A Different Kind of Daughter

by Maria Toorpakai

  Sangeen went off up the stairs, down the hall. I sat between my father and Taimur, both tall as pillars next to me. It was a Thursday night. What I remember most is the heavyweight silence, unsaid things that had more power than any utterance. When my brother sat down, he looked at our father, a whole afternoon related in a blink. My father nodded, took a sip from his cup, blew steam from the top, thinking.

  I waited to be told it was over, and I was ready. There were worse things than home, the kitchen, laundry. My boys. My bicycle. The wall in my room was perfect for practicing hits. All I’d have to do was push the mattress off to one side; it was the only thing in there. Things would be different this time—better than failing school, than never having had the chance to be a champion. Than being blown up.

  “We have to make a few changes, Maria, in light of recent events.”

  “Yes, I know, Baba. I’m ready. What happened to your lip?”

  “A minor disagreement over the meaning of life—turns out I was right.”

  “Baba, you won’t admit to what I already know.”

  “Good, then we are on the same page, as always. The problem is the bicycle.” He held up an index finger, twirled it, sending the lamplight into a minor frenzy.

  “No, it’s not the bike, it’s my squash racquet.”

  “Put it in the trunk.”

  “What trunk?”

  “Baba has traded the pick up for a hatchback, Maria. You can sit in the backseat while I drive. Lie down even. It’s in the garage at the neighbor’s house. No one expects it.”

  “What? How will you get to work?”

  My father’s hands went up with his shoulders. Then: “You’ll go at random times and by random routes—but you will go.

  “Yes, Maria. If we get to keep our Qurans, you get to keep your racquet.”

  *

  When I went to bed that night, I could not sleep. I heard my father moving through the house along the narrow corridor, checking our rooms. We all knew he caught sleep only here and there, like morsels of food. His feet stopped outside the door. I could see them through licks of flickering light in the sliver underneath. The window was open next to the bed, all of Peshawar asleep but as restless as the rustling leaves when a breeze pushes between the emptying branches. My father stood at our door a long time. I imagined him placing a hand flat against the wood planking, as though checking for a heartbeat. Finally, my eyelids grew heavy. All around me the air of the city stirred, three million living breaths. How many fewer after tomorrow—no one knew.

  18. Purdah

  I woke early from fitful sleep, untangled my limbs from the single pale-blue sheet. I pulled open the shade next to me, releasing all at once the darkness from the room. Out the window, garbage littered the street. At the center of the asphalt, a crow picked bits of food out of a torn plastic bag. I watched him for a few minutes, chin on the sill, and got up. Inside, the house was still quiet. I slid into my clothes, the day ahead already taking shape in my mind—Taimur driving me on a meandering route, windows up all the way, to the academy. It wasn’t Friday, but that no longer seemed to matter. There were random bombings all the time— hospitals, doctors’ offices, theaters, police stations, bazaars, the homes of government officials; once or twice, a Christian church. Between attacks there were threats, and those were almost as bad: buildings evacuated, people racing out the doors in an explosion of panic. Once children were trampled. Before six, I was already in the kitchen slicing mangoes. The glistening juice running all over my hands always brought me back to the valleys, sitting on rocks with my old crew in the sunshine. They might all be diehard Talibs by now—might be after me for all I knew.

  My mother hadn’t come home yet. I looked for her telltale satchel by the door—the one with all the pens and maps in it. Somehow, she always had a small bag of candy and a dwindling roll of happy-face stickers. I bit my lip, holding back a familiar dam of emotion that always threatened to break. My father was asleep like a dead man in a chair by the front door, waiting. When I touched his arm, he stiffened and shot up. Together we went to the kitchen, where I gave him a plate of fruit and nuts. He looked at the offering bleary-eyed, as though he didn’t know what to do with it. Cups of tea—our shared elixir. We sipped and said nothing, though we’d expected her home twelve hours before. While we didn’t think the other was looking, we each glanced at the door.

