The Sound of Language (16 page)

“That is sad,” Tatjana said. “Can you have more children?”

“I don't know … maybe,” Raihana said.

Tatjana was silent for a while and then said softly, “We, you and I, women like us have been through hell. Stones shouldn't scare us.”

“I just didn't think it would happen here,” Raihana said.

“I ran with my two-year-old son and I was also pregnant,” she said. “My younger son was born here, in an asylum center. I was there for five months with my boys before they gave me asylum.”

“Because I have relatives in Denmark, I was there for just a week,” Raihana said.

“I want to go back to Bosnia. It looks like things are better,” Tatjana said, and then laughed softly. “But I don't want that for my children. Stones here are better than what is at home, ruins and bad memories.”

They fell silent after that. The break ended and students started to come back and fill the chairs. Right before Casper started to speak again Raihana leaned over to Tatjana and whispered, “I won't be scared anymore.”

Gunnar was just getting into his car when Kabir's car drove into his driveway. Kabir looked angry and Raihana seemed apologetic.

“Hej,”
Gunnar said to both Raihana and Kabir as he closed the door of his car shut.

“Hej,”
Raihana said, but her head was bowed.

“Please let her phone me when she is ready, so I can come and pick her up. You can keep your bicycle,” Kabir said. He started to un-clamp the bicycle Gunnar had loaned to Raihana from his car.

“No, no, I can bicycle back,” Raihana protested.

“I will drop her home,” Gunnar said. “And please, she can keep the bicycle.” He had looked at Raihana's bicycle in the morning and it was a lost cause.

Kabir looked at both of them sternly.

“You don't have to worry about those boys,” Gunnar said to Raihana. “I told Kabir yesterday what we plan to do. The boy who lives here, his parents have agreed that the police should talk to him. They will pick him up after school today. I will go to the police station as well. That will straighten him out.”

Kabir looked as if he wanted to say something, but he decided against it and drove away.

The fragile friendship that Raihana and Gunnar had established in the past few months seemed to have dissipated. Gunnar was acutely aware of being white, a Dane, like the boys who had hurt Raihana.

They went inside the house and Raihana put her lunch box in the fridge before going to the garage.

Gunnar followed her and pointed toward the honey extractor. “This is what brings the honey out of the honeycombs,” he said.

He showed her how to put the frames filled with honey into the honey extractor. He then pressed a button, which started the extractor; the frames rotated within the machine and honey oozed out, coming out of a nozzle at the bottom of the machine.

They made five buckets of honey from the frames they had collected from the colonies the day before.

“We stir the honey, that makes it creamy and light,” he explained. He wasn't sure if she understood. Usually she asked questions, but for the first time she was completely silent.

Christina carne to visit while Raihana was at Gunnar's house. She had just found out about what had happened.

Gunnar was relieved to see Christina. He was having a difficult time speaking with Raihana. She seemed to have lost her exuberance and it was such a shame. After all that she had seen in her home country, she had lost her laughter here, in his country where she was supposed to be safe.

“I am scared,” Raihana confessed to Christina when they sat alone on Gunnar's veranda. “This not happen here.”

“No,” Christina nodded. “But things like this happen everywhere.”

Christina always spoke slowly and clearly; Raihana liked that about her.

“I can't tell you how I feel,” Raihana said suddenly. “I don't have enough Danish.”

Christina smiled. “You will.”

“Kabir wants me to stop coming here,” Raihana told Christina.

“I know,” she said. “He talked to me today at the school. I told him that this could happen anywhere —it didn't happen to you because you come to Gunnar's house.”

“It happened because I'm Afghan,” Raihana said.

“No, it happened because those boys are foolish,” Christina said.

Gunnar set coffee cups and a pot of coffee on the table in the veranda. Their outdoor furniture was beautiful, made of teak, in traditional Danish style. Gunnar had not wanted to spend a lot of money but Anna was adamant they buy Trip Trap, the most expensive outdoor furniture. They had lived with white plastic chairs and tables for many, many years, saving up to buy the teak wooden ones. They finally had bought a set three years before Anna died.

