Words in the Dust (19 page)

We reached Farah City in far less time than it had taken before. Najib asked for directions to the hospital as soon as we got to town. He brought the car skidding to a stop outside the hospital gate. Night had fallen.

A guard rushed out of the gatehouse. He pointed his rifle at us. “Slow down! What’s your hurry?”

“My sister,” Najib shouted out his window. “She’s been burned. They say she’s here.”

“Well, you’re not driving that fast in here!”

“Bale,” Najib said. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

The guard pulled the gate open and Najib drove inside. The front courtyard was mostly gravel for parking, but there were several large, dried-out flower beds. Not even weeds grew in them. Tall trees formed a sort of canopy that drenched the place in gloom. When the wind stirred the branches, little jagged shadows cut the moonlight along the ground. It would have been pretty, if it weren’t such a horrible place.

We stepped out of the car. Smoke billowed from under the hood. A group of men sat on the cement front porch. The red-orange lights from their cigarettes flared in the dark, and the conversation quieted as we approached.

“You tear your car up driving so fast.” Tahir drew a long drag on his cigarette and stood up.

“Tahir, sahib.” Najib addressed Zeynab’s husband in tight, controlled words. “What happened?”

“Nobody knows.” Tahir shrugged. “There was an accident. A hose must have come loose on the cookstove when she was making supper. She caught on fire.” He blew out a big puff of smoke. “But we put it out quickly. She’ll be fine.” Najib nodded and we turned to go into the building, but Tahir grabbed my brother by the shirt. “Whoa, rafiq. She is in the women’s section of the hospital. You cannot go in there.”

I didn’t even wait for Najib’s approval. I ran inside, letting the wooden screen door slam shut behind me. Blinking from my tears and from the light as I came in out of the dark, I was horrified at the sight of the filthy place. The bare cement floor needed to be swept. The single light in the middle of the hallway barely prevented total darkness, but still attracted a frantic swarm of flying bugs. I called out to the first person I saw. He was at the end of the dingy hallway, looking at some papers. “My sister, Zeynab Frouton, was burned. Where is she?”

The man looked up with a frown. “Are you a visitor here? Did you check in with the hospital administrator?”

“What?” I couldn’t believe this man was going to bother with procedure in this disgusting, run-down place. “Let me see my sister!”

The man sighed, shook his head, and then gestured for me to follow him down the hall. A door was open to the night, without even a screen. In the next dark room, a horrible rotting smell stung my nose. The man pulled a string to turn on the light. Next to a large empty washtub, blankets stained in blood or waste made a feast for the buzzing flies.

This was a hospital? They had brought my sister to this place to get better?

The man led me past the laundry and stopped outside an open door, motioning into a chamber lit only by a dim lamp in the corner. I went inside. From across the room, I saw my sister in the only bed. She didn’t look so bad. She was wearing her pretty dress with the pink and purple flowers. I slowly stepped closer.

“Oh, Allah, have mercy,” I whispered. “Zeynab.” She wasn’t wearing a dress. She wasn’t wearing anything except a stained white sheet over her legs. The beautiful pink and purple flowers weren’t flowers at all, not beautiful at all. It was her scorched and blistered skin.

“Oh.” I looked at her. I shifted my weight from one foot to another. “Oh, Zeynab. Oh.”

My sister lay naked from the waist up, moaning softly. She was burned everywhere, all over her body. The top layers of her skin had somehow shrunk back, tearing into clumps that had then bubbled and blistered into a dark purple-black. The exposed skin below was bright pink. A section of
the skin over her stomach had scorched to a sort of yellow and peeled back. Her breasts were bright pink, her nipples bits of black char. Her neck was a bleeding, oozing black wound.

But the worst was her face. I sobbed almost to a scream. Her beautiful, long, dark hair looked as if it had melted into her seared scalp. Her nose had disappeared almost completely. There were no lashes on her closed eyes. Her eyebrows were gone.

And her mouth, her lips that had never been horrible like mine, was twisted and cracked. Her upper lip had split in the middle, rolling back to expose her teeth. All my life, I had wished and prayed to be like my sister. To have a pretty face and a normal mouth. I never ever, not for one second, wanted her to look like I used to.

