by Sharon McKay
Yasmine pressed her nose against the car window. Across the road a cluster of old men stood in front of a mosque petting their beards and twirling tasbih prayer beads.
She could smell bread baking. A line of large flat baskets, filled with milky-white mounds of dough, lay in a row on the ground against a wall. Boys kicked a ball about in the middle of the road.
“What are they doing?” asked Yasmine.
“The boys are playing while they wait their turn. The baker will call out and a boy will take him the dough,” said Mother. “Not every family can afford an oven.”
Yasmine nodded. She could see the baker squatting beside the hot oven. He was soaked in sweat and there were burn marks on his arms. They looked like chicken bones wrapped in crinkled, brown paper. A boy stood over him holding out a basket. The baker snatched the dough, smacked it flat, sprinkled it with water, then lowered it into the hot oven.
“Is that a school?” Yasmine pointed to a low building beside the mosque.
“It’s a madrassa, a religious school for boys,” said Mother.
“Where is the school for girls?” asked Yasmine.
“Westerners are building a school for boys and girls, but it is not ready,” she said.
“When will it be ready?”
Mother hesitated. “It may take a long time.”
Yasmine said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Baba was still talking to the kebab-seller when a girl plopped a bundle of naan down beside the grill. She looked to be about Yasmine’s age. The girl looked towards the car. They stared at each other for just a second. Should she wave? Yasmine was about to lift her hand when the girl turned and ran down the road. She had a limp.
Baba climbed back into the car and gave the driver directions. They didn’t have far to go. The house was very near the middle of the village, and the village was small, tiny even. It was only a few moments before the car stopped in front of a great metal door. Baba gave the bell-cord a yank. An old woman with hooded eyes opened the door. She and Baba talked. She nodded then and opened the door wide for Baba to pass into their new home.
Chapter 4
Tamanna
Bazaar-E-Panjwayi, Kandahar Province
Tamanna swept aside the heavy curtain that hung across the doorway separating house from courtyard and looked east to see a weak sun rising.
“Salaam, Mor,” Tamanna called out to her mother as she slipped her feet into worn sandals.
Mor, hunched in the middle of the courtyard, struck a wooden match and lit the coal fire in the pit under the round tandoor oven. A spark landed on her sleeve. It met with one of Mor’s mighty smacks.
“Mor?” Tamanna took a step. Her hip suddenly gave way and her foot shot out, knocking her brother’s blue, star-tipped sandals to the ground.
“Tamanna!” Mor cried out.
“I am sorry, Mor.”
“Tut-tut.” Mor’s tongue clicked against her teeth.
Tamanna took a deep breath and adjusted her hijab. She picked up Kabeer’s sandals, cleaned them with her sleeve, and placed them back on the step. Kabeer had been missing for five years and, although the sandals fit her perfectly, Tamanna was not allowed to wear them. Kabeer would have big feet by now, but there was no arguing with Mor. The shoes stayed by the door waiting for her brother’s return. Was he dead? She and Kabeer were twins, connected forever. Surely she would know when his spirit had left this earth. Would she not have felt it in her bones?
Tamanna hip-hopped around the house, ducked under the clothesline, and crossed the back of the garden. But it wasn’t a real garden. Nothing grew there except thistles. Her eyes were fixed on the outhouse straight ahead. She had trained herself not to look in the direction of Uncle Zaman’s shed. He was asleep. He was always asleep. There were times when Tamanna thought Uncle never got up and Mor never went to bed. Uncle was ten years older than her mother and, in her opinion, he was mean and as lazy as a slug. Worse, he gambled and smoked chars. Maybe he even went to the house where liquor was sold. There were whispers about such a place in the women’s bathhouse.
