But saying that would probably just make her teacher feel bad.
And, to be honest, Abby knew that the only reason she had put the flag there in the first place was because it took up a lot of space.
That was then.
Now she sort of felt like she ought to stand up for Amira. And Sadeed.
Still, it was only a flag. And she didn’t want Mrs. Beckland to get in trouble.
So Abby turned back and smiled. “Well,” she said, “it’s no big deal. I guess I should just put up something else.”
Mrs. Beckland nodded. “Maybe a picture of a village. Or the Hindu Kush mountains. You can choose almost anything.”
“Except the Afghan flag,” Abby said.
“Right,” said her teacher. “Except the flag.”
CHAPTER 19
MOSTLY SADEED
About two weeks later, Amira’s next letter was waiting for Abby when she got home from school.
Dear Abby,
I am sad to tell you this.
I am not able to send more letters to you now. My teacher says so. And he asks for you please to not write back to me, and my parents also ask this. It is because of some people here who do not like America.
But I like America, and so does my family. Many others too. And I like you also.
I am happy you wrote to me. And glad. I liked all the letters. And I am hoping to when we can send more.
Please be healthy, and give my good wishes to your family.
Your friend,
Amira
Abby read the letter once quickly, and then again. This one was definitely from Amira herself—it wasn’t even Sadeed’s handwriting.
She stood there at her kitchen counter, trying to understand: This girl’s teacher wanted them to stop writing letters? And her parents? And who were these people who didn’t like America?
She couldn’t quite get her mind around it. There wasn’t enough explanation.
But she didn’t worry too much about it. Because she was sure there would be a second letter, like before. From Sadeed. Probably tomorrow, or the next day.
And he’d explain the whole thing. And even if his teacher said they had to stop the letters, they could probably figure out a way to keep sending them to each other. Of course, only if he wanted to. Either way was fine with her. Because, really, it was just a school project.
So Abby made a copy of the letter and the envelope, and she took them to school the next day and put them up on the bulletin board.
And she waited to see if anyone would notice.
Mrs. Beckland was the first.
“Abby, I’m so sorry about that letter from Amira, that she can’t write to you anymore. But I think I understand. I’ve been hearing a lot on the news about anti-American feelings in that part of the world. So it’s probably a question of safety for Amira and her family.” She paused a moment and then said, “Sort of hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
Mariah said something too.
“No more pen pal, huh? Good thing you got enough letters to get your grade. So that’s cool.”
No one else seemed to notice, just like no one else had noticed that the huge Afghan flag had been replaced by a picture of two old tribesmen sitting next to a road. And Abby wasn’t offended or bothered about it, that no one else said anything. Because after a day or two, even a really interesting bulletin board turns into wallpaper, and almost nobody sees it anymore.
Five or six days later, Abby stopped thinking there would be another letter. And after two weeks, she had pretty much stopped thinking about it altogether. Because it made her a little sad.
And Abby didn’t think about climbing on the wall that much anymore. She had done a few of the easy routes to the top during gym classes in April, but then the days had started to get so warm. And the higher you climbed in the big gym, the hotter it got. So she hadn’t tried the ledge route again. Too much work, and it wasn’t any fun to get all sweated out during first period.
Besides, she had plenty of other things to do. The end of the year was coming up fast now, and the constant pressure of getting a B or better on every single test and quiz was starting to get to her. She had never realized how much hard work it took to get good grades. She had always thought that somehow kids like Jill Ackerman and Kendra Billings and some of the other honor roll students got good grades automatically, just because they were smart. Not true.
All the schoolwork had even kept her from making progress on her fort in the fallen oak. And it also kept her from thinking about life in the hills above Kabul.
Still, as it got to be the end of May and then June, every now and then as she sat doing homework at the desk in her room, she would look up from her papers and books at her own little bulletin board, and she would look at the pictures Sadeed had drawn. And she wondered how he was doing over there in Afghanistan. And of course, Amira too. And her mom and dad.
But mostly Sadeed.
CHAPTER 20
PRESENTATION
Abby, let’s not forget that you still need to give an oral report for your extra-credit project, all right? How about Wednesday?” When Mrs. Beckland said that to her on Monday morning, Abby nodded and said, “Sure.”
But on the inside, she groaned.
Because an oral report was the last thing she wanted to deal with during her last four days at Baldridge Elementary School. All the tests and quizzes were over, and she had kept up her end of the bargain: a B or better on every one of them.
The sixth-grade class was doing community service projects around the school on Monday, and there was a bus trip to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield on Tuesday, and then the last day on Thursday was Field Day, almost like a carnival. It was supposed to be a fun week.
Plus, she really didn’t want to dig into the whole Afghanistan thing again. She had kind of let it all go, stopped thinking about it. About the letters. About everything.
But the report couldn’t be avoided. It was part of the deal, if she wanted to go on to seventh grade. And she did.
