Tiny Dancer

by Anthony Flacco

  The calls sustained her, paltry as they were. They kept her from the fear that there was no longer anybody on earth who understood her. With Peter and Rebecca, she didn’t have to retract any of herself. The principal obstacle became her failing English. Zubaida could listen to them, even without the words for complex thoughts, and she could feel the way that the very sound of their voices was meant to be greatly reassuring to her. But she found that the reassurance couldn’t sink in anymore, and the voices did nothing to make her feel any safer. Every one of their soothing words was cancelled out by a growing sense that she was slowly being extinguished.

  So little of them could get through to her at all, at that point. Now the looking glass twisted once again and for Zubaida it was Peter and Rebecca who were hovering in the air, nearly invisible, disappearing into satellite telephone static. They became little more than two Cheshire grins calling to her from a mirage, while she struggled to answer them with her fading American words.

  By now she had been given plenty of time for the message to sink in. There had been warnings, before, but she had paid no attention. Sometimes you can sneak by an angry Taliban bully and he won’t notice you or choose you for trouble. The trick is to go on about your business as if you don’t feel any danger, so they don’t smell your fear. And you never make eye contact. If you make eye contact, you fall into their realm, you invite them to deal with you instead of melting away unscathed. She had been sneaking by the warnings well enough that she managed to forget the danger was out there. It was a sound course of action, in terms of getting through a potentially stressful situation, and it had served her well in America. It served her well enough back at home, at first, and for awhile. But of course that did nothing at all to actually protect her.

  Some of the warnings were so clear to her, now. She looked back at them and they screamed at her, We were right there! How could you miss us?

  Back in America, she saw a beautiful model of a tiny sailing ship, perfectly detailed, sails unfurled and set to run with the wind. It was captured inside of a glass bottle barely big enough to hold it. The ship was fully rigged for tacking through powerful storms on the high seas, but it would never know a drop of the water it was created to sail, or put canvas to a single puff of breeze. The beautiful sailing ship was really nothing more than a thing of curiosity, trapped inside its tiny space.

  She had known it back then, looking at that model ship, but until recently she managed to keep herself from seeing or feeling what she saw in the back of her mind—she was trapped in that bottle, stranded on that ship.

  Chapter Eighteen

  What Zubaida could not have imagined was the way her journey affected many of the millions who saw her story on television. She had no way of conceiving of the power of the internet, where hundreds of people all over America—and in translated versions, other countries around the globe—spontaneously searched out Zubaida’s foundation, online. Donations and offers of service began to come in, and quickly became a mountain of generous energy expressed in $25 and $50 and $100 amounts. The amount of cash being held on her behalf by the foundation which Peter caused to be set up for her grew in excess of fifty thousand dollars. This was an amount of money with a great deal of buying power in Afghanistan, far beyond its European value.

  That knowledge was overwhelming, at first, and more than a little intimidating because Peter and Rebecca had only begun the foundation thinking that it might raise enough to send occasional aid and supplies to the Hasan family in support of Zubaida’s schooling, maybe even raise enough to pay for her trip back to America, if she wanted to pursue more education here. They hadn’t had the chance to visualize farther than the hope that all of this might encourage her father to protect her from being pressured into any unwanted marriage situation until she was old enough to support herself and make her own decision about her life.

  Suddenly, there was this fortune. Not only was it an unexpected plot twist, but it was like the evil twin to the other twist of her sinking tone of voice during their phone calls, and her clear despair over the lack of continued schooling. They hadn’t expected such a steep drop in her condition and such a strong her need for some kind of effective intervention on her behalf.

  But the sheer size and complexity of such a thing towered before them. How was anyone to achieve any sort of effective end, using American money that will have to be delivered half a world away, across hundreds of miles of un-policed terrain amid a country full of struggling people who lack technology and basic communication infrastructure? How was it to be done, to send what would be considered a massive amount of aid, and direct it at one specific girl without simply putting her in an impossible social situation amid the jealousy and envy of family or neighbors?

  Her status, after all, was only that of a woman who must serve.

  Peter and Rebecca went into the holiday season full of joy for their impending arrival, but still apprehensive about Zubaida’s fate. She was sounding so much less alive during their phone calls, now. It was getting hard to find something positive to say to her about her situation. The very aliveness of the holiday season with the bright lights everywhere and the traditional expressions of cheer served to drive them to do something about a deteriorating situation in Zubaida’s life that could only go so far before its damage was permanent, not to be repaired.

  Using contacts at the office of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Herat, Afghanistan, they checked and found out that her foundation account was enough to buy a good, modern house for Zubaida’s family inside the city of Herat, with enough money left over to stock the house with basic appliances. There it would be far easier for Mohammed and the older brothers to get work, and best of all, Zubaida would have a choice of schools available within walking distance, as would all of her siblings.

