by SAIMA WAHAB
But Baba was different. In Afghanistan most people aren’t too concerned with what kids eat, but Baba used to make us eat our vegetables because, he said, they were good for us. Carrots, he said, were good for our eyesight. When I complained, he reminded me how important it was to have good vision so I could see the Russians coming and hide before they found me.
Perhaps his attention was an outgrowth of the pity he felt for Najiba and me having lost our father, but he displayed the same generosity to the villagers who worked his land. Even though most of the village belonged to him, and he would have been within his rights to collect food and rent from the people who lived there, he allowed them to keep the food they grew for their own families. God likes us to work for ourselves, he would say, so out into the fields he would go, growing the food to feed us. If he was too busy with the school or something else to get out to the fields to pick vegetables for our meal, we simply went without.
His favorite dish was kadu, sweet pumpkin. Sauté some onion, add fresh chopped pumpkin, milk, and sugar, and you have the worst-tasting dish on planet Earth—well, that’s how I felt about it at age five. Now I ask my mom to make it for me in the rainy Oregon winter because it makes me feel warm inside. One day Baba brought home a donkey loaded down with as many pumpkins as it could possibly carry. At the sight of it I started to cry. Were we going to have to eat all of those pumpkins? I asked Baba when he inquired what was wrong. He laughed and told me he would give some of them away if I would just stop crying. He gave a few armfuls to one of his friends, but there were still too many as far as I was concerned. I begged his friend to take more—the fewer pumpkins, the less kadu we had to eat. For weeks afterward whenever a guest came to the house hoping to be lucky enough to eat some of my grandmother’s famous kadu, Baba would laughingly confess that I had made him give all of our pumpkins away.
At the end of every autumn Afghans butcher one or two of their animals and hang the meat to dry. With no refrigeration, drying ensures that meat doesn’t go bad, and it gets the family through the long winter ahead. When Najiba and I first arrived from Kabul we were so miserable, so lost. We didn’t know where our father had gone, or why our mother was so heartbroken, and we cried all the time. To comfort us, Baba gave us a lamb to play with. The lamb became our pet. He followed us everywhere, just like in the American nursery rhyme. When the day came to butcher him, Najiba and I were hysterical. Baba took our hands and tried to explain to us about meat, about the reality of our lives. He even tried to use my dislike of kadu, saying that since we wouldn’t eat his sweet pumpkin, we had to eat lamb. Najiba begged him to take one of the donkeys instead. We would happily eat the donkey. He laughed and explained to us that donkey meat was haram, forbidden. In the end, he gave us a few days to say good-bye, and then the lamb disappeared.
We lived in Baba’s village for a year. There were bombs being dropped on our village day and night, causing an ever-present layer of dust to settle on everything, no matter how often Mamai and Grandmother cleaned. As the days passed and my father failed to materialize, Mamai grew increasingly certain that she was going to live the rest of her life as a widow. When I tell my close American friends the story of what happened to my parents, how my mother became a widow with three children before she was even thirty years old, they feel sad for me. Sadder for me, however, is the reality that my mother was only one of thousands of Afghan women who were dealt the same fate as a result of the Russian invasion.
Mamai moved slowly, in a state of shock, unable to believe that her husband, who had carried their children on his shoulders around the house and who loved to cook with her, would never return. She looked at us, but I knew she didn’t really see us, her mind off in happier times. Having our grandparents was a blessing, not just for us but for her, because it gave her time to adjust to the harsh reality of her new life. The only time she became alive was when we would hear the sounds of the jets, because we all knew that bombs would follow within seconds. She would grab my hand, throw Najiba on her hip, and run fast for shelter in the small caves that pocketed the surrounding hills as the bombs rained down from the sky.
Even with all of the bombs dropped and mines left by the Russians, I felt safer in the village than in Kabul. Baba protected us the best he could. I felt he was so divine that God would watch out for him and, by extension, us. But more than that, he gave us so much attention and love that for hours I could forget where I was and what had happened and simply enjoy the serenity of his company.
Then the day came when my grandfather realized that life in the village had gotten too dangerous. He made the painful decision that Pashtuns dread more than death: He would leave the land that had belonged to our family for as many generations as could be traced back. He did it, however, to keep his word to my father—that his daughters would be allowed to have a life different from the one we were destined for.
For our journey out of our forefathers’ land, Baba secured camels for Najiba and me. But we were city girls. We rode in cars and electric buses. We had never seen a camel and were terrified of them. They were impatient, irritable. They pawed the dust with their giant feet. We rocked back and forth toward the mountain trail that would take us to the border. I remember looking back at Najibas, thinking her camel was trying to bite my back as it got close to mine, and I screamed, “It’s trying to eat me!” Had we been boys, my grandfather would have yelled at us for shrieking and acting up, but we were fatherless daughters, homeless half-orphans. So he found a couple of donkeys the next day, and we were hoisted onto their backs. They were much gentler, even bored with the task of taking us to join Khalid and our family in Peshawar, Pakistan.
