Panting, my father slipped off his wet boots and found me staring up in a basket by the kitchen. I lay as still as when he’d left me within my soft cocoon of cloths. The kitchen overflowed with perfumed heat—the scent of scattered cumin, pounded coriander seed—and he was happy to find his infant so contented. My father leaned down close to my face. Then he smiled, winter frost still on him and his brown eyes somehow blue, as if within those clear domes he’d trapped bits of sky. A hand on my heart, he whispered his gifts to me.
First into to my right ear and breathed the azan, our Muslim call to prayers, as was the custom in our part of the world. Then he moved to my other ear.
“Your given name is Maria, for purity, because the cruelty of our world has yet to alter you. Inshallah, it will never succeed. Second, I give you Gulgatai, as your pink face even now is pinched tight and betrays only the innocent promise of a rosebud. We have yet to know the great beauty that lies hidden within you. Lastly, you’ll be known as Toorpakai, a girl with black hair that is the envy of the darkest night. Maria, you have three names, but one life. Live well and with meaning. Never be afraid, because you are my daughter. Above all else, in your blood, you are a Wazir.”
At that moment, I became who I am. Shams slipped a single gold coin into a fold of my blanket. To this day, I keep that very coin with me, often concealing it in the well of my palm until the metal grows hot. I’ve never shown the coin to a soul, and never will. When I hold it up to even the faintest light, it shines like the winter sun that greeted my father. I know that if I were to find that place on the rim of our valley, even decades from now, I would hear the still-living echo of his voice dancing along the tumbling Suleiman Mountains.
Years later when I would ask Shams a simple question about life, he’d always weave me a whole tapestry of words.
“Where did I come from, Baba?”
“Well now, Maria, I caught you with a fishing net from a bend in the mighty Indus.”
I never doubted that myth for a moment.
Then my father told me God sent a great lion to Tibet and made its ferocious mouth the guardian source of the mighty, life-giving river Indus. From then on, every tribal child came to be, dropped like shooting stars into the moving folds of the estuary and floated as carelessly as fallen leaves toward home.
“But you, Maria, were not like the others, simply born without a care into a moving current. Somehow you came into this world straight from the legendary lion’s ferocious mouth. This is why you are so strong. When I caught you, your flailing fists tore through my net, and it took ten men to haul you in.”
*
Our land, too far from the nourishing Indus, was arid, rainfall a rarity. Monsoons and oceans were but beautiful rumors, biblical tales told by old men, patches of blue on a map. Shams’ river myth suited me. Perhaps I was born with a fire in my soul that needed putting out, because I would have given half my life to jump just once into the ocean—to know the beauty of curling waves and feel their pounding thunder eclipse the beating of my heart. I imagined whole days of rain, big drops like a deluge of diamonds falling from the sky; how strange and beautiful it would be to see the world glazed and polished with wet—everything clean.
My father kept buckets full of water lined up in a row along one side of the house. When he found them drained, he’d send a boy from the village out to the stream to fill them again. The water remained cold a long while in the wall shade, bits of leaves or insects landing on the clear surface. I could dip my whole arm in, and watched mesmerized as goose bumps stippled my skin right up to the elbow. Sometimes I simply put my lips to the cool surface and took a long drink. Even in summer, the water always tasted of ice.
Every June, cold water became precious, but we had a plentiful supply from the river running near our house. In the summer, South Waziristan raged with a heat that slapped the air around, making it shimmer. Gathering clouds of dust blew on mid-afternoon wind like hard spit cursing across the valley bowl. Grains infiltrated everything—hair and eyes, nostrils and lungs. I found grit in the tiny wells of my ears, coating my skin like sandpaper. It encrusted lashes, roughened my tongue; it turned the sun blood red.
During those hot spells, I poured buckets of water hauled from the river over myself, sometimes four times each day. Sometimes more. The weight of the full buckets overwhelmed my arms, and so I would drag them by the thin wire handle, water spilling over the lip and leaving a wet trail that vanished instantly to steam or seeped into the hard, pounded clay of our courtyard. I never once needed an excuse to bathe; it was an obsession my father encouraged.
