“Can Hasti come with us?” Anoosheh asked.
The sunset-haired woman shook her head no and put glasses on her face that hid her eyes. When they left the tent, she murmured something in the language Anoosheh couldn’t understand.
Anoosheh remembered the sound of those words, just like she remembered Hasti sobbing and calling for Anoosheh to come back. She would hear words like that often in her life, said by many different people in many different places. Once she learned what the words meant, she understood the reason the woman with the sunset hair hid her eyes.
“We can’t save them all,” the woman said as they left the orphans’ tent behind. “I’m so sorry. We just can’t save them all.”
***
2009
Mastana pulled Anoosheh’s shaylah down on her forehead. “I can see your hair,” she said. “You can’t go out like that. Everyone is to look their best today.”
Anoosheh tugged her shaylah back where she’d had it. The plain, white cloth covering her head and wrapped around her neck was rough, and it always made her forehead itch. She didn’t want it to touch her skin, but the teachers at the Maidan Shar Girls School made the students wear their entire uniform, even the uncomfortable shaylahs, whenever they were in public.
Anoosheh didn’t mind the rest of her uniform. The soft black folds of the jilbāb she wore to cover her body had plenty of room for Anoosheh to hide the books she took to read after class was over. Students were supposed to leave them in the classroom, because the teachers said they had to last, but Anoosheh was careful. She was sure her teachers wouldn’t mind if they found out she took them to the room she shared with Mastana and the other girls who lived at the school, but she didn’t want to take the chance. If a student broke too many rules, she was sent away, and Anoosheh had nowhere else to go.
Mastana was older than Anoosheh, but they sat next to each other in class while they learned mathematics and history and geography, English and Dari and Pashto. Mastana thought she could tell Anoosheh what to do, and for the most part, Anoosheh let her. She had only one leg, and used a crutch to walk. She never asked Anoosheh how she lost her hand, and Anoosheh never asked her how she lost her leg. Anoosheh thought that was what made them friends. They lived at the school along with six other girls who had no parents and three of the teachers’ helpers who had no homes.
Everyone was nervous about the man coming to visit the school today. His name was Sayd Farouq Durani, and their teacher said all students were to address him as Shaghelay Farouq. Their teacher said he was the man who made it possible for Anoosheh and the other children to go to school and have enough food to eat so they could spend their time learning and not begging in the street. She told the girls that he spoke English better than any of the teachers in the school, and they should be ready to answer in English whatever questions he asked. Anoosheh hoped he wouldn’t ask her how she lost her hand.
Shaghelay Farouq didn’t come to their classroom right away. By the time the door opened and he walked inside, Anoosheh was so nervous she had trouble sitting still. Mastana had already pinched her once beneath the desk to make her stop wriggling.
Anoosheh had seen few men since she’d been taken from the refugee camp by the woman with the sunset hair. Anoosheh hadn’t seen her again, but now that she was learning English, she knew that was the language the woman had spoken. Anoosheh expected Shaghelay Farouq would have sunset-colored hair, too, because the teacher said he spoke such good English. She was surprised that he looked just like everyone else at Maidan Shar, only his face wasn’t as hollow and his teeth were straight and white.
“Good morning, girls,” he said in English.
Their teacher nodded. “Good morning, Shaghelay Farouq,” all the girls in Anoosheh’s class said in unison.
He looked at the students as if he wanted to remember all their faces. He paused when he reached Anoosheh, then his gaze moved on to Mastana. When he was finished, he sat down at the teacher’s desk.
“For today,” he said, “I want you to speak to me only in English, and you must use only the English form of address. You have been taught how to do that?”
Anoosheh sat very still. The teacher hadn’t told them how to address someone like Shaghelay Farouq in English, and it hadn’t been in any of the books she’d read.
When none of the students answered him, Shaghelay Farouq turned toward the teacher, who shook her head and looked as nervous as Anoosheh felt.
“Ah,” he said. “Good. Now I can be useful. I was afraid you had already been taught everything you need to know.” He smiled. “When I speak this language,” he said in Pashto, “I am Shaghelay Farouq. But when I speak like this,” he said in English, “I am Mister Durani. Please repeat that.”
All the girls did, although none of them said the first word well.
“Very good,” he said. “When I was much younger, I lived in Kabul until my work took me to the United States.” He looked at Anoosheh. “Do you know where those places are?”
Her stomach clenched, but she nodded. She knew the names of many of the places on the maps hung on the walls at the front of the classroom.
“Come up and show me,” he said.
Anoosheh did as she was told. The classroom was small, the desks crowded together, and Anoosheh had to squeeze past Mastana, who sat on the outside of the row so she had a place to keep her crutch.
When Anoosheh got to the front of the class, she pointed to Kabul on the map of Afghanistan, then went to the map that showed the United States.
“Very good,” he said. “I live in a state called Virginia. Can you show me where that is?”
She pointed to Virginia on the map of the United States before she realized that was something she’d learned by reading her geography book in her room. She saw Mastana’s eyes grow as wide as her own must have been. Mastana knew that Anoosheh read at night before they had to turn out the light in their room.