“Zeynab,” I wailed. “Zeynab.” Was she dead? I did my best to stop sniffling and lowered my ear over her mouth. The smell assaulted my nose — a horrible salty-sweet-sour smell, like the worst stench from the butcher district on the hottest day — and I clamped my hand to my mouth as I gagged. But she was breathing. She was still alive.

I fell into a chair beside my sister’s bed, almost dizzy. “Zeynab,” I cried. “Zeynab. Zeynab.”

I don’t know how much time passed before I felt the hand on my shoulder, but it startled me so much that I sprang up and spun around.

“Zulaikha.” It was Captain Mindy and Shiaraqa. Next to them by the hallway door was Corporal Andrews. He looked
at me and nodded. Seeing him so serious, where before he had always been smiling and happy, brought fresh tears to my eyes.

“Why are you here?” Shiaraqa asked.

I wiped my eyes. “My sister.”

Shiaraqa told Captain what I had said and she gasped, covering her mouth. For a moment, I wondered how Shiaraqa and Corporal could be in the women’s wing, but then I sobbed. The Americans with their stupid guns could do whatever they wanted. Anyway, it didn’t matter. They weren’t looking at my sister in a bad way. How could they? How could anyone look at her that way ever again?

I took a deep breath to try to collect myself, and a heavy smell hit my nose. It was Zeynab on the bed next to me, her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. She did not speak.

“Zulaikha, are you okay?” It was Shiaraqa who spoke, translating again for Captain.

Of course I was okay. It was my sister who was … who was …

“Can you help her?” I asked, speaking directly to Captain Mindy as though she could understand.

When she heard the translation, she wiped a tear from her eye and blinked several times. Shiaraqa translated her words. “Captain Edmanton is very sorry about what happened to your sister. She says the Farah Hospital doctors called for American help. She has radioed the American base at Kandahar and asked them to send a helicopter so that your
sister can be flown to the good doctors there. They are waiting for an answer. She wants to try to help her the best she can.”

Captain opened a bag that she had brought with her. She took out a small wet white cloth and rubbed it on Zeynab’s arm. Then she pulled out a clear bag with a tube and prepared a needle. Once the needle was in my sister’s arm, she taped it down before turning to me. “This will help her feel a little better until we can get her to a good hospital,” Shiaraqa translated. “She says there is not much else we can do for her in this place.”

Captain Mindy knelt down in front of me and took hold of my shoulders. She looked into my eyes and said something to Corporal Andrews. In a moment, he handed me a plastic bottle of cool water. Captain helped me tip the bottle to my lips and I drank. Then she ran her hand over my hair and spoke. Shiaraqa translated. “If we move her to a good hospital quickly, there is a chance we can save her.”

“Zul … aikha.” It was Zeynab, speaking in short hisses. I rushed to her side, leaning over her to hear her better. Her eyes, thank Allah, were not burned. When she saw me, her smile turned into a wince as the hot skin at the corners of her mouth cracked and bled.

Captain said through Shiaraqa, “Tell her she must not try to speak. She must rest. A helicopter should be on the way to take her to get help.”

My sister turned her eyes, not her head, to see who was there. She seemed to focus in on Shiaraqa for a moment before her gaze returned to the ceiling. “No,” she whispered.

“What, Zeynab?”

“Zulaikha,” Captain Mindy said softly.

I ignored her. “What did you say, Zeynab?”

Captain put her hand on my shoulder. “Zulaikha —”

“She is
my
sister and she wants to talk to me!” I yelled. Captain Mindy looked at Shiaraqa for the translation, but he only shook his head.

A tear streamed back from Zeynab’s eye and she groaned in pain. It must have burned on her scorched face. “No,” she whispered. “No … fly. Let … me … mmmmm …” Her eyes rolled in her head as she trembled. “Let … me … die.”

Die? My Zeynab? Oh, no. A thousand times no. “Zeynab, they can help you. The Americans can fix you the way they fixed my mouth.”

The radio that Captain Mindy had clipped to her chest squawked and a loud voice spoke over it. She quickly covered it and stepped out into the hallway.

“Let … me … die,” said Zeynab. Each word was a quiet, forced wheeze.

“Oh, no, please, Zeynab,” I cried.

Captain Mindy stepped back into the room and spoke firmly to Shiaraqa. I looked to him and he translated. “A helicopter is on its way. She needs to know if your sister takes any medicine.”

I asked Zeynab and she whispered no.

Shiaraqa spoke more quietly. “Is she pregnant?”