Many months ago, Mor had tried to offer Uncle advice. “What you are doing is against the laws of Islam. You will get hurt,” she had said, gently and kindly. Tamanna, holding her breath, had watched it all from the doorway of the house. Uncle Zaman’s face had turned as red as a pomegranate. He’d spat on the ground and screamed, “No woman tells me what to do, you ahmaq! You woman! I will not be told how to behave in my own house!” But it wasn’t his house. It was Mor’s house. Then Uncle Zaman shook his fist under Mor’s nose. But yelling and shaking a clenched fist did not satisfy him. He slapped Mor and then he punched her, and when Mor crumpled to the ground he kicked her, screaming, “You nothing woman. You have no brain. You must not speak.”
“Stop, stop!” Tamanna had run across the courtyard then and pitched herself on top of her mother. Uncle had pulled back his leg and let it fly. When his foot landed on Tamanna’s hip, there was a sound, a crack, and searing pain that ricocheted up her body and left her throat scorched.
Three seasons had passed since then, and Tamanna’s hip had still not healed properly.
Now Tamanna slammed the outhouse door and bolted it by dropping a length of wood into a slot. The outhouse was just four old pieces of wood surrounding a concrete slab with a hole in the floor. It stank. A new hole needed to be dug, but Uncle would not provide the money, and so they made do.
They could have supported themselves if they had been allowed to keep all that they earned. Mor sold eggs from the chickens Grandfather provided, and she baked naan for Rahim Khan, Mor’s cousin the kebab-seller. Tamanna delivered the bread to him twice a day. But almost everything they earned went to Uncle.
Tamanna burst out of the outhouse, poured water out of a jug and washed her hands. A sound—a sort of groan mixed with a yawn—emanated from Uncle’s shed. She tiptoed to the door and peeked inside. She expected to see him sprawled out on his mat, as if tossed there by a large, careless animal. Instead the old wooden door suddenly swung open so wide and so forcefully that it banged against the inside wall. Tamanna reeled backwards.
“What do you want?” Uncle Zaman snarled. He loomed over her like a hawk over prey. He had high, sharp cheekbones and a large, hooked nose. Some might have called him rugged and handsome, but Tamanna thought him menacing and fearsome.
“Salaam,” Tamanna whispered.
“Go away.” He waved his hand at her as if she were a fly. “No, come here.”
Go away. Come here. It was always that way with Uncle.
“There is a new customer. He is an important man from Herat. Lots of money. Take him some naan and charge him double,” he growled.
Tamanna nodded. A car and a small truck had passed through the village yesterday. There had been a girl inside the car with green eyes, wearing a beautiful gray hijab, and the man had spoken to Rahim Khan, the kebab-seller. He’d been dressed in fine, clean clothes. That must have been the man Uncle was talking about.
“He lives in the big house with the blue door. You know it?” he asked.
Tamanna nodded again. No one had lived in that house for years and years. If the man with the fine clothes lived there, then the girl did too. Perhaps she would see her.
“Deliver the bread and do not stop to talk to anyone. I have seen men give you dirty eye. If you get dirty eye again I will make you wear a burka. I will not have you spoiled for marriage.” He barked out the words while swishing his hands in the air.
“Mor says that I am not to be married for many years. My father said—”
“Your mother is a useless woman. Your father tried to fight the Taliban and look where it got him—in the grave. Dead men do not speak. I will say when you get married.” He spat out the words.
Tamanna’s lower lip trembled, but her hands made small, tight fists. How did he know that her father was dead? There was no proof. She wanted to cry out, to yell, but there was no stopping Uncle.
“Have
you any news of your father? Have you received any more of his precious letters?” he jeered.
Tamanna pursed her lips and swallowed hard. A long time ago, travelers passing through the village had brought letters from her father. Mor took her husband’s letters to the holy man, the imam, to read. The letters were long, many pages, but the imam only said, “Your husband sends warm regards and prayers for peace and God’s blessings.” The imam kept the letters. Then, they stopped. They had not received a letter in five years.
Most people would have said that Tamanna was a quiet girl, easily dominated. But they would have been wrong. Anger gave her courage. “My father is a brave man.” She looked Uncle square in the face. Uncle raised his hand as if to strike her. Tamanna willed herself not to move. She just waited for the blow. But nothing happened. Uncle laughed and walked past her towards the outhouse.
