Her gaze followed hurrying villagers as they scrambled up the steep mountainside and vanished into its hidden recesses. Unable to contain her curiosity, she crossed the road and fell in behind a group of children as they climbed. She struggled to keep up with them and her feet were caught in several of the spiky crevices along the way, sharp stones nipping at her feet.
As she straightened, a little room built right into the mountain caught her attention and she stepped inside. The earthen floor was smooth and free of the irritating little rocks and pebbles that had so vexed her as she climbed. But it was the walls, covered in brightly painted designs, that held Parween’s gaze. She reached out and passed her fingers over the colorful hues that decorated the cave’s walls. Like the giants, these decorations were worn smooth in places, yet the beautiful reds, blues, golds, and other colors remained vivid.
Smiling and pleased with her discovery, she left the room and found a narrow, steep stairway carved into the cliffside that led upward, toward the top of the carved Buddha. There, just above the statue, a final room beckoned.
It held no paintings, but it opened onto the valley, and when Parween stepped inside, she could see the entire village, green and lush and teeming with homes and people and animals. She tried to make out Uncle Abdullah’s compound but she was so high up that everything looked the same. In the distance, however, she saw Bamiyan’s center. The little marketplace, lined with shops and bazaars, was crowded with people.
Determined to see as much as she could on her first day, Parween scrambled back down the stairway, then down the side of the mountain, and headed off in the direction of the bazaar.
Strands of matted hair peeked from underneath her veil. Every inch of her was crusted with old dirt. To wash in Onai had meant trekking the long distance to an icy cold stream where she’d had to lean into the biting waters and scrub with coarse soap. For Parween, it had been too much trouble; it was easier to just stay dirty, and besides, being clean wasn’t important. It wasn’t like being tall, tall enough to pluck the freshest apricots and the sweetest apples from the highest branches. It had been months since she’d had a proper wash.
Even here in Bamiyan, she was like most of the other kids, scrawny and hungry for entertainment, and for something to eat. The bazaar, filled with food and trinkets and who knew what else, offered endless temptations. She walked the short distance to the marketplace, and stepping from a dark and narrow road into the bright and open space, she froze, spellbound by the swirl of activity and excitement that surrounded her.
The scent of fresh naan, hot from the tandoor oven, drifted on the breeze and drew her to a baker’s shop on the bazaar’s main road. When she peeked inside, the heat of the ovens hit her full-on, and she blinked to clear the sting from her eyes. Tendrils of steam danced in the air, rising from an oven built right into the earthen floor of the little shop. It was open, and she could see a blazing fire at the bottom of the cavernous, cylindrical space; they baked the bread by slapping fresh dough onto the sides. A man—the baker, she supposed—did just that and then slid the cover back into place.
The room was smoky and dark, and as she entered, Parween had to blink again to get a better look. Two men, covered with grime and soot, sat cross-legged in the center of the shop, arranging hot loaves of naan. Another man stood off to the side mixing the flour and water. He was the one who’d closed the oven, and he moved again to the center of the bakery.
As the baker kneeled and lifted the cover, Parween ventured farther in to get a closer look. In one fluid motion, the man slid out two hot loaves of steaming bread and then slapped two new pieces of dough onto the oven’s side walls. Parween’s empty stomach roared to life at the sight of the warm bread, and finally the seated men turned to her.
“Naan?” the older one asked.
“Afghanis na doram,” she replied sadly. I have no money. But the older man broke off a large piece of the warm bread and handed it to Parween. She hesitated, but he motioned for her to take it and thrust it into her hands.
“Tashakore,” she whispered, thanking him, overwhelmed by his generosity. She backed out of the little room, clutching her treasure, and squatted on the ground outside to watch the townspeople as she ate.
The bazaar was filled with people. The women, children in tow, wore colorful dresses and pants and bright shiny jewelry as they walked purposefully through the street. The men milled about, talking and laughing.
Parween leaned back against the baker’s storefront and took slow bites of her bread. With all this smiling, things must be pretty good here, she supposed. Even the donkeys, hitched to posts outside of little shops, seemed content.
The sound of sweet music filled the air. It was a sound that Parween had rarely heard in Onai, where people had no money for luxuries like music. Yet in this marketplace, several merchants had cassette players and were playing exotic Indian music. The melodies of lutes and voices competed with the hum of generators—the more successful shopkeepers could afford to provide electricity for a few hours each day, it seemed.
The buildings, too, were sturdier than those she’d seen before. They were made of wood, and some were even two stories tall. Parween noticed the strings of colored lights wound around some of the shop openings. Once darkness fell, those little colored lights would surely create magic in the night.
What a grand place Bamiyan is.
Directly across the road from the bakery stood an open-air butcher shop. The butcher himself sat on a wooden chair, winding his faded turban around his head. Sides of beef, strung up to dry, were covered with flies, and dogs and mice darted about in search of the drippings. Parween was mesmerized watching them chase after the stray bits of meat. When the dogs got too close to the hanging beef, the butcher reached out and swatted at them.
Still squatting, Parween licked the last crumbs of bread from her fingers, stood, and headed off to explore.
