The Pearl that Broke Its Shell (6 page)

The next step was my clothing. Madar-
jan
asked my uncle’s wife for a shirt and pair of pants. My cousin had outgrown them, as had his older brother and my other cousin before him. She sent me inside to get dressed while she and my sisters swept my girl hair from the courtyard.

I slipped one leg in and then the other. They were slimmer and heavier than the usual balloon pants I wore under my dresses. I cinched the strings at the waist and made a knot. I pulled the tunic over my head and realized there was no ponytail to pull through after it. I let my hand run against the back of my head, feeling the short ends.

I looked down and saw my knobby knees through the pantaloons. I folded my arms across my chest and cocked my head, as I’d seen my cousin Siddiq do so many times. I kicked my foot, pretending there was a ball in front of me. Was that it? Was I a boy already?

I thought of Khala Shaima. I wondered what she would say if she were to see me like this. Would she smile? Had she really meant it when she suggested I should be turned into a boy? She told us our great-great-grandmother had worked on the farm like a boy, that she’d been a son to her father. I had waited for her to go on, to get to the part where our great-great-grandmother turned into a boy. Khala Shaima said she would come back and tell us more of the story another day. I hated having to wait.

I smoothed my shirt down and went back out to see what my mother thought.

“Well! Aren’t you a handsome young boy!” Madar-
jan
said. Even I could detect the hint of nervous uncertainty in her voice.

“Are you sure, Madar-
jan
? Don’t I look odd?”

Shahla covered her mouth with her hand at the sight of me.

“Oh my goodness! You look just like a boy! Madar-
jan,
you can hardly tell it’s her!”

Madar-
jan
nodded.

“You won’t have to get your knots taken out anymore,” Rohila said enviously. Getting the knots brushed out of our hair was a painful morning routine. Her hair coiled into a mess of tiny birds’ nests that Madar-
jan
struggled to brush out while Rohila winced and squirmed.

“
Bachem,
from now on we’re going to call you Rahim instead of Rahima,” Madar-
jan
said tenderly. Her eyes looked heavier than they should have at the age of thirty.

“Rahim! We have to call her Rahim?”

“Yes, she is now your brother, Rahim. You will forget about your sister Rahima and welcome your brother. Can you do that, girls? It’s very important that you speak only of your brother, Rahim, and never mention that you have another sister.”

“Just in case we forget what she looked like, Parwin drew this picture of Rahima.” Rohila handed Madar-
jan
the sketch Parwin had done while she was cutting my hair. It was an incredible likeness of me, the old me with long hair and naïve eyes. Madar-
jan
looked at the drawing and whispered something we didn’t understand. She folded the paper and placed it on the tabletop.

“Is that it? Just like that? She’s a boy?” Shahla looked skeptical.

“Just like that,” Madar-
jan
said quietly. “This is how things are done. People will understand. You’ll see.” She knew my sisters would be the hardest to convince. Everyone else—teachers, aunts, uncles, neighbors—they would accept my mother’s new son without reservation. I wasn’t the first
bacha posh
. This was a common tradition for families in want of a son. What Madar-
jan
was already dreading was the day they would have to change me back. But that would only be when I began to change into a young woman. That was still a few years away.

“Oh, wow.” Parwin had returned to the courtyard to see what happened.

“So just like that. She’s a boy.”

“Nope, not yet,” Parwin said calmly. “She’s not a boy yet.”

“What do you mean?” Rohila asked.

“She’s got to walk under a rainbow.”

“A rainbow?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My God, Parwin,” Madar-
jan
said, smiling faintly. “I don’t remember telling you about that poem. How do you even know about it?”

Parwin shrugged her shoulders. We weren’t surprised. Parwin couldn’t tell you if she had eaten breakfast but she often knew things that no one expected her to know.

“What is she talking about, Madar-
jan
?” I asked, curious to find out if Parwin was right or if her imagination had gotten the best of her today.

“She’s talking about an old poem. I don’t know if I can even remember how the story goes but it’s about what happens if you pass under a rainbow.”

“What happens if you pass under a rainbow?” Rohila asked.

“There’s a legend that walking under a rainbow changes girls into boys and boys into girls.”

“What? Is that true? Could that really happen?”

This perplexed me. I hadn’t walked under a rainbow. I’d never even seen one, for that matter. How was this change supposed to work?

“Tell us the poem, Madar-
jan
. I know you remember it.
We drank in spirits
. . .” Parwin started her off.

Madar-
jan
sighed and went into the living room. We followed. She sat with her back against the wall and looked to the ceiling, trying to recall the details. Her
chador
fell across her shoulders. We sat around her and waited expectantly.

“
Afsaanah, see-saanah
. . . ,” she began. One story, thirty stories. And then she sang the poem.

We drank in spirits and played in fields

Enamored of

Indigos, saffrons and teals

There was fog in the space

Between them and I

Colors reach to touch God in the sky

I envy the arc, stretched strong and wide

As one brilliance blends into another

Colors bow deeply to welcome a brother

We humble servants, meekly pass under

Rostam’s bow changes girl to boy, makes one the other

Until the air grows dry and tires of the game

And the mist opens its arms, colors reclaimed

CHAPTER 6

S
hekiba sat with her back against the cool wall. It was night and the house was quiet. Snoring came from every direction, some louder than others. By the soft glow of the moon, she could see the kettles and pots she had washed and stacked in the corner to make room for her blanket. Like most nights, her eyes were wide open while everyone else’s were closed. This was the hour of night when she would wonder what she could have done differently.

