One Half from the East

  I wonder if Rahima is just behind the wall. I run a little faster, not sure what I’m going to do when I get to the door.

  I look back. There’s a long stretch of empty road behind me. I’m far from the market. No one knows I’m here. I feel a breeze tickle the back of neck and realize I’m sweating.

  It’s quiet. All I can hear is the soft clap of my sandals hitting the dirt road.

  I can’t tell if there’s someone in the tower. I keep my eyes away from it.

  When I reach the walls, there’s nothing I can do but touch them. They’re too tall to see over. I listen. I hear kids at play and the thump of a foot hitting a soccer ball. Is my best friend playing in there? I hear laughter.

  Maybe things aren’t as bad as I’ve thought.

  Before I think about it much more, I pound on the door. I put my ear against the metal and try to make out voices. I would know Rahima’s voice anywhere.

  The door swings open and I’m face-to-face with a boy I’ve seen at school. He’s older than me. I can tell he’s surprised to see me.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  I hadn’t thought this through.

  “I think my cousin was brought here.”

  “Cousin? What cousin?”

  “Rahim . . . a.” It is a tiny sound at the end, but it makes a huge difference.

  His eyebrows go up.

  “She’s your cousin?”

  I nod, trying to look convincing.

  “I don’t think she’s supposed to have family coming here to visit her. Did her parents send you?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I just wanted to visit her. I didn’t get to see her before she left.”

  “Oh, I get it!” he exclaims. “You want to see what she looks like now! Yeah, I bet you would.” He takes a step back and looks over his shoulder. “Let me see if she’s . . .”

  I turn and look at the road. I’m expecting to see black jeeps coming back to the compound from the mosque any minute now.

  “Hey, your cousin is here!”

  I turn around and peer past the open door. I see the courtyard, big enough that all the homes on my block could fit in its belly. There’s a well in the middle of it and someone’s leaning over it, pulling up a bucket. She’s wearing a blue dress and has on a loose head scarf that drapes down her shoulders and to the middle of her back. She’s straining to pull the bucket up and looks like she might just fall into the well.

  When our eyes meet, I feel the air go out of my chest. In a flash, I realize all the terrible things I’ve been hearing are true. If she’s here, it means she’s married to the warlord now. As impossible as it sounds, she’s his wife.

  Rahima drops the rope, and the bucket whizzes back into the well, clanking and thudding against the brick walls as it drops into the dark earth.

  Twenty-Three

  “What are you doing here?” she whispers.

  I stare at her. I can’t help it.

  She is thinner. Her eyes keep darting behind her and down the road. She seems terrified. Her dress hangs on her body awkwardly, and her shoulders are hunched forward.

  “I needed to see you.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Her hair is the only thing about her that doesn’t look like a girl, and that’s covered with the head scarf. Her eyes, her lips, her neck—all her features are so delicate. She looks nothing like Rahim.

  “I went to your home.”

  Rahima steps out of the compound, pulling the door closed behind her so no one will see us.

  “You didn’t come back to school, and I was really worried. When your sister told me I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Everything happened so fast,” she says. She blinks back tears, her lashes fluttering.

  “That boy who answered the door—is he going to tell someone I’m here?”

  Rahima shakes her head.

  “He’s more interested in playing before his father gets back.”

  “Is his father . . . Is he the one?”

  Rahima looks away. I can see her face get red. I’ve never seen her this way. She looks like she might scream or sob. I touch her arm. She’s trembling.

  “But what about school? Your teachers will fail you if you don’t come back! And Abdullah and Ashraf—they want to see you. I need you!”

  My best friend looks like I just punched her in the stomach.

  “Please come back.”

  “I can’t,” she whispers and takes a deep breath. “I hate this, Obayd. I hate my dress. I hate where I sleep. I miss my sisters and my mother. I don’t want to be here.”

  I am angry for her. How could this have happened to someone like Rahim? Where is the bacha posh who taught me how to stand without falling? I want to save her.

  “We can go now,” I whisper, even though I’m not sure it’s all that easy. “Come with me. You would never have to come back here!”

  “You don’t understand. They’ll find me.”

  “Why are you acting like this? You would never let me give up. You would tell me to run!”

  “Obayd!” She’s angry now, a sad kind of angry. She sounds more like my best friend. “There are guards here. And where would I go? If I go home, they’ll bring me right back and it’ll only be worse. I can’t run into the mountains. They’ll find me.”

  “Why did this happen?”

  “Why? Because I’m a girl. Because people think they can do what they want to us. They think we should have no say in what happens to us. That’s why I don’t want to be a girl. That’s why I would’ve done anything to make myself a boy forever.”

  I think back to our trek to the mountains. How she wanted to keep going even after that snake had slid around my ankle, even though it was dark and we were nervous we wouldn’t find our way home. My friend had bigger demons chasing her. I get that now.

  “You knew this was going to happen.”

  She says nothing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How could I tell you . . . this?” Her voice is small. She wipes a tear with the back of her hand and sniffles. She doesn’t look as tall as I remember. I can’t believe how much things have changed in just a few days.

