It wasn’t so much that I wanted my sisters to be envious. It was more that I wanted to celebrate my new privileges to come and go, to wander through the shops without my sister’s supervision. If I had a little more tact, I would have found another way to express myself. But my loud mouth caught Khala Shaima’s attention. Maybe there was a higher purpose to my insensitivity.
Khala Shaima was my mother’s sister—her older sister. Madar-jan was closer to her than anyone else in her family and we saw her often. Had we not grown up around her, we probably would have been frightened by her appearance. Khala Shaima was born with a crooked spine that wiggled through her back like a snake. Although our grandparents had hoped to find a suitor before her shape became too obvious, she was passed over time and again. Families would come to ask about my mother or Khala Zeba, the youngest of the sisters, but no one wanted Khala Shaima with her hunched back and one raised shoulder.
She understood early in life that she would not catch anyone’s eye and decided not to bother fussing with appearances at all. She let her eyebrows grow in, left those few stray chin hairs and dressed in the same drab clothing day in and day out.
Instead, she focused her energies on her nieces and nephews and taking care of my grandparents as they aged. Khala Shaima supervised everything—making sure we were doing satisfactorily in school, that we had proper clothing for the winter and that lice hadn’t nested in our hair. She was a safety net for anything our parents might not have been able to do for us and she was one of the few people who could stand being around Padar-jan.
But you had to know Khala Shaima to get her. I mean to really get her. If you didn’t know that she had the best intentions at heart, you could be put off by the lack of pleasantries in her conversation, by her sharp criticisms or by the doubtful squint in her eyes while she listened to you talk. But if you knew how she’d been spoken to her whole life, by strangers and family, you wouldn’t be surprised.
She was good to us girls and always came with candy-laden pockets. Padar-jan would comment snidely that her pockets were the only sweet thing about Khala Shaima. My sisters and I would feign patience while we waited for the rustle of chocolate wrappers. When she arrived, I had just returned from the market, and in plenty of time to get my share of the sweets.
“Shaima, honest to God, you’re spoiling these girls! Where are you getting chocolates like these from these days! They can’t be cheap!”
“Don’t stop a donkey that’s not yours,” she fired back. That was another thing about Khala Shaima. Everyone used those old Afghan proverbs, but Khala Shaima could hardly speak without them. It made conversations with her as circuitous as her spine. “Stay out of it and let’s let the girls get back to their homework.”
“We’re done with our homework, Khala Shaima-jan,” Shahla said. “We’ve been working on it all morning.”
“All morning? Didn’t you go to school today?” Shaima’s eyebrows furrowed.
“No, Khala Shaima. We don’t go to school anymore,” Shahla said, averting her eyes since she knew she was throwing Madar-jan into the fire.
“What does that mean? Raisa! Why aren’t the girls in school?”
Madar-jan lifted her head from the teapot reluctantly.
“We had to take them out again.”
“In God’s name, what ridiculous excuse did you come up with this time to keep them from their studies? Did a dog bark at them in the street?”
“No, Shaima. Don’t you think I would much rather have them going to school? It’s just that they’re running into foolishness in the streets. You know how boys can be. And, well, their father is just not happy to send them out so they can be toyed with by the neighborhood boys. I don’t blame him, really. You know, it’s only been a year that the girls are even able to walk in the street. Maybe it’s just too soon.”
“Too soon? How about too late! They should have been going to school all this time but they haven’t. Imagine how far behind they are and now that they can catch up, you’re going to keep them at home to scrub the floors? There will always be idiots in the street saying all kinds of things and giving all kinds of looks. You can believe that. If you hold these girls back for that, you’re no better than the Taliban who closed their schools.”
Shahla and Parwin shot each other looks.
“Then what am I supposed to do? Arif’s cousin Haseeb told him that—”
“Haseeb? That moron who’s dumber than a Russian tank? You’re making decisions for your children based on something Haseeb said? Sister, I thought more of you.”
Madar-jan huffed in frustration and rubbed her temples. “Then you stay here till Arif gets home and you tell him yourself what you think we should do!”
