by N. H. Senzai
Zayd gave Ariana a worried look. “What’s going on?” he whispered.
“I don’t know any more than you do,” replied Ariana. Neither of them had uttered a word during the tense six-minute drive to Wong Plaza, nor had they asked their obviously agitated father any questions.
The officers and Jamil walked into Kabul Corner as one of the policemen took notes. After what seemed like a good half hour, the police left the store and drove away, leaving Jamil inside. Fidgety from being cooped up in the car, Zayd couldn’t take it anymore. He hopped out of the backseat, with Ariana right behind him. They scurried toward the door of the store, which gaped open.
Ariana peered inside, spotting an overturned spice rack lying across the entrance. The ground was streaked with cumin, dried mint, cinnamon, and red pepper.
“What the—,” whispered Zayd, his face going pale.
Ariana’s throat tightened as she surveyed the store; it looked like an IED had exploded inside. She blinked, not believing what she saw. The cash register lay a few feet from the counter where it had been yanked from the wall. The new freezer’s doors hung drunkenly agape, and the new line of frozen kebobs, melting and turning into mush, were on the floor next to overturned nut bins. Everywhere she looked was destruction—torn packaging and broken glass lay strewn in the aisles; the contents of shattered jars littered the linoleum; jams oozed and mixed with pickles, olives, and tomato sauce.
“Oh, no,” whispered Ariana, shivering.
Zayd reached out and slipped an arm around her shoulders in a protective hug. She stood there, huddling next to her brother’s warmth, as they stared at their father. Jamil picked up the cash register, tears gleaming in his eyes. Then he paused, seemingly immobilized by the carnage before him. Ariana sunk deeper into shock. She’d never seen her father cry, except when Masood Baba, her grandfather, had lain dying at the hospital.
“Who did this?” Zayd whispered out loud.
“They don’t know,” said Jamil. “Juan found the store like this and called the cops.”
As they stood at the front of the store, surveying the damage, Uncle Shams’s minivan screeched to a halt outside. He tumbled out with Baz and Marjan trailing behind. “Oh my goodness,” he said with a gasp as he viewed the destruction. “We’re ruined!” he cried, deflating against the counter as if someone had let the air out of his body.
Jamil blinked, coming out of his stupor. He glanced at the kids as they stood, wide-eyed with fear. “Now, Shams,” he began, his voice ragged but calm. “I know it looks bad, but we can clean this up.”
“This is thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of damage,” muttered Uncle Shams, looking around in a daze.
“Don’t worry,” soothed Jamil. “I’ll call the insurance company first thing in the morning and file a claim, once I have a copy of the police report.”
Uncle Shams sat on a stool behind the counter, holding his head in his hands.
While Zayd called their mom and Sara Khala, Ariana and her cousins headed back to the bakery, which was covered with a layer of flour. All the bags had been slashed and the contents strewn everywhere.
“Man, it looks like snow,” said Baz, wielding a broom.
Marjan nodded, his round face crumpling. “Who’d do this?” he whispered.
“Don’t worry about that now,” said Ariana, giving him an awkward hug. Marjan wrapped his pudgy arms around her and wiped his nose on her shoulder. Eeeww, thought Ariana, but she resisted the temptation to shove him off.
Marjan stepped back, a little embarrassed. “C’mon. Let’s clean this up.”
Ariana returned to the front of the store with garbage bags so that she could start sorting through what could be salvaged and what couldn’t. She shut the front door and stood at the window, gazing across the deserted parking lot. Beyond the flickering sign with the missing g sat the dilapidated auto parts warehouse, which now had a sold sign hanging on it. Someone had finally bought the eyesore.
“Ariana jaan,” called her father. “Can you please get us the mops?”
Ariana nodded, stepping over the torn velvet cushions. She held back a gag reflex from the caustic stench of vinegar, mustard, and cayenne pepper swirling together like a witch’s brew. Nose held between her fingers, Ariana hurried back to the supply room. Wishing she had some cotton balls to stick in her nose, she pushed open the door and found overturned boxes and supplies.