  Then, in that tense morning stillness, the sudden shifting of door locks changed everything. In a moment she was there, satchel thumping to the floor, chador falling from her head to her shoulders. As though she’d been holding her breath all night with us, she exhaled—“Well!” We stood together, all talking at once. Usually, when people didn’t come back for hours, they never came back at all. My father dropped his head into his hands and I thought for a moment that he might collapse. Then he looked up at her, shook his head and took a long deep breath as though to hold back a high tide of emotion. In my entire life, I’ve never seen my father cry and I doubt I ever will—it simply isn’t his way. Then we followed my mother across the front room and my father signaled for me to help her. For several minutes he was still too overcome to speak. I went to her as she sat down on the mats in the living room. One after the other, and as though they were precious things, I removed her worn out shoes. In a moment, my father moved close to me on the floor watching, but somehow unable to touch her. Aami looked over at him, smiling, and held out a hand as though caressing his stunned face through the air. “Come now, Solomon. Get up from your knees.”

  We didn’t have to ask what had happened; she was already telling us as she removed her burqa from a sack and placed it over a cushion next to her. I looked over at the empty fabric draped like a deflated thing, pictured my mother staring out from behind it and wondered what she’d seen through that tight mesh. Then she peeled off the chador. A few small grains fell to the floor— maize. In them I saw undulating fields, churning from green to silver in the wind. Underneath those coverings, she had on a kameez with flowers embroidered all over it. I rarely saw her that way, without a shawl, hair in a long black braid down her spine. She leaned back and sighed.

  “Two Taliban leaders were in a shoot-out in the village—rival leaders. It had nothing to do with the school, but of course when the gunfire got going, we had to stay in there hiding. It went on and on through the night. They blew out windows. We were all on the floor under desks while they went at killing each other. It didn’t stop until dawn.”

  My father was next to her now, as she was undoing her tight braid, pulling the soft lengths of curls from her long hair. He sat transfixed as her fingers ran through the strands. His gaze alone was an intimate act I rarely saw between them. I was thinking about how minutes before he’d taken her shoes from me and put them away, and then brought a damp towel for her tired feet. When she let her hair fall, I could see in his eyes that he was somewhere else, swimming into the past—maybe to the young girl he married, her bird-wing hands caressing the new jean jacket folded in her lap. In his eyes, my mother was still Queen of the House.

  “Who won, Yasrab?” He watched her shaking the dust of war from her hair.

  She laughed, reached back, and took his hand. “No one, of course. I must sleep.”

  Gratitude shed years from my father. He put a piece of mango in his mouth and ate it, sighing as though he’d never tasted anything more luscious. For the first time that morning, he looked at me, all the grimness peeled away from his face. The thick hair around his mouth glistened. He asked me for more and I gave it to him.

  “Baba, what is it they want?”

  “Who?”

  “The Taliban. They want me to stop playing squash, for you and Aami to stop teaching. But what is the thing they want for all this blowing up and shooting they do?”

  My father didn’t miss a beat. He pushed aside the empty plate, wiped off the untamable beard I knew he hated. “They want the government to get rid of our constitution and impose their version of Islam on everyone—
I’ve told you about it before —that’s the whole thing in one sentence. If I go on, we will be here for years.”

  “You never told me exactly what it is—their version of Islam.”

  “It isn’t Islam—that’s the thing you must know above all. First they took the word ‘taliban’ from our language for themselves and murdered it.”

  “It is why everyone has started to use the English word ‘student’.”

  “Yes. And now they have adducted our faith.”

  “They have their own laws.”

  “Yes. Many. Women must not work outside the home, attend school, see a doctor when they are sick, play sports, or go anywhere without a male accompanying her. In public, they must be covered head to toe in a burqa with only a mesh covering at the front to see through. They must not wear shoes that make noise while they walk. No music is permitted, no entertainment. Windows of buildings housing women should be painted black, so there is no possibility of a woman’s face being seen even by accident . . .”

