My Name Is Parvana (7 page)

ELEVEN

“
Dear Shauzia: It is getting harder and harder to remember what you look like …”

Parvana stood and listened to the interpreter read the words she had written to her friend so long ago. She had written the letters in Dari. They sounded strange as they came out of the corporal’s mouth in English for the major’s benefit.

“… My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be.”

“Whoever wrote that sounds very sad,” the major said. “What do you think, Corporal? Think this Shauzia is an actual person?”

“The notebook could just be a diary, sir,” the woman replied. “Many girls give their diaries names. Anne Frank called hers Kitty.”

“I read my older sister’s diary when we were kids,” the major said. “Dull reading. All about how she hated her hair and hated her legs and hated her nose and was sure no one would ever like her. I never teased her about it, though. I didn’t want her to know that I knew she felt so bad about herself. It was more information about her than I wanted to know.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Read on, Corporal.”

The interpreter read from letter to letter. Parvana was too fed up even to be angry at this invasion of her privacy.

“Dear Shauzia: We are back on the road. It almost feels like we never left. Maybe Green Valley was just a dream. I should stop dreaming. All my dreams turn to garbage …”

“‘Dreams turn to garbage,’” the major quoted. “People become disillusioned, they can easily turn to violence. We’ve seen that before, haven’t we, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir.”

She turned a page and kept reading.

“Dear Shauzia: Someone in this camp has a radio and I heard that the Taliban are gone and there is a new government in Kabul. The news is causing a lot of arguments. Some say things will get better. Others say things will get worse. Some say the foreign troops will kill all the Afghans and move into their homes. When one man heard that, he waved his arms in front of his tent made from trash bags and said, ‘They want my house? They can have it.’ Rumors are spreading faster than dysentery. No one knows what is happening. But I know. I know that whatever those important people are doing in Kabul, they are not thinking about girls like me, or about any of us who are lost and living in the mud.”

More pages turned.

“Dear Shauzia: I hate the foreign military. In the newspaper today there was a story about a foreign missile hitting a village and killing a bunch of children. And yesterday, a soldier was in Mother’s office. Of course, I listened at the door. He wanted Mother to give him information on all our staff. Mother told him that her job was running a school, not spying for the army. She said she personally knew all of her staff and that nothing would make them less safe than their neighbors seeing the military come to their homes. She said the army should spend more time going after the people who are blowing up schools and killing teachers and less time bothering innocent people. Then she kicked him out so fast I nearly got hit by the office door. Mother was so angry at him
that she took it out on me with a long list of extra chores — another reason for me to hate the foreigners!”

“Sounds to me like there’s quite a bit of anger there, Corporal. Enough to make her a terrorist? I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.”

Parvana had to stand and listen to her life being spouted back at her, and she had to pretend that she didn’t understand a word.

TWELVE

“
How do I know it works?”

Parvana stood beside her mother and Asif in the small tailor shop. The tailor pulled the chair away from the table and made a gesture, inviting Mother to sit down and try the sewing machine out herself.

Parvana laughed. Her mother had been a professional journalist before the Taliban came, and now she was the headmistress of a school. She could do many things, but she could not operate a sewing machine.

Mother frowned and nodded at Asif. He had also never used a sewing machine, but he could figure out how it worked within a minute of sitting down in front of it.

“No electricity required,” the tailor said. “It operates by pedal. Just move your foot.”

Asif shifted in his seat so that his foot was on the middle of the pedal. Parvana watched him stitch a seam. It looked pretty straight to her.

“There is a gear that seems to be sticking,” Asif said.

“A drop of oil, it will work like new.”

“We’ll see,” Asif replied. “Where are the others?”

The tailor took Asif to the back to show him the other machines. The school was going to set up a sewing class.

“He’ll be a while,” Mother said. “Let’s look at fabric.”

They headed off through the market. The fabric alley was draped with colors and textures from the cloth that hung down like branches. Mother picked a stall with a wide choice of fabric and started a long discussion with the owner. Every now and then Parvana would offer a suggestion or point to something she liked, but Mother ignored her. She had plenty of her own ideas.

The school’s first year was over, and the new year was about to begin. Nooria had gone to New York, and she had been very nice to Parvana for nearly all of her last three weeks in Afghanistan.

After she left, Mother cried for four days. Then she got very busy and insisted everyone else be busy, too. When Parvana, Maryam and Asif were not cleaning, painting and getting the school ready to start up again, they were working in the vegetable garden. They also studied every night.

Now that she had mastered the art of multiplying fractions, Parvana did not mind the lessons. She worked hard and steadily, passing through the sixth- and seventh-class workbooks and starting on the eighth.

