Tiny Dancer (31 page)

She formed her rapport with the other girls at school by rapidly developing an Americanized persona which they found easy to accept. When she was in her most American mode, she tried not to think of her family or her home village, because she could sense how odd her behavior would look to the American girls. She knew her father would be alarmed at the changes in her, but when her American girl act became so natural to her that it didn’t feel like an act anymore, then was that the “Zubaida” she was, now?

Whatever was supposed to happen to the American side of Zubaida after she returned to Afghanistan? If she hung on to it, would she be seen as corrupted by her journey? Or if she tried to hide it, could she keep it under the veil forever? She felt like a caged bird who had tasted freedom over the treetops, and who was now expected to meekly fly back into her cage and voluntarily close the door on herself.

But then there was her family, and her ache for them. There was her hunger for the warm and familiar sense of sitting around the house with everyone after dinnertime and listening to their conversations buzzing around her ears until the sounds lulled her into sleep. Even the firm feel of the sleeping pallet was an old and welcome embrace. The fine beds at Peter and Rebecca’s house might be far more comfortable once people got used to them, but they could never have the comfort of being associated with a lifetime of experience at the way a familiar sleeping surface feels. At home, when she curled up on the folded blankets, the familiarity of the sensations did more to comfort her than the most expensive mattress in the biggest American home.

That small and personal level of familiarity was the thing that called out to her with the most compelling voice. The smell of her mother’s hearth, the feel of her native clothing, the sound of her family’s voices, all such memories filled her with a homesick ache that sometimes nearly bent her over. A million tiny memories of such things were all a part of who she was, who she had always been.

But where was the place for Zubaida within those layered familiarities? Such things came from the memory of a girl who had never fit the profile of a docile Middle Eastern girl in the first place. Now, with her eyes open to countless possibilities she could not have dreamed of a year earlier, how was she supposed to be able to confine herself to that tiny little corner of the room that she would be expected to occupy in her parents home? Where was she supposed to exist after she was married off to some man who might or might not decide that her tiny corner of
his
house should be even smaller that it was in her parents’ home?

The questions swirled inside of her until she was so dizzy that the bed seemed to spin. The part of her that knew where she was realized that the aftermath of anesthesia usually left her dizzy and nauseated until the chemicals cleared out of her body, but the part of her that was still lost to dreams and nightmares continued following behind the characters floating through her brain. Some of the characters represented family members, fellow villagers, and the glaring Taliban enforcers. Others reflected her recent experiences with images of Peter and Rebecca and the Burn Center staff, friends at school, her teacher. But every one of the rest of her dream characters was a variation of herself and all of them were trying to imitate the real Zubaida.

She was eager to see what they would find, so that maybe then she would know which Zubaida she was supposed to be after she finished waking up and went back to Peter and Rebecca’s to recover. And which Zubaida she should be once she returned to school for the last weeks of the term.

And which Zubaida she should be when she returned again to her side of the world.

Chapter Fifteen

By the time that the maximum
restorative effects of Zubaida’s many surgeries started to show, the little fits and starts of publicity that previously ran through various news media turned into a steady stream. Quickly, a sandstorm of media interest filled Rebecca Grossman’s days. Finally the phone/fax/email queries overwhelmed her. Before long, she and Peter had to stop taking any media calls at all. They sat down to sift through the offers that had already come in.

The first thing to consider was the potential impact that media exposure might have on Zubaida. Had her self-esteem been bolstered well enough that she could enjoy such attention, or would she just find the scrutiny intimidating?

They decided to test the water by allowing L.A. Times reporter Steve Lopez to do a piece with the family, since there was no stress on Zubaida in a newspaper article. She seemed happy enough about the little interview, and an American newspaper wasn’t of much concern to her. Beyond that, there was one offer, though, that seemed like a safe way to start with something where she would actually participate, but would still be easy on her. They could postpone deciding about the other requests until after they saw how she reacted to this one.

So they accepted an offer from a Los Angeles radio station that broadcasts in
Farsi
and
has a large immigrant audience. They invited Zubaida to come in for a morning show interview. It seemed like a perfect setup; she and Rebecca would be together the whole time, sitting at a table across from the radio show host, and Zubaida would be wearing a headset and answering call-in questions in her own language from the listening audience.

Zubaida not only agreed, but showed real interest in the idea of talking to a lot of people over a telephone at a radio station. She was so intrigued by the opportunity that once Rebecca escorted her into the station and everyone gave her a few minutes to get oriented, she answered all of the host’s initial interview questions without any apparent difficulty.

Rebecca couldn’t follow the exact conversation, but she delighted in seeing how Zubaida came to life at the opportunity to tell her story in her own words. She could interpret Zubaida’s voice, body language and gestures well enough to follow along while she told the listeners all about dancing her way into the fire, and about the nightmare months, and about her present-day amazement at this second new life.

For Rebecca, the indelible image of that day was the sight of Zubaida perched happily next to the large radio mike with her head engulfed in the earphones, answering the first call with the cheery words, “Hello, Zubaida here!” and then glancing over at Rebecca to raise her eyebrows and flash her a grin before turning back to the microphone and taking the call.

For the next hour, Zubaida spoke without hesitation to the call-in audience. Rebecca visualized this girl’s life in the mud-brick ruins, followed by only a few brief months in America—much of which were spent in the hospital or in recovery—and then she tried to grasp the enormity of the cultural adjustment that she was seeing. She didn’t have to understand the process to be elated at witnessing this moment of glory for the little girl who called her Mom.