  That single boost upward could guarantee a fighting chance for a new and much better life for the entire family. The city is only two hundred miles from Farah, but it’s a world away in terms of opportunity. With the fall of the Taliban, inside of Afghanistan’s three major cities, a woman with an education can live a life that is once again filled with choices.

  The bureaucratic process of buying a home in that place was the same slogging nightmare of red tape and official permission-seeking that it seemed like it would be. Simple questions took days to answer. Simple forms took weeks to get.

  On February 10th of 2004, they received this email from an analyst at the National Security Council in Afghanistan, advising them on his progress at helping them find out how to move money into an unstable region:

  “I have just called a man in Herat, a money changer. He said it would be difficult to transfer money directly to Herat but the way the do it is to get the money in Dubai, over in the United Arab Emirates and then send it to Herat using Hawala- I think I have told you about Hawala (an ancient tribal system of money transfer. It is based on good faith and verbal contracts, and is usually safe. It has been in place for centuries). He is supposed to call me back soon and let me have the information we need. He said they can do it within a week.”

  The offer was put to Hasan: Let Zubaida’s fund buy your family a good house in the city. Move the entire family there and seek employment there, making sure to put Zubaida in school and keep her there. If you want the foundation’s support, you will see to it that your daughter gets an education and never allow her to be taken away in marriage against her will.

  As soon as Hasan received the offer, he was eager to cooperate. There were countless emails and letters and phone calls to secure permission to take on this project while the creaky wheels of Afghanistan’s battered bureaucracy turned. Peter and Rebecca eventually found an ally who was a compassionate soldier in the area, named Shannon Para. Eventually Shannon found them an ally in a local man named Latif, who worked as a facilities manager with the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Herat. Shannon was their reliable local contact for as long as he was in the country, and when he was tra
nsferred out, he made sure to bring Latif up to speed on how to work with the Grossmans, the Hasans, and the local authorities. That thin line of contact would be all that linked them.

  On May 31st of 2004, Rebecca came to the end of a healthy pregnancy and gave birth to their daughter, Alexis. But despite the aura of joy and celebration at their house, She decided that she should be the one to tell Zubaida that there was finally another child in Peter and Rebecca’s house, but this was not the time. She wanted to be sure to get the message across to her that no child could replace her and she would not be forgotten, so it seemed that a better time to tell her about her new “sister” would be after her family’s move was successfully completed and her schooling was arranged. With that living proof that she had not been abandoned by Peter and Rebecca, she would surely be feeling much stronger and hopeful, able to see the arrival of baby Alexis as a happy thing that she could share in with them.

  By July of 2004, the small contingent of people in Afghanistan who were involved in helping Zubaida’s foundation find her family a new home were ready to bring Mohammad Hasan to Herat. After several previous scouting trips, everyone was ready to finalize a deal on an available home in the right price range. There were a number of false starts—and the disappearance of $5,000 in “earnest money” on one particular house—but eventually a modern, nine-room house with electricity and running water was found for a final cost of just over $40,000, plus the add-on costs of essential utilities and appliances. For less than $50,000, the entire Hasan family would have a ground-floor start in a relatively urban city, where the men could have a better chance of finding work and all of the young ones could go to school.

  Zubaida’s school was only a quarter mile away from their new home and was paid for, one fistful at a time, from the pocket money of ordinary Americans who joined themselves as links in the long, long chain. Early in August, the entire family moved from their home village of Farah into their new home in Herat, where they remained among their people and their culture but in a position to participate in the best that their people and culture might have to offer them.

  The city was modern enough that it would have elements of the country’s re-built infrastructure as soon as the new government’s public works were underway, but Zubaida would remain in contact with her ancient culture, even in this place—high atop the cliffs over Herat there still stands a giant battle fortress. Huge, circular guard towers join thick walls that reach up several stories high. The walls are notched at the top for archers’ battle stations, and fitted with extra slits for archers and spear throwers. The fortress shows a Roman influence in its grim efficiency. It was erected centuries ago by the mighty army of Alexander the Great, when it was their time to invade, conquer, and occupy.

  The Afghan people got rid of them, too.

  The move away from Farah was a well-timed event for Mohammed Hasan. By that point his neighbors were openly wondering why he couldn’t just pay back all his debts from his trips with Zubaida, since he had such powerful American friends. They only had to look at Zubaida to know that this was true. When the survival struggle is long and hard and social niceties fall away, people who are otherwise generous in spirit begin to wonder why one person should find favor over another. The Hasan family was beginning to live a fishbowl existence in a town of mud-brick walls. It was as if there had been a rumor about the Hasans having a box of gold hidden in their house, keeping it all to themselves while their neighbors struggled to feed themselves.

