My father watched Batoor long after he’d vanished up the street into shadow, hand on my shoulder, squeezing. Both of us stood in our open threshold, home warm and quiet behind us as those soft piano sounds swelled from the radio, the pitted road one step away. My father made me promise things in whispers out there that I didn’t understand—about roaming around with Batoor and the other boys, never being alone in the alleyways; about not trusting or going anywhere with any man. If I needed rupees, my father told me, all I had to do was ask. He was looking into the dark as though he could still see my friend wandering barefoot up the road. Somehow I knew I wouldn’t see my friend from Peshawar for several days, and that he’d reappear with his hair cut and his nails filed down to perfect crescents. Maybe a new pair of shoes if he was lucky. So lucky he would barely say a word. My father looked down at me. We were both silhouettes in the dark. I wanted to know why he never asked the boy his story, as he did every other visitor. After all, it was the first time I’d brought home human treasure.
“Batoor has already lived a thousand years too many. To ask him to tell his tale would be asking him to live a thousand more.”
Within a day, I was back at the mosque with my sister and an empty bucket. She went down the hall in her pristine chador to find her group, and I went to wash and then to pray. Every now and again, I liked to linger in the prayer hall, as though my soul had emptied and needed filling. I stood under the huge center dome. Above me, the white vault seemed to push straight through the sky, a circumference of half-moon windows surrounding it like a dozen suns. We were meant to see heaven up there, and I always believed that I did. Then, before kneeling, I faced the indentation of black marble within the mihrab wall, which showed the congregation the Qibla—the direction in which they should all pray.
If you could walk through that indentation like a secret door and kept going, you’d get all the way to the Kaaba in Mecca. I’d forgotten to leave my bucket in the ablution rooms and thought at once that I should go back and put it on the bench for later. It was then that I heard a cough behind me and turned to see the smiling face of a mullah in a long robe and white turban—a man I didn’t recognize, though I’d been to our mosque almost daily. I could smell fresh soap on him as I smelled it on Batoor and the other boys. He was wiping his hands with a cloth. Wordlessly, he nodded to my bucket and motioned for me to follow him.
And I did. We slipped down an empty corridor, and I remember thinking that he seemed to glide across it, as a holy man of his stature should, while I lumbered in shoes that were too large for my feet. For some reason, I felt filth in my hair, on my hands; my skin crawled, though I’d scrubbed hard in the sinks. We weren’t going to the ablution rooms; we weren’t going anywhere I’d ever been before. The mullah led me to an adjacent building and had me put my bucket down outside a door. He had to use a heavy brass key to open it, and when the locks shifted in their casing I could feel the heavy sounds in my heart. Inside, all the curtains on the four tall windows were shut tight but one, which let in a sword of light. An imposing desk, a silk rug woven to a deep ruby sheen, and at the far end, a long ottoman covered in cushions. It was hard to see, though I noticed a small pair of boys’ shoes left behind and lying on their sides like dead things.
Then I saw a tendril of steam spiraling up from a red tea pot positioned in a corner. The Masala chai whisper wandered the room as though it had traveled time, all the way from my old life back in the college town, just to reach me right there and then. No Buddha this time, no floating lotus or cross tacked to the wall, no pictures of prophets or shelves of sacred books—no woman to offer herself up to save me if I cried. No brother sitting in my lap listening to a story—whatever was happening, it was all real. How I wished to be standing in the tranquility of that Saraiki woman’s living room again, sipping tea and watching the Afridi nourish my whimpering brother—confident in the kindness of strangers. I could hear the woman chanting in my ear and then my father explaining that scene to me later. My mind was grabbing on to memories as though to flimsy rafts. Standing in the mullah’s office as he tried to lure me into his shadow was like stepping into the foreboding threshold of a nightmare. Then in the cold darkness of sheer terror, I felt warm hands on my head and heard a deep voice come back to me like sureness itself—“do not be afraid”. Later, I’d realize how peculiar it was that in my moment of confused terror, inside my own mosque, I hadn’t reached for ayahs. Instead I had conjured a tableau of peaceful women sitting in a living room, and then the prophet from my dream. Just for that, the mullah might have whipped me.