“Did I say I was leaving?” Khala Shaima said coolly. She propped a pillow behind her uneven back and leaned against the wall. We braced ourselves. Padar-jan hated dealing with Khala Shaima’s intrusions and he was just as blunt as she was about it.
“YOU’RE A FOOL TO THINK THESE GIRLS are better off rotting in this home instead of learning something in school.”
“You never went to school and see how well you turned out,” Padar-jan said facetiously.
“I’ve got a lot more sense than you, engineer-sahib.” A low blow. Padar-jan had wanted to major in engineering when he finished high school but his marks didn’t make the cut. Instead, he took some general classes for one semester and then dropped out to start working. He had a shop now where he fixed old electronics, and though he was pretty good at what he did, he was still bitter about not making it as an engineer, a highly regarded title for Afghans.
“Damn you, Shaima! Get out of my house! They’re my daughters and I don’t need to listen to a cripple tell me what I should do with them!”
“Well, this cripple has an idea that may solve your problem—let you keep your precious pride while the girls can get back into school.”
“Forget it. Just get out so I don’t have to look at your face anymore. Raisa! Where the hell is my food?”
“What is your idea, Shaima?” Madar-jan jumped in, eager to hear what she had to say. She did respect her sister, ultimately. More often than not, Shaima was right. She hurriedly fixed a plate of food and brought it over to Padar-jan, who was now staring out the window blankly.
“Raisa, don’t you remember the story our grandmother told to us? Remember Bibi Shekiba?”
“Oh, her! Yes, but how does that help the girls?”
“She became what her family needed. She became what the king needed.”
“The king.” Padar-jan scoffed. “Your stories get crazier every time you open your ugly mouth.”
Khala Shaima ignored his comment. She had heard much worse.
“Do you really think that would work for us too?”
“The girls need a brother.”
Madar-jan looked away and sighed with disappointment. Her failure to bear a son had been a sore spot since Shahla’s birth. She had not anticipated that it would be brought to everyone’s attention again tonight. She avoided Padar-jan’s eyes.
“That’s what you’ve come here to tell me! That we need a son? Don’t you think I know that? If your sister were a better wife, then maybe I would have one!”
“Quit jabbering and let me finish.”
But she didn’t finish. She only started. That night Khala Shaima started a story of my great-great-grandmother Shekiba, a story that my sisters and I had never before heard. A story that transformed me.
CHAPTER 2
SHEKIBA
SHEKIBA.
Your name means “gift,” my daughter. You are a gift from Allah.
Who could have known that Shekiba would become the name she was given, a gift passed from one hand to another? Shekiba was born at the turn of the twentieth century, in an Afghanistan eyed lasciviously by Russia and Britain. Each would take turns promising to protect the borders they had just invaded, like a pedophile who professes to love his victim.
The borders between Afghanis
tan and India were drawn and redrawn from time to time, as if only penciled in. People belonged to one country and then the other, nationalities changing as often as the direction of the wind. For Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan was the playing field for their “Great Game,” the power struggle to control Central Asia. But the game was slowly coming to an end, the Afghan people ferociously resisting outside control. Chests expanded with pride when Afghans talked about their resilience.
But parts of Afghanistan were taken—little by little until its borders shrank in like a wool sweater left in the rain. Areas to the north like Samarkand and Bukhara had been lost to the Russian Empire. Chunks of the south were chipped away and the western front was pushed in over the years.
In that way, Shekiba was Afghanistan. Beginning in her childhood, tragedy and malice chipped away at her until she was just a fragment of the person she should have been. If only Shekiba had been prettier, something at least pleasing for the eye to gaze upon. Maybe then, her father could have hoped to arrange a proper marriage for her when her time came. Maybe people would have looked at her with an ounce of kindness.
But Shekiba’s village was unforgiving. To get to Kabul, one had to ride one week, crossing a river and three mountains. Most people spent their entire lives in the village, in the green fields surrounded by mountains, walking the dirt roads that connected one compound to another. Their village was in a valley, dark soil nurtured by the nearby river and tall peaks giving a sense of enclosure, privacy. There were a few dozen clans, extended families who had known each other over generations. Most people were related to each other, somehow, and gossip was one way to keep busy.