“If you keep this up, you’ll be in high school soon,” Mother told her. “You’re quickly catching up to your age level.”

Parvana had a new, secret plan to get a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris. She would find Shauzia and become richer and more successful than Nooria.

Nooria would say, “You must come and visit me in New York City. I can see the Statue of Liberty from my apartment window.”

And Parvana would reply, “The Statue of Liberty is very nice. In Paris, we have the Eiffel Tower. And, by the way, I own it! I bought it! That’s right. I designed a house that fits right inside and now I live there.”

Parvana found that to be such an exciting idea that she put her hand in her pocket and took out the pen and paper she always carried with her now. She had so many ideas that she couldn’t trust them to stay in her head. She wrote them down right away so they couldn’t escape.

She drew a sketch of the Eiffel Tower, then put a house right in the middle of it. It could have different levels, she thought, like a treehouse, and big windows on all sides so she could see who was out on the grounds. And she would hang big banners on each side saying
Parvana’s House
and
Welcome Shauzia
.

She was adding a giant swing when Mother bumped into her, reaching for a bolt of green cotton.

Parvana dropped her pen.

“You could try to be helpful instead of just standing there,” her mother said. It was an automatic Mother comment that meant nothing. Her mother did not want her help buying fabric. Her mother just wanted her to carry the fabric after she bought it.

Parvana tried to spot her pen.

She had heard it drop, but it wasn’t at her feet.

She stared at the ground until she spotted it right under the fabric merchant’s feet.

I can’t ask him for it, she thought. He looks exasperated enough already.

Mother was not an easy customer.

She waited until Mother asked to see something on the top shelf. He moved his foot, freeing the pen, but then he accidentally kicked it away as he reached for the ladder. The pen rolled down the alley.

Parvana went after it.

As soon as it stopped, it was kicked away by another foot. It rolled and rolled through the market.

Parvana was sure she looked ridiculous — a full-grown girl chasing after a pen.

Finally, the pen came to a stop against the wall of a bedding and blanket shop. Parvana bent down and scooped it up.

As she stood up, her heart stopped.

There was a notice pasted on the wall. Its words were big, clear and angry.

To the parents who send their daughters to the Leila School:

This school is run by evil people. If you let your daughters go, then you are evil, too.

Evil must be destroyed. You have been warned.

Parvana stared and stared. She couldn’t move.

“There you are!”

Mother came up behind her, arms full of parcels.

“Help me with these. Really, you are more trouble than Hassan and Maryam put together. If I can’t trust you not to wander — ”

Then Mother spotted the notice. And she stopped talking.

Parvana crammed the pen into her pocket and attacked the notice. It was stuck to the wall with glue and would not rip off, no matter how much she scraped at it with her fingernails.

“Parvana, come …” Mother tried to pull her away.

Parvana took out her pen and tried to stab the notice out of existence, and when that didn’t work, she started to scribble all over it.

“Parvana. Come!”

Mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled, hard.

Only then did Parvana realize she had drawn a crowd. A half-circle of men surrounded Parvana and her mother.

Parvana had learned from her last mistake. This time she did not run. Instead, she looked each man in the face.

“The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says in the Holy Qur’an that all are called to be educated, women and men alike. If you worry about what goes on in our school, come and see it for yourself. You know where we are. Knock at the gate. Ask for me. My name is Parvana. I will give you a tour.”

Her fingers found a loose edge on the notice. She grabbed hold of it and pulled. It ripped clean through. Now nobody could read the awful message.

“Here, Mother, let me help you carry those,” Parvana said, taking some of the parcels of fabric. Then she put her hand through her mother’s arm and they started walking. She could feel her mother trembling and remembered that while she was used to being outside in the marketplace, her mother was not.

The men let them move through.

Walking away, Parvana was filled with a sense of triumph. Those men would talk about her now. They would talk about what she had said, and then they would add, “That brave girl is right! Education is the duty of everyone!”

Father used to call me his little Malali, Parvana thought.

Malali was a girl in Afghan history, famous for leading troops into battle against the British. And now Parvana was doing the same, rallying people not to war, but to education.

She straightened her back and raised her head higher.

That’s when she saw the other notices.

They were everywhere — on walls, pasted on signs, nailed onto poles. Everywhere Parvana looked, she saw the warning notices. She was walking through a forest of hatred.

I’ll have to burn down the market to get rid of them all, she thought.

Her confidence and celebration drained right out of her. Asif was ready and waiting at the tailor’s with a taxi to take them and the sewing machines back to the school.

He took one look at her face and got them out of there quickly.

For once, Parvana felt grateful when the high walls of the school compound wrapped around them, keeping out the rest of the world.

