My Name Is Parvana

by Deborah Ellis

  A man was sitting underneath her window. He was crying.

  It’s a good place to cry, Parvana thought.

  It was private, or as private as it was possible to get. She didn’t imagine it would be good for a soldier’s image to be found sobbing. Even the women had to act tough.

  Parvana listened to the crying for a while.

  Was the man homesick? Did he lose a friend in the explosion? Had someone hurt him? Was he lonely?

  Parvana thought about calling down to him, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Then she thought about the food she still had on her shelf. Maybe the crying soldier would like a package of cheese and crackers.

  But soldiers could get that food any time they wanted. That wouldn’t be much of a gift.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Parvana heard the soldier say, between sobs. “I can’t do this. I’d rather be dead!”

  Then Parvana knew what to do.

  She hopped down from her perch, dug the pen and a piece of paper out from under her mattress.

  She would write the crier a note. It might cheer him up. Or at least it would make him feel less alone.

  She put the tip of the pen on the paper. But she couldn’t think of what to say.

  She started to write, At least you’re not Jane Eyre. But what if the crying soldier hadn’t read the book?

  She couldn’t write, It will get better, because it probably wouldn’t. She couldn’t write, Don’t worry, because there were all kinds of good reasons to worry about a lot of things.

  It was hard to write a hopeful message because Parvana didn’t have any more hope. To have hope would mean that she could see a future that could be brighter than the present.

  For a long moment she kept the pen hovering over the paper.

  Then she knew the perfect thing to write.

  It was a poem she had learned from the book of American poetry. It was by a woman named Dorothy Parker.

  Razors pain you;

  Rivers are damp;

  Acids stain you;

  And drugs cause cramp.

  Guns aren’t lawful;

  Nooses give;

  Gas smells awful;

  You might as well live.

  She wrote the poem out, tucked the pen back into its hiding place and folded the paper into a little square. She climbed back up on the cot and table and dropped the poem through a gap in the shutters.

  She heard the small sound of surprise from the soldier when the paper landed on him. His crying slowed down as he unfolded the paper, and it eased off as he read the words.

  Parvana stayed at the shutters and listened to the soldier blow his nose, get up and brush the dirt off his clothes.

  “Thank you, whoever you are,” the soldier said. For a second his fingertips touched Parvana’s. Then he was gone.

  Parvana got down from her perch and paced around the cell. She felt really good. She had reached out to a stranger and had helped him to feel better. She had seen a problem and, for the moment, had fixed it.

  That was one of the things she had loved best about the school. She knew where everything was. When students had questions, she had answers. She could help a student who felt stupid realize she was smart, and she could help a scared student feel safe.

  Parvana settled back down on the bed and put the blanket around her shoulders again. She started to pick up Jane Eyre, but then she had a memory.

  Years before, she had worked in Kabul, sitting on a blanket in the market, reading and writing things for people who could not read or write on their own. She had sat beneath a window. The woman who lived behind the window was locked in by her husband, but she dropped little gifts on Parvana’s blanket, just to say hello. Before Parvana left Kabul, she planted flowers beneath the window to give the window woman something to enjoy.

  I’m the window woman now, Parvana thought.

  She smiled.

  And then she started to shake.

  Her chest felt like it was being squeezed by a wide leather strap. She could not get her breath. She climbed up to the window again, pressed her mouth against the shutters and sucked in as much fresh air as she could.

  A question kept floating through her mind.

  Who will plant flowers for me?

  Maybe it was Miss Brontë’s fault, or maybe it was the chocolate in the brownie. Maybe it was the wounded soldier’s blood still on her T-shirt or the sweet, smoky scent of the Afghan air. Something cut through the wire Parvana had wrapped around her heart. Something reached what she had tried so hard to hide.

  Parvana was too tired to fight it off.

  She sank to the floor and drew her knees up to her face.

  And cried.

  SEVENTEEN

  A strange noise pulled Parvana from her sleep.

  At first she thought some kind of animal had come into the room and was whimpering because it couldn’t find its way out.

  As she grew more awake, she thought it might be Ava, scared from a bad dream. But Ava and Maryam were both sound asleep beside her on the toshak.

  Then she realized the noise was coming from her mother.

  Parvana wriggled out from beneath the quilt, careful not to disturb the younger ones, and knelt in front of her mother.

  Mother was sitting in a corner looking at a photograph of Parvana’s father. The photo had been ripped apart by the Taliban and its pieces scattered in the wind. Parvana had found most of them on her journeys around Kabul. A few pieces were missing, but there were enough left to see that it was her father’s face. Even in the scant light of the candle flame, Parvana could see the strength and kindness in her father’s eyes.

  “I’m afraid, Nasrullah,” her mother whispered at the photo. “What have I taken on? I’m afraid …”

  Mother talking to photographs was not a good sign.

  It used to worry Parvana when it happened in Kabul.

  Now it just annoyed her.