As she exited, she heard Uncle Shams’s angry voice reverberating near the back door. “It was those thieving Ghilzais!”
“Now, Shams . . . ,” began Jamil, attempting to hold back his brother’s flood of words.
“Of course it’s them! All our problems began when they moved in next door. Only they would gain from driving us out of business.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Shams,” cautioned Jamil. “The police don’t have any clues as to who did this.”
Ariana could just imagine her uncle inflated like a puffer fish filled with air. “Until there is proof otherwise, I am convinced that it’s those Ghilzais.”
Ariana held her breath. Uncle Shams had a habit of getting angry quickly, but she’d never seen him this furious.
Jamil released a pent-up sigh and then remained silent a moment, as if he’d run out of words to convince Shams otherwise. “All right,” he said, changing the subject. “For now all of us need to calm down and get this mess cleaned up. But we will get to the bottom of who did this.”
“IT WAS LIKE A bomb had gone off inside the store,” murmured Ariana, staring morosely at the contents of her lunch bag.
Mariam’s hand stopped in midair, her forkful of spaghetti dripping crimson sauce onto her crisp coral-colored shirt. “Was it really that bad?”
Ariana nodded, her expression glum. Laila stared at her midchew; she’d been asleep when Ariana had returned with Jamil and her brother and cousins at nearly two a.m. the night before. Since Ariana and the boys had been allowed to sleep through breakfast, Laila had gotten only tidbits of what had happened from the adults, and she’d been dying to hear the details.
“How bad is it?” whispered Laila, choking down the bite of sandwich.
“It’s pretty bad,” said Ariana, rubbing her shoulder, sore from hours of sweeping. “They ripped out the cash register and stole the petty cash. But then they went on a rampage through the store. They destroyed tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory. The dry goods—flour, rice, lentils, sugar, and spices—were all torn apart. They shoved jars of pickles, jams, and sauces onto the floor, creating a slippery, toxic sludge. Even Uncle Shams’s new line of kebobs were pulled out of the freezer and ended up in a soggy melted mess. We cleaned for, like, five hours, but there’s a ton more to do.”
“Oh, no,” said Mariam, laying down her fork.
“Why didn’t they just take the money and leave?” pondered Laila.
Laila’s got a point, thought Ariana with a frown. The vandals had taken a risk by hanging out to trash the place. They could have gotten caught.
Laila gulped, her lips compressed. “It’s like it was personal,” she said. “As if they wanted to destroy not only the store but also Uncle Jamil’s and Uncle Shams’s spirit.”
“Your father and uncle must be devastated,” said Mariam.
Ariana nodded, Uncle Shams’s words from the night before ringing in her ears. “He thinks the Ghilzais did it.”
“It’s just like Zia and Bawer,” said Laila, sharing a worried look with Ariana.
“Who and who?” asked Mariam.
Ariana and Laila filled Mariam in on their family history and the feud that went all the way back to Afghanistan.
“Wow,” said Mariam, her eyes wide. “That sounds like those two crazy families we learned about last year, the Garfields and the McDougals.”
“The Hatfields and McCoys,” corrected Ariana.
“Yeah, them,” said Mariam. “They, like, killed off half of each other’s family.”
“Do you think Uncle Shams will get mad enough to retaliate against them?” wondered Laila out loud.
Ariana shivered. “I’ve never seen him so mad. He’s convinced the Ghilzais had something to do with the break-in. He’s like a rumbling volcano that’s going to explode at any minute.”
“You never know what can happen if someone is pushed to the edge,” whispered Laila, and she nudged aside the rest of her sandwich, her appetite gone. “Remember how one tiny incident with the goat escalated into a cycle of badal and kept getting worse until Tofan Baba was shot? What if the police don’t find proof of who broke into the store and Uncle Shams takes the law into his own hands . . .” Her words trailed off, but the girls knew what she was thinking.