  He went on, but as he spoke, every word weighed me down. I saw everything I was doing in a new, harsh light—the gross insult of the white T-shirt and shorts I so often wore, my uncovered face, the single large earring looped to one lobe, my short spiked hair—my ways. The game I played—all over the country and continent—ranked number one. The bicycle I hardly ever rode anymore. And the target over me seemed to darken like a stain. I looked around the kitchen as he came to the end of a long, memorized list—the last edict something about polio vaccinations.

  “The Taliban believe the vaccinations are a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. They banned those too.”

  “How long until they stop?” I wanted to hear a general timeline—months, weeks, anything but what he gave me.

  “I don’t know.” Eye to eye, he looked at me.

  “I understand something that I didn’t before now, Baba.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “They won’t stop until I do. Stop playing squash.”

  “No. It’s more than that. That’s just the beginning of what they’re after. You’re a tribal girl. They want you in purdah as an example to all the others.”

  “What does that really mean?”

  His gaze moved all over kitchen—kettle coming to a boil, cutting board soaked in sweet juice—and then came to rest on the burqa my mother had left over the chair. “Between four walls”—he held up the dust-covered garment—“in this.”

  After that, I shifted into survival mode. I did everything to the letter: tracksuits with a hood, backseat of the car, head down. We never took the same route twice in a row, never stepped out the front door without someone checking. I adopted an erratic training schedule; I came and went to and from the academy at all hours, telling no one when I would be there or when I planned to leave. My whole life was reconfigured—eating, sleeping, breathing—because of a letter tacked to my father’s hatchback. Every night, desperate for sleep, I heard my father’s voice go down the list of the Taliban edicts. We, and everyone in Peshawar who lived in a constant state of terror, wondered as they kneeled and prayed five times a day to Allah, what kind of Islam the Taliban were following. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to our peaceful faith. Fifty miles away and closing in fast, that was daily life. The note on the windshield was just the first step in a long campaign. I lived in a constant state of agitation—living without living, breathing like an animal, walking fast, eyes darting like prey. The Taliban were terrorizing me in the coolest manner possible—a little bit at a time.

  When the air marshal in charge of the squash academy came into the court, two cans of Fanta in his hands, I put down my racquet. A military badge emblazoned his green tracksuit, under which you could see the sheer cut of his shoulders. To look at him, I had to crank my neck, and when I did, I could see the pulse beating in his. Beads of sweat gathered at his sideburns. It was hot in the tank—the ventilation system kept going out. A long, serrated scar cut across his cheek; a thin mustache sat over his top lip. People conjectured about the scar, said he’d been in a plane crash or been wounded as a youth in the days when brave young boys went into the hills to fight with the mujahideen—he looked like a man who’d survived horrors he’d never talk about. I wondered why he was there, sharing a soda, knowing as I sipped the saccharine drink that it couldn’t be good news.

  “People talk, Maria. See you come and go. See your face.”

  I didn’t deny the thing that anyone could see. I was pale from fear, no hiding it.

  He told me about the threats the academy had received, telephone calls. The first call was specific—Get rid of her. After that, just the crackle of dead air on the end of the line at least once every single day. Other players reported sightings of strange men standing around outside, watching the entrance, studying the building, and taking notes. Each morning, he told me, the staff expected to find a letter tacked to the door. It was only a matter of time. In my mind, I turned over the reality the air marshal presented me with, as I turned my racquet in my hand. What had begun as a single threat against me had multiplied to involve many other souls.

  “I can’t play here, can I?”

  “Maria, you are the national champion. If you stop playing here, we all do. I’ve made a few calls.”

  *

  At the first knock, my father let the men in—four officers, none of them in uniform. They sat in our front room on mats, legs crossed, notepads in their laps. Question after question. I answered each matter-of-factly, told them about riding past the two men in the alley, about the pair outside the squash facility dressed to the nines in professional sports gear. As I spoke, one man looked at me intently, as though searching my face for something he’d lost. Another man scrawled notes in a strange staccato handwriting my father told me later was called shorthand. The other two simply stood by the door, one inside and one out, watching. Every now and then we could hear the lone figure outside the front door pacing the cement ground and letting out a quick cough. Taimur told me afterward that there were many more positioned up and down the road. As the night transpired, we learned that the threats to my life had reached the local government offices, where members of Parliament discussed the logistics of my security needs. Funds had been allocated to secure around-the-clock protection for me. It was all surreal.