Shekiba’s parents were second cousins, their marriage arranged by Shekiba’s paternal grandmother. Their family, like many others, lived off the land. Each generation splintered the family’s land so that people would have a place to build a home, if they decided to leave the clan’s main house. Shekiba’s father, Ismail Bardari, was the youngest in his home. His older brothers had married before him and filled the compound with their wives and children.
Seeing there was no room for him and his new bride, Shafiqa, Ismail picked up his chisel and set to work. He was lucky though, in that his father bequeathed him a lot with such fertile soil that his share of crops would be guaranteed. He was the hardest working of his brothers and his father wanted to ensure that the land’s potential would be realized. There were many hungry mouths to feed and a good yield could bring in extra income from the village. His brothers lacked Ismail’s instincts. He had a gift. He knew just the right temperature at which to plant, how often to till the soil and the perfect amount of water to make crops grow. Ismail’s brothers resented him for being their father’s favorite. They pretended to prefer living in the main home. In the end, he surrounded the house with a wall of mud and stones to give it privacy, as a proper Afghan home needed.
Ismail brought his nervous bride to their new home, surrounded by a small plot of land that bordered his brother’s. Standing outside, she could see her in-laws coming and going from the house, their burqas blue spots on a khaki landscape. When the women headed in her direction she would hurry inside and cover herself, embarrassed that her belly was swollen with child. But Shafiqa’s in-laws found her dull and timid, and over time they took less interest in her and her children. The women sighed heavily when they spoke with her and whispered to her husband when she wasn’t near. Had Shekiba’s father been like most other men, he might have heeded those whispers and taken a second wife. But Ismail Bardari was unlike some other men and stayed with the one wife he had, however his mother and sisters felt about her.
Shekiba’s brothers, Tariq and Munis, were the only real link to the clan. Shafiqa watched over Shekiba and her little sister Aqela, nicknamed “Bulbul” because her light, melodic voice reminded Ismail of the local songbird. Tariq and Munis would come and go between their father’s and their grandfather’s homes, acting as couriers of clothing, vegetables and news. The boys were well liked by their grandparents and valued as male heirs. Ismail’s mother, Bobo Shahgul, often said the two boys were the only good thing to come from Shafiqa. The boys overheard many hateful comments but they knew better than to share everything they heard. Shekiba and Aqela didn’t realize how little their father’s family cared about them since they spent their days close at their mother’s side. Sometimes, too close.
A clumsy two-year-old Shekiba changed her life in the blink of an eye. She woke from a midmorning nap and set off to find her mother. Shekiba heard the familiar sounds of peeling in the kitchen and stumbled into the cooking niche. Her small foot caught on the hem of her dress and her arm flailed into the air, knocking a pot of hot oil from a burner top before her mother could reach her. The oil flew out and melted the left half of Shekiba’s cherub face into blistered and ragged flesh.
Shafiqa screamed and doused her daughter’s face with cool water but it was too late. It took months to heal, as Shafiqa diligently kept Shekiba’s face clean, using a compound the local alchemist had mixed for them. The pain got worse as her skin fought to recover. The itching drove Shekiba mad and her mother was forced to wrap her hands in cloth, especially while she picked away at the dead, blackened skin. Fevers came, so high they made the toddler’s body tremble and writhe, and Shafiqa had nothing to offer, nothing she could do but pray at her daughter’s side, her body rocking back and forth, and beseech Allah for mercy.
Bobo Shahgul came to see Shekiba when she heard about the incident. Shafiqa anxiously waited to hear any helpful advice her mother-in-law might offer but Bobo Shahgul had none. Before she left, she suggested Shafiqa pay closer attention to her children and muttered thanks that it hadn’t been one of the boys.
