“Because the Taliban bombed Amrika. Now they’re angry and they’re bombing them back.”
Our grandfather entered the courtyard and overheard our conversation.
“Siddiq-jan, what are you telling your cousins?”
“I was just telling them about Amrika, Boba-jan. That they’re firing rockets at the Taliban!”
“Padar-jan,” Shahla asked timidly, “did the Taliban destroy many homes in Amrika?”
“No, bachem. Someone attacked a building in Amrika. Now they are angry and they’ve come after him and his people.”
“Just one building?”
“Yes.”
We were silent. It sounded like good news. A big, powerful country had come to our rescue! Our people had an ally in the war against the Taliban!
But Boba-jan could see in Shahla’s eyes that there was something that puzzled her and he knew just what it was. Why would Amrika be so upset after just one building was attacked? Half our country had crumbled under the Taliban. We were all thinking the same thing.
If only Amrika would have been upset about that too.
CHAPTER 4
SHEKIBA
SHEKIBA CONTINUED TO TOIL IN THE FIELDS as if her father were at her side. She fed the chicken and the donkey and fixed the plow when the axle snapped on a stone in the field. The house was quiet, somber. Sometimes the silence grated on her nerves and she would try to break it with the sounds of chores, or by talking to the birds perched on the wall. Some days she felt content, almost happy, to be self-sufficient. She hoped her mother liked the small flowers she had planted while she listened to the bulbul sing over Aqela’s grave.
Some things were difficult. Without her father around, Shekiba had no connection with the village or its resources. She used the cooking oil sparingly and was careful with how much she harvested from their field so that she would not go hungry. She dug a small trench between the house and the wall and buried some potatoes so that she would have a stock for the coming winter months. She picked the beans and ate a few, leaving the rest to dry for later.
Her father’s death seemed to usher winter in sooner than usual, by Shekiba’s warped sense of time. Shekiba had little reason to care about the month or year. The sun would rise and fall and she continued to do her chores, occasionally bothering to wonder what would come of her. How long would this existence last? More than once she thought of ending her life. Once, she’d pinched her nose and shut her mouth. She felt her chest tighten and tighten until she finally took a breath and continued to live, cursing her weakness.
She again contemplated digging her own plot, beside her father, and lying down in it. Maybe the dark angel Gabriel would see her and reunite her with her family. Shekiba wondered if she would see her mother again. If she did, she prayed it would be the mother who sang while she cooked their meals, not the bald, glassy-eyed woman Shekiba had buried.
Winter came and Shekiba floundered along, subsisting on what she had managed to keep through the fall. Each time she bothered to undress and bathe, she noticed her ribs protruding more. She used her siblings’ clothing to cushion her hip bones from the hard floor. She grew weak, her hair brittle and frayed. Her gums bled when she chewed but she barely noticed the taste of blood in her mouth.
Spring came and Shekiba looked forward to the warmth of the sun and the tasks that came with it. But along with spring came a visitor, and the first hint that Shekiba would not be allowed to live like this for long.
She was feeding the chicken when she saw a young boy in the distance, coming toward her home from her grandfather’s house. She could not tell who it was but went inside and donned her burqa. She paced back and forth, peeking through the door from time to time to confirm that the boy was still coming toward her. Indeed he was, and as he neared, Shekiba could see that he was no more than seven or eight years old. She marveled at how healthy he looked and wondered what her cousins were eating at the main house. Once more, Shekiba was thankful for the ability to hide behind the blue cloak.
“Salaaaaaam!” he called out when he was near enough. “I am Hameed! Dear uncle, I want to speak to you!”
Hameed? Who was Hameed? It did not surprise Shekiba that she didn’t recognize him. Likely many cousins had been born since she lost contact with the clan. Shekiba wondered how to reply. Should she answer or should she keep quiet? What would invite less inquiry?
“Salaaaaaaam! I am Hameed! Dear—”
Shekiba cut him off.
