We begged and pleaded with Padar-jan to let us return to school. One of Parwin’s teachers, a childhood friend of Madar-jan, even showed up at the house and tried to reason with our parents. Padar-jan had relented in the past but this time was different. He wanted us to go to school but struggled with how to make that happen safely. How would it look for his daughters to be chased by local boys for all to see? Awful.
“If I had a son this would not be happening! Goddamn it! Why do we have a house full of girls! Not one, not two — but five of them!” he would yell. Madar-jan would busy herself with housework, feeling the weight of disappointment on her shoulders.
His temper was worse these days. Madar-jan would tell us to hush and be respectful. She told us too many bad things had happened to Padar-jan and it had made him an angry man. She said if we all behaved then he would go back to being his normal self soon. But it was getting harder and harder to remember a time when Padar-jan wasn’t angry and loud.
Now that we were home, I was given the extra chore of bringing the groceries from the store. My older sisters were quarantined since they were older and noticeable. I was, thus far, invisible to boys and not a risk.
Every two days I stuffed a few bills from Madar-jan in the pouch that she had sewn into my dress pocket so I would have no excuse for losing them. I would wind my way through the narrow streets and walk thirty minutes to reach the market I loved. The stores were bustling with activity. Women looked different now than they had a few years ago. Some wore long blue burqas and others wore long skirts and modest head scarves. The men all dressed like my father, long tunics with billowing pantaloons — colors as drab as our landscape. Little boys wore ornate caps with small round mirrors and gold scrolling. By the time I got there, my shoes were again dusty and I would resort to using my head scarf as a filter for the clouds of dirt the hundreds of cars left in their wake. It was as if the khaki-colored landscape were dissolving into the air of our village.
Two weeks into our expulsion from school, the shop owners had gotten to know me. There were not many nine-year-old girls who would walk determinedly from shop to shop. And having watched my parents haggle prices down, I thought I could do the same. I would argue with the baker who tried to charge me double what I had seen him charge my mother. I bickered with the grocer trying to tell me that the flour I wanted was imported and, thus, subject to a surcharge. I pointed out that I could just as easily buy the same fancy flour from Agha Mirwais down the block and scoffed at the price he quoted. He gritted his teeth and put the flour in the bag along with the other groceries, muttering words under his breath that no child should hear.
Madar-jan was pleased to have my help with the market. She was busy enough with Sitara, who was just taking her first steps. Madar-jan had Parwin look after Sitara while she and Shahla took care of the household chores of dusting, sweeping and preparing the night’s meal. In the afternoons, Madar-jan made us all sit down with our books and notebooks and complete the homework she assigned us.
For Shahla, the days were isolating and difficult. She longed to see her friends and talk with her teachers. Shahla’s strengths were her intuition and her intelligence. She wasn’t at the very top of her class, but she usually charmed her teachers just enough to push her onto the short list of star pupils. She was average looking but put extra care into her appearance. She would spend at least five minutes brushing her hair every night, since someone told her it would make her locks grow longer. Shahla’s face was what people would call pleasant, not beautiful or memorable. But her personality made her glow. People looked at her and couldn’t help but smile. Polite and proper, she was a favorite in school. She had a way of looking at you and making you feel important. In front of family and friends, Shahla made Madar-jan proud as she would speak maturely and inquire after each member of the family.
“How is Farzana-jan doing? It’s been so long since I’ve seen her! Please do tell her that I was asking about her,” she would say. Grandmothers would nod in approval, praising Madar-jan for raising such a respectable girl.
Parwin was another story. She was striking. Her eyes were not the mud-brown color the rest of us had. Instead, hers were a hazel-gray blend that made you forget what it was that you were going to say. Her hair hung around her face in wavy locks with a natural luster. She was undeniably the best-looking girl in our whole extended family.
But she was completely lacking in social skills. If Madar-jan’s friends stopped by, Parwin would shrink into a corner, busying herself with folding and refolding a tablecloth. If she could manage to escape before company made it into the room, even better. Nothing was more of a relief to her than avoiding the traditional three-kiss greeting. She kept her answers brief and all the while kept her eyes on the nearest escape route.
“Parwin, please! Khala Lailoma is asking you a question. Can you please turn around? Those plants do not need to be watered at this very moment!”
What Parwin lacked in social skill, she more than made up for in artistic ability. She was masterful with pencil and paper. Graphite turned into visual energy in her hands. Wrinkled faces, an injured dog, a house too damaged to repair. She had a gift, an ability to show you what you did not see, even though your eyes graced the same sights as hers. She could sketch a masterpiece in minutes but washing the dishes could take hours.
“Parwin is from another world,” Madar-jan would say. “She is a different kind of girl.”
“What good is that going to do her? She’s going to have to survive and make her way through this world,” Padar-jan would retort, but he loved her drawings and kept a pile of them at his bedside to flip through from time to time.
The other problem with Parwin was that she’d been born with a bad hip. Someone had told Madar-jan she must have been lying on her side too much when she was pregnant. From the time Parwin started to crawl, it was obvious something was off. It took her much longer to learn to walk and to this day she hasn’t lost her limp. Padar-jan had taken her to a doctor when she was five or six but they said it was too late.
Then there was me. I didn’t mind the expulsion as much as my sisters. I suppose this was because it gave me opportunity to venture out on my own, without two older sisters to chastise me or insist I hold their hands as we crossed the street. Finally, I had freedom — even more than my sisters!
Madar-jan needed help with the errands and lately it was impossible to depend on Padar-jan for anything. She would ask him to pick up some things from the market on his way home and inevitably he would forget, then curse her for having an empty pantry. But if she went to the bazaar by herself, he went into an even worse rage. From time to time, Madar-jan asked the neighbors to pick up an item or two for her but she tried not to do that too often, knowing they already whispered about the peculiar way Padar-jan had of walking up and down our small street, his hands gesturing wildly as he explained something to the birds. My sisters and I wondered about his behavior too, but Madar-jan told us our father needed to take a special medicine and that was why he sometimes acted strangely.
At home, I could not help but talk about my adventures in the outside world. It bothered Shahla more than Parwin, who was content with her pencils and paper.