“Cleanliness, Maria, is half of faith.”
“Then I have more faith than any Pashtun.”
Sometimes Shams called me Tahara, which, like Maria, is the Arabic word for purity. Before prayers, custom demanded that a supplicant bow before God, a state of taharah, free from all forms of filth, both of the mind and the flesh. Because I was always playing outside in our courtyard with those buckets full of river water, no one ever called me in before prayer for wudu, the ritual washing. I lived in a state of perpetual wudu. Every week, Shams brought me bars of white soap from the market, wrapped like small gifts in wax paper and smelling of sandalwood and fragrant oils I could not identify. I would squat on the ground outside, slippery bar in my hands, and my father would lift the metal bucket high, pouring clean water over me, rinsing away the film of dust from my body.
When no one was looking, I often ate bits of soap the way other children sneaked spoonfuls of raw honey or handfuls of sugar cubes. The white soap from the market stall was always sweetest, and I’d take small bites of it like bird pecks, careful to smooth out my teeth marks using a wet thumb. I’d never consume so much at a time that anyone would notice, as it was a private pleasure that I knew full well was peculiar to me. Once, my mother caught me nibbling, crouched low by the big metal laundry basin, and I heard her gasp as I licked my lips. Looking up, I swallowed very slowly and dropped the bitten-up brick. In parts of the world like America, she told me, mothers rinsed their children’s mouths out with soap and water as a punishment when they used bad language. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what she meant by “bad language,” as I’d never heard a mean thing spoken in my home. I couldn’t imagine such a strange practice as forcing a child to eat as a penance what I thought of as a secret delicacy. Sucking on my fingertips, I laughed and said the soap there must not be as good as ours.
“I don’t think there is an angel in heaven, Maria, who is as pure as you are. God willing, the world never sullies you.”
*
When I was just four and too young to venture out alone, as soon as the heat had abated and the world came alive again—mostly with living sounds; birdsong, chattering schoolboys, a holy man calling the pious to pray—I would spend most of the day on our roof, feet dangling over the edge. After weeks of hauling full, clanking buckets of water from the compound wall and across the courtyard, my arms swelled with new strength till I could no longer slip them easily into my dresses, which to me was a blessing.
I liked to sit, sleeves rolled way up to the shoulder, and curl my fists, watching in fascination the rise and fall of hard ridges of stretched skin where there had been nothing before. Sometimes I thought I could feel myself growing, though I was still very small.
I’d woken up that morning, bathed in the courtyard, and sat on a stool in the kitchen as my mother oiled and plaited my long, straight toorpakai hair, reciting dates and historical events like mantras that had no meaning to me whatsoever. She’d been up half the night studying for midterm exams in Middle Eastern history and religion, cramming facts into her brain that would vanish in a day, replaced by another series, for another test. I could feel her fingers dancing along my scalp, pulling apart tangles, my long tresses a torment to us both; but for some reason, to shear it was out of the question. I never understood why. Sometimes I thought it was because of my name—if I cut off my black hair, I’d have to give up Toorpakai and
one-third of myself.
Later that morning, the house was empty. I checked the front-facing windows and tore off my red-and-orange dress, leaving it in a pile like a bit of sunset left melting to a puddle on the floor. With no other comfortable garments to wear—everything in my cupboard was adorned with heavy beads and ribbons—I left on my thin white slip. Walking out to the side of the house, I climbed an old rusted drainpipe, the hem of my slip catching several times on nails, to our roof. At the top, I hoisted myself up and I tiptoed the perimeter ledge like an acrobat, considering how to fill the empty free hours ahead. In those days, with everyone at school, time was my own canvas to paint. Every now and then, a neighbor would stop in to check on me, but most of the time I was left alone in the house. Sunlight so soft, after a while I dozed face-up on an old straw mat positioned on the floor like a raft. A steady stream of lazy daydreams colored in a full hour. I was lost at sea. The sole survivor of a shipwreck. An explorer in search of new land. A lonely cloud drifting. An eagle. Anything at all.