What if Uncle Shams gets mad enough to do something to Gulbadin?
“Well, if the Ghilzais really did break in, they should be brought to justice before Uncle Shams takes the law into his own hands,” said Mariam.
Ariana exchanged a secretive look with Laila. “But that’s just it, Mariam. . . . We don’t think that the Ghilzais did it.”
“Why in the world would you think that?” asked her friend. “They have every reason to want you guys out of business.”
“It’s an odd feeling I have,” said Ariana. “Some of what’s happened just doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mariam.
“Let me try to explain,” said Ariana, sorting it out in her own mind first. “It all started when the Ghilzais opened Pamir Market across from us. Although that wasn’t cool of them, it wasn’t like it was illegal—and it wasn’t against the rules in Mrs. Wong’s lease. Uncle Shams looked into that and found out that the lease doesn’t have something called a non-compete clause, meaning there can be a competing business in the same plaza.”
“That stinks,” said Mariam, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah, I know,” said Ariana. “Then Pamir Market had its grand opening and we found out that they’d cut their prices to attract more customers.”
“That must have made your father and uncle mad,” said Mariam.
“Yeah, but that’s not illegal either,” explained Ariana. “It was when Haroon left and ended up at Pamir Market that the problems, and the gossip, really began.”
Mariam nodded. She’d heard the rumors flying around, from her parents. “Does anyone know how they stole Haroon from you guys?” she asked.
“No. Dad and Uncle Shams have been too busy trying to figure out a way to get back customers and bring in more money,” said Ariana. She remembered her parents huddled in the kitchen, whispering about using the kids’ college fund to help cover expenses.
“Maybe we should just ask Haroon,” suggested Laila.
Ariana nodded, though the thought of going behind her father’s back to talk to their old baker made her a little nervous. “Okay,” she said, inspired to do a little digging. “Let’s put that on a to-do list.”
Laila pulled out her notebook and opened to a clean page. On the top she wrote Feud Investigation. Next to number one she wrote, Talk to Haroon.
“Then, a couple of weeks later, the horse meat flyers appeared out of thin air,” said Ariana. “And I know that Dad and Uncle Shams didn’t have anything to do with them.”
“But we did benefit from Pamir Market’s bad publicity,” said Laila. “A lot of our old customers came back.”
“For a while Dad thought the Ghilzais had put the flyers up so they could accuse us of harassing them,” said Ariana. “But as Laila and I examined the flyer, we realized that that made no sense. Why would they damage the reputation of their own store? The more we analyzed the flyer, the more questions we had.”
“Yes,” said Laila. “We translated the Farsi into English, and the wording of the flyer is terrible. It sounds like it wasn’t even written by a Farsi-speaking person.”
“But that’s not real proof that the Ghilzais didn’t do it,” said Mariam.
“You’re right.” Ariana sighed. “So, we need solid evidence, whether the Ghilzais are involved or it’s someone else.”
Laila wrote, Find proof whether Ghilzais are behind the flyer.
“So Uncle Shams believes that the break-in was the Ghilzais’ way of getting back at you for the flyers?” asked Mariam.
“Yeah,” said Ariana, her shoulders slumping. Her father and Uncle Shams were still in the process of cleaning out the store and haggling with the insurance company about getting payment for the losses.
“But the police don’t have any suspects or proof, right?” asked Mariam.
“Yup,” said Ariana. “They think it could have been anyone—maybe a bunch of teenagers out for some fun, making trouble.”
“Maybe the door was left unlocked,” said Mariam.
“No.” Ariana frowned. “My dad and Uncle Shams are supercareful about locking up, especially these days.”
Mariam looked thoroughly confused. “But who else can it be?”
The two cousins shrugged.
“There’s only one way to uncover the answers to these questions,” said Mariam, looking Ariana in the eye. “You know what we have to do, right?”
Ariana gulped. Man, this is going to be hard.
