Words in the Dust (17 page)

As soon as I got out of the car, Baba-jan wrapped me in his big powerful arms and swept me up off the ground in a great hug. “Allahu Akbar! God is great! Look at what they’ve done for my baby girl! Look, Khalid. Look, everyone! Come see how they’ve changed Zulaikha!” His eyes glowed with the same fire of excitement as the day he announced his job on the school. He smelled of the sweat and dust and welding slag from a hard day working, and I could draw it all in through my repaired nose. I rested my head against his chest. I was too old to be held up like little Habib, but I loved being surrounded by my father’s arms. Baba-jan, sweet, good Baba-jan, was making my transformation all I had ever dreamed about.

His thick, rough-skinned hand rested on my forehead and he gently pushed my head up off of his chest. “No, no, Zulaikha, no more hiding away. My beautiful daughter.” He set me down and turned me to face the rest of the family.

Khalid stood on his toes, stretching his neck one way and another, trying to look closer. When I smiled at him with a real smile, he gasped and roughly pulled Habib closer so he
could see. Habib was more interested in Baba’s excitement. He clapped his hands and giggled until Khalid grabbed his head and forced him to look at me. Habib squinted, looking carefully. He pointed to his own mouth and then mine, smiling.

“Wah wah, ’Laikha!” said Habib.

The look on my youngest brother’s face made my eyes ache with the pressure of holding back joyful tears.

Malehkah, sitting on the front porch with her hands over her swollen belly, nodded to me. “You look better.”

From Malehkah, this was high praise. If only Zeynab were here to see me transformed, everything would be perfect.

Baba-jan clapped his hands. “Tonight, we celebrate! Malehkah, we must have the biggest feast. We’ll eat all the best of everything.” He put his arm around Najib’s shoulders. “Come, Najibullah, I have some plans for the Nimruz Clinic that I want to show you!” Baba-jan led Najib around the house to the back courtyard to talk about men’s business.

Malehkah squinted her eyes and wrinkled her nose at me, and I noticed she was looking not at me, but at my mouth. This is how she’d always looked at me. But this time, there was a difference. Though she scowled, there was a hint of an upturn to her lips. Not a smile, but not really a frown either. She shook her head and went into the house.

I leaned back against the compound wall in the quiet front courtyard, letting the warm sunlight shine on my face. I was home. And for the first time in my life, I felt whole.

The next two months blurred into one long endless stream of work. Afghanistan held a big election for Parliament. Baba was pretty excited for it. He even insisted that Malehkah vote, saying it was important for everyone to exercise their new rights. But I think he also told Malehkah to vote for those candidates whose ideas might lead to more welding and construction contracts.

I couldn’t make myself care about the election. Malehkah’s coming baby made her tired quickly. That left me to take care of the entire household. I looked after the boys. I cleaned and dusted. I went to the bazaar. I cooked most of the meals. I fed and milked Torran. I cleaned her stall. I watered and weeded the garden in the morning and evening.

Most nights, I collapsed on my toshak tired and alone. In the morning, when I woke, I still missed my sister. I had asked Baba several times if he would take me to visit Zeynab, but he always said he was too busy and we’d go as soon as his work schedule slowed down. Sometimes I’d think about all the things I wanted to tell Zeynab, about how wonderful it was to be able to go to the bazaar without worrying about everyone staring at my mouth, about how the business contracts from her bride-price were bringing Baba so much
success, keeping him busy and happy. Then I’d think of all the work that I would have to do that day. And the next day. And the day after that.

My only breaks were the short lessons I was able to sneak with Meena. Since I went to the bazaar often, I had been to her shop many times, showing the muallem what I had copied, sounding out words, and even putting whole sentences together.

Now I was fighting the one war Afghanistan could never win — the battle against dust. The Winds of 120 Days had died down, but even so, everything in the house somehow ended up covered in sandy grit. Because of this, I found myself dusting everything in the house over and over again.

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip as I dusted off trunks in the storage room. Inside my own trunk next to me was the notebook from Captain Mindy. I took it out and turned to the page of poetry that Meena had recited, then I took the pen that I had clipped to the notebook cover and began to copy the lines again. Right to left, the swoops and dots and swirls formed words across the page.

I looked at what I had written and smiled. By copying the poem and reciting it from memory as I wrote, I could make connections between the sounds of the letters and their words. Between the words and the meaning in some of the lines. It wasn’t as though I actually knew when I knew something. Just one day I would realize I understood something that I hadn’t understood before. Was this learning?