“Your uncle is not home. He cannot speak to you now.”
There was no answer for a time. She wondered if Hameed had been warned about her. She could imagine the conversation.
But be careful. Your uncle has a daughter, a monster, really. She is terrible to look at, so don’t be too frightened. She’s insane and may say crazy things.
Shekiba put her ear to the wall, trying to hear if Hameed was still there or if he was walking away.
“Who are you?”
Shekiba did not know how to answer.
“I said who are you?”
“I am . . . I am . . .”
“Are you my uncle’s daughter? Are you Shekiba?”
“Yes.”
“Where is my uncle? I was told to bring him a message.”
“He is not here.”
“Where is he then?”
At the edge of the field. Did you see the tree? The one that should be growing apples but grows nothing at all? That’s where he is. You walked right past him, along with my mother, my sister and my two brothers. If you have anything to tell him, you can tell him as you make your way back to the house with all the food.
But Shekiba did not say what she was thinking. She had that much sense left in her.
“I said, where is he?”
“He has gone out.”
“When will he be back?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, tell him that Bobo Shahgul wants to see him. She wants him to come to the house.”
Bobo Shahgul was Shekiba’s paternal grandmother. Shekiba hadn’t seen her since before the cholera took her family. Bobo Shahgul had come over to tell her son about a girl in the village, the daughter of a friend. She had wanted her son to take her on as a second wife, maybe even to have him move back into the family compound with the second wife and keep the first wife at this house. Shekiba remembered watching her mother listen to the conversation with her head bowed, saying nothing.
“Tell Bobo Shahgul that . . . that he is not here now.”
She was skirting the truth.
“You will tell my uncle what I have said?”
“I will.”
She could hear his footsteps grow distant but waited a full hour before emerging from the wall, just in case. She wasn’t the brightest girl, but even Shekiba knew it was just a matter of time before her grandmother sent another message.
Three months passed.
Shekiba was attaching the harness to the donkey to begin tilling the soil when she saw two men walking toward the house. She darted inside and grabbed her burqa in a panic. Her heart fluttered as she waited for them to near. She kept her ear against the inner wall, listening for footsteps.
“Ismail! Come out and speak to us! Your brothers are here!”
Her father’s brothers? Bobo Shahgul meant business. Shekiba frantically tried to think of something reasonable to say.
“My father is not at home!”
“Enough with the nonsense, Ismail! We know you’re here! You’re too much of a coward to leave your home! Come on out or we’ll barge in there and shake some sense into you!”
“Please, my father is not home!” She could hear her voice cracking. Would they force their way in? It wouldn’t take much effort. The door would fold in at their slightest touch.
“Goddamn you, Ismail! What are you doing hiding behind your daughter! Move aside, girl, we are coming in!”
CHAPTER 5
RAHIMA
MADAR-JAN TOOK ME BEHIND THE HOUSE with Padar-
jan’s scissors and razor. I sat nervously while my sisters watched. She pulled my long hair into a ponytail behind my head, whispered a prayer and slowly began to shear away. Shahla looked astonished. Rohila looked entertained and Parwin watched only for a moment before running back into the house for her pencils and paper. She sketched furiously with her back turned to me.
Madar-jan cut and trimmed, bending my ear forward to trim around it. She cut my bangs short and straight across my forehead. I looked at the ground around me and saw hair everywhere. She brushed the loose strands from my shoulders, blew at my neck and dusted off my back. My neck felt bare, exposed. I giggled with nervous excitement. Only Shahla noticed the single tear that trickled down Madar-jan’s cheek.
The next step was my clothing. Madar-jan asked my uncle’s wife for a shirt and pair of pants. My cousin had outgrown them, as had his older brother and my other cousin before him. She sent me inside to get dressed while she and my sisters swept my girl hair from the courtyard.