So about ten fifteen on Wednesday morning, she took her index cards and a few display items and went to the front of the room and stood next to Mrs. Beckland’s desk.
And after the teacher got the room quiet, Abby started her report.
“Parts of Afghanistan are very modern. In a lot of towns they get satellite TV and Internet. But in most of the country, there’s hardly even electricity or running water. So life for most kids there is a lot different than it is for kids here.
And Afghanistan is really ancient. The capital city of Kabul has been there for more than three thousand five hundred years—which is about eleven times longer than Washington, D.C., has been a city.”
As Abby got through the first index card, she could see that the kids were not into this at all, not that she blamed them. She didn’t want to be stuck in a hot, stuffy classroom any more than they did.
So Abby flipped ahead a couple of cards.
“Afghan culture is still really connected to its past. For example, the Afghan national sport is called Buzkashi. And it’s played by two teams of men on horseback. And there’s a dead goat, and they cut its head off, and then stuff sand down into its guts to make it heavy.
One way to play the game starts with the dead goat on the ground. The players all try to grab the goat, and then keep control of it and carry it around a post at one end of this huge field, and then get it all the way back and into their goal at the other end. And everyone is always fighting and trying to get the dead goat. And the game can go on for days, and they fight each other with whips and other weapons, and sometimes players get killed. And if you don’t believe me, look on the Internet. It’s pretty crazy.”
That got the kids’ attention, but Abby decided to cut to the end of her report anyway, the part about the letters. And after reading the first few sentences, she stopped looking at her notes.
“If you looked at my bulletin board, you saw the letters I sent and the ones I got back, so I’m
not going to tell much about that. But I’m supposed to tell about what I learned. From the experience.
“And I have to be honest. I don’t think I learned that much. I learned that the kids there are mostly like us, with the same kinds of feelings and everything. And that wasn’t a surprise. Because everybody talks all the time about how people everywhere are pretty much the same. And I think that’s true.
“And really, I decided to write to a school in Afghanistan for sort of a stupid reason—because there are big mountains there, and I’m kind of into rock climbing. So I thought it would be fun to write to kids there, and they could tell me what it was like to have these awesome mountains all around them.
“Turns out they don’t think the mountains are that great. More like a problem. They have avalanches, they can cause floods, they catch all the rain way up high, which makes a lot of the land down below too dry for farming. And the mountains make it really hard to get around, to go places. And to have wires for electricity. All kinds of problems. Plus, the mountains are perfect hiding places for bandits and terrorists.”
She held up a large copy of the drawing of the family.
“This is Amira, the girl who wrote the letters. And this is her mom, Najia, and her dad, Zakir. And this is her big brother, Sadeed, and he’s the one who drew this picture.”
At this point, Abby paused. Because this would be the perfect moment to reveal the whole story of Sadeed, the part no one knew. About how he wrote her a secret letter. About how he was the one who actually wrote most of the letters signed by Amira. About how he sent her a little mountain. And about how she sent him a spoonful of American soil. And how her last letter on the bulletin board was not the actual letter she sent, how she had left certain things out.
But she looked out at all the bored faces in front of her and said nothing. Because that part of the project? It was none of their business. And it wasn’t part of the deal she had made with Mrs. Beckland, either. That part belonged only to her.
She said, “You might have seen that the last letter from Amira says that she had to stop writing to me, and I had to stop writing to her. Because there were people there who don’t like America. She didn’t exactly say so, but it was probably because it could be trouble for her or her family if certain people there knew she had an American friend. Because not everyone there in Afghanistan likes our country. So part of what I learned is that people are simple, but the stuff going on around them can get complicated. And even dangerous. And that’s the end of my report.”
She picked up the big copy of Sadeed’s family portrait, stuck the index cards in her back pocket, and went to her desk.
Mrs. Beckland said, “That was very interesting, Abby. Does anyone have a question?”
No hands went up.
“Well then, let’s use the next half hour or so to clean out lockers. Quietly. And then it will be lunchtime, and then there will be a thirty-three-minute after-lunch recess, and then all the fifth and sixth graders will go to the auditorium to see a movie. And tomorrow is Field Day. The weather’s supposed to be hot, so dress comfortably, because after homeroom, we’ll be outside almost the whole time until early dismissal at twenty-five after twelve. And if your locker is already clean, just stay at your desk and talk with your friends. Quietly.”
Abby had emptied her locker on Tuesday, so she stayed at her seat. But after a minute or two, she got up and went to the back of the room.
Piece by piece, she took the pen pal information off the bulletin board and then sorted all the paper into the recycling bins.
The project was finished.
CHAPTER 21
FIELD DAY
It was Thursday, the last day of school, and Abby felt like she deserved every bit of the fun she was having. Field Day was like an extra-long gym class, plus free refreshments. The sky was blue, everybody was laughing and running around, and Abby knew for absolute sure that this was her very last day at Baldridge Elementary School. It was going to be an amazing summer, and in the fall, junior high.