It was nice wooden furniture but Gunnar had seen similar ones in Bilka that cost a quarter of what these had. But Anna had been stubborn. Every time Gunnar sat on the chairs now, he smiled, a part of him less wounded by Anna's loss.

Gunnar joined them for coffee at Christina's insistence.

“When the honey is ready, you should take some jars home with you,” Gunnar said because he didn't know what else to say. Honey was safe. “The honey is really yours too.”

Raihana smiled shyly.

She looked so forlorn that Gunnar said, “Don't worry about those boys anymore,” even though he had promised himself that he would try and keep her mind off the incident. But as they sat under Anna's green parasol, on her Trip Trap furniture where Gunnar could clearly see Raihana's bruises and the fear in her eyes, he realized how ridiculous it was. Of course he would have to talk about the incident. He couldn't just wish it away.

“Are Maria and the kids coming for the heather honey week?” Christina asked.

“Yes,” Gunnar said, “I think so. She hasn't said they aren't.”

Christina looked at Raihana. “Every year Gunnar and his wife took some of the colonies to the west coast and left them there to make heather honey.”

Raihana seemed to take some time to understand what Christina said.

Gunnar cleared his throat. “We go to the beach where heather grows, and we leave some colonies there, so the bees can make honey from the heather.”

“I read it in your wife's book,” she said. “Put bees near bushes and they only take heather nectar. I read it.”

“Yes, yes,” Christina said. “Gunnar's daughter-in-law, Maria?”

“Yes,” Raihana said and then added, “I meet her.” She didn't add that she didn't like Maria, and Maria didn't like her.

“She comes with her children and they go to the beach for a day to leave the bees,” Christina said.

“How long you bees leave there?” Raihana asked.

“About four to six weeks and we have made very good honey,” Gunnar said.

“Maybe you, Kabir, and Layla would like to join Gunnar and his family,” Christina said, smiling at Gunnar.

If Gunnar was surprised it didn't show. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Fine idea, Christina.”

Raihana understood what Christina had said but wondered if she had been mistaken.

“It'll be after the school closes,” Christina said. “You should go; Layla and Kabir will like it very much. Their son can play with Maria's kids.”

No, Raihana thought, she had not misunderstood. Christina wanted Raihana, Layla, Kabir, and Shahrukh to meet with Gunnar and his family. Like they were friends?

Raihana's first instinct was to refuse. Kabir would never agree and neither would Layla.

“It'll be fun,” Gunnar said. “I can meet your family and you can meet my son, Lars.”

Raihana bit her tongue. Gunnar seemed so excited about the prospect that she didn't have the heart to say no, not right away. She would later on, she thought. She would not ask Layla and Kabir, there was no point—she knew their answer.

“No rush,” Gunnar said. “We go in two weeks.”

At around four o'clock Kabir came and picked up Raihana. He didn't wait for her to call but just drove up to Gunnar's house. He spoke to Christina for a few minutes, said a quick hello to Gunnar, and then hustled Raihana into the car.

“I think you shouldn't come here during the summer holidays. We'll find you another
praktik,”
Kabir said. “I don't like that man.”

“Why?” Raihana asked.

“He seems like one of those frauds. One thing on the outside and another on the inside,” Kabir said.

“What does that mean?” Raihana asked, feeling defensive.

“He says he'll take those boys to the police but he really won't; it's all talk,” Kabir said.

“No, it isn't,” Raihana protested. “He's going to the police.”

“Whatever,” Kabir said. “These people, they think we should only clean their houses and supermarkets, that we aren't good for anything else.”

“That's not true,” Raihana said.

“Why do you defend him? He makes you clean things in his house, doesn't he? Don't you wash his clothes and dishes and clean floors?” Kabir demanded, driving faster.

“I do it because I want to,” Raihana said. “And he doesn't think I'm a servant.”

“Why? Because he saw a movie with you? And ate
samboosas
with you?” Kabir asked.

Raihana sighed. “No, because he is kind and talks to me with respect. Because he invites you and Layla and Shahrukh and me to come with him and his family to his summer house by the beach in July.”