Anoosheh froze. She expected Shaghelay Farouq—Mister Durani—to yell, or at the very least to strike her for disobeying the rules. She closed her eyes as he stood up from the desk, but no blow came.
“I would like you to come with me,” he said to her instead. “I want to show you something you might enjoy. Something I believe you may be very good at. Would you like that?”
He wasn’t angry with her? Maybe he thought all the students knew the names of the provinces in the United States.
Anoosheh realized he was waiting for her to answer. No one had ever asked her what she wanted to do.
“Yes,” Anoosheh said. She couldn’t say no to the man who made it possible for her to live at the school.
Mister Durani’s smile widened. “Very good.” He turned to the rest of the class. “Continue with your work. I will be back later, and perhaps someone can read to me from one of your lessons.”
He held the door open for Anoosheh, and then he led her down the hallway toward a part of the school she had never seen.
“Your teacher tells me you are very bright, Anoosheh,” Mister Durani said. “She says you read all the time, even when you should be sleeping.”
Her teacher knew—and she’d told Mister Durani! Anoosheh bowed her head and waited for him to tell her she must leave the school. She would have to beg for food and find somewhere to sleep. The girls who lived outside the school with their families told stories of how they used to beg on the street, and how they had to run and hide from people who tried to hurt them. Anoosheh didn’t want to live like that. Why had she broken the rules?
“I’m very sorry,” Anoosheh said softly. “I know I shouldn’t have taken books from my classroom.”
“I wish we had enough money to buy you even more books,” he said. “Funds are limited, and we do what we can for as many as we can. Now, come see what I brought you here to show you.”
He held the door open to a room filled with desks the size of her teacher’s. Women sat working at machines Anoosheh had never seen before. Some seemed to be feeding fabric t
o the machines. Others moved their fingers over parts of the machine marked with letters.
One of the women in the room was a teacher’s helper who lived at the school. She gestured for Anoosheh to come stand by her desk. “This is a computer,” she said, pointing at a machine on her desk. “I’m going to teach you to use it. We have limited access to the Internet here, but I’m going to teach you how to find places where you can read more books than you could possibly read in a lifetime.”
Anoosheh didn’t understand. How could something as small as this machine hold more books than she could read in her lifetime?
“Someday we hope to have enough computers for every student in the school,” Mister Durani said. “Until then, we must start small.” He smiled at her again. “In Maidan Shar, we’re starting with you.”
***
2014
The American soldiers were leaving Afghanistan.
Anoosheh didn’t venture outside the school often. The streets weren’t safe for girls her age. When she did go outside, it was impossible to go anywhere and not see an American soldier. Some of the soldiers were even women. They dressed in the same uniforms as the men and carried the same weapons, and they didn’t have to cover their hair with a hijab when they were in public.
She didn’t understand why a woman would want such a dangerous job. On the last field trip her class had taken with Mr. Durani to the school in Paghman, men on the street had hurled insults at the women soldiers, even though the women carried guns and the men didn’t. If the women soldiers had not carried weapons, Anoosheh knew the men would have beaten them for daring to bare their heads in public.
She had first learned of the school in Paghman when Mr. Durani had given her the task of writing reports for the website he used to raise funds for the foundation he’d started that operated his two schools in Afghanistan. On one of his frequent visits, he’d told her the people who donated money to the foundation wanted to know who they were helping. Anoosheh was to be the public face of the Maidan Shar Girls School.
That had been two years ago, and Anoosheh had written many reports since then. She’d become very proficient at typing with her one hand and moving the mouse with the stump of her other arm. She still didn’t like when people looked at the stump, but she’d learned to ignore their stares.
During his last trip to Maidan Shar, Mr. Durani had told her how he opened his first school in Kabul two decades ago. The school had accepted twenty boys out of the hundreds Mr. Durani had met in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.
“The building was old and all I could afford,” he’d said. “It did not last the first winter.”
Anoosheh knew that Mr. Durani was not a wealthy man. He’d had no funds to rebuild or relocate the school, and he’d had to send the students away. He’d said that had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, even harder than leaving Afghanistan and moving his wife and children to the United States.
There he had started the foundation that now operated the Maidan Shar Girls School and the Paghman school for both boys and girls. He’d said he hoped to start another school soon, one that would teach children and young adults who’d lost limbs in the war useful skills so that they could earn a living.
There were so many children like Anoosheh and Mastana. And Hasti. Anoosheh had used the computer to try to find out what had happened to Hasti. She’d used the computer to learn many things, and one thing she’d learned was that the world was much larger than Wardak province or Afghanistan or even the Middle East. In a world that big, it was easy to forget one small, armless girl. It looked like the world had forgotten Hasti, because Anoosheh hadn’t been able to find any mention of her anywhere.
