Tiny Dancer (30 page)

America was supposed to be full of the Others, if not the very
Land of the Others
itself. But Zubaida hadn’t met any of the Others, yet. She recognized that therefore, there had to be least
one other group
besides her people and the Others. Whoever they were, she still didn’t know what to call them. She had no way to even describe or define them.

The trip to Texas sharpened Zubaida’s dilemma; there were so many kind and friendly people. How was that possible? And with her English developing enough that she could participate in conversations and understand most of what was said, the people she met now seemed even less foreign to her. Although their lives were greatly different from hers in terms of the available physical comforts, her lifetime of living as a part of an extended family made it easy and natural for her to recognize warmth and hospitality and to react well to it. The very core values of her own culture, far older than any form of religious control, had survived long enough to be handed down over the centuries, for no other reason than that they fit human survival so well: hospitality to a stranger, generosity to a friend, fidelity to one’s promises. No one who showed her such clear demonstrations of those very qualities could be dismissed as an Other.

Now things were growing increasingly complex because she kept running into more of them, the not-Others, whatever they ought to be called.

When Rebecca took her to Texas, she had painted Zubaida into a tiny little corner by showing her so many who were not the Others—which proved there wasn’t something special about Los Angeles. There were too many not-Others to ignore any longer. She had to somehow learn to recognize them, perhaps through some trait that they all shared.

Zubaida recognized the feeling of being pushed into a corner, for different reasons. She had watched her entire village’s female population struggle to exist in the tiny corners of their own. All of them were either women who must serve, or, like Zubaida, girls who were expected to grow up to that existence.

The images of these women and girls had made such an impact on Zubaida that even here in America, so many thousands of miles away and in such a different world, she could still sense them inside of herself. That old cornered feeling throbbed inside of her. Meanwhile, contradictions clashed between the world of the Others as it had been described to her, and the simple world that Peter and Rebecca were showing her each day. Each point of view battled to become the truth in her eyes.

She was doing her best to follow her father’s directive and learn everything that she could while she was in America, but he had not told her what she was supposed to
do
with all of that information other than share it with the others in the family, once she returned.

But what happened the day
after
Zubaida finished telling them everything she knew about life in America and everything she knew about reading and writing? What was she supposed to do, then—go find a corner to occupy and watch it slowly grow smaller and smaller with each passing year?

Her loyalty to her family and to the familiarity of her old life was solid inside of her. Homesickness was a constant nagging feeling in the back of her mind and the pit of her stomach. But as the time to return back home began to close in on her, the question of what she was returning to was becoming difficult to ignore. Just because she was a master of maintaining a nonchalant attitude even when confronted with amazing things, she was only human, an eleven year-old girl. The opportunity to go shopping with a bunch of girlfriends in a mall conveyed messages far more potent than simple challenges about greed and the worship of material things. These messages were far more ominous in terms of their capacity to affect her.

This kind of personal experience taught her how to exercise personal choice, how to consider her own individual style of dress, and how to devise her own way of presenting her personality to the world instead of hiding it under veils. Were these the corrupting forces that the Taliban clerics railed against? Because they didn’t make Zubaida feel corrupted; they made her feel stronger.

Where was she supposed to put that strength, once she brought it back home with her? What would her family think about that? What could they possibly expect from her?

She certainly couldn’t see any way to leave it here, and since everybody kept assuring her that she was going to be allowed to go home, where could she hide her education back in her homeland? Where could she hide her cultural awakening and her sharpened personality and her personal strength?

Was there any veil thick enough to keep all of that hidden from disapproving eyes whenever she was out in public? At home, were there walls thick enough to restrain her curiosity?

Her father had asked her to become someone that her own world didn’t know how to understand and accept. On the other hand, Peter and Rebecca were showing her a life that she wasn’t going to be allowed to live with them in America. It was as if she had become some kind of a ball, and now everyone was taking turns at batting her this way and that, without anybody saying a word to her about where she was supposed to eventually land.

* * *

Kerrie Benson spent the first two weeks of May watching Zubaida slowly withdraw into long silences. Benson’s unique student still participated in classroom work but she was beginning to have daily spats with classmates. They were always minor issues, things that were quickly resolved, things that any other girl might suddenly find to be of concern. The difference with Zubaida was that she was having more of those moments and they were getting in her way at school.

When she and her best friend Emily got into a spat, Benson finally took Zubaida aside and quietly told her that she had been noticing some changes in her behavior. This argument with Emily was causing Benson to wonder—was something going on that she should know about?

At first Zubaida gave her the standard look-away-and-clam-up routine, but when Benson asked when her next surgery was taking place, Zubaida suddenly looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Then all her concerns burst out of her like a flash desert sandstorm. Yes, her final operation was coming up in a couple of days, on Friday, May 16th.

Even though it was the last one, she dreaded the hospital and the anesthesia. Most of all she dreaded another recovery. And this time, she knew that after the recovery period, she would be returning back home to Afghanistan. She missed her family and wanted to be back with them, but she also couldn’t imagine what sort of a life awaited her at home.

Or perhaps she could imagine it all too well. It struck Benson that Zubaida didn’t say a word about having any problems with the idea of leaving behind her American comforts. She accepted those things as part of this whole experience, but didn’t appear to have any concerns over leaving material wealth behind.

The things that bothered her went deeper, and presented Benson with a dilemma she could neither fix nor teach Zubaida how to resolve. Not even Zubaida’s dread of yet another surgery, her relief at having her health restored, or even her enjoyment of school and friends was enough of a distraction to keep her from being haunted by the question—whatever was going to happen after this final surgery and recovery period?