  Mohammed Hasan now found himself in the position of living out the same struggle for survival every day amid fellow villagers who could not help but assume that he had access to some form of wealth and power that he was refusing to share with them, an especially powerful message in a land where financial dealings have always been matters of faith and of personal honesty. His biggest mistake was to panhandle the American soldiers whenever he was around them and gather up enough to make a few payments to his creditors. They got the taste of the money, and there was no choice but to presume that where there was that much, there had to be more. If he could get that much, he could repay them all, could he not?

  However, it’s likely to have been the same fear that prompted their suspicions which ultimately protected Hasan in the long run. If he could summon such power from the American forces and even extract those small amounts that he had paid back to them so far, then he had proven himself too important for the locals to punish for his tardy payments. For them, the trick would simply be to keep him on the string well enough that he didn’t forget to keep paying, but also to avoid angering him with demands or intimidation. It was impossible to know whether he might also have power to harness some of their soldiers on his behalf if he got angry with them. Such things had been the expected means of grabbing power in Afghanistan even since the days of the long Soviet invasion: harnessing some measure of the dominate power’s force and turning it to your own ends.

  Could Hasan have something like that in mind? How could anyone in the Province know what Hasan’s resources were with these Americans, and what sort of secret plan might he be concealing? No, it was best to play Mohammed Hasan like a well-tuned instrument. Just pull a little music out of him, one or two songs at a time. No need to beat the instrument to death. In fact, leave it in good shape, to keep the music coming.

  For all these reasons, Hasan knew it was time to go.

  Around the household, the arrangements to leave were kept quiet. They knew that the most peaceful departure would be the most unexpected one, free of too many gathered witnesses who might bring unpleasant suspicions along with them.

  The female side of the family had just as much reason to be excited as the males; Mohammed and Bador agreed that the best way for the entire family to improve its fortunes was for all of the young ones to go to school. The couple didn’t need to force themselves go along with the desires of the Americans who were helping them; they both saw the compelling need to keep their children out of ignorance. It was the real scope of the opportunity opening up to them, since in their society their children’s future was literally their own.

  At last, on Monday, September 6th, at the end of a long road of bureaucratic paper chasing, Peter and Rebecca received an email from Shannon Para, their closest contact to Zubaida’s family in Afghanistan. He confirmed that one month after the family’s arrival in their new home, they were settled into the area and school had just opened. Zubaida and several her family were enrolled and starting classes. Shannon personally drove them to school on that special day, but they would easily be able walk the distance.

  When Zubaida called Rebecca and Peter, the tone of her voice said everything they wanted to hear. It would take awhile for her to relearn enough English to express it, but her voice showed that she felt it already—now the life that her American mom and dad dared to awaken in her was going to actually exist, all around her. This time it would unfold in her home world among her whole family, in a country that needs her kind of energy from its women.

  * * *

  On that same September 6th, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, President Bush said, “…Afghanistan, a country which has been brutalized by the Taliban, a country in which many young girls didn’t get to go to school, a country in which their moms were whipped in the public squares because they didn’t tow the line to these barbarians running the country, has now registered 10 million people to vote in the upcoming election.”

  Two months later, when newly elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated, he expressed special gratitude to the country’s newly freed women, who turned out to vote in numbers so high that the world’s political commentators were floored with surprise. He told a story—one of many, he emphasized—of an older mother who came to a voting booth with two ballot cards, asking if she could also file a ballot for her married daughter, who was at home giving birth. The registrar explained that this was not allowed, that she could only cast her own. So she did, and went away. But a
few hours later her daughter showed up carrying her newborn daughter and cast her vote anyway.

  This was the social sea-change that was going on all around Zubaida while she began her new life in a world that not long ago had no place for a female with her outsized personality. Now the elected leader of the country was calling out to just such women, asking them to stand up and join in their society from a position of strength, to grasp the opportunities that education and personal freedom offered, at all levels of life.

  * * *

  A growth spurt hit Zubaida not long after she returned to her country, and she quickly gained inches in height. It made her look more grown up, old enough to cover her hair with a light shawl, now that her undersized form was expanding into lanky adolescence. There was the temporary loss of coordination that comes with sudden new length in fast-growing limbs.

  With adolescence also came a somewhat heightened sense of her own modesty and an increased desire to be taken seriously in the adult world, meaning that much of the dancing she was to do would be invisible now, dances of her own thoughts and imaginings. There was so much more to engage her mind. The lonely and dangerous celebrations of life that used to pour through her body in secret bursts of musical motion were no longer as necessary to her spirit as they once were, back when they were her only outlet for personal choice and expression.

  In this new phase of her short and strange life, the future lay ahead full of possibilities and options. Now she was moving into that future with an opportunity for personal dignity that was more like the existence she had seen lying ahead inside the lives of her friends back in America.

  Thus, for the mere price of constant anxiety over whether or not she is making the right decision at any given moment, she would be rewarded by having those very possibilities and endless options available in the first place. Whether her time in this world was going to be short or long, her experience of being alive was going to take place inside of an existence that the tiny dancer who once played alone among the ruins could never have imagined.