My Name Is Parvana (8 page)

FOURTEEN

T
he warning posters worked. When the new school year began, student enrollment was down.

“But it is still a great day,” Mother said on the first day of term. “We are still here. That’s what matters. That’s a victory.”

They had a first-day assembly. Mother gave a terrific speech, telling everyone to work hard and do their best for Afghanistan. It was a short assembly. Mother believed in setting the tone the first day by getting everyone right to work.

Parvana felt surprisingly happy as she headed to the dining hall with her books. She had studied hard during the break. She had trained her body to be able to sit for a long time and she had trained her mind to focus. The return of the students meant more work in a lot of ways, but it also meant more hands to do the work.

“Parvana, come here a moment.”

Mother waved her over after the assembly.

“I need you to take over a class,” she said. “The teacher I hired to replace Nooria hasn’t shown up. I’m trying to track her down, but I need you to watch the girls in the meantime.”

“What do I do?”

“Teach them something!”

Mother hurried away. Parvana headed to what had been Nooria’s classroom. Twenty girls waited for her there.

“Where’s our teacher?” one of them asked.

“The headmistress is trying to find out. I’m just filling in.”

Two girls stood up and headed for the door.

“Who are you and where are you going?” Parvana asked them.

“I’m Farah and this is my sister. We’re supposed to go home if there isn’t a real teacher.”

“Why would anyone tell you that?”

“Our parents told us that the teachers have been warned to stay away. They said if we had no teacher we should come home, or people will say we are here doing bad things.”

“Go back to your desks,” Parvana ordered.

“But …”

“I said go back to your desks.” Parvana squared her shoulders. “Your teacher is here.”

When the sisters were in their seats, Parvana said sharply, “Class stand.”

The girls all stood, but they rose clumsily, slowly and shyly. Parvana wasn’t satisfied.

“Try again,” Parvana said. “This time, everyone stand on the left side of your desk.”

Not all the girls knew their left side from their right, so they had to get that sorted out.

They tried again.

“Class stand.”

Parvana took them through it a few times.

“Better,” she told them. “I want you to do that whenever I or another teacher enters your classroom. It is a sign of respect.”

It was also one of the things she remembered from when she had attended school many years before.

“Now let’s see how much arithmetic you know.”

Parvana worked them hard. The morning session passed quickly in a haze of quizzes, games and reading out loud. By lunch time she was drained but excited.

“The morning went really well,” she told her mother. “They were answering questions. They were learning! And I think they had fun.”

“Did you take attendance?” Mother asked.

Parvana hadn’t even thought of that. “I’ll do it after lunch.”

“Our funders need to know how many students we have each day. If our numbers fall much more, we won’t get as much money from the aid agencies. They’ll think we aren’t doing our job. So that attendance record is important. Ask one of the other teachers to help you. They’ll get you set up.”

“You mean I’ll be keeping the class?”

“Until I get a real teacher to replace you. I’ll teach your students myself when I can, but I can’t be in the classroom every day. I know this will be a lot of work for you. You’ll have to do your own school work in the evenings. I hope it won’t be for long. You’ve made such progress.”

“One of my students told me the villagers are saying that the teachers have been threatened.” Parvana liked saying “my students.”

Mother rubbed her eyes. She looked very tired and it was only the middle of the day.

“Go and get your lunch, Parvana, then get back to your class. I’ll try to spend some time with you tonight. We’ll make up some lesson plans.”

Parvana went to the dining hall. She got her tray of food and headed toward a table of students, then changed her mind. She took her tray to the teachers’ table.

Before she went back to her class she slipped into her family’s sleeping quarters. She took off the white chador that all the students wore and put on a dark blue one that Nooria had left behind.

She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked fine.

Even if Mother hired another teacher, she would never go back to being an ordinary student.

“I was born to be in charge,” she said to her reflection.

Then she hurried off to her classroom.

After all, lunch was over. Her students were waiting.

FIFTEEN

A
couple of months into the term, Parvana pushed back the bolt on the school’s metal gate very early one morning. She wanted to see if the newspaper had arrived. She liked to start each day talking with her class about what was going on in the world.

Asif usually got to the newspaper first, and then he was insufferable. By the time Parvana arrived in the dining hall for her breakfast nan and tea, he already had all the news.

He enjoyed lording it over her, too.

“What do you think will happen at the president’s conference today?” he’d ask her, knowing she didn’t know what the conference was all about. Or, “Can you believe what happened in Italy?”

Then Parvana would have to ask, “What conference?” or “What happened in Italy?”

Today, though,
she
would get the news first, and she would be the one to announce it all at breakfast.

The newspaper was there, tossed into the weeds by the side of the driveway. Parvana picked it up and started to unroll it.

As she headed back into the school yard, she spotted something else on the ground.

At first it looked like a big sack tied up with a rope.

Then she saw the small feet sticking out of it.

“Mr. Fahir!” she called out.

She dropped the newspaper and ran to the bundle, untying the rope and flinging away the rags that covered it.

The child moved. It was alive.

Parvana gently brushed the hair away from the child’s face.