We were part of a small caravan that consisted of our family, our two camels, our two donkeys, and several other donkeys that belonged to families from the village. There was safety in numbers, but too large a group trying to cross the mountains into Pakistan would draw the attention of the Russian jets, which were known to bomb whole caravans, killing every man, woman, and child in them. The danger was so great that we traveled during the night and slept in caves and holes in the ground during the day. The lucky ones were the refugees who would find hosts in the villages on the way to Pakistan, who would give them a bite to eat and a place to sleep for a few hours.
The trip from Ghazni to Peshawar now takes just hours by car, but it took us over ten days and was a consistently grueling journey, during which we didn’t know if we would make it to the next day. Crossing the vast desert and mountains with Russian jets often flying overhead, we were terrified that our end was near. I remember hearing the jets far away, and shutting my eyes tightly, hoping that if I couldn’t see them, the Russians couldn’t see me either. Miraculously, we found our way to the rest of our family in Pakistan. But the journey that began my new life was spent with my eyes tightly shut, hanging on to the back of a donkey, fearing that if I opened my eyes, I would be bombed to pieces.
TWO
I was first proposed to when I was nine.
Well, actually it wasn’t really to me that the proposal was made. I only found out because one day not too long afterward, my brother, who had heard about it from the adults, was pulling my hair and harassing me, so I went crying to Mamai. When Mamai got mad at him, he said something like, “Oh, yeah, well, hopefully Baba will say yes and soon we will be rid of you!” I started crying even harder, hoping Khalid was wrong, and that there was no way Baba would give me away so soon. But if he were to follow our centuries-old customs, he would do exactly that. Marriages were arranged by grandfathers and fathers, between tribes and families, to strengthen their ties. Neither the appropriate age nor the consent of the children was necessary. The tribe that had wanted to be linked with mine was well respected, very wealthy, and powerful, and my grandfather would not have been unjustified in agreeing to the marriage.
I knew all of that, even from a very early age, because I had grown up hearing about my obligations and responsibilities toward the family and had always had a sense
that my childhood days were numbered. I don’t think I thought that I would be spared the harsh life of a married Afghan woman forever. I just didn’t want my married life to begin at age nine.
Astonishingly, Baba didn’t disappoint me. He told the other family that his granddaughter was too young for that kind of silliness, and that he had hopes that I would be able to at least graduate from sixth grade before marriage. The first time he refused a marriage proposal, he was very respectful, knowing how quickly you can make a mortal enemy out of a Pashtun by insulting him. But over the next couple of years, I heard stories of him kicking out men who came into our mehmaan khana, guest house, asking for my hand in marriage for their sons, Baba yelling at them, “Are there no other girls left in the world? Leave my granddaughter alone!”
As I grew older and became more aware of what he was doing to protect me, I loved him all the more. But in a culture where you are not allowed to express your love by declaring it casually, I didn’t know how to show him what he meant to me. I would make his tea and take it to him, a large scarf covering my four-foot height, tripping on the edges of it as I walked up to the mehmaan khana where he stayed. He would usually be reading, but whenever he saw me enter the room, he would put his book down, give me a brilliant smile, and pat the ground next to him. I would put the teapot down, pour him a cup, and sit beside him. I was too shy to say anything about what he was doing, but he knew exactly what I felt and would put his arm around me. “Don’t worry,” he would say. “Everything will work out. As long as I am alive, everything will be fine.” I believed him completely, and with him on my side, I felt like I could conquer any obstacle in life.
I felt lucky. Life was good for me. I knew that I was different, and not just in the way that most of us feel during preadolescence. For one thing, I went to school, which none of my friends were allowed to do. Sometimes I would be resentful that they were at home, playing with dolls and learning how to be little women, while I was forced to go to school and learn about subjects that I knew I would never use as a Pashtun woman. And when my friends would ask me to play with them after school, I had to say no because I would have homework to do.
I was the only girl in my class, until sixth grade—my fellow students never forgot to remind me that I was an abnormality and not a real girl, because real girls didn’t go to school. For their vicious words, like a true Pashtun, I took revenge. I earned the best grades every year, and memorized poems and times tables for extra credit. Yes, I admit, I became the teacher’s pet and was asked to lead the prayers during the assemblies. I was also selected as the class proctor whenever our teacher had to leave the classroom, and was given a ruler to use to keep the boys in line. I used it without mercy. None of the boys were allowed to say a word, and if they gave me so much as a wrong look, I would ask them to stretch out their arms and would hit them on the back of their hands with the ruler. I used the back of their hands because I knew it hurt more than their palms.
Back at home, my brother would complain to Baba and Mamai because a couple of his friends were in my class and I wouldn’t allow them to talk in class or to be rough on the playground. Baba would laugh, the deep laugh I loved, and look at me with a twinkle in his eyes.