THIRTEEN

P
arvana was back in the little office, standing again, the same guard staring at her.

She was having a hard day. She was so tired! She was even too tired to summon any thoughts to distract herself.

They kept changing her routine. She never knew what was going on or what was going to happen next. That made it impossible for her to relax.

They kept thinking up new things to do to her. They would not let her sleep.

The latest thing was music. They piped music into her cell. Loud music. The same song over and over and over. Some young man singing about puppy love. As soon as he finished singing his song, he started again from the beginning.

Parvana had no quiet, no place in her brain to gather her thoughts. Only puppy love, puppy love, puppy love, hour after hour.

I might just go crazy, Parvana thought. No matter how hard I try not to. I’ll be like the woman on the hill I passed by all those years ago. All she did was sit and wail, far away from everybody.

Parvana wondered if the woman was still there. Maybe Parvana could sit and wail on the next hill over. They could sort of keep each other company.

The questioning man and interpreting woman entered the office then.

“You can go,” the man said to the soldier, who saluted and disappeared.

They both had paper cups of coffee and they each carried a book. The man also carried an open box of donuts that he placed on the desk. They took their seats, opened their books and began to read.

The sight of books caused such excitement to stir in Parvana that she could barely contain herself. It was all she could do not to cross the office, take their books away, plop herself down on the floor and start reading herself.

To calm herself, she concentrated on the donuts.

There were six in the box. Two were covered in white powdered sugar. Two were chocolate, with chocolate icing. Two had pink icing with colored sprinkles.

Parvana tried to guess who would eat which donut first, and was delighted when she guessed right. The woman took a chocolate donut, the man took one with the powdered sugar. It squirted a blob of red jelly onto his boot. He didn’t notice.

She did some mental arithmetic — fractions and percentages, based on the donuts left in the box — while the soldiers took the lids off their coffees, opened their books and settled in to read.

Only then did Parvana take a look at what they were reading.

The man was reading
The Constant Gardener
by John le Carré.

Parvana had never heard of it, but she liked the title. She would like to be a constant gardener. All day long, she would dig and plant and water and harvest.

It seemed an odd choice of book for a man who spent all his time barking questions at a teenaged girl.

Maybe he would rather be a gardener, too.

Then she looked at what the woman was reading. It was
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë.

Parvana hadn’t read that book, either, and the title gave no clues as to what it was about.

Her captors sat and read, drank their coffee and ignored Parvana.

Parvana didn’t care. She was so grateful for the silence! She wanted to put all the silence in a big sack and carry it with her. And she was grateful for the idea of becoming a constant gardener. She got lost in thoughts of what sort of a garden she would have if she didn’t have to do anything else. Planning a garden was like planning a village. It had to be useable but should also look and feel good. Parvana’s mind became full of pathways and benches, tomato plants and big heads of cauliflower.

When the paper cups were drained of coffee and only crumbs and stray sprinkles remained in the box, the man and woman put down their books and started in again on Parvana.

“Are you tired of my jail yet?” the man asked, while the woman translated. “Perhaps this is paradise for you. You have a bed to sleep in. An indoor latrine. Food every day. Is that why you’re not talking, so you can keep living in my jail?”

He paused, as if he really expected her to answer. Then he continued.

“If that’s what you’re thinking, you’d better think again. We are in the Peace Business, not in the business of giving nice homes to little girls who are too stubborn to talk to us. We’re not going to put up with this much longer. Right now you have a nice private cell all to yourself. You get the same food we get, which is pretty darn good, and you have your own latrine! I don’t have my own latrine. I have to share with the other officers, and some of those guys are slobs.

“You are also currently enjoying, piped right into your cell, the musical stylings of one Donny Osmond. But don’t think you’re going to stay in this lap of luxury forever. When our generosity runs out, your time here is done.

“There are much worse places than this, and much worse people than us. We don’t want to turn you over to them, but we may not have any choice. If we are not one hundred percent certain that you are not a threat, we will make sure that you are locked up forever. You have to prove to us that we can trust you. And you can start by talking. Or screaming. Or crying. Give us some sign that we are getting through to you.”

The man talked on and on, with the woman translating. To Parvana’s ears, it all became just a different version of the dog song.

Her head hurt.

“We are going over the ruins of that school with a fine-toothed comb. We are compiling evidence against you, charges you will have to answer for. Maybe you’re innocent. Maybe you were just there by accident, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We don’t think so. After all, we are not in the habit of locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong. But maybe in your case we made a mistake.

“Right now, it looks like you are involved in some very bad activities, activities that are disgraceful for a young girl. I don’t want to believe it! I know you think I’m mean and heartless, but I truly want you to be innocent. But I need proof. I’m not the boss here. I have people to answer to. And those people are saying things to me, things that I’d be worried about if I were you.”

