Mud City (10 page)

“I’d like to see something like that,” Farzana said.
“Take me with you.”

“I can’t take you with me to the ocean.
It’s a very long way, and I’m having enough trouble getting myself there.
Besides, I’m not stopping once I get to the sea. I’m going on, and I
don’t want anyone slowing me down. How could I take you with me?”

Farzana turned her back to Shauzia. “I don’t need anyone to
take me anywhere. I can get to the sea by myself.”

Shauzia watched her walk away. The younger girl’s head was held
high, but Shauzia knew she’d hurt her feelings.

“Maybe I should say yes,” she said to Jasper. “It would
be a lie, but it would make her happy for a little while.” Sometimes it was hard
to know the right thing to do.

Shauzia hurried after her friend.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll take you with me.
We’ll go to the sea together.”

Shauzia fanned away the flies that kept collecting on the sweat on her
face. All around her, others were doing the same.

“Every time we come here, we wait,” a man beside her said.
“Do you think we have nothing else to do? I should be looking for a
job.”

“Are there jobs around here?” Shauzia asked.

“There is work in Peshawar,” the man replied.

Shauzia brushed the flies away again and went back to her thoughts. She
wasn’t ready to return to Peshawar.

She was sitting with hundreds of others in the camp’s central
warehouse. They were waiting for the flour to be distributed.

“Why don’t I just go and get it at the end of the day?”
she had asked Mrs. Weera.

“Because by then our allotment could have disappeared. You need to
be there to grab our
ration when it comes in.” The flour was
delivered on a big truck by an aid agency.

At the end of the afternoon, one of the warehouse guards announced to the
crowd, “No flour today. Go back to your homes.”

“What do you mean, no flour?” a man called out. “I can
see it through the window. I have children to feed.”

“That flour is for other people,” the guard said. “There
is not enough to give out to you today. Go back to your homes.”

There was nothing else to do. Shauzia and the others went back to their
homes.

“We can make do without it for a few days,” Mrs. Weera said,
when Shauzia told her what happened.

“How?” Shauzia demanded. A picture of the full shelves and
refrigerator in Tom and Barbara’s house came into her head. She pushed it aside.
“We should complain to somebody.”

“We will manage,” Mrs. Weera said, putting an end to the
argument. They managed by eating less.

Shauzia went back to the warehouse on the next scheduled day for flour
distribution, at the
end of the week. The same thing happened
again, and Shauzia returned to the Widows’ Compound empty handed.

When it happened again the following week, she was fed up. And hungry.

“I should go back to the city,” Shauzia grumbled to Mrs.
Weera. “I could find a job there and buy something to eat.”

“But how would you get the food back here?” Mrs. Weera asked.
“You’re not thinking, Shauzia.”

“Why would I bring the food back here? I’m not responsible for
all these people!”

“Yes, you are. And so am I. We have two good legs, two good arms,
two good eyes, and minds that work properly. We have a responsibility to those who
don’t have what we have.”

“Then let’s do something,” Shauzia yelled.
“Everyone in the compound is hungry, and we just sit here on our two good legs and
do nothing.”

“I’ve already met with the camp management,” Mrs. Weera
replied. “There’s nothing we can do. The aid agency that sends us flour is
dependent on donations. If they don’t have the money, how can they buy
flour?”

“But there’s flour in the warehouse, just
sitting there. I saw it through the window.”

“That flour must be for some other group of people.”

“So we just starve?”

“I’ve put out a call to other women’s organizations, and
I’m sure they will help us. Until then, we must be patient.”

Shauzia stomped away in frustration.

“We hate being patient, don’t we, Jasper?” Jasper wagged
his tail in agreement.

Shauzia remembered the raids on the hotel garbage cans. She had an
idea.

“The guards only watch the front door,” she told Farzana.
“They don’t watch the back window. They’re too lazy.”

They came up with a plan. They needed the help of a dozen of the older
children in the compound. They all said yes. Everyone was hungry.

They left the compound early the next morning, just as the sky was getting
light. Jasper went with them. None of the adults saw them leave.