“Run, Habib! The djinn will get you! Aaar!” Khalid shouted outside the storage room. I sighed. I should get back to work. There was more to do. Always more. I stuffed my notebook back into my trunk and slammed the lid.

Out in the main room, Habib tottered along, squealing and laughing, while Khalid ran after him with his arms up in the air.

“Boys, please! I’m trying to rest. Just for a little while,” Malehkah moaned from where she was trying to relax on a toshak.

Habib made for the front door, but Khalid cut him off. “I’m the djinn! Raaaaa!” Khalid showed his teeth. Habib shouted and ran in a circle toward the back door where they’d come in. “Raaaaaar!” Khalid roared, chasing him with his arms out to the side, flapping them like wings.

Malehkah groaned and flopped a toshak over her head. “Zulaikha, quiet them down! They need a bath anyway. Then wash their clothes too.”

When would it stop? When would it get easier? When Malehkah had the baby? When Baba found a husband for me? I touched my whole upper lip and ran my tongue along my
teeth. “Now what?” I whispered. My mouth was changed. But every day was the same.

After the boys were bathed and playing quietly, I told Malehkah that I needed to go to the bazaar to buy more soap for the laundry. She didn’t even tell me to hurry. She just bit her lower lip and squinted her eyes while she held her belly. When I asked if she was okay, she only told me where the money jar was in the room she shared with Baba. I felt a little guilty for leaving Malehkah all by herself with the boys and with the other work I still needed to do. I’d just have to hurry. Moving quickly and keeping a watch for Anwar, I crossed the river and rushed to the little sewing shop at the end of the bazaar.

“Salaam, child,” Meena said as I came into the shop. She put down some curtains she had been sewing. “It is very good to see you again.”

In a few minutes, we were sipping our tea back in Meena’s little apartment.

“I’m understanding even more of the poem than I did last week when I was here,” I said after I took a drink.

“Good,” said Meena. She seemed to be looking past me toward the shop.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“What?” She turned her attention back to me. “No. I’m just … That’s good, child. You understand more. Very good.”

“I’m starting to be able to piece together whole sentences. And learning the sounds in some words can help me figure out other words. It’s as if the more I learn, the faster …”
Something was wrong. We’d met many times now, and I’d never quite seen her distracted like this. She wouldn’t even meet my gaze. “Muallem-sahib?”

“Hmm?” She looked up and shook her head. “Yes, I’m sorry, Zulaikha. But there’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.” She hesitated. “I have been talking to some of my friends. Especially an old friend from Herat, who used to teach at the university there.”

I sat up. “How did you meet this person? Was he here?”

“When I heard they were looking for teachers for An Daral’s new girls’ school, I applied. My friend was visiting.
She
has a job with the new Department of Education. Imagine my surprise when she interviewed me.” Muallem smiled brightly. “And my happiness when they hired me.”

“It must have been wonderful to see your old friend,” I said.

Muallem nodded. “It’s also nice to have a new job. I could use a bit more money.” She took a sip of tea and waited for a moment. “I start as soon as the school is built. When that happens, it may be even more difficult to meet for our already rare lessons. So … I spoke to my friend. I told her about you. About your mother. I said that even though you’re behind due to a lack of educational opportunities, I believe you could be an extraordinary student.”

My cheeks felt hot. “Tashakor, Muallem-sahib.”

Meena nodded. She wasn’t finished. “Zulaikha, my friend was so impressed by your story that she has offered to teach you, to get you caught up on all the schooling you’ve missed. You could live and study with her in Herat, and then,
when you’re ready, maybe you could apply for entrance to the university. Someday you could earn a degree. You could become a teacher at a school like the one here in An Daral, or even at a university in Herat or Kabul. There would be many more options for your future.”

I almost dropped my cup, but managed to steady my shaking hand long enough to set it down on the small table. I felt much as I did when Baba told me the Americans could fix my mouth. Only this was something different. To study in Herat? To learn about the great poets in the city where they lived and wrote thousands of years ago? I could hardly imagine how wonderful it would be.

But I was also needed at home. Malehkah would need help with the new baby soon. And with Zeynab gone, there was so much work. And Baba …

“Baba would never let me.” I felt like I was rejecting her again the way I had before.

“How do you know?”

