CHAPTER 5. RAHIMA
Madar-jan took me behind the house with Padar-jan’s scissors and razor. I sat nervously while my sisters watched. She pulled my long hair into a ponytail behind my head, whispered a prayer and slowly began to shear away. Shahla looked astonished. Rohila looked entertained and Parwin watched only for a moment before running back into the house for her pencils and paper. She sketched furiously with her back turned to me.
Madar-jan cut and trimmed, bending my ear forward to trim around it. She cut my bangs short and straight across my forehead. I looked at the ground around me and saw hair everywhere. She brushed the loose strands from my shoulders, blew at my neck and dusted off my back. My neck felt bare, exposed. I giggled with nervous excitement. Only Shahla noticed the single tear that trickled down Madar-jan’s cheek.
The next step was my clothing. Madar-jan asked my uncle’s wife for a shirt and pair of pants. My cousin had outgrown them, as had his older brother and my other cousin before him. She sent me inside to get dressed while she and my sisters swept my girl hair from the courtyard.
I slipped one leg in and then the other. They were slimmer and heavier than the usual balloon pants I wore under my dresses. I cinched the strings at the waist and made a knot. I pulled the tunic over my head and realized there was no ponytail to pull through after it. I let my hand run against the back of my head, feeling the short ends.
I looked down and saw my knobby knees through the pantaloons. I folded my arms across my chest and cocked my head, as I’d seen my cousin Siddiq do so many times. I kicked my foot, pretending there was a ball in front of me. Was that it? Was I a boy already?
I thought of Khala Shaima. I wondered what she would say if she were to see me like this. Would she smile? Had she really meant it when she suggested I should be turned into a boy? She told us our great-great-grandmother had worked on the farm like a boy, that she’d been a son to her father. I had waited for her to go on, to get to the part where our great-great-grandmother turned into a boy. Khala Shaima said she would come back and tell us more of the story another day. I hated having to wait.
I smoothed my shirt down and went back out to see what my mother thought.
“Well! Aren’t you a handsome young boy!” Madar-jan said. Even I could detect the hint of nervous uncertainty in her voice.
“Are you sure, Madar-jan? Don’t I look odd?”
Shahla covered her mouth with her hand at the sight of me.
“Oh my goodness! You look just like a boy! Madar-jan, you can hardly tell it’s her!”
Madar-jan nodded.
“You won’t have to get your knots taken out anymore,” Rohila said enviously. Getting the knots brushed out of our hair was a painful morning routine. Her hair coiled into a mess of tiny birds’ nests that Madar-jan struggled to brush out while Rohila winced and squirmed.
“Bachem, from now on we’re going to call you Rahim instead of Rahima,” Madar-jan said tenderly. Her eyes looked heavier than they should have at the age of thirty.
“Rahim! We have to call her Rahim?”
“Yes, she is now your brother, Rahim. You will forget about your sister Rahima and welcome your brother. Can you do that, girls? It’s very important that you speak only of your brother, Rahim, and never mention that you have another sister.”
“Just in case we forget what she looked like, Parwin drew this picture of Rahima.” Rohila handed Madar-jan the sketch Parwin had done while she was cutting my hair. It was an incredible likeness of me, the old me with long hair and naïve eyes. Madar-jan looked at the drawing and whispered something we didn’t understand. She folded the paper and placed it on the tabletop.
“Is that it? Just like that? She’s a boy?” Shahla looked skeptical.
“Just like that,” Madar-jan said quietly. “This is how things are done. People will understand. You’ll see.” She knew my sisters would be the hardest to convince. Everyone else — teachers, aunts, uncles, neighbors — they would accept my mother’s new son without reservation. I wasn’t the first bacha posh. This was a common tradition for families in want of a son. What Madar-jan was already dreading was the day they would have to change me back. But that would only be when I began to change into a young woman. That was still a few years away.
“Oh, wow.” Parwin had returned to the courtyard to see what happened.
“So just like that. She’s a boy.”
“Nope, not yet,” Parwin said calmly. “She’s not a boy yet.”
“What do you mean?” Rohila asked.
“She’s got to walk under a rainbow.”
“A rainbow?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My God, Parwin,” Madar-jan said, smiling faintly. “I don’t remember telling you about that poem. How do you even know about it?”
Parwin shrugged her shoulders. We weren’t surprised. Parwin couldn’t tell you if she had eaten breakfast but she often knew things that no one expected her to know.
“What is she talking about, Madar-jan?” I asked, curious to find out if Parwin was right or if her imagination had gotten the best of her today.
“She’s talking about an old poem. I don’t know if I can even remember how the story goes but it’s about what happens if you pass under a rainbow.”
“What happens if you pass under a rainbow?” Rohila asked.
“There’s a legend that walking under a rainbow changes girls into boys and boys into girls.”
“What? Is that true? Could that really happen?”
This perplexed me. I hadn’t walked under a rainbow. I’d never even seen one, for that matter. How was this change supposed to work?
“Tell us the poem, Madar-jan. I know you remember it. We drank in spirits…” Parwin started her off.
Madar-jan sighed and went into the living room. We followed. She sat with her back against the wall and looked to the ceiling, trying to recall the details. Her chador fell across her shoulders. We sat around her and waited expectantly.
“Afsaanah, see-saanah…,” she began. One story, thirty stories. And then she sang the poem.
We drank in spirits and played in fields
Enamored of
Indigos, saffrons and teals
There was fog in the space
Between them and I
Colors reach to touch God in the sky
I envy the arc, stretched strong and wide
As one brilliance blends into another
Colors bow deeply to welcome a brother
We humble servants, meekly pass under
Rostam’s bow changes girl to boy, makes one the other
Until the air grows dry and tires of the game
And the mist opens its arms, colors reclaimed
CHAPTER 6. SHEKIBA
Shekiba sat with her back against the cool wall. It was night and the house was quiet. Snoring came from every direction, some louder than others. By the soft glow of the moon, she could see the kettles and pots she had washed and stacked in the corner to make room for her blanket. Like most nights, her eyes were wide open while everyone else’s were closed. This was the hour of night when she would wonder what she could have done differently.