Farzana and one of the small boys went to the front of the storehouse.
Their job was to
keep the guards occupied by talking to them and
asking endless questions. The rest of the children went to the back of the storehouse.
Shauzia pried open the window with a knife she had borrowed from the compound’s
kitchen.

They soon had bags of flour making their way out the window and onto the
little wagon they had brought with them.

Shauzia never knew how word of what they were doing got out. She
didn’t recall seeing anyone on their way to the warehouse, but there were a lot of
people in the camp with nothing to do but watch other people.

The children’s wagon was only half filled with sacks of flour when
the first adults started to show up. The larger men pushed the children out of the way
and tried to snatch the flour off their wagon. Children had to drape themselves over the
sacks of flour to protect them.

The noise the adults made brought the guards, and the noise the guards
made brought more people out to the warehouse.

In what seemed to be only moments, a large crowd had gathered. Everyone
pushed to the window and tried to break down the front doors to get at the flour. A
crowd always draws
a bigger crowd, and there was soon a
full-fledged riot.

A huge mob of hungry, desperate people swarmed around the storehouse.
Shauzia was in a panic about Farzana and the small boy with her, but she couldn’t
get to them. The crowd of grown-ups was too thick, too crazy with hunger and anger.

There was too much yelling, too much pushing. People beat against the
storehouse with sticks, and when they couldn’t reach the warehouse, they beat on
each other.

Shauzia still had a bag of flour clutched tightly in her arms. She used it
to protect her as she pushed toward the crowd.

Someone started pulling on it. Shauzia looked up. A man twice her size was
trying to grab her flour.

“I have hungry children to feed!” he yelled.

“What do you think I am?” Shauzia yelled back.

He was bigger and stronger. He raised his arm and slammed his fist into
Shauzia’s head. She dropped to the ground. Her head hit the dirt with a thud, and
she watched the man run off with her flour.

She wanted to get up off the ground and run after
him. She wanted to hit him the same way he had hit her, and grab back the flour that she
needed to feed herself and her friends. But that message was not making the journey from
her brain to her body. All she could do was lie on the ground and watch the legs of the
rioters run around and around.

Many of the flour bags broke in the struggle. The ground around Shauzia
soon looked like Kabul in the winter, as the flour swirled in the air and settled on the
dirt.

The rioters paid no attention to Shauzia. Her body rolled this way and
that as people rushed around her and over her, often stepping right on her as if she was
a log, rather than a person.

Someone big and heavy stepped on her leg. Shauzia felt a snap. She cried
out in pain. Her cries were lost among the yelling of the rioters.

Another blow landed on her head, and then everything went black.

She was unconscious when Jasper finally found her. He stood over her,
barking furiously at everyone who came close, protecting her from the raging crowd.

Shauzia’s head felt like it was buried under a load of rocks. The
noises around her were unfamiliar, and she struggled to open her eyes. The best she
could do was open one eye a teeny bit, but not enough to see through. The effort was too
much for her, and she dropped into darkness once again.

Some time later, she was able to stay awake long enough to make a sound.
Her chest and her head hurt terribly, and what was the matter with her leg? She opened
her mouth just wide enough to moan. Then she passed out.

“Shauzia.”

Shauzia heard someone calling for her at the end of a long, long
tunnel.

“Shauzia.”

Bit by bit, the tunnel grew shorter.

“All right, Shauzia. It’s time to wake up.”

Something was familiar about the voice, but
Shauzia’s brain was working too slowly to be able to pinpoint what it
was.

“Shauzia! Wake up! No more nonsense!”

That did the trick. Some of the darkness lifted from Shauzia’s
brain. She managed to open one eye long enough to see Mrs. Weera’s face hovering
over her.

“What... ”

“You’re in the clinic,” Mrs. Weera said.
“You’ve been banged up a bit, but nothing to be frightened of. You’ll
soon be back in the game.”

Mrs. Weera’s brash cheerfulness was hard on Shauzia’s ears.
She waved her arm slightly, telling Mrs. Weera to go.