  It started at first light when I pulled up the shade. Standing in the sunshine, a man outside looked over—one of the officers from the night before. We didn’t wave; I was under strict instructions not to. Most of the time, they told me, I wouldn’t even know they were there. Just like the Taliban, undercover officers used disguises—vendors, students, addicts, holy men, squash players. Two boiled eggs for breakfast and I was right back upstairs. Checked the window. The man was gone, but as I was about to turn away, another man stepped into position across the street.

  In the car, Taimur and I took turns spotting them. I was in the backseat, peering over his shoulder. One was driving behind us in a rust bucket almost identical to our own, wearing shades, gloved hands on the wheel. When Taimur turned, he turned; when Taimur doubled back, he followed suit. Others weren’t so easy to pick out: the vagrant sitting at the curb at the end of our block, rolling cigarettes—my brother slowed the car, told me to take a careful took at the man’s clean, dead-giveaway hands—the kebab vendor in the street outside the complex—“Did you notice all the kebabs are burned black, Maria?”

  I took a long drink from my water bottle before getting out of the car. The water tasted clean and cool, and I let myself savor it. Overnight, everything had transformed—we’d laughed all morning in the car. I’d slept without stirring through Technicolor dreams of the ocean—boomerang waves and thatched houses on the crystalline beach. Those men formed a net around me; they were experts at protecting people. And for a while, I thought I was safe.

  On the roof of the academy, I saw men dressed in full black gear, sitting like giant bugs. They had guns on bipods fixed to each corner, scopes flashing as they scanne
d the walkways all around me while I made my way across the quad. A window washer, bucket at his side and rags in his hand, looked over as I went in. He’d be there until lunchtime, when his replacement took over.

  In the courts, I trained well. For the most part, the undercover officers stayed outside and, over the weeks, started to blend in like wallpaper. I wondered how long they would keep going, following me, watching my back. The first night, the man in charge had told me that when the threats stopped, they would leave. So far, that hadn’t happened. As soon as I started to believe the threats would never materialize, I’d get a stark reminder—the sound of another car bomb detonating at the market; murdered bodies dumped in the street like trash; more people going missing. At that time, many prominent Pakistanis were abducted and killed.

  I didn’t think anyone would get past my protectors. The day that certainty disintegrated, something was off from the start. An oversized tracksuit consumed me; it was all I had to wear, and the fabric baked my limbs like an oven. My body seemed to have a life of its own, changing size all the time. Shorts that fit fine the week before were suddenly tight rubber bands about my waist. Already perspiring, I stood in the court alone. Sore knees, especially the left one, which had been giving me trouble. All around, the sounds of other games in full swing reverberated—the laughter of children. The academy had just opened registration to new players in the under-thirteen category, some as young as five. Maybe it was all the noise coming from the other courts and the constant high chatter of the children, but I couldn’t tamp down the pulsing of my nerves. I was on edge, and nothing was falling into place—my swing; my focus; all my hits were dull.

  I stood in the court, heating the ball up in my hands. Thinking. A whistle blew and the air quieted down. I was still standing at the T, and I felt something stir behind me. I shot around, but there was nothing in the glass. I shook the feeling off, laughed at myself, and got into a slow drill. Ten hits in and I felt it again, behind me: a shifting of shadows and a slight bend in the light. This time, I saw a figure slip fast past the glass in the corridor. I waited a moment—nothing seemed unusual except for the tingling creeping over my skin. Could have been anyone. Just a few minutes before, I’d seen my guard pretending to be a window cleaner in the lobby. I recognized him as the man who’d taken all the shorthand notes. I told myself over and over that I was safe.