“How do I … I mean, I just …”

He had let Najib and me fly all the way to Kandahar for my surgery. And if he was helping to build a new school, maybe he’d be open to girls seeking an education. He’d even encouraged Malehkah to vote. Still, it was a crazy idea. “My family doesn’t even know I’ve been coming to see you. If they find out I’ve been sneaking around to study here in secret, I’ll get a beating. Anyway, even if my father didn’t care about any of that, I doubt he’d agree,” I said. “It would be too expensive.”

Meena smiled. “It’s free, child. My friend owes me some favors. And …” She paused. “And I owe your mother this. If it hadn’t been for my literature circle …” I was about to speak again, but Muallem cut in quickly. “Take your time. It is a big decision. Think about it. Ask your father about it. It is a new Afghanistan. Women and girls are back in school, and I think you are destined to be one of them.”

I smiled at Meena. She reached out and squeezed my hand. Then she went to her shelf and brought down a worn leather book.

“Now, let’s put our thoughts of your bright future to the side for a moment, and turn our attention to the past by looking at more of Firdawsi’s
Shahnameh.
”

When the lesson was finished and I started toward home, I was still thinking about the poems Muallem had showed me. I stopped in the bazaar to buy some peppers for our meal, happy again that my mouth was fixed. Looking normal, I drew much less attention to myself. All around the market, in the café, and just in groups around the street, men were talking about the election.

A young man selling soda in a café waved his hands as he talked. “The Americans rigged the whole thing so this woman … What’s her name? This … Malalai Joya would win,” he said. “It’s not enough that they drop their bombs on our children, now they want their puppets in the capital too!”

An old man with a long white beard twisted the cap off a bottle of orange Zam Zam and nodded. “
Women
don’t even want a woman in parliament. A couple crazy female ballot-counters changed all the women’s votes so Joya would win. My cousin saw this happen.”

A third man, in a spotless, bright white perahan-tunban, spoke up. “I cannot believe how you all complain! At least we get to vote. It’s better than when the Taliban were in charge.”

The shop owner gave the man his change and a hard look. “Tell that to the innocent women and children who the Americans bombed in Kunar Province. They were just trying to dig their families out of the rubble from the first bombing when the Americans hit them again. The Taliban never had bombers.”

The man in white shook his head and walked away. “You just can’t stand the idea of a woman in parliament.”

A woman in parliament? Incredible news! Hard to believe. But then, the news about the Americans bombing children was hard to believe too.

“Zulaikha,” someone whispered from a narrow alley between two closed-down shops. I jumped at the sound, but it wasn’t Anwar. “Zulaikha,” she called again.

“Zeynab!” I rushed into the tiny alley and threw my arms around my sister, chadri and all. “Zeynab, is it you?”

She pulled out of my embrace and folded the front of her chadri up over her head so I could see her.

“Zeynab.” My hands came to my face as I looked at her. When I last saw my sister, her hair was curled and her face made up. She was radiant. But now there were dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her lips were dry and cracked. “What happened?”

“Nothing has happened.” She smiled. “Your mouth. So beautiful. I heard that you’d had your surgery. I just wanted to see you.”

“What are you doing in An Daral?”

“Tahir is visiting his brother. I managed to convince him to let me come along. We’re not staying very long, though.”

“Then invite me to your new house. I’ve missed you so much.”

She ran her fingers through her matted, dusty hair. “I wanted to invite you, but I am so very busy. You see, Leena is very nervous and will have one of her attacks if she has to work too hard. Belquis is pregnant and so she can’t get around much. Then there are a great many children to take care of. And our house is so big, it …” She bit her finger and turned away for a moment. Then she looked at me and forced a smile. “… takes longer to clean,” she finished.

“But is your husband kind at least?”

She didn’t answer right away, but stared into the distance. Then it was as if she suddenly remembered I had asked her a question. “Yes. Of course he is. I am trying very hard to please him. He is helping to teach me.” She moved a lock of hair away from her face and wiped her nose with her chadri. “Every
night.” She struggled to get her words out. “He wants me to have a son, but I don’t know …” She wiped her eyes.

My legs shook. Zeynab had been my whole life. Always so pretty and happy and kind. And now …

I hugged her, squeezing her as she used to squeeze me when I was upset. But now she hung limp in my arms, resting her cheek atop my head. I felt her tears on my chador.

“I will miss you, Zulaikha.” She took a step back. “I love you. I always have.”

“Wait!” I said. “Don’t leave. Come home with me just for a bit. Or we could go someplace and talk.” My mind was spinning, dizzy, trying to think of a place we could go.