I slipped one leg in and then the other. They were slimmer and heavier than the usual balloon pants I wore under my dresses. I cinched the strings at the waist and made a knot. I pulled the tunic over my head and realized there was no ponytail to pull through after it. I let my hand run against the back of my head, feeling the short ends.
I looked down and saw my knobby knees through the pantaloons. I folded my arms across my chest and cocked my head, as I’d seen my cousin Siddiq do so many times. I kicked my foot, pretending there was a ball in front of me. Was that it? Was I a boy already?
I thought of Khala Shaima. I wondered what she would say if she were to see me like this. Would she smile? Had she really meant it when she suggested I should be turned into a boy? She told us our great-great-grandmother had worked on the farm like a boy, that she’d been a son to her father. I had waited for her to go on, to get to the part where our great-great-grandmother turned into a boy. Khala Shaima said she would come back and tell us more of the story another day. I hated having to wait.
I smoothed my shirt down and went back out to see what my mother thought.
“Well! Aren’t you a handsome young boy!” Madar-jan said. Even I could detect the hint of nervous uncertainty in her voice.
“Are you sure, Madar-jan? Don’t I look odd?”
Shahla covered her mouth with her hand at the sight of me.
“Oh my goodness! You look just like a boy! Madar-jan, you can hardly tell it’s her!”
Madar-jan nodded.
“You won’t have to get your knots taken out anymore,” Rohila said enviously. Getting the knots brushed out of our hair was a painful morning routine. Her hair coiled into a mess of tiny birds’ nests that Madar-jan struggled to brush out while Rohila winced and squirmed.
“Bachem, from now on we’re going to call you Rahim instead of Rahima,” Madar-jan said tenderly. Her eyes looked heavier than they should have at the age of thirty.
“Rahim! We have to call her Rahim?”
“Yes, she is now your brother, Rahim. You will forget about your sister Rahima and welcome your brother. Can you do that, girls? It’s very important that you speak only of your brother, Rahim, and never mention that you have another sister.”
“Just in case we forget what she looked like, Parwin drew this picture of Rahima.” Rohila handed Madar-jan the sketch Parwin had done while she was cutting my hair. It was an incredible likeness of me, the old me with long hair and naïve eyes. Madar-jan looked at the drawing and whispered something we didn’t understand. She folded the paper and placed it on the tabletop.
“Is that it? Just like that? She’s a boy?” Shahla looked skeptical.
“Just like that,” Madar-jan said quietly. “This is how things are done. People will understand. You’ll see.” She knew my sisters would be the hardest to convince. Everyone else—teachers, aunts, uncles, neighbors—they would accept my mother’s new son without reservation. I wasn’t the first bacha posh. This was a common tradition for families in want of a son. What Madar-jan was already dreading was the day they would have to change me back. But that would only be when I began to change into a young woman. That was still a few years away.
“Oh, wow.” Parwin had returned to the courtyard to see what happened.
“So just like that. She’s a boy.”
“Nope, not yet,” Parwin said calmly. “She’s not a boy yet.”
“What do you mean?” Rohila asked.
“She’s got to walk under a rainbow.”
“A rainbow?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My God, Parwin,” Madar-jan said, smiling faintly. “I don’t remember telling you about that poem. How do you even know about it?”
Parwin shrugged her shoulders. We weren’t surprised. Parwin couldn’t tell you if she had eaten breakfast but she often knew things that no one expected her to know.
“What is she talking about, Madar-jan?” I asked, curious to find out if Parwin was right or if her imagination had gotten the best of her today.
“She’s talking about an old poem. I don’t know if I can even remember how the story goes but it’s about what happens if you pass under a rainbow.”
“What happens if you pass under a rainbow?” Rohila asked.
“There’s a legend that walking under a rainbow changes girls into boys and boys into girls.”
“What? Is that true? Could that really happen?”
This perplexed me. I hadn’t walked under a rainbow. I’d never even seen one, for that matter. How was this change supposed to work?
“Tell us the poem, Madar-jan. I know you remember it. We drank in spirits . . .” Parwin started her off.