Later, I took my lunch on the roof—a cup of yogurt, bowls of lentils and nuts. I went back down to wash in the buckets and climbed back up again; that’s when I heard the gleeful voices of the men, eruptions of clapping like rain. I had no idea why they shouted so, but I was drawn to the sound, the way it rose up in unison and fell again like music, knowing that the very rhythm had a special purpose I could not name.
I closed my eyes, tuned in again to the high-pitched chattering beyond. I squinted into the distance, saw nothing. Canopies of leaves grew a richer green as the light dipped deeper into gold that I could barely see past. Then a small white ball suddenly emerged from the treetops and rose high. It seemed to hover, spinning a moment as though suspended in the air, then it dropped down again. Someone let out a booming shout and the ball was back, rising even higher as though pushed by the force of the erupting cheers below. This time, before it vanished again to earth I was on my feet.
I ran fast without shoes. It was not hard to find my way. The only road outside our home curved in one direction and led me past several clusters of village dwellings, along the stream and out into open space. I continued on, moving off the road to a rut cutting between trees toward a park of soft meadowland, a few blue pines here and there, which I’d only ever seen from a great distance. Now I could hear the men clear as day, and I walked toward them, finding myself on a hill looking down to a long, flat field. A tall willow stood nearby, full branches over the slope, and I stepped within its green umbrella, resting my hands on the twisted trunk. I leaned forward and looked through the curtain of branches into the field below. Down there, some fifty feet away, a large group of men stood dressed all in white against the vivid emerald green of the freshly cut lawn. I thought that, in all their pristine brightness, they must be holy men. I saw one holding the clean white ball between his hands. Many other men sat on benches or stood along the perimeter, watching the activity in the field.
A long net with holes far too big for catching fish cut the field into a perfect half, and on either side stood a formation of men in two rows three across, one extra player positioned at the back. The player with the ball stretched and took his position on the rear line. Face set with concentration, he tossed the ball way up into the air. No one made a sound. I held my breath. Within a beat, his other arm went up and he slapped the ball open-palmed and hard so that it shot straight over the net. A man on the other side pounded it back before it hit the ground, and a breathtaking back-and-forth volley ensued. Mesmerized, I didn’t dare blink. When at last it hit the grass on one side, half the men in the crowd shouted out with jubilant approval, while the other half jeered. The sounds rose high and fell away again, and I suddenly understood that I was watching a game in which only one side could win.
From my hideaway under the willow, I followed the quick movements of the ball and felt each powerful hit with a strange all-consuming excitement that stole my breath. Later, I would learn the game the men played down in the village field was called shooting volleyball. It was one the most popular games in the country, second only to squash. At barely four years old, crouching under the willow tree and spying on the game, I knew that every dream I’d ever had was eclipsed—I was hooked.
After a little study, I understood the basics of the game and mimicked the players from my hiding spot, jumping and slapping an invisible white ball down over an imaginary net with my small open hand. The day was fading slowly into a long twilight, and I felt my skin growing hot from the wild exertions of my play. Then I heard a hard slap, and as if by some miracle, the round white ball flew in my direction. Arching in a shallow curve, it hit the ground barely two feet from the willow and rolled to a sudden halt. For a moment I didn’t move. I’d never held a ball of any kind. Never played a sport in my life. Without thinking, I crawled out from the curtain of branches, my skin hot, my heart racing. I could feel my braids coming apart as I ran and bent down to retrieve the ball. Sweat dripped down my heavy hair to my hot back, where the fabric of the white dress slip stuck to my skin like a sheet of paper. I held the ball; it was smooth and made of soft leather. The men below all stared up the slope and called loudly in my direction. Still cradling the ball, I peered back at them down the hill to the playing field, where they stood watching me. Two men from the crowd were already approaching. They called out. Propelled by their shouting, I took a breath and tossed the ball high to the heavens and watched it spin. In tandem, my other arm and hand rose, and I jumped in my bare feet, slapping the ball open-palmed with everything in me. The moment my small hand made contact, the volleyball soared. Barely arching, it landed in the green field full of men. Voices exploded at once, and some of the white figures came running up the slope after me, their mouths hanging open in shock. I could feel my hand burn and stared down at my palm, seeing the red mark like a branding. My fate had suddenly changed—I could feel it. So I stood there grinning and waited for the men to come to me.
