The Pearl that Broke Its Shell (8 page)

A month later, school was back in session and my nerves were again rattled. Madar-
jan
trimmed my hair and spoke to me cautiously.

“You’ll be in the boys’ classroom this year. Pay attention to your teacher and mind your studies,” she warned me, trying to make this little talk sound routine. “Remember that your cousin Muneer will be in your class as well. No one, the teacher, the students, no one will ask you about… about anything. Just remember that your father has decided to send you to school this year. You are one of the boys and… and… mind what the teacher tells you.”

It would be different, I understood. Khala Shaima’s plan had worked well within the confines of our family compound and even in my trips to the bazaar. School would put this charade to the test though, and I could sense my mother’s trepidation. My sisters were furious. Padar-
jan
had decided they were to stay home even though I could have accompanied them to school.

Muneer and I walked to school together. He wasn’t the brightest of my cousins and I rarely saw him since his mother kept her children away from the rest of us. That probably worked in my favor. He needed to be told only once that I was his cousin Rahim and always had been, and in his mind there never had been a Rahima. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to worry about his giving me away.

“
Salaam, Moallim-sahib,
” I said when we arrived.

The teacher grunted a reply in return, nodding as each student walked in. I wiped my moist palms on my pants.

I felt the teacher’s curious eyes follow the back of my head but it could have been my imagination. I scanned the room and stayed close behind Muneer, noting that none of the boys seemed fazed by me. I kept my head bowed and we made our way to the back of the classroom, where Muneer and I shared a long bench with three other boys. One boy was especially eager to show how much he knew about the teacher.

“
Moallim-sahib
is very strict. Last year he gave four boys bad marks because their fingernails weren’t clean.”

“Oh yeah?” his friend whispered. “Then you better keep your finger out of your nose!”

“Boys! Sit up straight and pay attention,” the teacher said. He was a rotund man, his shiny bald head rimmed with salt-and-pepper hair. His neatly groomed mustache matched his sparse hairs. “You’ll begin by writing your names. Then we’ll see what, if anything, you learned in your last class.”

I quickly realized the male teachers were just as strict as the women. Class wasn’t much different except that there was more whispering and shooting each other looks than I’d ever seen in a girls’ classroom. I wrote my name carefully and watched Muneer struggle from the corner of my eye. His letters were awkwardly connected and an extra dot had changed “Muneer” to “Muteer.” I debated correcting him but the teacher looked in my direction before I could even begin to whisper. He walked around the room and looked at everyone’s names, shaking his head at some and grunting at others. Very few seemed to meet his standards.

He looked over my shoulder and I could hear the air whistle through his nostrils, his belly casting a shadow over my paper. My name got no reaction, which I could take only to mean it had not severely disappointed him. Muneer’s notebook, however, made him groan.

“What is your name?” he demanded.

“M-M-Muneer.” He stole a glance upward at the teacher but quickly looked down again.

“
Muneer,
” he said dramatically. “If you come back to this class tomorrow and make a single mistake in your name, I’ll send you back to repeat last year’s work. Understood?”

“Yes,
Moallim-sahib,
” Muneer whispered. I could feel the heat from his face.

So the boys weren’t learning much more than the girls, I realized.

After class, the boys were more interested in racing outside and kicking a ball around than questioning who I was or where I’d come from. Muneer and I walked home with two boys named Ashraf and Abdullah. They were neighbors who lived a half kilometer from our family’s house. This was the first time I’d met them, though they knew Muneer and my other boy cousins.

“What’s your name again?” Ashraf asked. He was the shorter of the two and had light brown hair and round eyes. He was pretty enough to make me wonder if he was like me, a girl underneath those pants.

“My name is Rahim.”

“Yeah, his name is Rahim. He’s my cousin,” Muneer added. The teacher’s warnings had shaken him up but now that we were outside, he was breathing easier.

“Abdullah, have you ever seen Rahim before?”

Abdullah shook his head. He was dark haired, slim and calmer than his neighbor.

“No. Are you any good at soccer, Rahim?”

I stole a sidelong glance and shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh, he’s really good at soccer,” Muneer said emphatically. His reply caught me off guard. “I bet he could beat you.”

I looked at Muneer, wondering if he was trying to set me up.

“Oh, yeah?” Abdullah grinned. “Well, he doesn’t have to beat me but it would help if he could beat Said Jawad and his friends. They’re probably over in the street playing if you want to join them.”

“Yeah, let’s do it!” Muneer picked up his pace and headed down the side street that led to the makeshift field and away from our house. The field was actually an unused side street, too narrow for a car. The boys were accustomed to meeting there for pickup games.

“Muneer, don’t you think we should—”

“C’mon, Rahim. Just for a little while! It’ll be fun,” Abdullah said, giving my shoulder a light shove.

I suppose I could have been worse. The only thing I knew how to do was to run. Luckily, I did that well enough that the boys didn’t notice that my foot never made contact with the ball or that I never shouted for the ball to be passed to me. I ran up and down the street, my shoulders scraping the clay wall of the alley. I kept expecting my mother or father to appear and drag me back home angrily.

I liked feeling the breeze on my face. I liked feeling my legs stretch, trying to catch the others, trying to race ahead of them. My arms swung by my sides, free.

“Over here! Pass it over here!”

“Don’t let him get by! Catch him!”

I neared the ball. There were six feet kicking at it, trying to knock it back in their direction. I stuck my foot into the melee. I felt the leather against my sole. I kicked at it, sending it flying in Abdullah’s direction. He stopped the ball with his heel and nudged it toward the opposite goal. He was running.