Madar-jan sighed and went into the living room. We followed. She sat with her back against the wall and looked to the ceiling, trying to recall the details. Her chador fell across her shoulders. We sat around her and waited expectantly.
“Afsaanah, see-saanah . . . ,” she began. One story, thirty stories. And then she sang the poem.
We drank in spirits and played in fields
Enamored of
Indigos, saffrons and teals
There was fog in the space
Between them and I
Colors reach to touch God in the sky
I envy the arc, stretched strong and wide
As one brilliance blends into another
Colors bow deeply to welcome a brother
We humble servants, meekly pass under
Rostam’s bow changes girl to boy, makes one the other
Until the air grows dry and tires of the game
And the mist opens its arms, colors reclaimed
CHAPTER 6
SHEKIBA
SHEKIBA SAT WITH HER BACK AGAINST THE COOL WALL. It was night and the house was quiet. Snoring came from every direction, some louder than others. By the soft glow of the moon, she could see the kettles and pots she had washed and stacked in the corner to make room for her blanket. Like most nights, her eyes were wide open while everyone else’s were closed. This was the hour of night when she would wonder what she could have done differently.
Her uncles had barged into the home that day, refusing to be turned away. Now that she had been reunited with her grandmother, she could hardly blame them for their persistence. No one wanted to disappoint Bobo Shahgul. She was horrid enough when she was satisfied.
It hadn’t taken long for Shekiba’s uncles to realize that something had happened to her father. The house smelled of rot and loneliness. Shekiba had stopped sweeping the floor and had let the potato peels collect in a corner, too disinterested to take them outside. After a time, she didn’t notice the smell. But it wasn’t just the house. Shekiba had become apathetic. She hadn’t bothered to wash her dress, and for most of the winter, she had curled up in a ball under a blanket, letting her own stench fester. Daylight and warmth had inspired her to wash herself but it would take more than a few baths to undo what had become of her. Her hair was a tangled nest of lice and unbrushab
le for months.
Shekiba was pale and gaunt. For a moment, her uncles believed they may have been looking at a djinn, a spirit. How could living flesh look like that?
They asked for her father, their eyes scouting the room and realizing instantly that he was not there. Shekiba trembled and turned to the side, wanting to hide from them but making sure they were not approaching her. They couldn’t see her, but they could smell fear, sweat and blood. They asked again, louder, angrier.
That was when Shekiba left. She heard a scream and a blue ghost ran into the wall that had sheltered her from the view of others—the wall her father had built to guard his family. Another scream, and as she fell to the earth, hands grabbed the ghost, shocked at how easily their fingers circled bones. The ghost wanted to fight back, to run away and escape, but the men had meat on their bones. They gripped her and she let go, allowing them to roll her onto her blanket and carry her back to the family compound in much the same way that she had carried her father to his grave.
As she passed by the tree where her family lay buried, Shekiba moaned and called out to them. She tried to lift her head to see the rounded mounds of earth.
Madar. Padar. Tariq. Munis. Bulbul.
She did not see her uncles look at each other, sharing a realization that the entire family was dead, even their brother Ismail. Shekiba didn’t see them bite their tongues, hold back their tears and mutter that they should have been there to wash their brother’s body and throw dirt on his grave. Shekiba was the last survivor—the one who should not have survived. They wondered how long this girl had been living alone and shook their heads with the shame of the situation. A girl, by herself! What dishonor this could bring to their family if anyone in the village were to find out!
They laid her in the courtyard of the home while they went to notify Bobo Shahgul. Within minutes, the spry old lady stood over Shekiba, peering down through her cataract-clouded eyes to get a better look at the grandchild she could do without.
“Tell your wives to get her washed up. Warn them that her face will turn their stomachs. And tell them to feed her. We must deal with this creature now if we are to save our good name within the village. May God punish her for keeping her father from us, my son! Not even telling us when he left this world! She will pay for this.”