Peter and Rebecca had assured her that she could stay long enough to finish out the school year, since they saw it as an important milestone for her to add in with the entire experience of being in America. But that only extended her stay a couple of extra weeks. She had to wonder whether her last day in that elementary school would be her last day of schooling in this life.

Kerrie Benson could only respond to Zubaida by reminding her of her strong inner qualities, which had frequently impressed Benson. She pointed out that whatever direction Zubaida’s life took, those same qualities that would ultimately determine how well she adapted to whatever new challenges were going to confront her back at home.

Zubaida nodded, saying that she understood. But as usual, she kept most of everything masked with indifference until she could go off someplace by herself and try to figure things out.

There wasn’t going to be a lot of time alone for that. The surgery was coming up two days later, on Friday, May 16th, when Dad/Peter/Doctor Grossman would change her body, one more time.

* * *

For this final surgery, Peter Grossman had to again project his imagination into the future—not just to set the healing process in motion in the best way, but also to choose the particular adjustments to Zubaida’s remaining scars so that she would retain maximum function over time, even if she was unable to receive the periodic adjustments she would get if she stayed in America. His work had to push her ability to absorb so much surgery within a compacted time against the possibility that this could be the last surgical intervention she would have, at least until she was old enough to travel on her own and make her own decisions—if that day was ever to come.

Once his team had her prepped for surgery and placed under anesthesia, he began the first of the day’s four procedures. The main task of the day was to give back as much range of motion as possible to the heavily scarred areas beneath her left arm. He used two large “Z-plasty” cuts to open the areas of skin contracture, then re-folded the skin flaps to allow the flesh a maximum capacity for stretching. He rearranged the tissue in layers, stitching the deeper muscle layer first, then stitching the skin covering again. The length, depth, and angle of each cut were vital to success of the operation, and would control how much motion that the remaining scars would allow her to have.

The next three procedures consisted of several dozen injections of a dilute steroid solution into the swollen areas of scarring to her torso, left arm and shoulder, and across her face. These were the final steroid treatments that he would be able to administer to her scars, boosting the process of smoothing them out. This final adjustment to her new suit of skin consisted of sixty separate injections to her body and face.

A couple of hours later, the work was done and Zubaida was transferred to the recovery room. Peter planned to bring her home as soon as possible this time, knowing that her morale would be higher in a safe home situation.

And with that, his official job came to an end.

He was finished, a year and a half after first being contacted by his brother in law Michael and told all about an Afghan girl, burned beyond recognition, whom a bunch of soldiers and army doctors wanted to help out. He had performed the miracle of restoration they sought from him and which he had promised both to her father and to her. Video and still cameras had thoroughly documented the process of restoration, and future medical students or doctors would have it available as a reference case if they found themselves presented with a similar disaster.

Ordinarily, there wouldn’t be much left for him to do. Check with his assistant of many years, Stephanie Osadchey—who began working at the Grossman Burn Center back when it was run just by Peter’s father—and make sure the record keeping on the case was up to date. Then, after a few follow-up visits to check on the patient’s healing, ordinarily, the case would be over.

Now, however, the last surgery meant that he was finally going to shift from being Dr. Peter—who repeatedly carved on Zubaida as if he were whittling wood, each time leaving her bandaged and sore—to just being “Dad.” Then he could focus on doing whatever he could to help the girl who had become his surrogate daughter begin getting ready to make the transition out of her American home and back to an environment which had utterly changed while she was gone. With the fall of the Taliban rulers, there was talk about new levels of freedom for women, perhaps even access to schools. But there was also chaos among the local warlords throughout the country, so that existence was still carried out on a very provisional and day-by-day basis.

He knew that when it came to helping Zubaida prepare to face that world, where so much of what was going on lay beyond the control of any individual, the best thing he and Rebecca could do was to keep impressing upon her how close to her they had come to feel. They intended to make it clear that they were determined to stay in touch with her after she returned home.

Zubaida lay half-awake in the recovery room, balanced on the line between waking and sleeping. Her thoughts also balanced themselves; half of her awareness realized she was coming out of anesthesia after another surgery. That part knew the score well by now and was waiting for the first pain to hit. But the other half of her was still fading in and out of the place dreams and nightmares coexist, borne along on a flood of distorted images.

The half of her who knew she was in the hospital and had a fair idea of what had happened to her felt completely cut off from the half of her who still wandered in a dream state. In dreams, she looked for herself and couldn’t find anything. Who was she, anyway? She had been Zubaida as she knew herself to be, then the fire dunked her in hell for months and brought her back out melted like candle wax. Who was she then, when strangers stared and the cruel ones laughed?

Who was it that her father fought so hard and so long to help? Was that Zubaida? Was Zubaida that monstrous piece of beggar bait, drawing coins from sympathetic palms in the marketplace? If so, then Zubaida was gone now.

But this person whom Peter carved back out of her melted flesh—was that Zubaida? Because as that Zubaida emerged, over time, she also allowed herself to be transformed by the Americans and their lives and their friendship. Her friends at school became a partial reflection of her, as had her wide range of experiences in this place. She had been forming an American version of herself, one who loved playful mischief and who delighted in having little adventures with friends in public places. That Zubaida also was deeply impressed with the kind of freedom women have in America, and with the kind of personal power they can casually employ, almost anywhere they go.