I felt a thrill as I chased after him. I liked being part of the team. I liked the dust kicking up under my feet.

I liked being a boy.

CHAPTER 8

Q
uickly, most of the household work was turned over to Shekiba. Her uncles’ wives found that, once she’d recovered, she was quite capable and could manage even the chores that required the combined strength of two women. She could balance three pails of water, instead of just two. She could lift the wood into the stove. They whispered happily to each other when Bobo Shahgul was not listening, not wanting to appear lazy to the matriarch.

She has the strength of a man, but she does the chores of a woman. Could there be any better help for the house? Now we know what it must feel like to live like Bobo Shahgul!

Shekiba heard their comments but it was in her nature to work. She found that sunset came faster if she busied herself, no matter how laborious the task. Her back ached at the end of the day, but she did not let her face show it. She did not want to give them the satisfaction of exhausting her. Nor did she want to risk a beating for not being able to keep up with her work. In this home, there were many ready sticks to teach her that indolence would not be tolerated.

Khala Zarmina, Kaka Freidun’s wife, was the worst. Her thick hands came down with a surprising strength even though she claimed to be too old and tired to do any of the more cumbersome tasks in the house. Her temper was short and she seemed to be poised to take Bobo Shahgul’s place when Allah finally decided to reclaim the bitter old woman. Bobo Shahgul realized as much and could see through her false flattery but she tolerated it, keeping Zarmina in line with an occasional berating in front of the others.

Khala Samina was by far the mildest. She was wife to Bobo Shahgul’s youngest living son, Kaka Zelmai. It took about a week for Shekiba to realize that Samina scolded or hit her only in the presence of the other daughters-in-law. When she raised her hand, Shekiba braced herself. Unnecessarily, she realized. Samina put no more weight into her blows than she would to swat a fly.

She doesn’t want to look weak,
Shekiba thought.
But now I know she is.

Shekiba kept to herself, did the work assigned to her and tried to avoid eye contact. She did nothing to invite conversation, although she did provide a good topic for discussions in the house. Summer was a few weeks away when Bobo Shahgul interrupted her scrubbing the floor. Kaka Freidun stood beside her, arms crossed.

Shekiba instinctively pulled her head scarf across her face and turned her shoulders to face the wall.

“Shekiba, when you have finished with cleaning this floor, you are to go into the field and help your uncles with the harvest. I’m sure you will appreciate a chance to get fresh air outside and it seems you are experienced with this kind of work.”

“But I still have to prepare the—”

“Then prepare it quickly and get outside. It is about time you helped to grow the food that has fattened your face.”

Kaka Freidun smirked in agreement. This was all his idea. He had watched Ismail’s land reap a harvest that most others would have thought impossible given last season’s pitiful rainfall. It occurred to him that his brother’s daughter-son may have inherited his instincts with the earth. Why not make use of her? After all, there were plenty of women to do the housework. Bobo Shahgul had agreed readily. The clan was in need of a good harvest. There were many mouths to feed and for the first time in years, their debts were growing.

Shekiba nodded, knowing that the new assignment would not mean a relief from her current ones. Her days would be longer. Khala Zarmina was especially angry about the new arrangement but she dared not contest Bobo Shahgul.

“There is more to be done here in the house! Bobo Shahgul has forgotten what it means to take care of the cooking and cleaning. I’ve left a pile of clothes in need of hemming and darning for Shekiba
-e-shola
but I suppose that will all have to wait if she is going to be out in the field during the day. She had better wake up earlier if she’s going to get lunch ready too.”

The family had quickly embraced her nickname. In Afghanistan, disabilities defined people. There were many others in the village who had such names. Mariam
-e-lang,
who had walked with a limp since childhood. Saboor
-e-yek dista
was born with one hand.
And if you don’t listen to your father, your hand will fall off just like his,
mothers used to warn their sons. Jowshan
-e-siyaa,
or the black, for his dark complexion. Bashir
-e-koor,
the blind, had lost most of his sight in his thirties and despised the children who laughed at his stumbling gait. He knew, too, that their parents joined in the snickers.

Shekiba dried the floor hastily and tightened her head scarf under her chin. She went outside and saw that her uncles were taking a break, leaning against the outside wall and drinking tea that her cousin Hameed had brought out to them. Shekiba turned to assess the progress they had made.

From this side of the house she could see her home. It looked small in comparison to the clan’s house.

This is how it felt to watch us.

She noticed that there were new pieces of equipment in their field and that her father’s tools had been carted over to this side of the land. The house had been emptied. A pile of their belongings lay outside the wall her father had built.

They’re taking my home. They wanted our land.

Suddenly, Shekiba realized why it was that Bobo Shahgul had summoned her youngest son after so much time. Her father was tilling the most fertile land the family had and they wanted it. They wanted more than the share of crops he sent over from time to time. They wanted it all. Now there was no one in their way. They were taking her home.

Shekiba thought she would feel nothing but inside, she seethed. No one had thought of her when the house’s contents were thrown outside for trash. The few remaining items that had belonged to her mother, her father, her siblings all tossed aside to make way for something new. Was someone going to move into her home? Shekiba realized part of her was still hoping to return to that home, to live there independently as she had before. But, of course, that would never happen.

Shekiba found a container and walked into the field. There was much to be harvested. The onion plants had long yellow leaves and had probably dried up about three weeks ago, given their appearance.