  She picked up the photo. “I miss him, too, Mama.”

  “How did he die, Parvana? You were with him. The last time I saw him, he was alive.”

  “The last time you saw him, he was being arrested.” She wanted to say, “And you left him in prison so that your precious Nooria would have a better life.” But she didn’t say that because 1) for a long time, Nooria did not have a better life and 2) because she wanted to get a few more hours of sleep. She knew from experience that arguments with her mother could last for a long time and lead absolutely nowhere.

  She put the photo back on the shelf.

  “Can’t you sleep?” she asked her mother. “Do you want me to make you some chamomile tea?”

  Chamomile was one of the herbs they grew in the school garden. It made a very soothing tea.

  “I don’t like your tone,” Mother said.

  “Everything is fine,” Parvana said. “Our numbers are down, but we’re keeping the school open. The students we still have are learning and doing really well.”

  “It was wrong to let you be a teacher. Now you think you know everything.”

  Parvana actually had to put her tongue between her teeth and clamp down hard. Otherwise, she would have said, “You didn’t let me be a teacher, you needed me to be a teacher. And I’m a much better teacher than Nooria ever dreamed of being.”

  She had to bite hard until she was sure the words would stay unsaid.

  For a long time, Mother didn’t speak. Parvana got tired of sitting in silence and moved to head back to the warmth of her bed.

  Then Mother said quietly, “Our students are being harassed in their homes. Their parents are harassed for sending their daughters to us. We’re losing students. If our numbers keep going down, the charities that fund us will stop giving us money. We’ll have to close the school and we will be back to living in some filthy camp.
”

  Parvana suddenly felt full-body tired, weighed down by her mother’s despair.

  Then she had an idea.

  “The people who hate us can’t see through the walls,” she said.

  Her mother sighed. “Just go back to bed.”

  “They can’t see us, so they think that what we’re doing here is bad,” Parvana said with growing excitement. “Maybe we should have a sort of school festival. Invite the whole village. Students could prepare the food. Different classes could recite poetry or multiplication tables. Students could give speeches on Afghan history or geography. It could be fun!”

  “And, Mama, I could sing!” chirped Maryam from the toshak.

  Mother just sighed again. “I wish Nooria was here,” she said. “She would know what to do.”

  Parvana had heard enough. She got up off the floor and left the room. She didn’t care that it was still night and she would be cold. Her anger would keep her warm.

  Mother was never going to see her as a person with important things to say. Why did she even care anymore?

  She stomped around the yard, hitting walls with her fists and kicking at stones. Then she rounded a corner at the back of the school and stopped in her tracks.

  There were men carrying boxes into the storage shed. They wore traditional clothes and had the black turbans of the Taliban on their heads and rifles slung over their shoulders. Mr. Fahir was with them.

  “Please don’t do this,” Mr. Fahir said. “We are a school!”

  One of the rifle-carrying men shoved Mr. Fahir out of the way.

  Parvana dropped back behind the building, her brain and her heart rushing a mile a minute.

  Should she run and tell her mother? Should she try to find some kind of weapon? She had a ridiculous vision of grabbing the thick collection of poetry and bashing the men over the head with it.

  Think, she told herself.

  She peered around the corner again.

  The men were gone.

  The shed door was closed.

  Moving as quietly as she could, she inched her way over to the shed. She touched the padlock that was back on the door.

  She heard the front gate close and a truck engine start up. Sticking to the shadows, she got to the guardhouse just in time to hear one of the men snarl at Mr. Fahir, “You say one word about this to anyone, your whole family dies.”

  The truck sped off.

  Parvana waited a moment, then raised her hand to knock on the guardhouse door.

  Then she heard a sound and dropped her hand. She moved in close to be sure.

  Mr. Fahir was crying.

  She backed away and returned to her bed. She didn’t know what else to do.

  The next morning, Mother announced at the staff meeting that the school was going to have a festival and invite everyone from the village. Parvana didn’t even think about being bitter for not getting credit for the idea. She had much more serious things on her mind. She threw herself into the preparations and stayed away from the storage shed.

  Whatever was in there, she didn’t want to know.

  EIGHTEEN

  The festival was just a week away.

  “I know it’s not much time,” Mother said when she announced the plans to the rest of the school during morning assembly, “but you are all well prepared already. Your teachers tell me you are working hard in your studies, and this will give you a chance to show off your talents and knowledge to the whole community.”

  The girls were enthusiastic. Many of them had tried to explain to their parents what they did all day, but if their parents had never gone to school, it was hard for them to understand.

  Now they could show them.

  First, villagers would arrive and be formally welcomed by Mother. Then they would visit the classrooms and sit in on a lesson.

  Parvana decided her class would do an arithmetic lesson. She had been teaching them about earning and spending money.

  She gave them problems to solve: If you have twelve Afghanis, and oranges cost three Afghanis each, how many oranges can you buy? And, if each orange has twelve sections and there are fifteen people in your house, how many sections will each person get?