  I bite my bottom lip to keep it from shaking.

  “What am I supposed to do without you?” It’s a selfish thought, but I really feel lost without her.

  “If I had one more day out there . . .” she says, looking at the world behind me, the world that’s now out of her reach. “If I had one more day out there, I would spend every minute of it finding a way to make sure I never ended up in here.”

  It’s my best friend talking to me in that way that’s just for us. The look in her eye, the hidden words, the way she points somewhere over my shoulder with the tilt of her head. It’s a code that no one else would understand, not even Abdullah or her sister Shahla. There are some things about Rahima that only I can understand.

  “That’s what I would do, Obayd,” she says, fishing into the folds of her dress. She pulls out her Wizards hat and holds it out to me. It is folded in half, and the rim is bent in the wrong direction. “You should take this.”

  “Your Wizards hat?”

  She nods.

  “Why would you give that to me? You need it more than I do!”

  “You’ve been staring at this hat since the first day I met you.” She smiles. “Maybe it’s time for it to bring you some luck. And you know me. I’m not going to stay here forever. I’ll tell you something, Obayd. These people aren’t very bright. I’ll find a way to outsmart them, even if it’s not today.”

  I take the hat, even though I’m not sure I should. It feels strange to take something so important from her, especially at a time like this.

  I’m touching the red embroidery and thinking about giving it back to her when I hear a hum in the distance.

  We both turn and see a cloud of dust down the road. Somewhere in that cloud are black jeeps and somewhere in those black jeeps
is a man that calls Rahima his wife.

  “Obayd, you need to leave now!” She pulls her head scarf over her face and reaches for the door handle. “Go, Obayd! Please!”

  She looks so afraid that I start to shake. She’s inside again. She’s closing the door, and all I can see is one wide eye.

  The jeeps are getting closer. I can see a smudge of black in the center of the dust clouds.

  “But what should I do without you, Rahim? What should I do?”

  “Do everything,” she says and closes the heavy door. Her voice calls out again—louder. “Do everything, Obayd! DO EVERYTHING!”

  Twenty-Four

  There are three jeeps and they are coming at me. I look around. Other than Abdul Khaliq’s compound, there’s nothing around here. There are no other homes, no shops or trees to hide behind. There is only the road.

  I step away from the door. My friend is gone. She has probably ducked back into the house so her husband won’t guess she came out. I don’t know what it’s like living in that house, but I could almost guess by the look on her face.

  There’s nothing beyond the compound. The road sort of ends here. If his guards see a boy walking into the open plain, they’ll be curious enough that they’ll come after me. I take a deep breath and decide there’s only one way to go.

  I put the Wizards hat on my head and tug the bent rim so it’ll hide my eyes.

  I walk back down the road, toward the jeeps, with their big tires and dark windows. I’m dressed in my pantaloons and tunic shirt. I have a men’s vest on, one my father used to wear. It’s big on me but makes me feel like a small man. The jeeps are close enough that they can see me, even if I can’t see them. I walk, keeping my eyes straight ahead like I’ve got nothing to be scared of.

  The first jeep whizzes past me and doesn’t stop. It drives all the way around to the side of the compound and disappears from view. The second jeep slows as it comes close to me. If I reached my arm out, I would touch it. I can feel dust in my nose and throat. The jeep is inching along, slowly enough that I can’t help turning and looking at the black window. I wonder if he’s looking back at me, my best friend’s husband.

  The second jeep keeps going and I think I might be safe. Maybe they’ve decided a little boy is nothing to worry about. Maybe they think I’ve lost my way and wandered out this far by mistake. But if they ask me any questions, they’ll know I’m lying.

  The second jeep pauses a few yards from the compound.

  I can hear its engine behind me.

  I’m not surprised that the third jeep pulls up next to me. I keep walking, but when it stops abruptly I feel my stomach drop. I stop walking not because I want to talk to anyone but because I think it might be worse if I don’t.

  I don’t know what to do with my eyes. It feels like forever before the black window slides down.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I look up at the bearded man talking to me. He’s wearing a small wool cap, and I can see the long black neck of a rifle between his knees.

  “Sorry.”

  “I bet you are. But I asked what you’re doing out here.”

  There are two other men in the backseat of the jeep. They lean toward the window to get a better look at me. I can’t see their faces well, and I’m not really trying. I try to keep my eyes on my sandals.

  “Are you going to answer?”

  There’s one thing I’ve heard about the warlord, which is that he wears only black. The men in the jeep are dressed in beige, so I guess they must be his guards. Abdul Khaliq is probably in the second jeep, the one that’s waiting right up by the compound, to see what the people in the third jeep learn about the mysterious boy wandering around his home.

  “I’m on my way home now,” I say. My voice is broken and dry from the dust and nerves.

  The man looks at the other two guards in the car and shakes his head. He opens the door and steps out.

  I half expect my best friend to come running out of the compound, shouting for these men to let me go and saving me from whatever’s about to happen. But she doesn’t. She can’t.

