The most important thing on Sonya’s mind is to have children, or rather, sons. She is pregnant again and terrified it will be another daughter. When Latifa pulls her shawl off and starts playing with it, Sonya slaps her and ties it round her head. When the last-born plays with the mother’s shawl, the next child will be a girl, so the saying goes.
‘If I have a daughter, Sultan will take a third wife,’ she says after the two sisters-in-law have been squatting some time in silence on the kitchen floor.
‘Has he said so?’ Leila is surprised.
‘He said so yesterday.’
‘He only says it to frighten you.’
Sonya is not listening. ‘It must not be a daughter, it must not be a daughter,’ she mutters. The one-year-old she is nursing is lulled to sleep by her mother’s monotonous voice.
Leila is not in the mood for talking. She needs to get out. She knows she cannot sit at home all day with Sonya, Sharifa, Bulbula and her mother. I’m going mad. I cannot stand it any longer, she thinks. I don’t belong here.
She thinks of Fazil and the way in which Sultan treated him. It was that which made her realise that the time had come to stand on her own two feet, to try the English course.
The eleven-year-old had worked every day carrying boxes in the bookshop, eaten with them every evening, and slept on the mat curled up beside Leila every night. Fazil is Mariam’s oldest son, and Sultan and Leila’s nephew. Mariam and her husband could not afford to feed all their children, and when Sultan needed help in the shop they gladly accepted the offer of board and lodging with Sultan for their son. Payment was Fazil’s daily twelve-hour labours. He was let off on Fridays to visit his mother and father in the village.
Fazil thrived. He tidied up the shop and carried cases during the day and fought with Aimal at night. The only person he could not get on with was Mansur who slapped him or hit his back with his clenched fist when he made mistakes. But Mansur could be kind too. Suddenly he might take him to a shop and buy him some new clothes, or even take him to a restaurant and buy him a nice lunch. On the whole Fazil enjoyed life, far removed from the muddy streets of his native village.
But one day Sultan said: ‘I’m fed up with you. Go home. Don’t show yourself in the shop any more.’
The family was stunned. Had he not promised Mariam to look after the boy for a year? No one said anything, nor did Fazil. But when he lay on his mat that night he cried. Leila tried to console him, but it was no good, Sultan’s word was law.
The next morning she packed up his few belongings and sent him home. It would be up to him to explain to his mother why he had been sent home.
Leila was livid. How could Sultan treat Fazil like that? She might be next in line. It was time to think of something.
Leila hatched a new plan. One morning when Sultan and the sons had left, she pulled the burka over her head and disappeared out of the door. This time too she grabbed a little boy to accompany her. Today she chose another way, out of Mikrorayon, out of the appalling concrete jungle. On the outskirts of the neighbourhood the houses were so ruined they had remained unoccupied. Nevertheless, some families had taken shelter in the ruins and survived by begging from their almost equally poor neighbours, who at least had a roof over their heads. Leila crossed a little field where a herd of goats grazed the sparse clumps of grass while the goatherd dozed under the only remaining shade-giving tree. This was the border between town and village. On the other side of the field was the village Deh Khudaidad. But first she dropped in on big sister Shakila.
The gate was opened by Said, the oldest son of Wakil, the man Shakila had recently married. Said was missing two fingers from one hand. He had lost them when a car battery he was fixing exploded. But he told everyone that he had tripped over a mine. There was more status in being injured by a mine; he might have been fighting in the war. Leila did not like him, she found him simple and coarse. He could neither read nor write and spoke like a peasant, like Wakil. She shuddered at the thought of him. He gave her a crooked smile and grazed her burka as she walked past him. She shuddered once again. She shuddered at the thought of being yoked to him. Many of the family had tried to hook them up. Shakila and Wakil had both asked Bibi Gul for her.
‘Too early,’ Bibi Gul said.
‘About time,’ said Sultan. No one asked Leila and Leila would not have answered. A well-behaved girl does not answer questions about whether she likes so-and-so or not. But she hoped, hoped to escape.
Shakila arrived, hips swaying, smiling, beaming. All fear as regards her marriage to Wakil was unfounded. She was continuing to work as a biology teacher. His children worshipped her; she wiped their noses and washed their clothes. She made her husband fix the house and give her money for new curtains and cushions. She sent the children to school; Wakil and his first wife had not bothered much about that. When the oldest sons grumbled because they found it embarrassing to sit in the same classroom as little children, she just said: ‘It will be a lot more embarrassing later if you don’t go.’
Shakila was over the moon. At last she had a man. Her eyes sparkled. She looked in love. After thirty-five years as an old maid she had adjusted brilliantly to the role of housewife.
The sisters kissed each other on both cheeks, pulled the burkas over their heads and strode out of the gate, Leila in black, high-heeled shoes, Shakila wearing the white, sky-high, gold-buckled pumps, the wedding shoes. Shoes are important when neither body nor clothes, hair nor face can be exposed.
They skipped over puddles, avoided coagulated mud and deep ruts, while the gravel ground through the thin soles. The road was the road to school. Leila was en route to apply for work as a teacher. This was her secret plan.
Shakila had made enquiries at the village school where she worked. There was no English teacher. In spite of Leila having completed only nine years at school, she felt confident that she could teach beginners. When she lived in Pakistan she had attended English evening classes.
The school lies behind a mud enclosure. The wall is too high to see over. An old man sits by the entrance. He makes sure no intruders are admitted, especially men, as this is a girls’ school and all the teachers are women. The playground was once a grass pitch, now it’s a potato patch. Round the patch cubicles have been built into the wall. The classrooms have three walls: the back enclosure and the two side walls. The playground side is open, so the school head can observe what is going on in all the classrooms. In each cubicle there are some benches, tables and a blackboard. Only the older girls have stools and tables; the younger ones sit on the ground and follow what goes on on the blackboard. Many of the students cannot afford exercise books but write on little boards or bits and pieces of paper they have found.
Confusion reigns. Daily new pupils turn up who want to start school; the classes are getting bigger and bigger. The authorities’ school campaign has been very visible. All over the country large banners have gone up depicting smiling children carrying books. ‘Back to school’ is the only text necessary, the picture tells the rest.
When Shakila and Leila arrive the inspector is busy with a young woman who wants to register as a pupil. She says she has completed three classes and wants to start the fourth.
‘I cannot find you on our lists,’ the inspector says, leafing through the card index, which by chance has been left lying in a cupboard during the entire Taliban era. The woman is silent.
‘Can you read and write?’ the inspector asks.
The woman hesitates. In the end she admits she has never attended school.