Zeynab heard the question and painful tears sprang from her eyes. “No,” she whispered in little gasps. “He say … He … say …” She winced against the pain. “He say … I … can’t.”

Shiaraqa nodded and left the room. My eyes went wide and I put a hand to my open mouth. “But it’s only been a few months,” I said. Without thinking about my words, I added, “You can still have a baby. You will, Zeynab. Think about your little boy. He’ll be so beautiful.”

Zeynab shuddered as more tears burned her face. After a few quiet but tense moments, Shiaraqa rushed back into the room and spoke to Captain Mindy. She looked at him and answered in rapid English, punching her fist into her hand. He answered and Captain threw her hands up and shook her head.

“What is the problem?” I asked.

Shiaraqa would not even face me. When he spoke, he looked at Captain. “Your sister’s husband says he cannot afford to stay with her in Kandahar through her treatment, and that his wives may not go without their husband as an escort. He says the Americans should treat your sister here in Farah.”

How could Tahir say such a thing? Didn’t he understand how serious Zeynab’s burns were? He was a rich man. He could afford the time away from work to go to Kandahar. He had to know that this hospital was nothing like an American hospital. This place was dirty. The people here hadn’t run one tube into her arm as the Americans had.
They hadn’t even bandaged Zeynab. She was simply lying there on the bed.

Mercifully, Zeynab was asleep again. Over the next few hours, Captain Mindy and Shiaraqa went outside several times. I knew they were arguing with Tahir. Every time they came back, Captain was angrier. I looked down at Zeynab’s charred and peeled-away skin. My sweet sister was dying. She was dying and her husband, Tahir, didn’t care.

Everything blurred in my tears. I stood there, remembering how beautiful and wonderful Zeynab had been, my strength and friend and hope through my whole life. I stood there, watching her suffer, listening to her raspy, shallow breathing. I stood there until just before the dawn, when finally she breathed no more.

In the murky mix between yesterday and today, between light and dark, I squeezed Zeynab’s hand for the last time. I should have cried. I should have screamed and pulled out my hair. But I had shed all the tears I had left. I was exhausted and dizzy from a long, long night in this horrible, hot room. I pulled the white sheet up to cover my sister. Then I turned away.

There was nothing more to be done here. Zeynab’s dead body, just like her life, belonged to Tahir now. I stepped out of the room. The only light spilled in through an open door at the end of the hallway near the front of the hospital.

“Zulaikha?” Captain Mindy said as I passed. She put her hand on my arm but I pulled away, staggering toward the front door.

I hadn’t realized how thick the heat had been in the hospital until I was outside on the front porch and the cool air stung my face.

Najib sprang to his feet. “Zeynab?”

I only shook my head. I couldn’t say the word. Najib turned away quickly and I took his hand.

We passed Tahir, who stood up, yawning and stretching. He didn’t shed a single tear. I was too sad, too tired to be shocked. My sister was only one of his wives. He had two others. He was a rich man and could marry again.

Shiaraqa called after me, translating something Captain Mindy was saying, but I kept walking with my brother to the car. Only when Najib was in the driver seat did I turn around and see Shiaraqa hadn’t been calling after me at all. Instead, he was speaking in a loud voice to Captain Mindy. Captain shouted, pointed at Shiaraqa, and then pointed at Tahir. When Shiaraqa shook his head and responded in English again, Captain Mindy grabbed his perahan-tunban and shook him. Finally, Shiaraqa nodded and turned to Tahir.

“What does this crazy woman want?” Tahir asked.

“She says she thinks you’re wrong to be so old and marry so young a girl.”

“She doesn’t understand. She knows nothing. These things happen.” Tahir shrugged. “Anyway, why does she care so much for this one girl when the Americans have killed thousands? Tell this little tramp to go on home.” He took a step toward Captain.

I heard a metallic click and saw Corporal Andrews standing closer to them both, his rifle ready and his finger on the trigger.

Tahir’s chest heaved up and down as he breathed deep. He looked at Captain and then at Corporal. Taking a step back, he held up his empty, thick, sausage-finger hands. He spoke softly to Shiaraqa. “This is how the Americans do everything, bossing everyone around with their big guns, pretending to be heroes because they act like they care for one girl who burned in an accident.”

Captain erupted into English, her words blurring together in an angry rush. She motioned for Shiaraqa to translate, but didn’t pause to let him catch up.