“Praise be to Allah,” she whispered as she ran around to the front of the house.
The oven was now bristling hot. Plucking a small mound of dough as white as milk from a basket, Mor pounded it with a closed fist, dipped it into water, then lowered it down into the oven.
“Fetch the wood,” said Mor.
Tamanna raced to the far corner of their courtyard, laid down her shawl, a patoo, and piled kindling on top. Quickly she tied the corners of the shawl together and heaved the bundle onto her shoulder. Her hip throbbed with pain.
“There, Mor.” She dropped the bundle. A small cloud of dust enveloped them both.
“Drink your tea.” With a free hand, Mor pointed to a mug and a slab of steaming naan. Tamanna slurped the green tea through her teeth, then pulled back in surprise. Her tea was sprinkled with sugar. Such treats were reserved for Uncle, not for her!
“Mor?” she whispered, but her mother did not turn her attention from the hot tandoor oven. Beads of sweat were already forming on Mor’s brow. “Uncle says I must take naan to the big house near the mosque,” said Tamanna. Mor just nodded.
Tamanna picked up the two steamy bundles of naan that Mor had wrapped in white cotton. With the hot bread clutched tight to her chest, she charged out of the courtyard.
“Be careful! Do not step off the road, there are land mines!”
Tamanna did not look back and so she did not see her mother stroke her taweez, the holy charm that hung from a black thread around her neck. Still, she could hear her mother’s pleading words following her out through the broken gate and along the rutted path. Soon the path would join a straight road that ran through the village of Bazaar-E-Panjwayi.
“Salaam.” Tamanna plopped the naan onto the small plastic table by the stove of the kebab-seller and took a deep breath. The air was ripe with the smell of fried onions, tobacco, and sizzling lamb and goat.
Rahim Khan grunted as he plucked a piece of naan off the pile. He dropped kebabs slathered with onions on top of the flat bread and passed it to a waiting customer. A piece of lamb fell into the coals and crackled. Tamanna’s mouth watered. Rahim Khan plucked it out of the coals and handed it to her.
“Tashakor,” Tamanna thanked him. Rahim Khan nodded without looking her way.
Tamanna tried not to make eye contact with the customers. It was hard to ignore a bearded old man sitting at one of Rahim Khan’s tables, though. He had a face marked with scars, a sharp buzzard nose, and black buzzard eyes.
“Khoda-hafez.” She called out her farewell over her shoulder as she dashed off again.
“Watch out!” a woman in a burka shouted at her. Tamanna jumped aside as Gul Beebee Akthar, the mother of a martyr, paraded down the road in an old black burka. Two more women in burkas followed her, calling out, clearing the way.
“Salaam,” Tamanna said softly.
Tamanna turned into a small passageway between two houses. It was a shortcut across town. The passage bent and curved, and just when she neared the end it came to a dead stop, blocked by rusted farm equipment.
“What are you doing here?”
Tamanna froze.
Noor, fifteen and tall for his age, stood behind her. He riveted his hands to his hips and glared at Tamanna. All the children in the village were afraid of him. He wore a coal-streaked shalwar kameez and a beaded cap that covered hair so black it looked blue.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. It was improper to talk to a boy, and he knew that. Tamanna spun around. Behind her was the old farm equipment and on either side were tall mud walls. There was no way out except straight past Noor. But there would be gossip if someone saw them together in the passage! And then what would Uncle do? Tamanna pulled her hijab low over her forehead and came face to face with Noor.
“Do not speak to me ever again,” she hissed, then she bolted down the passageway towards the road.
The door was big, blue, and made of tin. Tamanna took hold of the bell-cord and gave it a mighty tug. It was many minutes before an old woman, with hooded eyes and a toothless scowl, opened the door. Tamanna had seen her often in the bathhouse. Wordlessly, Tamanna held out the naan.
The woman snatched the bread out of Tamanna’s hands. “Come back tomorrow and I will tell you if we want to make an order.”