  Or: If it takes twelve spools of thread to embroider a shawl, and each spool costs twenty Afghanis, how much should you charge for the completed shawl to be sure you are making money?

  After sitting in the classrooms for a short while, the villagers would be invited to the dining hall for tea and sweets prepared by the students. There they would be entertained by student presentations.

  All classes were going to begin by reciting passages from the Holy Qur’an. The little ones were going to sing a song about the animals of Afghanistan. Parvana’s class would talk about Afghan geography. The older girls would give speeches about ancient Afghan history. Girls who were keen on singing were going to perform a few Afghan folk songs.

  They cleaned the school from top to bottom and decorated it with drawings of flowers, the Afghan flag and traditional Islamic patterns.

  The students hand-lettered posters and flyers. Parvana, Asif and Maryam went to the village one day to hand them around. Whenever they could, they taped the festival notices over the threatening notices that were still stuck to the walls.

  “Come to our festival,” they said to the shopkeepers and to people in the market. “It’s free. Come and share the morning with us!”

  Asif concentrated on the men. Parvana could see him talking with the butcher, standing close to the headless, upside-down goat. He pointed at the flyer and then up the road to the school. The butcher shook his head and tried to turn away, but Asif wouldn’t let him go. He kept talking to the man calmly, until Parvana saw the butcher raise his hands in surrender and say, yes, he would be there.

  Parvana smiled and went on with her work.

  “Stay with me,” she ordered Maryam. Her little sister rarely went to the village, and she kept wandering off.

  “I want to explore.”

  “We’re not here to explore. We’re here to work.”

  “I never get to come here,” Maryam said.

  “You’re too young.” But as she said those words, Parvana realized that Maryam was almost the age she had been when she first cut off her hair and went to work in the marketplace in Kabul.

  “I’ll bring you back here after the festival,” she promised.

  “Mama won’t let you. She’ll be too afraid.”

  “She won’t be afraid when the festival is over,” Parvana said. “People will be so impressed they’ll throw flowers in the street for us to walk on.”

  They put up a few more posters.

  Parvana noticed a girl a little younger than herself. She carried a baby in her arms.

  “Would you like to come to our festival?” Parvana asked her, holding out the flyer. “It’s at the school outside of town.” She pointed the way. “Not a far walk. You can bring the baby. There will be food and lots of things to see.”

  She held out the flyer, but the girl just looked at her, shaking her head slightly and even backing away a step.

  “You are absolutely welcome,” Parvana said, thinking the girl might be ashamed of the shabbiness of her clothes. “Come just as you are. I promise you’ll be safe and comfortable.”

  The girl’s eyes shifted to the side and she shook her head no again.

  At that moment, a man who had been buying fruit at a nearby stall turned around and stood by the girl. He was very tall, very old, and he had an angry look on his face.

  He glared down at Parvana and growled, “Get away from her.”

  Parvana shrank back.

  He turned and walked away. The girl with the baby hunched herself over and quickly followed him.

  Parvana watched them go, wishing she could snatch the girl away from the old man and stick her in a
classroom.

  Maryam had disappeared again. Parvana found her at a music stall looking at a girl singing on a small television screen.

  “Maryam, let’s go.”

  “It’s a singing competition,” Maryam said. “Singers from all over Afghanistan get to sing on TV, and people vote on who they like the best. The winner gets a big prize. Oh, Parvana, couldn’t I enter? I could win all the money we need!”

  “Mother won’t let you go to the market by yourself. You think she’ll let you go on television?”

  She pulled her little sister away from the TV. They met up with Asif and walked back to the school.

  Festival day arrived, clear and bright. Parvana was thrilled to see how many people came through the door. Students led their parents in by the hand. Women in burqas walked through the gate on their own and flung their burqas back from their faces once they were in the courtyard. They held onto the flyer as if it was a ticket, in case anyone challenged their right to be there. Even the butcher showed up. Parvana watched Asif welcome him in.

  Ava, all dressed up in her school uniform, took the hands of women as they came through the gate and led them to a seat.

  Everything went according to plan. The students did what they were supposed to in the classrooms, the guests enjoyed the tea and sweets, and the concert started as scheduled.

  And then Maryam took the stage.

  She was supposed to sing a traditional folk song.

  She was dressed in a tribal dress. Her hair was brushed and looked even longer and thicker than Nooria’s.

  Why am I the one who got stuck with a head full of string, Parvana thought, as she watched her sister cross to the middle of the open space they were using for a stage.

  Maryam took up her position. Then she started to sing.

  It took a long moment for Parvana’s brain to believe what her ears were hearing.

  Maryam was not singing the folk song.

  She was singing some pop song she had heard on the radio.

  And in English.

  It was a love song with a catchy beat, and while she was singing she started to dance.

  The dance was simple. Most of it was waving her arms, bouncing her head and jigging her feet in time to the song.