The mullah went to his desk and I hovered under the threshold, feeling the coolness of the mosque behind me spread out like an ocean, the darkness of the office so hot you could barely think in it. The mullah was rummaging in his desk and licking his lips as though he were thirsty. He had a pile of rupees in his open palm—I could see their burnished gold glinting. I looked at the money, more than I’d ever seen in one place, right there for the taking. The mullah chuckled and talked to me about the boys I played with. He’d seen us many times and knew them all—all but me, he said, and he’d like to take some time to get to know me better. He was moving to the ottoman and motioned with his hand for me join him on the deep crimson cushions. Through the dimness, he gazed at me—not at my face but along the whole length of my body—and right then I knew full well what he wanted.
As though a hand were pushing me—the hand of God, the hand of my father, the hand of Jesus Christ whose sacred voice I still heard—I started to back away. The mullah frowned and continued talking, jangling his shiny pile of change and touching the red cushions. He beckoned me in again and told me to shut the door. Then he reached down into the darkness and pulled a ripe pomegranate out for me to see. In the soft air of the open corridor, I leaned down for my bucket, swinging it so hard by the handle that the metal hit the wall. Clangs reverberated through the mosque like a broken bell. I stopped then, stood my ground for a moment, and said what I had to say before running.
“When I need rupees I ask my father, and when I’m hungry for fruit he gives me that too. Bother me again, and I swear he will kill you.”
Moving fast up the corridor in the clean light and high polish, I went all the way past the prayer hall, running under its heavenly dome and around the pillars. I raced out the main doors, dropping my bucket but not hearing it. I just kept going, not stopping—not once.
The instant I stepped outside, the filth and clatter descended upon me. I stood in the street and gulped the air as though it was clean water and I hadn’t had a drop in days. I thought my lungs had forgotten how to breathe; I could not catch my breath. Across the road, I saw a few of the boys I knew lurking around. One of them had on an ironed shirt, new shoes. They hadn’t noticed me yet. I scanned their faces for Batoor, but he wasn’t among them. Not two minutes before, I’d been one step over a threshold away from that boy’s dark world, and I knew it. I didn’t wait long enough for them to catch sight of me. Running, I felt my father’s hand pressing down on my shoulder and heard his voice in my ear. Every word pierced me.
“Batoor has lived a thousand years too many already.”
9. Out of the Tribal Lands
Everyday life simply became too dangerous in Darra Adam Khel, so we loaded up the pick up once again, this time in search of peace. From the flatbed, I gazed down from the Indus Highway into a circular valley the size of a sea. And when I saw it—a metropolis spread out in a great hive of tall, clustered buildings—I thought Peshawar was a city to be reckoned with. I was right. Straightaway, I would struggle to find my place among the masses there, where I had nowhere to run free and didn’t know a soul. It was 2001, I was barely ten years old, and it felt as though that final move of my childhood, out of the bad and beautiful tribal lands behind us, signaled its end.
Before our departure, my father had described the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which would be the first real city I’d ever laid eyes on. The ancient texts of
the Parsi described the region as the sixth most beautiful place on earth, and it must have been true at one time, when it was still the jewel described in my father’s history books, nestled along the eastern end of the Khyber Pass. Now it was a sprawl of soulless buildings, as though the bygone valley had sprouted a boundless forest of huge, colorless trees, all rising half dead to a pale yellow haze. My father told us about the colleges, modern hospitals, markets, and parks. We were moving there for opportunities that we couldn’t find in the tribal belt: good schools, medical care, stable work, and no more guns—a better life. It sounded too good to be true. Maybe it was. All I saw slipping past the truck rails as we veered off the highway and onto Kohat Road was an imposing urban jungle. When we finally reached the heart of the city, the streets of Peshawar hummed with the angry clamor of jammed traffic; its cliff walls of buildings loomed for miles. The city seemed to have no end— if I let it, I thought, it could swallow me whole.
