Still, I couldn’t drill my nerves into submission. My skin was hot inside all that fabric, and I finally went out into the corridor and paced slowly to the lavatory. The fluorescent lights in there were always half out, casting a sickly glow over the eggshell walls. I washed my face many times in the sink with cold water, as cold as I could get it. Just then, I heard footsteps in the corridor, tapping against tiles, growing louder, slowing on approach, stopping. In the half-inch gap under the door, I could see a shadow flicker. I told myself it was the guard checking, waited awhile, seconds maybe, and then the feet moved and the tapping started up again and receded. The light overhead dimmed, and I went to the door—put my hand on the handle, held my breath, and opened it. Left to right, the hall was empty.
In the corridor on the way back to the courts, all the tanks were lit up and full of new recruits. The Wing Commander had them all lined up against the walls. The children seemed so small, though some were the same size I had been when I started. When he saw me, he waved and pointed. Even though the air force no longer sponsored me, we maintained a good relationship and often played matches when we had the chance. All of the children looked over at me in tandem, mouths breaking into smiles that took up half their faces.
Immediately, I thought it was my mistake—it’s hard to trust your instincts when it seems that there is always something or someone waiting to kill you—but as I returned to my court, my eyes darted to the empty water bottle, right where I’d left it, then to the strange bag in the corner. Leaving unattended parcels anywhere, inside or outside buildings, was strictly forbidden. Pushing back a tsunami of panic, I searched for an explanation or an owner of the abandoned bag. Mouth instantly parched, breath quickening, I didn’t go near the black duffel, just stared at it for a long time. Too long. Frozen. It was just like one I owned but brand-new, tags still on it. The zipper had buckled from the pressure of the packed contents. I kept hoping for someone to rush in and claim it, apologizing. Then a child’s squeal of pain in an adjacent court snapped me out of my lethal confusion, and I sprinted down the corridor, turning my head just enough to see the Wing Commander, small bare foot in his hand, a young boy wailing before him. I slowed, our eyes locked, he took in my face and rushed out of the court. I told him about the bag. We looked all around ourselves—nothing but glass, wall after wall of it. In a moment, everyone was running, and he was right behind me, shouting.
In three minutes flat, everyone was out of the building, hustled into the daylight, frantic and quiet. The entire sports center shut down, blocks were cordoned off, snipers in position at their scopes. I kept moving down the walkway in the thick, tense crowd, wondered how I would get home, what had happened to my guards. Military everywhere; helicopter overhead. Then I saw Taimur across the street, holding a bag of flour, just standing there stunned on the pavement in front of the car while chaos erupted all around him. I could see he was looking for me and rushed over the jammed lanes. He’d gone to work out in the next building, run on the treadmill, lifted a few weights, and then he’d left to shop for food. Only he and my father went to the market in those days. People were still hurrying all around us in a strange, quiet melee, like a fast river parting around two stones.
Taimur passed me his sacks as I slid into the backseat “What was that all about?”
I heaved the bags to the floor and lay down flat across the seat. The sweat on my cheek glued the side of my face to the warm plastic upholstery. I closed my eyes. Behind the lids all I could see were the children lined up against the white walls, just like the young men at the movie theater. I saw the black duffel, like a body bag for an infant, sitting in the court. Then I thought of the thing that scared me more than what might be inside it— all that glass. The engine sputtered several times, Taimur’s foot lightly pumping the gas pedal. I heard him ask the question again, his voice slightly frantic—“What’s going on? What was that all about?” Taking a page from my father’s book, I didn’t mince words. I sat up for a second and met his eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“I don’t know, Taimur—but I think it’s because of me.”
*
Living with such fear finally sucked the life out of everything. Rain fell daily for a time, cleaning away the dust and soot of the bombed-out buildings. Peshawar was grim, its death toll climbing. We were all living in a nightmare. The constant human perimeter of plainclothes officers surrounded me, and around them the Taliban watched and waited for a breach. The duffel taught me they would easily find one. The military bomb squad had checked the bag, sent in a German shepherd trained to scent explosives. The technicians, dressed like astronauts in heavy protective gear, took it away in a specially designed hold. Turned out it wasn’t a bomb, just an ordinary bag stuffed with brand-new white towels, as many as would fit before the zipper gave way—a cunning ploy that served its purpose. I was terrified—we all were.
