The dust coming off the road settled into every pore of our bodies, on our clothes, in our hair, and covered the bits of food we ate out of Masood’s pack. I lost track of how many days we walked. Sleeping under the stars on the side of the road in the hard dirt. We must have traveled a good distance, because the land began to change. It became slightly undulating, and then we passed through an area that at one time must have been heavily wooded, but now the forest had been thinned down to scraggily looking pine trees. The green pine needles broke up the pervasive brown scenery of the rocks, boulders, and dirt that all melted into one tone of dried-out earth. We finally came to another village; it looked like a fortress with a mud wall surrounding it—threatening to keep us out.
Inside the gates, we found an open area that had been turned into a makeshift campground filled with tents. Others escaping Kabul had ended up in this same remote place on their way to Pakistan, just like us: families, groups of men, and some who were alone.
Masood surveyed the place and turned to us. He squatted down to eye level, and with an ominous tone, he said to us, “Don’t talk to anyone here. Don’t trust anyone. Stay with each other, and don’t wander off.” He stared especially hard at me and repeated, “Don’t talk to strangers.”
I had no intentions of trying to make any more friends. Walking through the tents, I quickly noticed that most of the travelers carried Kalashnikov or hunting rifles and looked at us warily as we passed, as if they were sizing us up. From the way they dressed, some of them must have come from Kabul; others were in the traditional dress of the countryside, but they all were tense and suspicious. The cities and towns were emptying out in the face of the growing arrests and torture by the army. People didn’t trust each other. Some could be spies sent by the government to see who was escaping.
Everyone was suspicious of anyone who was curious or overly helpful. So it was best to keep to ourselves. Laila took to holding my hand to make sure I stayed with them when we walked through the camp. But when she wasn’t looking, I often snuck away to see the camp for myself. I didn’t have the same fears as my siblings of getting hurt. I was a little girl; I wasn’t a threat to anyone. Who would bother with me? But still, every time I returned from exploring on my own, Laila chastised me for being so careless.
The days of our stay blended into weeks. Around the cooking fire at night, some of the men talked openly of one of the travelers: a woman named Fatima. They were concerned that she wouldn’t make it through the mountains. One of them asked what would become of her daughter. Someone said they thought she would die if she was alone. She didn’t seem able to take care of herself. My curiosity got the best of me. Why couldn’t this girl take care of herself? I wanted to meet this girl and her mother, but Masood had told me to stay close to my sisters. Laila warned me every day not to wander off. And for some time I didn’t, but then I couldn’t restrain myself any longer, so one day when Masood and my sisters and brothers were preoccupied, I wandered off to find that girl and her mother.
Fatima and her daughter weren’t difficult to spot. I’d seen her wandering the camp at times, weak and frail-looking. She had pale skin and walked with a listless gait, as if she didn’t have the energy to spare even to take a few big steps in a row. She wore a white chador on her head and a peran tumban under a gray dress. Her hard life must have worn her down. She walked around with her eyes to the ground as if she was too weary to even lift her head. She wore a perpetual frown, as if she didn’t expect to complete her journey. Maybe she had heard what people were saying about her and had resigned herself to letting it come true, and one day she’d simply drop dead. Her daughter, Shakila, who was eighteen, was also very quiet and reserved. She appeared delicate and lovely, with long black hair, brown eyes, and deep olive skin. And she was very devoted, tending to her mother’s every need because the slight woman could do little for herself.
The camp was a ramshackle affair, with rows of shelters that were nothing more than plywood and canvas tarps thrown over branches and boards scavenged from the area. The camp was laid out in a haphazard maze of narrow alleys that twisted and turned through the entire camp. Making my way through this warren, I spotted Fatima curled up in a corner of her tent, weeping. I gathered she was grieving over her own fate, which to me seemed like a waste of time. Her daughter was very busy taking care of her. The mother hardly left her tent, but when she did, she wore her pain like her own death mask.
Once I knew where her tent was, I strolled by it each day. Most of the time, she lay in the same position as the first time I saw her. The rumor around the camp was that she feared her looming death would place her daughter in danger. A girl alone of marriageable age and who is beautiful but with no family to protect her is the most vulnerable of all people. If something happened to Fatima, Shakila would be at the mercy of any man in the camp who could claim her.
When I looked at Shakila, I saw Mina, her bruised and welted body, and those two devils who had beaten a little girl for playing games with a stranger. This land was harsher on its children than the relentless sun, scorching and unforgiving.
Every time I went by Fatima’s tent, I became more provoked to say something. I had watched Padar, with all of his weaknesses, never falter in his determination to help us. I couldn’t comprehend why she couldn’t be strong for her daughter, the way Padar had been for us. It didn’t seem right to me that she would give up in front of her daughter.
One day I stopped at the open flap of her tent and stepped inside. She must have sensed a stranger, and she looked up at me. I was intending only to get her to think about her daughter, to get her to bear up under the hardship that we were all going through, or everyone’s greatest fears about her would certainly come true.
“If you’re going to die, then it’s your time. If it’s not, then you won’t,” I said, trying to inject her with some courage to continue on. Whether we died or not was out of our control—couldn’t she see that and know it was best to try to live? “Stop crying. You have to be strong, or your daughter will suffer her whole life.”
She stared at me, surprised that I would speak to an adult this way. My every intention was to comfort her with the thoughts that had brought peace to me after leaving Mina. But I could see from her offended look that she hadn’t found any comfort in what I’d said. Shakila, who had been busy preparing something for her mother, had a look of horror. I couldn’t figure out if it was the very mention of death that had shocked her or that I had dared to speak to her mother the way I had.
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
Shakila and Fatima asked me with their eyes to leave and to stay away from them. I wanted to hide myself; I felt so ashamed at what I had said to her. I didn’t say it to mean that she should die, but if that was her fate, what could a person do about it but to suffer it courageously?
I ran from the tent door, out through the village gates, and into the thin woods. My head clamored with a sense that I’d injured them both, made them weaker by condemning her to die, and all I was trying to do was encourage her to persevere. I took a beaten path through woods that grew steadily thicker on either side of the narrow dirt track as it rose and dipped over the hills. Driven by my shame, I ran along a path that led deeper into the mountains. I hoped to reach a place to rest, somewhere away from everyone and the voice that ran through my head. I ran and ran until I was so winded I had to lean against a tree to rest. The trunk of the tree was so thick I could hide behind it, and the branches were filled with leaves. I panted in the shade of the great tree until I caught my breath. The air smelled clean and felt cool in the breeze off the nearby river. Down a slope, I could see the mud huts of the village sequestered in a clutch of brown hills.