Our new home was a stucco building, a washed-out mustard color that rose up several stories. I remember staring along its face, my neck craned, mesmerized by its height and the many windows that punctuated the facade. It would be like living inside a giant honeycomb. Our apartment block ran right alongside a sidewalk full of hustling pedestrians and fruit stalls selling lemons, oranges, limes, mangoes, all arranged in pyramids. Every time someone bought a piece of fruit, vendors swiftly rearranged the pattern. A parade of motorized rickshaws rushed past the curb. So many cars clogged the street that there was barely space between bumpers. The city buzzed like a hive.
A wiry teenager stood by the gutter, watching us unload our bags and crates. He jumped forward and held out a calloused palm, and I saw right away that his wrist had a stippling of raw sores across it—another heroin addict. It seemed that in Peshawar addicts and vagrant children were everywhere. My father nodded and handed the boy a small coin, promising one more after he’d finished helping us carry our possessions into the building—the few things that signaled home. With no room for chickens in this new apartment, all we brought with us were clothes and books, my mother’s box of mementos, two fans this time instead of one, and the Sohrab.
During the first few weeks in Peshawar, I had difficulty finding my bearings. We’d come from a landscape of wide-open flood plains where all the landmarks were purely of the earth—mountain peaks, a bend in the river, an acacia tree, boulders, sunflower fields, an abandoned eagle’s nest. One glance at the position of the sun and I could guess the time of day. Now I was lost in a chaotic grid of roads and buildings all jumbled together. My father gave us each a street map and a watch. But I didn’t want either—I wanted to go back to the valleys. I longed to see the Indus again, to breathe unspoiled air and to run barefoot across the rooftops and plains.
The apartment was clean and sufficient. We had a proper bathroom, a nice kitchen with cabinets, two bedrooms, and a living space with a pullout couch where my parents would sleep. Taimur and the twins shared one bedroom, while Ayesha and I occupied the other. My siblings took to city life immediately, slipping right into the routines that school provided. At first, I was still taught at home, but between their jobs teaching, my parents had little time to devote to my lessons. Most days, I stayed inside, staring out the window, waiting for someone to come back. When you opened a window, the city spilled in, all noise and heat. It was a strange sensation living closed-in, so many feet above the ground, and sandwiched between floors. Outside, all I could see were other buildings—no sun to offer my face to. I felt as though I was suffocating. Sometimes I wept myself quietly to sleep. Often, I thought I should just leave and walk the highway passes all the way back to Darra Adam Khel, where I could roam the mountains with my slingshot again. My family could see that from the first day in Peshawar I had grown sullen; my temper thrashed at the slightest provocation. I lurked about our rooms like a creature caught in a net. Moving to the city was a clipping of my wings.
The government education board, whose headquarters were in the city, sent my mother for training courses and on teaching assignments all over the area. My father commuted most days into the tribal regions to lecture at various colleges. For the first few weeks, my mother took Ayesha and me with her in the jingle bus, a colorfully decorated truck with benches inside, to the school for girls where she had taken a temporary post. The journey on the lumbering school bus was happy and loud, full of girls chattering on benches while I sat silent, pressed between my mother and sister. Every now and again a few girls would turn to look at me and stare.
In Peshawar, at my parents’ behest, I tried out Maria again, wearing the school uniform of dark, itchy dress and a veil draped over my head and shoulders. The only way I could go to a school for girls was to dress like one, and now the only way I could get a regular education was to go to school. Taimur had started at a fine high school at the other end of the city, and Ayesha was just two years away from going to high school herself. The twins attended kindergarten a short walk up the road from home.