The unmistakable aroma of grilling beef filled the air and she followed her nose to an alleyway where a turbaned, toothless man rotated kabobs on an outdoor fire. He turned and spat the gristle he’d been chewing onto the ground and then noticed Parween standing there. Studying her with gentle eyes, he wiped his greasy hands on his shirt and smiled.
“Besheneen, besheneen,” he said as he motioned for her to sit on the little stool beside his fire. She sat, and he handed her a hot skewer strung with three blackened kabobs. This time, she did not hesitate. She greedily took the skewer and tore into the scorched meat. She hadn’t eaten meat in several years, not since a girl from Onai had been married to her cousin, and the long-forgotten taste of charred beef filled her mouth.
Mmm… heavenly.
She chewed and chewed, and was loath to swallow. She wanted this moment to last. Who knew when she would taste beef again?
“Tashakore,” she said after she had finished the last bite. In reply, the man slid a broom to her and motioned for her to sweep the dirt and trash away from the ground around his fire. Parween happily took the broom and swept with new energy.
When she had swept every trace of loose dirt from the ground, she passed the broom back to the gentle-eyed man, murmured her thanks, and headed home. As she walked back through the bazaar, she passed a shop displaying glittery plastic sandals and stopped to admire them. The rows upon rows of delicate shoes entranced her. She looked down at her bare feet and longed to slip them into the ornate sandals. But she knew her mother wouldn’t buy such a luxury for her youngest and most wayward child.
She continued on, stopping in the fields to watch a girl about her own age exchanging blows with a boy. Parween scrunched up her face and squinted. Surely, this was a hallucination or the work of the jinn—those mischievous spirits that lay in wait for the souls of innocent boys and girls. She rubbed at her eyes and opened them again. The two were fighting. The girl had gained the upper hand, holding the boy down with her knees while she delivered the final punch.
“Aha,” the girl shouted as she stood triumphantly. “Th
at’ll teach you! Throw stones at me and you’ll pay the price.”
The boy stood, nose bloody and fists raw, and ran off. When he’d gone, the girl turned and saw Parween. Hands on her hips, with eyes big as figs, she glared and called out, “And you—do you want to fight?”
“No,” Parween called back, breathless with the thrill of what she’d just seen. “Khoob asti, you are good.”
“Tashakore, who are you?”
“I am Parween from Onai. We just moved here today.”
“I am Mariam,” the girl replied, retrieving her head-scarf from the ground.
Parween nodded. “Will I see you later?”
“Yes, why not?’ Mariam said as she turned and raced back through the fields.
Parween heaved a sigh of relief. She’d never expected to meet another girl who could fight. A girl! Maybe things would be okay after all.
At dusk, after sharing a skimpy dinner of rice with her mother, Parween trudged back up to the Buddha’s caves, climbed to the top room, and gazed out over the landscape. The nearby caves and terraced landscapes were punctuated with small patches of light from fires, kerosene lanterns, and wax candles. The strings of colored lights in the bazaar twinkled, just as she’d imagined. Music wafted from the village shops and Parween was captivated once more by the beauty of it all. She curled up against the wall and simply stared until she was nearly asleep for her first night in Bamiyan, nestled above the giant Buddha.
Within days of their arrival, Rahima was hired to sew small pieces for the village tailor. Parween’s brothers, Abdul and Noori, also found work. Abdul tended to the village elder’s herd of sheep, and Noori helped repair motors and engines on the few trucks that drove through Bamiyan.
The family had not counted on such good luck. With the promise of money flowing in, they allowed themselves some small luxuries. Parween received her coveted sandals, though not the glittery ones she had so longed for. Instead, her mother chose a serviceable and sturdy pair made of dark gray plastic. She also received a new veil, colored a deep pink and embroidered with tiny roses at the edges.
“Baraye man? For me?” she whispered as she took her gifts and held them close before hugging her mother and smiling. She’d never owned anything so beautiful, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to keep them like new. And for just a moment, she wanted to whistle as the boys had taught her, but she thought better of it.
Instead, she raced to the well, filled two buckets with cold water, and found her mother’s small sliver of soap. She scrubbed her feet red and nearly raw before she slipped them into her first pair of new sandals. She washed her hair and scalp, as well, rubbing so hard that her skin burned under the ministrations of the caustic soap. Her hair and even her fingers shone from the scrubbing, and for days she smelled of lye.
Life settled into a routine. For weeks Parween’s mother did not bring up the question of a husband and Parween allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe, the subject had been forgotten. After all, she thought, with everyone working so hard, who has time to think of such things?
And once the novelty of the new veil and sandals wore off, she prayed that Allah would rescue her from the life her mother had planned.
9
When Parween was twelve, disaster struck.
Parween was promised to a young man.
Though she would not marry for four more years, her entire life was suddenly laid out before her, a dreary repetition of babies, cooking, cleaning, and field work—the tasks that shaped the life of every Afghan woman.
Her childhood was effectively over. She was no longer allowed to walk to the bazaar alone or through the nearby fields. She would never again climb her beloved Buddha and gaze out over Bamiyan.
