilled at sewing long, baggy trousers.

  By now, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was almost complete and hopes of revolting against them were dashed, even as their methods became more and more aggressive. They conducted house-to-house search campaigns to confiscate hidden weapons of the mujahideen era. They broke cupboards and furniture and trampled on vegetation and gardens, searching for weapons hidden among tree branches, behind piles of firewood, and beneath the ashes of outdoor hearths. They searched chicken coops and grape arbors. If they found a gun, the owner of the house was charged with treason, beheaded, and his body hung for days in the public square like a sheep carcass.

  Outwardly, we behaved like good Heratis and tried not to bring attention to ourselves. Still, danger was everywhere. One day, we were all sitting in the living room when we heard a loud knocking on the front gate. Everyone rushed out. Looking at me, Agha called out to Madar, “The women should go back inside the house. Ansari! Take your daughter to the storeroom.”

  I was sixteen years old and I had a woman’s figure that needed to be hidden from the prying eyes of men.

  Madar made me hide in a corner of the storeroom next to two large chests. One contained our school clothes—Zahra’s and mine—the other was full of Agha’s books. Madar covered me with two blankets.

  It had been many years since the Russians and the mujahideen searched our house and my aunties had to hide. Now it was my turn. I heard the front gate open. Nobody said anything. Then the gate closed again. Crawling out from under the blankets, I looked out of the storeroom’s small round windowpane stained by the muddy rain overflow. Mushtaq was outside, whispering to Agha. I went into the yard. “They have begun the house searches of our neighborhood starting from the first house on our block,” Mushtaq said. “By now they might have reached the houses near the mosque.”

  Baba-jan said, “Unlatch the gate. If the Taliban kick the gate and it doesn’t open, they will become suspicious and angry.” Agha unlatched the gate and said, “Let’s go inside and wait.”

  My uncles and Agha found their turbans and put them on. A spine-chilling silence prevailed. I returned to the storeroom, ready to hide under the blankets at any moment.

  Suddenly someone kicked the front gate. My heart stopped. I ran and burrowed beneath the blankets. I could hear the Taliban’s loud voices. The door to the storeroom flew open. Someone was pulling up the corner of the blankets. My God! How had the Taliban found me so quickly? It was Zahra! Terrified, she crept under the blankets and began hugging me. She whispered, “I’m going to hide because the Taliban want to eat me, too.”

  I drew the blanket over us and hushed her. I heard the Taliban shouting at each other. I heard Agha saying something in Pashto. The voices in the courtyard were approaching the living room. I imagined Baba-jan with the Qur’an under his arm as he was the time the Russians burst into our house. I remembered a Russian kicking Baba-jan’s Qur’an and beating him on the shoulders and chest with his rifle butt. Afterward, Baba-jan developed a persistent cough, but he never complained about the pain. The Taliban talked among themselves in Pashto as they searched the rooms. There was no sound of anything being broken or smashed. It was difficult to breathe under the blankets. But the fear of being found by the Taliban was far worse than suffocation. We did not hear anyone. It was dead silent. Then I heard the storeroom door open.

  Zahra passed out in my arms. Silence again. Baba-jan was not reciting the Qur’an. A pair of legs was walking around near me. I was terrified. The crime of having books in the chest next to us was no less than the crime of hiding guns. Surely, because of those books, the Taliban would think we were infidels and kill us. I thought Zahra had stopped breathing. I heard feet walking through the rooms, kicking things. The pair of feet stopped. Then suddenly I was looking at dirty boots standing right in front of my terrified eyes alongside other
covered legs, and the bare feet of Agha and my uncles. Raising my head, I looked at Agha and my uncles, standing with their hands on their heads, then I looked at two Taliban pointing their rifles at me, and finally, I looked at the Talib who had lifted the blankets where I was hiding. Shivering, I shut my eyes. The Talib said, Allah-u Akbar. I thought a sword was about to fall on my neck. I heard Baba-jan say, “For the love of God, they are both children!”

  From behind my eyelids, I sensed that the other two Taliban were also looking at Zahra and me. Perhaps the sword wasn’t falling after all. I opened my eyes. That Talib was still staring at me with raised eyebrows. I wrapped the long scarf around me. Then the two blankets dropped back over our heads. Darkness. I hugged my sobbing sister. She had wetted herself.

  The storeroom door closed. The voices drifted out into the yard. We had been uncovered and discovered. I stood up. Zahra took my hand for comfort and security. I calmed her down. I snuck over to the dirt-stained little window. Looking out, my heart lurched. One Talib had removed the cover over the well and was looking down into it. My knees were shaking. Still holding their hands on their heads, my father’s and uncles’ faces had turned sallow with fear. I thought I heard someone screaming Allah-u Akbar in my ears. I felt like throwing up. It seemed as if the whole house was about to be bathed in blood. My vision blurred and the scene beyond the grimy window disappeared.

  Moments later, I noticed Madar and Nanah-jan standing beside me, staring fearfully through that tiny window. Our minds were on this side of the window, but our hearts were on the other side. Ashen-faced, Agha was looking back at us from beside the well. The same Talib who pulled the blankets off me tied a rope around his waist and was lowered into the well. I wanted time to stand still even if that meant living under the tyranny of the Taliban.