She was mostly hanging out with Mariah, which would have been more fun if Mariah had been a little more athletic. Her idea of fun was to sit somewhere out of the sun and talk about how funny or stupid or crazy or cute or delicious everyone else looked or acted or sounded or smelled. And because it was the last day, Mariah had brought her cell phone, and probably sent and received forty text messages before lunchtime.
Since Abby wanted to actually participate in some of the activities, she would loop back to Mariah every half hour or so. But after the huge tug-of-war, they did connect for lunch, because eating was something they both enjoyed equally. And while they were in line for the barbecued hot dogs, Mrs. Beckland came straight toward Abby with a letter in her hand.
Abby’s heart skipped a beat, then began to pound faster than it had during the three-legged race. Because she knew what Afghan stamps looked like, and the letter her teacher was holding out to her had come from Afghanistan, no doubt about it.
“Hi, Abby. I’m glad I found you. This arrived at the school for you today. It’s from my friend in Kabul, the teacher who helped me set up your pen pal project. She probably wants to know how that worked out for you. And it would be nice if you sent her a thank-you note sometime this summer. Anyway, here it is. I know I’ve already told you this, but you did a great job on your project, on everything else as well. Be sure to stop back here and see me sometime next year, all right?”
Abby smiled. “I will, and thanks again for all your help.”
She folded the envelope and put it in the back pocket of her shorts. She tried not to feel disappointed, but she was. Instead of a letter from a friend, it was from some lady she’d never met. And it meant she’d have to write a thank-you note.
As Mrs. Beckland walked away, Mariah said, “Aren’t you gonna open it?”
Abby shook her head. “Later. When I get home.”
“Abby,” Mariah said, “it’s a letter from the other side of the world—come on, open it up now. Open it up and read it to me.”
Abby pulled it out of her pocket. She took Mariah’s hand and put the letter onto her open palm. “Here, you read it.”
“For real?”
Abby nodded, and Mariah put one long pink fingernail under the edge of the flap and sliced the envelope open. She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and squinted at the yellow sticky note on it. “This lady has terrible handwriting, and tiny. Is this even in English?”
“Here.” And Abby took it from her and read out loud.
“Dear Abby,
A teacher from the village of Bahar-Lan stopped in at my office at the Ministry of Education, and he asked me to send this to you. It’s from one of his students.
Yours truly,
Maleeha Tahar”
Abby unfolded the sheet of paper and began to read, but not out loud. Because she knew the handwriting. It was from Sadeed.
Dear Abby,
I am sorry I was not able to write sooner, but we had a bad time in my village. A day before Amira wrote to you in April, a man became angry with me when he saw the flag on your last letter. And he made threats.
And that is why it was decided the letters should end.
The provincial police came, and there was fighting in the mountains around us. No one here has been hurt, thank God. But still, we may not write letters.
My teacher was going to Kabul on business, and I asked him to send my own last letter to you. He was not surprised when I asked. He guessed that I had written to you before, because of when you talked of Frog and Toad in your last letter. It seemed too great a chance to him, that we should both like that one book.
I have news you will like. My uncle Asif had some strong mountain rope from his time working in Pakistan. And he has given it to me for my twelfth birthday.
And on a holiday afternoon he took me to a rocky place near our house where the land falls away. He showed me how to make two loops at the end of the rope. For my legs. And then another loop f
or around my middle. And when I stepped into it, it was like what you had on in the first picture you sent. And then my uncle took the rope around his back, and told me to go over the edge. It was ten meters high, all rocks below. But he is strong, and I know he cares for me, so I went, floating on air a moment, then walking backward down the wall of rocks.
And when I got to the ground, he called, “Now climb up. I will make sure you do not fall. Just climb.”
And I did. All the way to the top. I was very tired and thirsty. And I could not stop talking about it.
My uncle is sorry now that he gave me the rope. He fears I will try to climb much higher. And I might. When I see mountains now, they mean something else. Because of things you said. I thank you for that. Here is how the word for “mountain” looks in Dari. It sounds like KOH.
I think of you now and again, always with respect. Because I admire you. I have read each letter from you many times. I know I will keep them. I have to share them with Amira, but they are more mine. I also keep the farmland you sent. And that I do not share. Because if one day I come to visit America, I will return it. And if I ever own my own piece of land here, I will add it to my garden.
Wishing you every happiness in your life, I
remain your friend,
Sadeed Bayat
“Hamburger or hot dog, dear?”
Abby had been shuffling along in the line at the food table while she read the letter.
She blinked and looked up into the face of a parent volunteer, a lady wearing a huge orange T-shirt and a hairnet.
But she didn’t want to eat. She wanted to think. And there was too much noise around her.
“Um . . . I’ll be back . . . in a while.”
“Hey, I’m starving!” Mariah said.
“That’s okay, you go ahead and eat. I’ll find you in a few minutes.”