Holding court in the living room, my father explained the mechanics of a bomb, how it worked, how it killed in several lethal phases. Men were all assembled, quiet and attentive, just like the students I’d seen in his lab. On sheets of paper, which he would later incinerate in the cooking stove, he drew basic diagrams, used cool scientific jargon, eyes bright though the subject was grim. Standing there, I was transported to his warehouse lecture hall in Dera Ismail Khan, the open back doors as big as a movie screen showing a sun-swept panorama of dry foothills. I’d watched him build a four-cylinder engine from nuts and bolts and intricate pieces of metal covered in thick grease, young students circling him, gutted cars surrounding me while I played. They had all looked at my father the way those men did now— spellbound.
“Depending on the point of impact, a bomb does its job in several ways. The initial blast wave: highly compressed air particles go out from the source at rates faster than the speed of sound, causing structural damage to whatever lies in its path— human or material. A series of supersonic stress waves follow. We haven’t found a way to protect people from stress waves. These carry more energy than sound waves and pass invisibly right through the body, tearing up tissues and organs. After that, we see fragmentation from materials packed into the bomb—ball bearings, nails, and razors—that travel at high velocity. Makes a machine gun look like a slingshot. Then you have secondary fragmentation from the buildings themselves—glass, concrete, metal. There’s fire, of course, smoke and intense heat, which kills those trapped inside the wreckage. Finally the blast wind, a great vacuum of smoke and debris that sucks the polluted atmosphere right back into the initial explosion.”
On the periphery, racquet bag still hanging from my shoulder, I made calculations. A blast wave from the white car had ripped all those boys outside the movie theater to pieces; others not killed by the first impact succumbed to the echoing stress waves, which explained the visibly untouched bodies littering the ground, looking as though they had just lain down and fallen fast asleep. Others were sprawled in sickening positions.
Standing there, my father before us all, drawing pictures of clouds and buildings and stick-figure human beings, I realized I had seen the real thing. I was remembering it all, like opening a box full of macabre photographs. Suddenly I knew that I had in fact gone back to check, back to the movie theater, my mind not wanting to believe what it already knew. It wasn’t just a nightmare I kept having night after night; it was a real thing I’d done—ridden my bike past the raging black hole where the theater had been, looking for a face, even just one, to know that one had made it. I saw people maimed from the first fragmentation of projectiles, skin peeled right off, eyes gouged out, limbs obliterated. Inside what was left of the building, I heard the screams of those in the middle of dying from the bomb’s last bites—secondary fragmentation of the structure littering their bodies with gruesome oddities, like a light switch cover in the neck or a door handle through the abdomen. Some fell victim to the fire that left their eyes bloodshot as it sucked out all the oxygen—their very last breaths. The flames still raged as I drifted through the
block of horrors.
When I got to the court the next day, I looked all around me and worked through the raw mechanics—walls of glass, secondary fragmentation. From the lobby, I heard the next group assembling for sessions in the courts. Giggling down the hall, high-fiving me as they passed along the corridor of clean windows, one after the other they dovetailed into their chambers. I felt every muscle in my body suddenly go lax. My protective officer was still hard at work making the surface shine and watching out for Talibs, but I was on my knees. I might as well be a ticking bomb wrapped in flesh and bone. No one was safe around me. I had to leave, and never come back.
*
I counted the days I’d been in my room. Thirty-nine—as if the number meant anything at all. The days all seemed to slip away— seconds, minutes, and hours all falling over a cliff. Sometimes I took a break and went outside, sat on the stoop. The men were still out there watching, taking shifts. We never acknowledged one another. There were fewer of them now that I was locked away at home.