A little girl stared back at her.

“Salaam alaikum,” Parvana said. “Who are you?”

The child whimpered.

Parvana’s calls had awakened her mother.

“What’s going on?”

“Somebody dropped off their daughter,” Mr. Fahir said. “It happened in the night. I didn’t see or hear anything.”

“They tied her up and left her!” said Parvana.

Mr. Fahir scooped up the girl in his arms. They all went into the dining hall where the woodstove was newly lit and giving off some warmth. Away from the cool morning air, they could smell how filthy the girl was.

“She weighs nothing,” said Mr. Fahir. He slowly put her down on a chair.

“What’s your name?” Mother asked her. “Who left you out there? Where are you from?”

The little girl didn’t answer.

“Her name is Ava,” Parvana said. “Look.”

A note was pinned to the child’s rags. It was written with crudely made letters.

Name Ava

Father dead Mother dead

Good girl

“She’s an orphan,” Parvana said.

“There’s something wrong with her,” Mother said.

There was something different about Ava. Her eyes didn’t quite focus and her mouth didn’t quite close.

“How old are you, Ava?” Mother asked.

Ava didn’t reply. She was too busy looking at Parvana.

“Do you know how old you are?” Parvana knelt down close to the girl and smiled when she asked.

Ava made grunting sounds and touched Parvana’s face with her fingers.

“I’ll have to make some calls,” Mother said. “This is a school, not a hospital. We’re not equipped to take care of her. I do not need this today.” She headed to her office.

“I’ll heat some water,” Mr. Fahir said. He put his hand on Ava’s head. “She could probably use a bath.” He smiled at Parvana and got to work.

Parvana got Ava a drink of water and a small piece of bread. She didn’t know when Ava had last eaten, but she knew that eating a lot when you haven’t eaten anything for a long time was not good for you. Ava chewed on the bread.

When the water was hot, Parvana took the kettle and Ava into the family’s quarters to get her cleaned up.

“Get her away from me,” Maryam said, as she tried out hairstyles in front of a small mirror. “She smells.”

“So do you sometimes. Get me your old shalwar kameez.”

“No,” Maryam said. “It’s mine. I don’t want it on that ugly girl.”

Parvana took Maryam by the shoulders. “Her name is Ava, and you speak to her nicely. As hard as your life has been, hers has been ten times harder. Get me your old shalwar kameez or I’ll give Ava your new one.”

“I hate you!” Maryam said, flinging the shalwar kameez at her. “I wish Nooria was here and you were in New York!” She stomped out of the room.

“She’s a very nice girl when she’s asleep,” Parvana said to Ava with a smile. “Let’s get you clean.”

The rags fell apart as Parvana removed them. They were rotten, filthy and beyond saving.

As the dirt on the child’s skin was washed away, Parvana made a terrible discovery.

There were scars on the little girl’s body — round burn marks from cigarettes being put out on her skin, scars in the shape of barbed wire around her wrists and ankles.

“Somebody hurt you,” Parvana whispered.

The scars were old, not fresh, but Parvana was still extra gentle as she rubbed a soapy washcloth over Ava’s skin.

She slowly poured water over the girl’s head and worked the soap into a lather. Ava whimpered, but she let herself be washed.

When Ava was clean and dry and dressed in clean clothes, Parvana tried to comb her hair. It was hopelessly matted.

“I’m going to have to cut your hair,” she said, “but it will look pretty. I promise.”

She fetched some scissors and gave her as long a cut as she could. She managed to turn the tangled mess into a style that curled naturally around Ava’s ears and neck.

“We’ll go to the market and get you a hair ribbon,” she said. Then she took the child in to see Mother.

“She’s all clean,” Parvana said.

Mother put down her cell phone. “She looks like a different girl. Now we can see your beautiful face,” she said to Ava.

“I told her we’d get her a hair ribbon.”

“A hair ribbon is easy. A home is harder. I haven’t found anyone who will take her.”

“I think we should keep her.”

“She’s not a stray puppy, Parvana. She’s a human being, one we are not able to look after.”

Parvana brought Ava around the desk and stood her in front of her mother.

“Someone hurt her,” Parvana said. “Look.”

Mother looked, touched the scars and slipped her arm around Ava’s shoulders.

“Well, we’re not going to shove her back out the gate. We’ll keep her here, but only until we find someplace better.”

“There is no place better,” Parvana said.

She took Ava’s hand and they went back to the dining hall for hot tea and a real breakfast.

Asif was reading the newspaper first.

Parvana didn’t care.

Her news was bigger than his.

SIXTEEN

E
xcept for freedom, Parvana had, for the moment, everything she needed.

She was back in her old cell. For warmth, she had a blanket. She draped it over her shoulders and head so that it hung down over her lap. It covered her face, it covered the bloodstained T-shirt she still wore two days after the explosion, and it covered the copy of
Jane Eyre
, open on her crossed legs.

No new meals had come since the attack, but she had been careful to save her leftovers from the meals that came before. On the little shelf above her table she had a package of nuts, a peanut butter and jam sandwich, cheese and crackers and something called SpaghettiOs — all in their own foil packets.