There would be no school for Parween, either. Though she’d asked her mother if she could enroll, Bamiyan’s lone school had closed its doors. There had been a period of relative quiet after the Russkis had left but before long, the region’s warlords were fighting one another. The country was thrown into turmoil once again. She’d heard her brothers discussing it with Uncle Abdullah. Both wanted to join the struggle, but Abdullah had forbidden it.
“There has been enough of this fighting,” he’d said. “We must learn to live in peace.” She’d watched as her brothers had stormed off, anger glinting in their eyes.
No good will come of this, she’d thought. Fighting always brought misery.
For Parween, the misery of her own fate was sealed, and she was expected to slide easily into the role of the promised young woman. Not even Allah had been able to rescue her from her destiny.
Parween’s days began before the sun rose, while the compound still retained the chill of night. She raised herself from her sleeping pad and rolled it up so that it could be used for guests to lean against when sitting. She quietly snuck out of the family’s room and gathered fuel for the fire, and then she stoked the ashes of the previous day’s fire, coaxing it back into life.
She trudged to the well, filled her leaky plastic containers with water, and filled the family’s small kettle to the brim. She prepared a breakfast of yesterday’s naan and last night’s rice, and when all was ready, she woke her brothers and mother.
Her older sister Shookria had long since married and moved into her husband’s house, disappearing into the life and village of her new family. She rarely came back to visit, and it would likely be the same for Parween. She’d been so young when Shookria had married that she could scarcely remember her sister, though Parween did remember Shookria’s wedding day. It had been an exhilarating event—a full day and night of celebration. Because the women celebrated apart from the men, they were able to laugh and dance and wear makeup applied with a heavy hand. A wedding was as much for them as it was for the bride. Parween had been caught up in the revelry. She had never known such bliss.
A cousin had applied makeup to Parween’s eager face, and when she peered into the tiny fragment of a splintered looking glass, she smiled broadly at her own reflection. It was queer to be looking at—admiring—herself, but she couldn’t help it. With her brown hair freshly washed and her bright green eyes lined in kohl, her reflection was quite pleasing. Then her cousin had pulled out an old tube of colored wax and applied it to Parween’s lips, and when she glanced back into the mirror to see her mouth ringed with the red gloss, she could barely contain her joy. She was one of them. She was as beautiful and grown-up as the women who crowded around the bride, and she was fascinated with the alluring girl the makeup had created.
When her cousin left the tube behind to join in the dancing, Parween had pocketed it. It remained one of her prized possessions, and she took it out from its hiding place now and then to remind her of her sister and of how she’d felt that day she’d first worn the waxy color on her lips.
In Bamiyan, she shared it with her best friend, Mariam, and the two applied it reverently and sparingly in the privacy of Parween’s home, gazing into an old mirror and dreaming wistfully of their futures.
Parween was consumed by her chores from dawn to dusk. After preparing breakfast, she tidied up the family’s room and swept the dirt from the carpet. Then she piled clothes into a large basket, slipped a bar of soap into her pocket, placed her veil on her head, and trudged off to join the compound’s women on their trip to the nearby washing stream. Along the way, others would join them, and by the time they made it to the stream, there would be a large group of women and girls, laughing as they plunged the clothes into the biting cold waters. After much scrubbing, the clothes would be strewn about on the ground and hung on low tree branches to dry.
The work was backbreaking. The icy water ate through bony fingers and settled into the skin of cracked and worn hands. Yet sitting back to allow the clothes time to dry offered the women the chance to share gossip and tell stories. They gathered along the stream’s edge, with their feet dangling in the water and backs resting against the trees.
“You heard that Farouzan’s husband thinks she is too ugl
y, didn’t you?” asked one gossipy old hag, her gray hair peeking out from her head-scarf. “He has demanded that she leave his house!” The old woman sat uncomfortably, her hunched back unable to lay flat against the tree.
“No, no, it’s the jinn that made him tell her to leave,” another replied.
The old woman snorted and blew her nose into her scarf.
Mariam sat next to Parween on the ground, laughing, and dipped her clothes into the stream.
Mariam was as small as Parween. She had black hair that was shiny when it was clean—which wasn’t very often—and large brown eyes that saw everything, or so she claimed. She lived near Parween’s family in a mud compound much like the one Parween called home. They were best friends with the same future laid out in front of them—marriage, children, and an endless cycle of cleaning and cooking. Until then, however, they met whenever possible, to giggle, gossip, and daydream.
“Ahh, did you know that Kandy-Gul gave birth to yet another daughter?” said a young woman not much older than Parween. “That’s five in all. Daoud will be looking for another wife.” That elicited a smattering of laughter from the women. Everyone here knew that a wife was only as good as the number of sons she gave to her husband. Daughters, though loved, were second-class citizens at best. But it was different in Uncle Abdullah’s compound, where women were treated kindly, for which Parween and her mother were very grateful.
The women at the stream continued to chatter. Once the clothes were merely damp, Parween and Mariam gathered them into their baskets and headed home, saying their good-byes when Mariam reached her doorway. Just a short distance farther on, Parween entered her own compound, deposited the clothes, picked up a basket, and headed off in search of fuel for the fire.
Lipstick in Afghanistan Page 8