It was the same routine every morning. Make breakfast for the others—small jug of watered-down yogurt, slices of fruit, nuts; laid out in bowls like the offerings Hindus leave at their shrines. Not much, just whatever I could find and turn into more than it was. Lots of bread. I stayed in the background, busying myself with dishes, with the boys—their hair, their manners, a stubborn stain on a white shirt. I watched them eat and washed the dishes afterward. Then I cleaned the whole house. I mopped the floors, remembering all the while my childhood days of carrying buckets of water down from the clear stream, the gateway of dead acacias opening to verdant fields that I might never see again except from the oval window of an airplane—if I was lucky. Then to my room and my new routine, mattress heaved onto its side against the wall. My racquet, my ball, making myself find angles that would send me all over a confined room not quite the size of a real court. The men outside could hear me. The first day, they’d come racing through the front door, breaking it right off the hinges, flying up the stairs with all their weapons drawn, four pistols out. Then they saw what I was doing, nodded, and left. After that, they just stood out there listening to my pounding through the hours and into the night. Sometimes I wondered if they went home and told their wives and children: “You should see this girl—crazy. She hits the ball in her room ten hours a day. It’s true. We actually counted. Nothing else to do.”
One hundred days—a milestone. Still in my room, in the timeless void. I’d started falling, regularly. One injury to the knees or a hamstring overlapped another, and then another. I didn’t have medical care or a coach or trainer anymore. No one—just the wall in my room to keep me going. As an act of defiance and survival, I still played in tournaments. Taimur found out the schedules for me, memorized the information, and we got in the car to go to the bus station or the airport, depending on the venue. I’d arrange my travel itinerary at the last minute, never buying tickets in advance of my trip, often showing up to register unannounced. Every time I was in the newspaper, a new threat followed. Once, my father was stopped in the street. Two men shoved him around, hacked off his beard—he always gave me the usual tongue-in-cheek explanation: “A minor scuffle.”
Over the weeks, I found myself weakening, a steady ebbing away like a slow leak. The bruises on my knees from so many falls against the concrete floor in my room built up into mounds of immovable flesh like hard shells. Silent witnesses to the deterioration, my family never tried to stop me. Following my steps, Babrak watched silently inside my slow shadow as I crawled up the stairs before bed. My father just took my hands in his rubbed them with ointment, tapped the cracks, and said a small prayer.
If I went back to the academy, the Taliban would bomb it— that was a certainty. Staying in my room meant saving lives. They were beating me the way they beat everyone. First they terrorized me, then they just burrowed in—into my city, into my sanctuary, into my psyche. They wore me down. Those weren’t boys at the end of an alley; they were soldiers of an angry god. For the first time, I couldn’t find a way to win.
I started to lose tournaments—not all at once, just here and there—against players who’d once been easy marks. And I knew my future was slipping away. Despite the hours of grinding training in my room, my mind and body were on a downward slide, along with everything else. Strange things were happening to me. My bones seemed to stiffen and my mind started to close in. I heard things over the dull pounding—voices muttering. Sometimes I fell to the ground and just went to sleep, waking up hours later in a pool of sweat.
One hundred and twenty-seven days—when my father found me, both my knees were bleeding. He called down to my brother, who came running. Then I heard them drag the mattress down from the wall. He opened the window and brought cool rags to my limbs, washing me down the way the women in the villages washed down the sick and the dead. I couldn’t move. He and Taimur picked me up at each end and put me on the bed. I lay there staring out as though from a pit in the ground. They were gazing down at me and talking quietly to each other. I reached up, and then realized that my hands and arms were just dead weights. A tear fell. My eyes burned. I didn’t have to try to cry; I just did. It was a relentless pouring out of my soul, an involuntary weeping that had no end. When I wailed, they later told me, it went on for hours, all breath and no voice, like piano keys playing without strings.