Anoosheh didn’t know what would happen after the American soldiers went home. She’d read much about the history of her country, and she knew more than what was in the approved textbooks the teachers used in class. Countries with bigger and better-equipped armies had invaded Afghanistan before. The American soldiers had been training the Afghan army, so perhaps the next army to invade would take its time. Anoosheh hoped so. Her country was struggling, and so were many of its citizens.
Mr. Durani told her once that she was very adult for someone so young, always thinking of such serious things. Anoosheh didn’t tell him that she hadn’t really been a child since her mother and baby sister had been killed in front of her by a man who’d become angry because her mother had refused him. Anoosheh had screamed at him and hit him, and he’d smashed her hand with his gun over and over again until her flesh tore away from her bones. If another man on the way to the refugee camp hadn’t found her, wrapped a tourniquet around her bleeding arm, and carried her to the medical tent, where doctors had amputated what was left of her ruined hand, she would have died on the road next to her mother and sister.
When the teacher’s assistant at the back of the workroom shrieked, Anoosheh had just started writing her latest report on the computer. The school had more computers now that the students could use, but Anoosheh had always preferred the one in the assistants’ room. None of the assistants stared at her while she worked. Now they all stared wide-eyed, their work forgotten, as the assistant stopped shrieking and began to sob.
“What is it, Nurani?” one of the other assistants asked. “What is wrong?”
Nurani pointed at the screen of her computer. Tears ran down her cheeks. “He’s dead. Mr. Durani is dead!”
Anoosheh went very still as a cold, hard feeling settled in her chest. The feeling radiated down her arms into her fingers, even the fingers of the phantom hand she rarely felt anymore.
“How?” someone asked.
Nurani shook her head, unable to speak. Another assistant, her face pale with shock, went over to comfort her. She read what was on Nurani’s screen. “The email says men came to the school in Paghman while Mr. Durani was there visiting. The men wanted to take girls who did not belong to them. Mr. Durani tried to stop them. One of the men shot him, and they all ran away.” She looked up from the computer, and her eyes met Anoosheh’s. “His daughter sent this email to every assistant and teacher, and to you, Anoosheh.”
Anoosheh looked at the icon on the bottom of her computer screen. She’d been so intent on her report that she hadn’t noticed when the icon indicated she had an email waiting. Now she didn’t want to open it. She didn’t want to read the words herself. The shape of those words would be ugly.
One by one, the teachers told all their classes that Mr. Durani had died, and then the students were dismissed for the day. Anoosheh and Mastana still lived at the school, only now they cared for the younger girls who had no families to go home to. Not all of the girls knew Mr. Durani, and Anoosheh had to explain why everyone was so sad.
That night, after the younger girls had fallen asleep, Mastana came to sit next to Anoosheh on her narrow bed. Mastana still walked with a crutch. If she was jealous of the attention that Anoosheh had gotten from Mr. Durani over the years or the things Anoosheh had been taught outside the classroom, she’d never said anything.
“What will happen to us now?” Mastana asked. “Without Mr. Durani, will the school continue?”
Anoosheh knew Mastana hoped to remain with the school as a teacher, just as Anoosheh wanted to stay and continue her work on behalf of the schools. She also knew that Mr. Durani did not run his foundation alone. He had people who helped him, although those people never came with Mr. Durani when he visited Afghanistan.
“It will be all right,” Anoosheh told Mastana. “The schools are too important to too many of us. The people who are left will find a way to keep them open.”
Mastana nodded and hugged her tight. Anoosheh returned the hug, and for the first time that day, allowed herself to cry. She told herself she was crying for Mr. Durani, but she knew some of her tears were for herself and the friend she had just lied to and the orphaned girls in this room.
Anoosheh had learned too much working on the computer. One thing she knew for certain was that compared to the vastness
of the entire world, one little school like Maidan Shar was not very important at all.
***
2026
Anoosheh didn’t like Kabul. There were too many people and too much noise, and even through the fabric of her burqa, the city smelled of cars and unwashed bodies and fear.
Not that Anoosheh saw much of the city. The burqa she had to wear in Kabul covered her head to toe. Although the cloth was lightweight, it made her feel claustrophobic. Only a small cutout over her eyes let her see the world, and even that was covered by mesh that made everything look hazy and indistinct. She remembered when she used to hate wearing the shaylah when she’d been a student at the Maidan Shar school. She didn’t know how lucky she’d been back then. The only good thing about being forced to wear a burqa was that the fabric hid her anger.
The schools that had played such an important part in her life were in trouble. Schools for children from the refugee camps were not popular with all segments of Afghan society, and the schools run by the foundation established by Mr. Durani were the least popular of all. The curriculum at his schools did not come solely from textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, but from a wide-ranging variety of sources Anoosheh had helped develop since she’d been appointed to the board of what was now The Sayd Farouq Durani Children’s Foundation. The entire curriculum had come under scrutiny by the Ministry of Education, and representatives from the board had been summoned to Kabul to meet with a representative of the Ministry to discuss the Ministry’s findings, as if well-educated and adequately fed bureaucrats knew the best way to educate children who had been traumatized by war.
Fiction River: How to Save the World Page 14