So she and Peter decided to take another step, and allowed local TV reporter Linda Alvarez to do a feature piece on their little family. All Zubaida had to do was to sit down for a brief interview with Alvarez, and then let the cameras follow her around for awhile. Once again, she took to the whole experience. By this point it was plain that there was something appealing to Zubaida in this kind of attention. Instead of being intimidated, she clearly regarded all of it as an adventure. Peter and Rebecca watched her adapt to these media situations, minute by minute. She blossomed under the attention as if the spotlights invigorated her, like strong sunshine.

That left them wide open for a trip to Chicago and then to New York city, as a threesome. They did a brief TV appearance in Chicago, although Zubaida didn’t have a chance to get warmed up before the segment moved on. She did, however, very much like the long black limousine that took them to and from the studio. The concept of having free fruit and soft drinks available from the moment that you step into a car seemed like a fine idea to her.

She stood up to the intensity of downtown Chicago at rush hour while the trio posed for pictures beneath the skyscrapers. While she didn’t like the noise any better than Peter or Rebecca did, she didn’t shrink away from it either, and walked along happily between them.

She showed the same casual acceptance of big city environment when they reached New York City, and happily posed for pictures on the streets in Manhattan.

She was curious, however, as to why the limousine sent by the TV studio in Manhattan was not as long as the car they got in Chicago…

* * *

On a number of different nights, Peter and Rebecca sat up late talking over what they should do about Zubaida. Her impending departure was a giant stone hanging over them. They were a married couple hoping for a child of their own, and in many ways it was as if Zubaida was a strange fulfillment of that desire. As the day of her leaving approached, they finally began ask themselves one central question:

How can we send her back to that?

Peter and Rebecca now faced the dilemma of many dedicated foster parents. The problem, of course, was that Zubaida was her parents’ child. Questions of life and livelihood or of health and safety or of education and possibility had to take a back seat to the simple fact that Zubaida was the daughter of another man and woman. So long as she desired to return home and her parents were actively interested in having her come back, the only decent thing Peter and Rebecca could do was to gracefully let her go. The pain of separation was merely an unfortunate side effect of the year-long experiment.

Zubaida often talked of her family, about missing them. Once she abandoned the fantasy of having Peter and Rebecca come back to Afghanistan to live next door, she was able to accept that their lives and their families were in America, just as hers were in Afghanistan. She knew that to return to her own people was to leave Peter and Rebecca, to leave her American friends, her school, and perhaps to never attend a formal school again. But she needed to go. Peter and Rebecca both saw that in her. She needed to continue to feel herself as a part of the Hasan family and of their extended family as well. That feeling of wholeness was worth more to her than any material temptation her life in American had to offer. While it was plain to both of them that Zubaida returned their feelings of love, and that she had bonded with them as much as they had with her, they also saw the animation in her features when she talked about her family. It wasn’t just that she missed them in a general way; she worried about how they were, without her. She seemed to feel a strong need to be back with them once again as a functioning member of the family. She needed to be needed. Every time that Peter and Rebecca talked about Zubaida’s future, they had to face the blunt truth: She has been like a daughter, but all along, she was another family’s child.

Zubaida participated in the school’s year-end ceremony with her classmates, and Peter and Rebecca threw a big back yard farewell party for her and her friends from school. Home videos from that day show a bunch of girls playing happily together, with Zubaida holding her own among all of them. The kids also had two huge boxes filled with presents that they collected at school, to send back to the other children in Zubaida’s family. The task fell to Rebecca of seeing to it that the articles actually arrived halfway around the world, to a town with no mail service.

Pictures from that day are also mutual testimony to Zubaida’s spirit as well as of the acceptance and openness of the other kids. Her classmates had been given a language of tolerance and support to use with this strange girl. Teacher Kerrie Benson, with the help of the class parents, used it to find a familiar and accepting way for the students to look at her, while Zubaida’s drive to be an active part of a group carried her into the good graces of the others.

The Others.

Peter filled his off-hours in going over logistics with Rebecca, setting up Zubaida’s return to her family. The State Department offered to arrange for an escort to accompany her back home, but Peter determined that after coming so far with her on this journey, he would finish it with her as well. By this time, the NGO that helped to bring Zubaida out of Afghanistan had moved on to other cases, so Peter and Rebecca took on all of the planning necessary for Zubaida’s return themselves.

So far, Peter had taken the enormous risk of insisting that his father agree to expose their practice to the kind of scrutiny and criticism that was virtually guaranteed if anything unexpected went wrong during her time here. Then, with the surgeries well underway and the medical risk finally shrinking, he and Rebecca took her into their home and spread the risk to their personal lives. No doubt they would have come under attack if any sort of major accident had befallen Zubaida while she was under their care, or if she had been interested in making good on her threats to harm herself.

Over the course of a year, they had run that gauntlet with nothing worse than day-to-day difficulties. Now there was one remaining risk, to personally escort her home and hand her over to the parents who had entrusted her into Peter’s care and eventually into his home. The trip actually presented a series of risks, not the least of which was the simple fact that Afghanistan was still a contested country dominated by Muslims, some of whom were extreme in their fundamentalism and in their hatred of all things Jewish.

So of course they would love to meet a man on their home turf with the last name of Grossman who was messing about with the health of a young girl from their country.

But he needed to look Zubaida’s mother and father in the eyes while he gave them back their child, so that they could see for themselves that Zubaida had never been without care and protection. He and Rebecca hadn’t intended to become surrogate parents at the outset, but it was as if events were designed to push them into it. Now with the bond between them and Zubaida as strong as it was, they wanted to offer a clear gesture to the Hasan family that they hoped Zubaida would always be a part of their lives and that they had no intention of abandoning her just because they were returning her to her homeland.