Like any little girl growing up, I had a best friend, Nafisa, who lived a few houses from mine. She had two older brothers and two younger sisters. I hardly ever saw her because she was not allowed to go to school, and in the evening she had to take care of all of her siblings, as her mother was always either pregnant or ill. At age twelve, Nafisa was the woman of the house, expected to not indulge in silliness like friendship and school and talking. Although she had beautiful almond-shaped eyes, dark hair, and light skin, I always remember her with scars and bruises, because her brothers beat her constantly. I would ask her, “What are they accusing you of now?” I remember her crying, saying, “I didn’t do anything, but they always find something to slap me for.” Sometimes they would hit her because she took too long laying out the laundry on the roof to dry and they thought that she was slacking off or—worse—looking at a boy on the street. Sometimes they would hit her when she didn’t get them tea or food fast enough. For one reason or another, they would leave a mark on her pretty face, turning it blue and yellow.
At no other time was the difference between my life and the lives of other Pashtun girls more clear. I would come home and busy myself with homework, terrified that at any point my life might be changed to what Nafisa had. I would look in fear at my brother, who was such a kidder, even at that age, and I would wonder, Will he beat me one day? No, he would never, I would try to reassure myself. Still, I felt terribly guilty that my best friend was living in hell, and I wanted so badly to beat her brothers for putting her there. Unfortunately, her brothers didn’t go to school either, were much bigger, and could have easily killed me had I insulted them by interfering in their family business.
I felt like I was living in a delicate bubble. All around me were my female cousins and friends enduring an existence that I couldn’t imagine. They were no different from me—for all intents and purposes, I should have been leading the same life. But there I was in the courtyard, getting into a car in which all the windows were covered in sheets (so no one could see inside) and being driven to a private school, where I was the only girl in my class. What made me so special? Was I the chosen one, or the cursed one? It was hard to tell at that early age, but I did know that I did not want the life of a typical Pashtun female, and I lived in constant terror that I would be forced into living that life. I desperately wanted to believe that my Baba could save me from that fate, yet the fear that he might not be strong enough to defy the centuries-old traditions of our people created in me deep insecurities that took years to overcome.
THREE
In the 1980s, the Russian invasion and eventual withdrawal created a great deal of political instability in Afghanistan and sparked a civil war that wrecked Afghan society beyond recognition. It became apparent to Baba that he might not be able to keep his promise to me that everything would be fine. So he started talking to his son in America to see if he could sponsor me, my brother and sister, and three other cousins. Mamai and my aunt, whom we all called Babo, were okay with the boys going but were opposed to sending the girls. But Baba was firm; the boys would go only if the girls were allowed to go with them.
Like everyone else growing up in a poor and conflicted country, I dreamed about America before going there. I knew that there were freedoms there beyond my wildest imagination, and rights that would be mine, if I could get to that land of equality. America could rescue me from the cultural restrictions and ancient customs that threatened to define my fate—if I could only get there. But it all seemed like a fantasy. I never believed that my dreams could come true.
To prepare for our possible move to America, we were switched from the school where I was the only girl to a private school that specialized in English. Here the boys and the girls were taught in separate classes. For the first time, I was not the only girl in class, but these girls were all from Pakistani families and spoke Urdu, so I was still the only Pashtun girl. We also began taking the bus to school and back because my uncle, the only one who knew how to drive, had gotten a job. (My mother and aunt weren’t allowed to drive.)
One Thursday (I remember the day because we were wearing our white uniform, as we did every Thursday) we were rushing out of the house, late for the bus. I got to the road and saw that the bus was about to pull out. In my haste to not be left behind, I ran, not noticing the speeding public bus going the other way. It slammed into my left side and lifted me—Khalid swore it was at least fifteen feet—into the air. After flipping many times I fell in the middle of the road, landing on my shoulder and head.
I don’t remember any of this. I woke up in the hospital after a three-day coma, from which nobody thought I would awaken. In Pakistan at that time there were no doctors trained in comas and no hospitals that offered trauma care, or at least not at the hospital i
n Peshawar. Mamai was told that if I woke up, it would be a miracle—and if I didn’t, no one should be surprised, and it wouldn’t be the doctor’s fault. In a country where hit-and-runs are the norm, and where there aren’t any insurance companies to deal with, I was told that the driver who hit me came to the hospital every day, bringing food for the family members who kept vigil for me. Three days after the accident I woke up and casually asked for some of the kebabs that I smelled. One of my relatives had brought them for Mamai, who had never left my bedside.
This was the second time Mamai was told to give a khairath, a sacrifice to show thanks to God for allowing me to continue living. Once I was released from the hospital, relatives and friends came to ask about my recovery, amazed that I was still alive.
I felt again like I had been saved for something—I didn’t know what, but I knew there was a reason I stepped away from events that I had no business surviving. It was as if an invisible hand was directing me toward a unique destiny. I could sense that there was something greater waiting for me. Finding out what that was, exactly, and seeking it out was a powerful motivation for me. I couldn’t wait for my future to unfold. As I lay there hearing Khalid tell the story of the bus hitting me, flipping me several times in the air, landing me so hard that people around me swore they heard the sound of my body slamming into the road echoing for days, I finally believed that I was chosen, and blessed. The fear of living a life like my best friend Nafisa’s was still not far from my heart, but I began to consider then that I couldn’t have lived through two near-death experiences for nothing. After all, I was just a human, allowed only one life with which to leave my mark.