• • •
Three hours later, lodged behind a bush next to the gym, Ariana and Laila watched Mariam standing under the monkey bars with Wali. A splash of coral against the dull, gray October afternoon, Mariam bent toward him, hands on hips, her face earnest. Wali stood with his hands in his pockets, nodding, then shaking his head. As the neutral party, Mariam had been tasked with talking to him. So she’d had a friend give Wali a note during math, asking him to meet her after school on the playground. Ariana kept her fingers crossed. She had no idea how this was going to go.
But five minutes later Mariam came running toward them at their appointed meet-up spot, outside the gym door. “It’s on,” she trilled. “Four o’clock at the Fremont library.”
• • •
“I swear on my honor—my father didn’t lure Haroon away from your store,” said Wali. His fists clenched, he leaned across the table and stared at the girls.
They were on the second floor of the library, in a secluded spot between the travel books and cookbooks.
“How can you be so sure?” prodded Mariam, looking him dead in the eye.
“Haroon came to our house,” said Wali, pushing back a lock of hair. “My father had never even thought of having a bakery at the store. Honestly, he was out of money. He’d spent thousands to upgrade Pamir Market for the grand opening.”
“So Haroon just showed up?” asked Ariana, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice. She’d been quiet so far, picking at the red and green paint stuck under her fingernails from painting Peter Pan sets.
“Yes. Haroon said he’d had it with the Shinwari brothers, the awful ovens, and the terrible assistant. He said he needed a change, and more pay. My father thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up, so he sold his BMW to put a bakery at the back of the store, and hired Haroon.”
Well, that did sound like something Haroon would say and do, thought Ariana grudgingly.
“Look,” said Wali. “When Mariam told me that you wanted to talk about what was happening between the stores, I took a risk to come here. If my dad found out I was talking to you, he’d be furious. He’d ground me for a year. But you know what, with all the weird stuff going on, something just doesn’t feel right.”
Startled, Ariana tried to gauge the sincerity in Wali’s face, wondering at his choice of words. It didn’t feel right to her, either. “Well, the news is out that our stores are feuding,” she growled, drumming her fingers against the table.
“Look,” said Wali, sounding exasperated. “My father didn’t even know about the feu
d in Afghanistan until Tofan Baba told us.”
“So where did the idea of the feud come from?” pushed Mariam, like she was interrogating someone on the witness stand.
“That was Tofan Baba’s friend’s fault,” muttered Wali, squirming in his chair.
Ariana remembered the conversation Hava Bibi and Tofan Baba had had at the festival. “Didn’t his friend tell everyone at the kebob restaurant about Zia, Bawer, and the goat?”
“Yeah,” said Wali, “but Tofan Baba told them it wasn’t like that in America—that the old feud had been left behind in Afghanistan.”
“But the story is out,” said Mariam. “My dad said he heard some guys talking about it at the mosque the other week.”
“But that’s how gossip works,” said Ariana. “After Haroon left for Pamir Market, the whole world began to believe that our stores are fighting.”
“That’s why we need to go through this list,” said Mariam, pointing to Laila’s notebook. “We need to understand all the facts and find out what’s really going on.”
“What’s on your list?” asked Wali, leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest.
Laila looked at the Feud Investigation list and read out, “Mystery meat flyers.”
“My dad was furious when he saw those,” said Wali. “He’s totally convinced that your family put them up.”
Ariana pulled the yellow flyer with the ink smudges from her backpack and laid it in front of Wali. “My family had nothing to do with these,” she said, her voice gruff. She explained how the flyers had been printed on expensive paper, and if her father had been behind it, which he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have wasted money on good paper.
“Then who did it?” asked Wali.
“Now, that is the million-dollar question,” said Mariam.
“Uh, what is a million-dollar question?” asked Laila.
That got a smile out of the three, and Mariam explained that it was another American saying that meant it was an important or difficult question that people didn’t know the answer to.