Tucked away under her mattress were several pieces of paper, taken out of the meal bags, and one lovely working pen. She hadn’t done anything but test it out to make sure it still had ink, but that was enough. She knew it was there.

She was tucked up on the cot, a chocolate brownie in her hand and Charlotte Brontë’s book on her lap. She nibbled on the brownie, lost herself in Jane, Mr. Rochester and the mad woman in the attic of Thornfield Hall.

At first she thought she would just read a chapter to make it last, but she decided not to bother rationing it. At any minute of any day, soldiers could come into her room and take everything away. They could move her to another jail. They could take her out into the desert, shoot her and leave her body for the buzzards.

She decided to devour the book. The more she read, the more she would have in her mind to entertain herself the next time they made her stand in that horrible little office.

The other wonderful thing Parvana had now was silence — blessed, beautiful silence. Donny Osmond had finally stopped singing. He seemed to have been wounded in the blast. Every now and then his song would squeak on again. It would whine and wheeze for a few bars and then sputter out and die.

She forgot about Mr. Osmond and got back to
Jane Eyre
.

Jane had just run away from the still-married Mr. Rochester and was in the strange village begging for bread, when Parvana heard a weird noise.

Into the quiet cell came the sound of someone crying.

The sobbing was muffled, as if the crier was trying to not let anyone know he was crying.

It sounded like it was coming from outside Parvana’s window.

Parvana put down her book, shucked the blanket and balanced herself on the cot and the table. She pressed her face against the shutters.

A man was sitting underneath her window. He was crying.

It’s a good place to cry, Parvana thought.

It was private, or as private as it was possible to get. She didn’t imagine it would be good for a soldier’s image to be found sobbing. Even the women had to act tough.

Parvana listened to the crying for a while.

Was the man homesick? Did he lose a friend in the explosion? Had someone hurt him? Was he lonely?

Parvana thought about calling down to him, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then she thought about the food she still had on her shelf. Maybe the crying soldier would like a package of cheese and crackers.

But soldiers could get that food any time they wanted. That wouldn’t be much of a gift.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Parvana heard the soldier say, between sobs. “I can’t do this. I’d rather be dead!”

Then Parvana knew what to do.

She hopped down from her perch, dug the pen and a piece of paper out from under her mattress.

She would write the crier a note. It might cheer him up. Or at least it would make him feel less alone.

She put the tip of the pen on the paper. But she couldn’t think of what to say.

She started to write,
At least you’re not Jane Eyre
. But what if the crying soldier hadn’t read the book?

She couldn’t write,
It will get better
, because it probably wouldn’t. She couldn’t write,
Don’t worry
, because there were all kinds of good reasons to worry about a lot of things.

It was hard to write a hopeful message because Parvana didn’t have any more hope. To have hope would mean that she could see a future that could be brighter than the present.

For a long moment she kept the pen hovering over the paper.

Then she knew the perfect thing to write.

It was a poem she had learned from the book of American poetry. It was by a woman named Dorothy Parker.

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

She wrote the poem out, tucked the pen back into its hiding place and folded the paper into a little square. She climbed back up on the cot and table and dropped the poem through a gap in the shutters.

She heard the small sound of surprise from the soldier when the paper landed on him. His crying slowed down as he unfolded the paper, and it eased off as he read the words.

Parvana stayed at the shutters and listened to the soldier blow his nose, get up and brush the dirt off his clothes.

“Thank you, whoever you are,” the soldier said. For a second his fingertips touched Parvana’s. Then he was gone.

Parvana got down from her perch and paced around the cell. She felt really good. She had reached out to a stranger and had helped him to feel better. She had seen a problem and, for the moment, had fixed it.

That was one of the things she had loved best about the school. She knew where everything was. When students had questions, she had answers. She could help a student who felt stupid realize she was smart, and she could help a scared student feel safe.

Parvana settled back down on the bed and put the blanket around her shoulders again. She started to pick up
Jane Eyre
, but then she had a memory.

Years before, she had worked in Kabul, sitting on a blanket in the market, reading and writing things for people who could not read or write on their own. She had sat beneath a window. The woman who lived behind the window was locked in by her husband, but she dropped little gifts on Parvana’s blanket, just to say hello. Before Parvana left Kabul, she planted flowers beneath the window to give the window woman something to enjoy.

I’m the window woman now, Parvana thought.

She smiled.

And then she started to shake.

Her chest felt like it was being squeezed by a wide leather strap. She could not get her breath. She climbed up to the window again, pressed her mouth against the shutters and sucked in as much fresh air as she could.

A question kept floating through her mind.

Who will plant flowers for me?

Maybe it was Miss Brontë’s fault, or maybe it was the chocolate in the brownie. Maybe it was the wounded soldier’s blood still on her T-shirt or the sweet, smoky scent of the Afghan air. Something cut through the wire Parvana had wrapped around her heart. Something reached what she had tried so hard to hide.

Parvana was too tired to fight it off.

She sank to the floor and drew her knees up to her face.

And cried.