Not knowing how to stop me, Taimur brought some of my medals up. Babrak followed suit, carrying a trophy in each of his hands. Then came my mother and Ayesha, who was home on a break from her university studies. One after the other, they quietly brought trophies to my room as I lay there, feet swollen and wrapped in cold towels. They lined them up all around my bed, which was lying at the center of the floor like a raft out at sea. And last came Sangeen, a small ornament in his hand. He sat down next to me and held out the glued-up trophy he’d broken all those years before, when I was just getting started. First time I’d ever won. I reached out then, let my fingers touch it, and fell asleep.
*
I woke to a laptop computer glowing in my room. It was Ayesha’s, and in a dream I’d seen her white veil shifting over my floor. She kneeled down to leave it there, touched my face, and went out. Blank page; cursor flashing. I could hear voices murmuring like ghosts all through the house. I looked over at the racquet in the corner, waiting for me. The wrapping on the handle was tearing away, just like the fabric of my mind. Lately, I had difficulty just arranging my thoughts—get up, cook, clean, sleep. All over the floor, balls lay scattered, some in better shape than others. I’d glued several back together. The new ones I kept in a bag hanging from the door handle.
Then that door handle turned slowly and my father was there with me. Shortened beard; he’d taken care in repairing the hack job. Clean feet crossed the floor. I heard a soft voice behind him and knew my sister was waiting in the corridor. In a moment, he was on his knees like another figment, and his invisible perfume of rich soaps and oils fell all over me—state of wudu—it was Friday. I turned my face to the window and saw the sun going down. I’d slept all day. I looked at my father; he was still alive. From another part of the house, Taimur called to my mother— him too.
Delicately, my father pulled back the thin blue sheet and checked me over. Unraveled the towels from my feet. Turned my hands over his and touched the palms. Kissed one, then the other.
“This room is ruining you, Maria.”
“I must play, Baba.”
“You will play. I swear it. Just not here. Not this way—not in purdah.”
“Purdah.” I breathed the word out loud, looked around at the four walls, all of them closing in. I saw what he did—I was no better off than a lost girl out there in the tribal lands.
Ayesha moved behind him. She had a piece of paper in her hands and held it out to me.
“I’ve made a list of over fifty colleges around the world with squash programs, Maria. I’ll help you write an email. You can try each one. You are a national champion—someo
ne will help you.”
Past the row of medals surrounding me, I saw that screen again, glowing white like an empty ocean. My father stood up. “You will play far away from here—in peace.” Then he left the room and nodded to my sister. Ayesha was on the floor, clacking away as though I wasn’t lying there wasted on the mattress in a squalid room in Peshawar, a bull’s-eye over my tired heart.
“I’ll help you get started and then, in a few days, when you’re better, you can keep sending the letter until someone answers.”
“Okay.” It was all I could manage to say.
“I wonder how it should start.”
Slowly, I rolled onto my side, bone and muscle screaming, saw the bruises on my wall, heard men shouting outside. Dogs barked. The sun slipped below the tree line, and I hadn’t even asked yet if there had been a bomb that day. I didn’t have to. There always was.
I took a deep breath—I didn’t know a thing about letters, had never written one in my life.
Dear Madam/Sir, I am Maria Toorpakai . . .
19. Breakbone Fever
Dear Madam/Sir,
I am Maria Toorpakai Wazir. I belong to the South Waziristan Agency of Pakistan’s Tribal areas on the Pak–Afghan border. South Waziristan, one of Pakistan’s most turbulent Tribal Agencies and the home of the Taliban, is also my home. In this war-ravaged and mountainous area my people reside but without any ray of hope.
Here, young girls are passing their lives in such miserable conditions. They have no facilities in education, health; and no recreational activities. They are restricted to four walls despite a desire to come out of the Stone Age and get assimilated with the rest of the world. Things have only worsened since the Taliban took over. They have barred girls’ education and blown up girls’ schools, barber shops and music centers. You should be well aware of the suicide bomb blasts emanating from these areas. My father, despite being severely opposed by the tribe and threatened by the Taliban, seeing my aptitude, not only permitted but encouraged me to play squash.
A Different Kind of Daughter Page 29