Every morning, slipping on the wool tunic was like putting on someone else’s ill-fitting skin. My hair was still razor short, and I was a tall plank of hard muscle inside that ironed dress. The uniform made my skin erupt in painful rashes. My big square hands showed their history of slinging rocks and shooting arrows. It didn’t take long for the other girls to size me up as I squirmed at my desk chair trying to concentrate on the lessons. There were rumors that I was actually a boy. But no one said a word against me, as I was a Madam’s child; they simply acted as though I wasn’t there. And in essence, I wasn’t. Throughout those long, torturous school days, I retreated to a dream world, walking the deep, fertile gullies between mountains, taking long drinks from streams. I had no interest whatsoever in reading textbooks or learning things from words scrawled on a board. Up until that point, I’d loved learning at home and couldn’t imagine acquiring knowledge any other way. My mother had taught me in the warm kitchen, my father in the soft shade of fruit trees, sitting on the cool clay floor of our living room, or taking walks through the rocky plains. Every day, Ayesha would come to check on me in my classroom, always shaking her head. She said, “I feel so sorry for you, Maria. You don’t belong in here.” She was right. I was completely out of place and wasn’t learning a thing. And so my father set me free from the prison of that suffocating uniform, gave me lessons when he could, and found me something else to do.
My new job was to run errands for the family—purchase groceries, school supplies, medicine, toiletries, newspapers, books. Whatever we needed. I had to get to know that map of the city like the back of my hand, and over the course of several months, I did. When I had my bearings set, my father let me take Sohrab out in the city, and we attached saddlebags to the sides and a bell to the handlebars. I loved to race along the paved streets—zigzagging through traffic; taunting drivers; ringing the bell; ignoring traffic signals, road signs; never stopping for anyone or anything. I dressed in shorts and T-shirts, pumping hard and bumping over potholes. The city streamed alongside me in a blur of white buildings as I rode past the ancient town gateways, playing fields, and stadiums, along the Kabul River Canal. But every single time I climbed onto the bike, I still thought of cutting right across Peshawar and dovetailing onto the long road all the way back to the wild tribal lands.
On any given day, my father might send me out for any number of things—toothpaste, razor blades, or a bunch of bananas. On one particular afternoon, he asked me to buy a bag of flour. Most of the time, I knew he was sending me out just to get me outside. If he couldn’t think of a thing for me to find, he simply directed me to a place—the beautiful gardens of Ali Mardan Khan, the narrow pitted alleyways of Old Peshawar, which were so fragrant with spice that I came back giving off heady wafts of saffron and clove. Once, my father directed me with a sketchpad and pencil to take a tour of the old monuments—Bara Bridge, built by the Mughals; Cunningham Clock Tower, built by the English. But eventually he ran out of ideas, and that’s about when I starte
d to run amok.
It started at the site of Kabuli Gate, the most prominent of the sixteen that once led into the old city. My tire punctured on a piece of broken pipe and I had to stop at the curb, sweating and breathless, to patch it. After I fixed the tear, I couldn’t quite get my breath to steady. My mouth was parched and rough, and my heart hammered. I rubbed my temples against the din of cars, mopeds, and lumbering trucks. I hated the city more than ever that day. Thirsty, I had no water left in my canteen and no money to buy anything but the sack of flour my father had sent me for. In the city, if you didn’t have rupees, you had nothing. It wasn’t like living out in the fields where water ran free for the taking in brooks, and trees dropped ripe fruit right into your open hands.
I was in the heart of Old Peshawar. Stone walls divided the area into three neighborhoods—Sard Chah, Gunj, and Dhaki Nalbandi. Who knows which one I was in when the boys began following me that day. When the first one called out to me, I looked back and got on my bike. Many of them got onto their own bikes; they must have been standing around waiting for someone to prey on. Some of them started out on foot, running, and then somehow their small cluster multiplied to a swarm. When I felt the wind from their movement, I pumped harder, legs moving like pistons. I could hear them jeering. They thought I had something they wanted—my watch, the shoes on my feet, the old Sohrab. Their sport was in the taking, I knew that much. They had no idea how strong I was as I rode just ahead of them. It occurred to me that they were soft-muscled city boys who spent their days loitering in the streets. I knew just by looking over my shoulders in angry glances that I could take them all, one at a time. And I wanted to. Turning into a side alley, I stopped pedaling, and I stepped off the bike.
A Different Kind of Daughter Page 13