Kabir didn't say anything for a moment. “He was just being polite; he is the type who will say anything to sound like a nice — ”

“No,” Raihana interrupted. “How can you be so bitter about these people? You live here, Kabir, in this country and — ”

“What? You think they want us here? They hate us. See what they did to you? Why don't you get it? They don't want us here.” Kabir was all but yelling as he pulled into the narrow driveway between the house and the garden hedge.

“Then why do you want to live here? Why do you want to stay here?” Raihana asked.

“Because I can't go back home, because I am a refugee and no one wants me,” Kabir said, his eyes bright with tears.

Raihana took a deep breath. “We are creatures of desperate times; you feel you have nowhere to go and I feel I have no future, no further life. I have to marry or … there is no option for me. And now this. I don't know what to do. But, Kabir, that is not the fault of all the people here. This country has been good to us.”

“But what about the people who don't want us here? What about those boys who threw stones at you? What about them?”

Raihana put her hand on Kabir's. “Not all of them are like those boys. Not all of them want to hurt us. You keep saying that the people here judge you because you are Muslim; because of the acts of a few terrorists, the entire following of Islam is now suspect, isn't that what you say? And you're doing the same thing, judging all Danes by the acts of those three boys.”

Kabir let go of the steering wheel. “I know, I know, not all Danes want us dead …”

“Gunnar is a decent man,” Raihana said.

“He really invited us to go to the beach with his family?”

“Yes,” Raihana said and smiled. “They make heather honey there.”

“Heather honey?”

“I'll tell you and Layla all about it,” Raihana said. “I read about it in that leather notebook that Gunnar's wife wrote in. Her name was Anna.”

The last day of language school was sunny. Just the day before it had rained with thunder and lightning, but as it was with summer rain, the clouds vanished into thin air and the sky looked like it had never seen a dark cloud before.

Christina was taking the class to Mønsted to celebrate the last day of school. The Mønsted limestone caves were supposed to be beautiful and the temperature inside was quite low, so everyone was advised to dress for winter.

It was a half-hour drive from the school, and after the trip to Mønsted, Christina was taking all of them to her house for lunch.

As soon as they walked inside the large entrance the chill seeped through.

“Very beautiful,” Suzi said as they leaned over a small pool of water and saw the reflection of the limestone formations on the other side lit up with hidden lightbulbs.

“I've come here four times before,” Olena complained. “Every time my relatives come to visit us from Kiev we bring them here. I know that show by heart.”

They walked into crevices and on strange paths, got stuck at one place because one of the girls, Noor from Iran, was six months’ pregnant and couldn't go up and down as easily as the others.

Raihana found a quiet place by the theater and stared at the still waters in front of her. The limestone caves were hundreds of years old and had in the past been used to mine limestone to build churches. Raihana could smell the faint odor of cheese.

“It smells funny here,” Raihana said to Olena, who came and sat next to her.

“They make cheese here; the temperature and moisture is supposed to be good for the cheese,” Olena said. “And it stinks because of it.”

Raihana didn't like Danish cheese. She had tasted blue cheese once when they had samples on top of rye bread at the supermarket. Layla had warned her against it but she was so curious she couldn't stop herself.

“The blue part is fungus,” Layla told her afterward and Raihana had felt like throwing up.

But Raihana liked the soft feta she and Layla often used in salads. It didn't smell like the inside of the limestone caves and wasn't bitter.

Raihana's and Olena's reflection were still in the water and Raihana could see the bruises on her face. The bruises might have been uncomfortable but they saved her from giving an answer to Rafeeq before he left for Pakistan. No one would press her into saying yes or no to marriage while she was recovering from the attack. But he would be back in three weeks and she would have to give an answer then.

“Pretty, isn't it?” Olena said, looking at their reflection.

“Yes,” Raihana said.

“Do your wounds still hurt?” Olena asked.

“No,” Raihana said. “But I know they are there.”

“Yes,” Olena said and nodded. “That's the scary part, isn't it?”

They didn't say anything for a while.

“Sometimes I wish I had stayed back in Afghanistan. I don't feel safer here anymore—and at least in Kabul I was prepared for the violence,” Raihana said.