“No, no need to thank me,” Mrs. Weera said, taking hold of
Shauzia’s hand and putting it between her two strong ones. For a moment Shauzia
felt safer than she had ever felt before.

Then Mrs. Weera spoke again.

“And I know you’re sorry for causing so much trouble.
We’ll take care of all that later. Right now, just rest and recover. We’ll
have you back in shape before you know it.”

Shauzia felt the bed shift as Mrs. Weera stood up. She closed her eye. She
was glad Mrs. Weera was keeping her visit short.

“Since you have Shauzia for a while, why not
get her started on her nurse’s training?” Mrs. Weera boomed out to the
clinic staff.

Shauzia didn’t have the strength to protest. Did Mrs. Weera always
get her own way?

The next day, Shauzia’s head felt a little better, and she could
open her eye wide enough to see the large cast on her leg.

“You’ve cracked some ribs,” one of the nurses told her.
“Your chest will be sore for awhile, but you’ll mend. We were worried about
your head, but you must have a thick skull. Nothing there seems damaged. You should see
your face. It’s all bruised.”

“I hurt all over,” Shauzia said. Since she didn’t have a
mirror, she didn’t care what she looked like. “Can you give me something for
the pain?”

“You’ll have to live with it,” the nurse said.
“We’re short of painkillers. We’re short of everything. The pain will
pass with time.”

“Is my leg going to be all right?” Shauzia was almost afraid
to hear the answer.

“You have a simple fracture. Six weeks in a cast and your leg will
be mended.”

“Six weeks!”

“Lower your voice, please. Do you have
someplace else to be?”

“Of course I do. Do you think I want to be here?”

“I don’t think any of us want to be here, yet here we
are.”

“Well, I don’t have to stay here,” Shauzia said
flatly.

“No one’s holding you prisoner,” the nurse said,
checking the bandages of the woman in the bed next to Shauzia.

“How can I walk with this bad leg?”

“Your leg is merely broken, not blown off. Stop complaining. You are
luckier than most.”

The nurse walked away then, so Shauzia couldn’t talk back without
yelling across the clinic. She would have done that if she hadn’t felt too weak to
shout.

“She must have been trained by Mrs. Weera,” she mumbled.

“Try to be patient,” the woman in the next bed said. She was
more bandages than she was woman. They covered all of her face except for one eye. Her
voice was old and raspy. “All things heal with patience.”

“Patience just gets you more of what you’ve
already got,” replied Shauzia. “Patience never heals anything. All
patience does is make you forget you ever wanted anything better. Patience will turn you
to stone.”

“When all you have to choose between is patience or impatience,
you’ll find patience much easier on the mind.”

“That’s fine for you. You’re old. You probably
wouldn’t do anything even if you could. I’m young. I have plans.”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“I’m sixteen,” the woman said.

For a long while, Shauzia didn’t speak. Then she asked, “What
happened to you?”

“A man threw acid in my face.”

“Why did he do that?”

“He didn’t like what I was doing. I thought I would be safe in
a refugee camp, but I don’t think there is a safe place for me
anywhere.”

“What were you doing that he didn’t like?”

“I was teaching his daughter how to read.”

“Was he Taliban?”

“Does it matter? Not all men with bad ideas belong to the Taliban.
It hurts me to talk. Let me rest now.”

Shauzia let her rest, and then she fell asleep
herself.

When she woke up, the bed beside her was empty.

She grabbed the arm of a passing nurse.

“Where is she?” she asked, nodding at the bed.

“She didn’t make it.”

“You mean she died?”

“Let go of me.”

“You don’t care, do you? You don’t even look sad that
she died. You didn’t do anything to help her!”

The nurse yanked herself free. “Do you know how many deaths we see
here? How am I supposed to cry over all of them? All you do is lie there and complain.
How dare you criticize me!”

“That’s enough.” An older nurse came over.

“What does she expect of us? There aren’t enough bandages, not
enough food, and not enough water.” The nurse’s voice rose in desperation.
“Three more children died today. What sort of place is this? Farm animals are
treated better.”