The door was about to close when a girl with bright-green eyes peeked around the wall. “Can you come in and visit?” she asked. It was her, the girl in the car! Visit? Tamanna was astonished. Girls did not visit. Tamanna did not know what to say and so she just stood there, wide-eyed.
“What is your name?” asked the girl.
“Tamanna,” she whispered.
“My name is Yasmine.”
The old woman slammed the tin door and the girl with the green eyes vanished.
Chapter 5
Warrior Eyes
The next morning Tamanna stood outside the tin door holding a small stack of naan wrapped in cloth. She felt confident. These rich people had to buy bread from someone, and Mor’s naan was the best in the village. Tamanna reached up and pulled the bell-cord. Deep breath. She was ready to negotiate a price with the miserable old lady with the hooded eyes.
A man swung open the large door. Tamanna took a step back. The rich man who owned the house stood in front of her. Men or boys almost always answered the door, and she should not have been surprised—it was only that she had been expecting the housekeeper. Tamanna looked down at her feet. She could feel his eyes upon her, but not in a dirty way.
“My wife praises the bread.” His voice was nice, not gruff or tinged with anger like Uncle’s. The man took the bundle out of Tamanna’s arms. She felt her face go hot. She could not speak to a man who was not a relative. How then was she supposed to negotiate a price?
“Would you like to work in my house?” asked the man.
Tamanna stood as still as a stone. It took a moment, maybe two, to understand his meaning. Only Uncle could make such a decision. Still, she nodded without raising her head.
The man left her standing in the road. She heard him talking to someone. A moment later, the old woman who’d opened the door the day before was marching past her, storming down the road, her long skirts flapping around her ankles.
“You may come in and wait,” said the man.
Tamanna sat inside the courtyard with her back against the wall. The courtyard was astonishing. There was a tree with a bench under it and beside it a soft toshak. There were flowers in earthen jars and herbs growing in a small garden plot. At the end of the courtyard there was a house with a beautiful, multicolored mat in front of the doorway. There was a copper washing pot, a table, a kerosene lamp—Tamanna had never seen such a courtyard. She looked up.
A figure loomed over her, blocking the sun.
“You make good bread.” Yasmine, the girl with the green eyes, squatted down beside Tamanna. Both girls were bathed in a soft morning light. Why did this new girl speak so oddly? She spoke all the same words Tamanna did, but they sounded different.
“My mother makes the naan. I just deliver it,” Tamanna said.
“I remember your n
ame. It’s Tamanna. Do you remember mine?”
“Yasmine,” whispered Tamanna. She had been repeating it to herself all night.
“Come and meet my mother.” Yasmine pulled Tamanna to her feet. A thin, gold chain sparkled around her neck. Tamanna had not thought it possible for a girl to own such a thing. Yasmine ran across the courtyard and into the house, and Tamanna hurried behind.
The floors in the house were covered with thick rugs. The first room, to welcome guests, held many beautiful pillows. Tiny painted teacups in silver holders sat on a large, circular, brass-topped table. The next room was the family room, with many more pillows, another large, round table, a daybed, and even a foreign-style desk and bookshelves filled with books!
“My father does his work at this desk. One day he will publish a book. That’s my room over there!” Yasmine pointed down a tiny hall.
A girl with her own room! Was such a thing possible? There was also a kitchen, an indoor toilet, and a separate room for her parents.
“Come.” Yasmine pulled Tamanna’s hand. “This is my mother,” she said proudly.
A woman with long, black hair streaked with silver, high cheekbones, a mouth curved in a gentle smile, and eyes as bright-green as jade sat up in a wooden bed. She was the most beautiful woman Tamanna had ever seen. She looked like a queen. The queen smiled.
“Welcome, Tamanna. I have tasted your delicious naan. My daughter was waiting for you to come this morning.”
Someone had been waiting for her! Tamanna should have been tongue-tied, but instead, the shyness that sometimes threatened to envelope her dissolved like fog in sunlight. “I am happy to be here.” There, she’d said it. It might have been the longest sentence she had ever spoken to someone who was not a relative.
They all heard the door to the road open and close.