The first man from the approaching group crossed into a pool of tree shade. His bleached shalwar kameez suddenly darkened as he stopped before me, staring, saying nothing. I recognized him as the cousin of a mullah from one village over. Not more than a week before, he’d celebrated marriage to a girl who’d gone to school briefly with my sister, Ayesha. I looked away from him. I realized just then that he’d also been the player who’d served the ball toward me.
The men who followed were all tall and clad in unblemished whites. They were not holy men. I recognized a few as my father’s colleagues from the neighboring college, where he sometimes gave guest lectures on varying subjects, from modern poetry to physics. My father had spent a lifetime reading textbooks, memorizing facts and formulas, theories and verses, as though they were all on a conveyor belt feeding straight into his brain. More than one of those men had been regular visitors to our home, where they sat on rugs in the living room, eating slices of fruit from white plates, always engaged in discourses that sounded to me like a foreign language. World affairs. Politics. Sometimes they prayed together on silk mats in a special room near the front door of our house. Then I noticed the mullah from our mosque; he approached twisting the coils of his thick graying beard in his fingers. He stared down at me and pulled a red ribbon from my hair like a vein from my head.
“I would like to play,” I said, half-smiling, no idea at all how wrong I was about that.
“Is that what you think is going to happen?” he said. In the cool shade, his face showed barely a feature, like the dark side of the moon.
“No, not yet. I am asking.” I felt a rivulet of sweat run down my spine.
“Asking who—Allah? Me?”
“I’ll beat everyone. You saw me hit the ball.” I dug my bare heels into the raw ground.
Something sinister entered the mullah’s eyes. I didn’t know enough yet about the state of things outside our compound to know that I had said the wrong thing.
After considering me for a moment, the small tears along the hem of my dress, m
y bare feet and arms, the mullah placed his hands on either side of my head. He seemed to study my shape, squeezing my skull. I could feel his pulse tap at my temples. A man behind him laughed.
“Inshallah,” I whispered, minding my manners.
The mullah kept one hand on my cheek, holding it hard. Then I saw his right arm rise straight up, open-handed, and the setting sunlight flickered faintly between his fingertips.
The slap to my face came so hard and fast that it sounded like a gunshot. The air in my lungs rushed out and I stumbled backward in my slip dress. The skin along my jaw pulsed with a pain that I’d never known. My mind raced with a fear that was new to me. It threatened to stop my heart—part of me wished it would. Instantly, the inside of my mouth was warm and slippery with blood.
If I thought he was done, I was wrong. He hit me twice more, all the while keeping a hand hooked to my shoulder to keep me from falling back.
When he let go of me at last, I fell to my knees in the dirt. I wanted to call out to my father, to the mighty Indus to come carry me to the Arabian Sea; but I said nothing, blinking eyes fixed dead to the ground before me. I could not breathe; it felt as though all the air had left the world.
The mullah leaned down at the waist, wiped a trail of blood from my face, and then smeared it like the juice from a crushed berry on a strip of white cloth pulled from his pocket. When I saw his casual cruelty in that single act, I thought that in his cool anger the man might kill me. I could not feel my own skin. I floated, and yet I was still there on my knees, afraid to move.
Instead, he cupped my chin in his hand and forced me to meet his gaze.
“A girl like you is dirty,” the mullah said, and he spat into my wide-open eyes. “Go back home to your father, dirty girl.”
Every man in the group after him walked past me and spat before going back down the hill to resume their game.
A Different Kind of Daughter Page 3