He stopped talking for a bit, as if to let his words sink in.

“You need to appreciate the sort of pressure I am under. This can’t go on indefinitely. It has to come to an end, soon, one way or another.”

He took another pause.

“I have money at my disposal,” he said unexpectedly. “The taxpayers of my country have sent money over here for two things: punish evil-doers and reward good-doers. Which one are you? Talk to me. One word. Show us you are a good-doer and I will release you with enough money in your pocket to have a very nice life. More money than you have ever seen. You could go to school, buy yourself nice clothes, start a business. Whatever you want to do. Under the right circumstances, I can be a very generous — ”

An explosion cut into his words.

Somewhere on the base, not far from the office, something was blowing up.

The room shook and filled with a roar of dynamite crashing through concrete. The major and the corporal were thrown from their chairs and Parvana was knocked to the floor. The sound was deafening. Sirens followed. Running boots filled the hallway.

Parvana sat up, curling her arms around her knees and keeping her head low, but not so low that she couldn’t see what was happening.

The man and woman were back on their feet. They stood in the doorway a moment, looking out. There was yelling and screaming, orders being shouted and names being called out.

And then the miracle happened.

Parvana was left alone.

Maybe they’ve forgotten about me, she thought.

She didn’t wait around to give them a chance to remember.

In a flash, she was on her feet and at the office door. She looked out into the hall. Everyone was running in every direction. Parvana could smell smoke and gasoline.

Someone or something had attacked the base.

It had nothing to do with Parvana. She grabbed the closest book —
Jane Eyre
— tucked it into her clothes and slipped into the hallway. If she could just get outside, maybe she could keep going.

Just inside the door to the outside world was a desk that usually had a guard sitting at it. The guard wasn’t there. He was running around dealing with the emergency. But he had left behind his pen.

Parvana snatched it up and made it disappear into her pants pocket. Then she headed outside.

She stepped out into chaos.

The attack had been a bad one. Parvana didn’t know if it was a rocket or a suicide bomber or even one of the army’s own bombs that had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

It didn’t matter. Fires were burning. People were screaming. Soldiers shouted orders and ran around with stretchers to fetch the wounded.

No one noticed Parvana.

The explosion had blown a hole in the fence. She walked closer. She could see the fields ahead, opening to her like welcoming arms.

She knew how to live in her country. If she could get beyond the wire, she could keep going. She could run up into the hills and disappear forever.

She broke into a run. One more person running would not be noticed. She was dressed in army-green. No one gave her a second glance.

She ran for all she was worth, shedding her exhaustion and leaving it behind in the dust. Her bare feet slapped hard against the gravel and sand. She could sleep in the hills. She could collapse on the good, rocky, nothing-will-grow-here soil and sleep under the Afghan moon and stars.

All she needed to do was to keep running …

“Help me!”

The voice was weak and full of pain. Parvana heard it through the noise, even though she told herself she didn’t.

In spite of telling herself sternly not to look for the source of it, she looked.

A young soldier, a woman, was pinned under some rubble and razor wire. Blood gushed from an artery in her neck. The soldier’s arms were pinned down by blocks of concrete, and she could not help herself.

Parvana looked around.

One of the other soldiers would notice this woman and help her. They would get to her in time. She would be sent to a fancy hospital and sent home, all fixed and healthy.

Surely someone else would get to her before it was too late.

Parvana ran a few steps more. The gap in the fence was within reach. Thirty seconds of hard running and she would be through.

Thirty seconds. A lot of blood could empty out of a human body in thirty seconds.

She had no choice.

She turned around, taking off her long-sleeved shirt while she ran. She knelt by the terrified soldier and pressed the rolled-up shirt against the woman’s neck.

“I need help!” Parvana yelled in English. She waved her free arm. “Medic!”

It seemed like an eternity of pressing on the wound and waving and yelling and, in between, telling the woman not to worry, that she would be all right.

When the medic arrived, he gave directions to Parvana and she followed each one.

They had drilled for this in first-aid class. She knew what to do.

The stretcher-bearers finally got there. Parvana backed away. She started to run again.

She made it to the fence. She ran through the gap and planned to keep on running, right across the plain and right up into the hills.

“Hands in the air!”

An armored car zoomed to a stop right in front of her. Machine guns pointed at her.

“Down on your knees, or I will shoot you!”

The soldiers, in full battle gear, with helmets instead of faces, blocked Parvana’s view of the mountains.

For a long moment, she thought she would just keep on running.

After all, at this point, she had nothing left to lose.

But she didn’t. She raised her arms, dropped to her knees and hoped they would at least let her keep the pen.