“I think tomorrow I’ll pick up some roasted chickpeas from the market. I have a few coins. If you like, I could bring you some, Shahla.”
Shahla sighed and shifted Sitara from one hip to another. She looked like a young exasperated mother.
“Forget it. I don’t want any. Just go and finish the chores, Rahima. I’m sure you’re just dawdling out there. In no rush to come home, I bet.”
“I’m not dawdling. I go and do the errands that Madar-jan tells me to do. But never mind. I’ll see you later.”
It wasn’t so much that I wanted my sisters to be envious. It was more that I wanted to celebrate my new privileges to come and go, to wander through the shops without my sister’s supervision. If I had a little more tact, I would have found another way to express myself. But my loud mouth caught Khala Shaima’s attention. Maybe there was a higher purpose to my insensitivity.
Khala Shaima was my mother’s sister — her older sister. Madar-jan was closer to her than anyone else in her family and we saw her often. Had we not grown up around her, we probably would have been frightened by her appearance. Khala Shaima was born with a crooked spine that wiggled through her back like a snake. Although our grandparents had hoped to find a suitor before her shape became too obvious, she was passed over time and again. Families would come to ask about my mother or Khala Zeba, the youngest of the sisters, but no one wanted Khala Shaima with her hunched back and one raised shoulder.
She understood early in life that she would not catch anyone’s eye and decided not to bother fussing with appearances at all. She let her eyebrows grow in, left those few stray chin hairs and dressed in the same drab clothing day in and day out.
Instead, she focused her energies on her nieces and nephews and taking care of my grandparents as they aged. Khala Shaima supervised everything — making sure we were doing satisfactorily in school, that we had proper clothing for the winter and that lice hadn’t nested in our hair. She was a safety net for anything our parents might not have been able to do for us and she was one of the few people who could stand being around Padar-jan.
But you had to know Khala Shaima to get her. I mean to really get her. If you didn’t know that she had the best intentions at heart, you could be put off by the lack of pleasantries in her conversation, by her sharp criticisms or by the doubtful squint in her eyes while she listened to you talk. But if you knew how she’d been spoken to her whole life, by strangers and family, you wouldn’t be surprised.
She was good to us girls and always came with candy-laden pockets. Padar-jan would comment snidely that her pockets were the only sweet thing about Khala Shaima. My sisters and I would feign patience while we waited for the rustle of chocolate wrappers. When she arrived, I had just returned from the market, and in plenty of time to get my share of the sweets.
“Shaima, honest to God, you’re spoiling these girls! Where are you getting chocolates like these from these days! They can’t be cheap!”
“Don’t stop a donkey that’s not yours,” she fired back. That was another thing about Khala Shaima. Everyone used those old Afghan proverbs, but Khala Shaima could hardly speak without them. It made conversations with her as circuitous as her spine. “Stay out of it and let’s let the girls get back to their homework.”
“We’re done with our homework, Khala Shaima-jan,” Shahla said. “We’ve been working on it all morning.”
“All morning? Didn’t you go to school today?” Shaima’s eyebrows furrowed.
“No, Khala Shaima. We don’t go to school anymore,” Shahla said, averting her eyes since she knew she was throwing Madar-jan into the fire.
“What does that mean? Raisa! Why aren’t the girls in school?”
Madar-jan lifted her head from the teapot reluctantly.
“We had to take them out again.”
“In God’s name, what ridiculous excuse did you come up with this time to keep them from their studies? Did a dog bark at them in the street?”
“No, Shaima. Don’t you think I would much rather have them going to school? It’s just that they’re running into foolishness in the streets. You know how boys can be. And, well, their father is just not happy to send them out so they can be toyed with by the neighborhood boys. I don’t blame him, really. You know, it’s only been a year that the girls are even able to walk in the street. Maybe it’s just too soon.”
“Too soon? How about too late! They should have been going to school all this time but they haven’t. Imagine how far behind they are and now that they can catch up, you’re going to keep them at home to scrub the floors? There will always be idiots in the street saying all kinds of things and giving all kinds of looks. You can believe that. If you hold these girls back for that, you’re no better than the Taliban who closed their schools.”
Shahla and Parwin shot each other looks.
“Then what am I supposed to do? Arif’s cousin Haseeb told him that—”
“Haseeb? That moron who’s dumber than a Russian tank? You’re making decisions for your children based on something Haseeb said? Sister, I thought more of you.”
Madar-jan huffed in frustration and rubbed her temples. “Then you stay here till Arif gets home and you tell him yourself what you think we should do!”
“Did I say I was leaving?” Khala Shaima said coolly. She propped a pillow behind her uneven back and leaned against the wall. We braced ourselves. Padar-jan hated dealing with Khala Shaima’s intrusions and he was just as blunt as she was about it.
“You’re a fool to think these girls are better off rotting in this home instead of learning something in school.”
“You never went to school and see how well you turned out,” Padar-jan said facetiously.
“I’ve got a lot more sense than you, engineer-sahib.” A low blow. Padar-jan had wanted to major in engineering when he finished high school but his marks didn’t make the cut. Instead, he took some general classes for one semester and then dropped out to start working. He had a shop now where he fixed old electronics, and though he was pretty good at what he did, he was still bitter about not making it as an engineer, a highly regarded title for Afghans.
“Damn you, Shaima! Get out of my house! They’re my daughters and I don’t need to listen to a cripple tell me what I should do with them!”
“Well, this cripple has an idea that may solve your problem — let you keep your precious pride while the girls can get back into school.”
“Forget it. Just get out so I don’t have to look at your face anymore. Raisa! Where the hell is my food?”
“What is your idea, Shaima?” Madar-jan jumped in, eager to hear what she had to say. She did respect her sister, ultimately. More often than not, Shaima was right. She hurriedly fixed a plate of food and brought it over to Padar-jan, who was now staring out the window blankly.
“Raisa, don’t you remember the story our grandmother told to us? Remember Bibi Shekiba?”
“Oh, her! Yes, but how does that help the girls?”
“She became what her family needed. She became what the king needed.”
“The king.” Padar-jan scoffed. “Your stories get crazier every time you open your ugly mouth.”
Khala Shaima ignored his comment. She had heard much worse.
“Do you really think that would work for us too?”
“The girls need a brother.”