  “Little boy, what are you doing out here? It’s a simple question.”

  He’s much taller than me. My hands are sweaty and trembling. I’m ready to scream and run, though I won’t get far. I consider crying and begging for mercy. How could a ten-year-old girl dressed as a boy possibly stand up to a warlord’s guards? I’ve been a bacha posh for less than six months. That’s not long enough to be as brave as Rahim!

  I should fall apart, but I don’t.

  “I was sent here with a task,” I say. “And I must apologize because I’ve done something pretty dishonorable.”

  “What task?” His nose wrinkles up, like he’s trying to sniff out the truth.

  “My family is very thankful to the great Abdul Khaliq for his help in keeping us safe. We are so appreciative. My mother baked a rosewater cake this morning, and my father asked me to bring it here. I’ve been walking for hours; at least, I think it’s been hours. I didn’t know how far this was from the market.”

  “So where is it?” He frowns at me.

  “Where is what?”

  “The cake. Where’s the cake?”

  “Oh, I was getting to that. You know, she was up before dawn mashing that dough with her fists. We could smell it baking and begged her to give us just a small piece, but she refused even my father. He loves her cakes, so he was really mad when she said no, no, no—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The cake. That’s why I was apologizing. My mother was in such a hurry to send me out the door this morning that she forgot to give me any breakfast. When I got here, I knocked on the door a few times, but no one answered. I didn’t want to be a bother, so I sat down and thought I might wait for someone to show up.”

  One of the men inside the jeep groans in frustration.

  “Do we have to listen to this babbling?”

  “Little boy, who’s your father?”

  “My father?” I don’t want to answer that question.

  “Yes, your father! I want to know who to blame for your existence!”

  “My father’s the angriest man in town. That’s who he is. Follow me home and you’ll see for yourself. Oh, I really don’t want to tell my father what happened to the cake!”

  “What are you talking about? Give me a straight answer before I knock it out of you!” he roars with a hand raised threateningly.

  “I ate it!” I blurt out.

  “You what?”

  “I ate the cake.”

  He sighs, rubbing his forehead with his palm.

  “It was a shameful thing to do and I’m so very sorry, but I couldn’t help myself. I thought I might pass out after such a trek to get here and especially since I hadn’t eaten anything before I set out, which was a big mistake, of course . . .”

  The man turns to the two guards still in the jeep. “Is this real?”

  One rolls his eyes and the other falls back against the seat and out of view.

  “And now I think I’m going to be sick. My stomach’s been pretty queasy since yesterday.” I cross my hands over my belly and shift my weight on my feet. “You know that feeling when something doesn’t want to be in there anymore but you’re not sure which way it’s going to come out?”

  “The kid’s an idiot. Let’s move.”

  I don’t stop. I keep going.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents. They’re going to kill me when they find out what I’ve done. That cake might have been the last thing I’ll ever eat. Oh, you don’t know my mother. This is the end of me!”

  I am shaking my head as if home is what I dread instead of these black jeeps. I put my hands on my thighs and lean over as if I might throw up right at their feet.

  “The last time I did something like this, my mother sent me to my uncle’s house. She said she didn’t know what she would do to me if I were around her. She’s going to be out of her mind th
is time. I think I should probably just walk back to the market and pick up a cake from the bakery and bring it here. At least I could tell her I’d delivered a cake here, and that much of it would be the truth. It won’t be the same, though. My mother’s cakes are so much better than the ones from the bakery. They aren’t nearly as dry or—”

  “Tell the kid to shut up! He’s making me crazy.”

  “He’s making me hungry.”

  “This makes you hungry? Are you insane?”

  “Maybe the yeast was bad,” I moan, holding my belly. “Do they put yeast in cakes? I think I might be allergic to yeast.”

  There’s the sound of static and a click. One of the men in the jeep has a walkie-talkie. A voice crackles through. I can’t hear what the voice is saying, but I hear one of the men respond.

  “We’re coming in now. Just some idiot kid. He says he ate a cake he was supposed to deliver. If we don’t leave him now, one of these guys is going to shoot him.”

  I should wet my pants right now, but by some miracle I don’t.

  The crackly voice on the walkie-talkie returns. This time I stop talking so I can hear it.

  “A cake? Tell the big-eared kid to keep his cakes. Who has time for this nonsense?”

  The man waves at me and climbs back into the jeep. I nod and look as apologetic as I can. I walk away, kicking at the ground like I’m not eager to get home. The jeep takes off and when I turn around to look behind me, they’ve all disappeared behind the clay walls of the compound.

  I take off running. I want to get as far away as possible.

  And as I run I can’t help thinking just how wild it is that I was able to talk my way out of being caught by the warlord’s guards. Me, a little girl dressed in boys’ clothes . . . How did I do that? It was like I wasn’t myself, like I was someone else!

  It was . . . it was . . .

  And then it hits me. My hand touches Rahim’s hat, fitting so snugly on my head that it doesn’t fly off even as I race down the dirt road.

  It was magic.

  Twenty-Five

  I won’t take it off.