Shekiba’s survival was nothing short of a miracle, another gift from Allah. Though her face healed, she was not the same. From then on, Shekiba was halved. When she laughed, only half her face laughed. When she cried, only half her face cried. But the worst part was the change in people’s expressions. People who saw her profile from the right would begin to smile, but as their view turned the corner, beyond her nose, their own faces would change. Every reaction reminded Shekiba that she was ugly, a horror. Some people would step back and cover a gaping mouth with a hand. Others would dare to lean in, eyes squinted, to get a better look. From across the road, people would stop in their tracks and point.
There. Did you see her? There goes the girl with half a face. Didn’t I tell you she was horrid looking? God only knows what they did to deserve that.
Even her aunts and uncles would shake their heads and cluck their tongues every time they saw her, as if every time they were freshly disappointed and shocked to see what she looked like. Her cousins came up with twisted names for her. “Shola face,” as her skin resembled the lumpy soft rice. “Babaloo,” or monster. That one she hated more than the others, since she too was afraid of the babaloo, the creature that frightened every Afghan child in the night.
Shafiqa tried to keep her sheltered from the comments, the jeers, the stares, but it was too late to save Shekiba’s self-esteem, a commodity people didn’t value much anyway. She covered Shekiba with a burqa when she saw people approaching their home or on the rare occasion when the family ventured into the village.
Remember, “Shekiba” means “a gift.” You are our gift, my daughter. No need to let others gawk at you.
Shekiba knew she was horribly disfigured and that she was lucky to even be accepted by her immediate family. In the summers, the burqa was hot and stifling but she felt safer within it, protected. She was not exactly happy but was satisfied to stay in the house and out of sight. Her days passed with fewer insults that way. Her parents withdrew even more from the clan, and the resentment toward Shafiqa’s aloofness grew.
Tariq and Munis were both energetic, and being just a year apart in age, they could pass for twins. When they were eight and nine, they were helping their father with the fieldwork and running errands in the village. They usually ignore
d the comments they heard about their “cursed sister” but Tariq had been known to throw back insults from time to time. On one occasion, Munis came home with scattered bruises and a foul temper. He’d had more than he could take of the local boys pestering him about his half-faced sister. Padar-jan had gone to the boy’s home to make amends with his parents but he never reprimanded Tariq or Munis for defending their Shekiba.
Aqela, always smiling, would sing nursery rhymes in her sweet bulbul voice and kept her mother and Shekiba’s spirits lifted as they did the chores. They were happy keeping to themselves. They didn’t have much, but they had everything they needed and never felt lonely.
In 1903, a wave of cholera decimated Afghanistan. Children shriveled up within hours and succumbed in their mothers’ weak arms. Shekiba’s family had no choice but to use the poisoned water that coursed through their village. First Munis, then the others. The illness came quickly and it came strong. The smell was unbearable. Shekiba was stunned. She saw her siblings’ faces grow pale and thin in days. Aqela was quiet, her songs reduced to a soft moan. Shafiqa was frantic; Ismail quietly shook his head. Word came from the compound that two children had died, one from each of Shekiba’s uncles.
Shekiba and her parents waited for their own bellies to begin cramping. They nervously cared for the others, watching each other and waiting to see who else would become ill. Shekiba saw her father put his arms around his wife’s shoulders as she rocked and prayed. Aqela’s skin was graying, Tariq’s eyes were sunken. Munis was quiet and still.
She was thirteen when she helped her parents wash and wrap Tariq, Munis and Aqela, the songbird, in white cloth, the traditional garb for the deceased. Shekiba sniffled quietly, knowing she would be haunted by the memory of helping her moaning father to dig the graves for her teenage brothers and delicate Aqela, who had just turned ten. Shekiba and her parents were among the survivors.
It was the first time in years that the clan made an appearance. Shekiba watched her uncles and their wives come in and out of the house, paying their obligatory respects before moving on to the next home grieving their dead. It went without saying that they pitied Shekiba’s parents, not so much for the loss of their three children, but for the disappointment that Allah could not have spared one of the sons instead of the defective girl. Luckily, Shekiba was numb by then.