Her uncles had barged into the home that day, refusing to be turned away. Now that she had been reunited with her grandmother, she could hardly blame them for their persistence. No one wanted to disappoint Bobo Shahgul. She was horrid enough when she was satisfied.

It hadn’t taken long for Shekiba’s uncles to realize that something had happened to her father. The house smelled of rot and loneliness. Shekiba had stopped sweeping the floor and had let the potato peels collect in a corner, too disinterested to take them outside. After a time, she didn’t notice the smell. But it wasn’t just the house. Shekiba had become apathetic. She hadn’t bothered to wash her dress, and for most of the winter, she had curled up in a ball under a blanket, letting her own stench fester. Daylight and warmth had inspired her to wash herself but it would take more than a few baths to undo what had become of her. Her hair was a tangled nest of lice and unbrushable for months.

Shekiba was pale and gaunt. For a moment, her uncles believed they may have been looking at a
djinn
, a spirit. How could living flesh look like that?

They asked for her father, their eyes scouting the room and realizing instantly that he was not there. Shekiba trembled and turned to the side, wanting to hide from them but making sure they were not approaching her. They couldn’t see her, but they could smell fear, sweat and blood. They asked again, louder, angrier.

That was when Shekiba left. She heard a scream and a blue ghost ran into the wall that had sheltered her from the view of others—the wall her father had built to guard his family. Another scream, and as she fell to the earth, hands grabbed the ghost, shocked at how easily their fingers circled bones. The ghost wanted to fight back, to run away and escape, but the men had meat on their bones. They gripped her and she let go, allowing them to roll her onto her blanket and carry her back to the family compound in much the same way that she had carried her father to his grave.

As she passed by the tree where her family lay buried, Shekiba moaned and called out to them. She tried to lift her head to see the rounded mounds of earth.

Madar. Padar. Tariq. Munis. Bulbul.

She did not see her uncles look at each other, sharing a realization that the entire family was dead, even their brother Ismail. Shekiba didn’t see them bite their tongues, hold back their tears and mutter that they should have been there to wash their brother’s body and throw dirt on his grave. Shekiba was the last survivor—the one who should not have survived. They wondered how long this girl had been living alone and shook their heads with the shame of the situation. A girl, by herself! What dishonor this could bring to their family if anyone in the village were to find out!

They laid her in the courtyard of the home while they went to notify Bobo Shahgul. Within minutes, the spry old lady stood over Shekiba, peering down through her cataract-clouded eyes to get a better look at the grandchild she could do without.

“Tell your wives to get her washed up. Warn them that her face will turn their stomachs. And tell them to feed her. We must deal with this creature now if we are to save our good name within the village. May God punish her for keeping her father from us,
my son
! Not even telling us when he left this world! She will pay for this.”

Bobo Shahgul proved to be a woman of her word. Since her husband had died two years ago, she had happily taken on the role of the family matriarch. She presided over her sons’ brides with her walking stick, though there was nothing at all wrong with her legs. She had earned the right to walk with her head high since she had given her husband six sons and two daughters. Now it was her turn to oversee the roost with the same iron fist she had survived.

Shekiba let herself be undressed and bathed. She found it much easier than resisting. The youngest wives were assigned the formidable task of deconstructing the beast Shekiba had become. Pails of water were brought in. Her hair was sheared, too far gone to salvage. They cursed her for the rank smells of every body recess, their nostrils seared. They put food in her mouth; someone moved her jaw, reminding her to chew.

In a few days, Shekiba’s mind returned to her body. She began to hear what people were saying; she began to notice that her belly did not ache with hunger. Her fingers reached up and felt a head scarf covering the ragged edges of her chopped hair.

I must look like one of my cousins,
she thought.

Her skin was raw and reddened from the brutal baths she had been given. Her aunts had scrubbed a layer of filth from her with a washcloth too rough for her frail skin. She had some scabs, while other areas stayed red and chafed, her body too malnourished to repair minor damage. At night, she slept on a blanket in the narrow kitchen, her feet often knocking against a pot and waking her up. In the morning, she was moved into one of many rooms where she would be out of the way while the wives prepared breakfast.

I’m tired of lifting her. Get Farrah to help you. My back is aching.

You say the same thing every day! Your back, your back. Surely, it’s not from doing anything around here. What has your husband been doing to you! Tell him to go easy.

Giggling.

Shut your mouth and pick up her arms. Ugh. I am queasy enough today. I can’t stand to look at her face.

Fine, but we’ll put her in your room. My room still has her smell from yesterday and I cannot stand it.

Shekiba let herself be moved around and insulted. At least she was not being asked to participate in this existence. But that would not last. Bobo Shahgul had other plans for her.

The family home had a small kitchen where the wives all helped cook. There was one main family room where everyone sat around during the day, the children played and meals were shared. Surrounding those two main rooms were four or five other rooms, each assigned to one of Bobo Shahgul’s sons. Families slept together in one room. Only Bobo Shahgul had a room of her own.

Shekiba was on her side in her uncle’s room when she vaguely felt Bobo Shahgul’s walking stick jab into her thigh.

“Get up, you insolent girl! Enough of your nonsense. You have been asleep for over a week. You’re not going to get away with this kind of behavior in this house. God only knows what craziness your mother allowed.”