My Name Is Parvana (2 page)

TWO

P
arvana looked around at the little room where she had landed.

It wasn’t bad. It was clean. It had a narrow metal bed with a thin mattress on it. A gray blanket was folded at one end. Next to the bed a metal table was attached to the wall. Underneath was a stool that folded under the table.

The walls were smooth gray and made of metal. Parvana’s eyes traveled across them and rested on a small sticker down near the floor by the bed. She knelt down for a closer look.

Port-A-Prison
, she read.
The Creative Containment Specialists, for all your containment needs.

The words were in English, which she could read. She kept reading and learned that the prison had been built in North America, in a place called Fort Wayne, Indiana. They must have folded it up like a cardboard box and packed it into a big plane to Afghanistan, then unfolded it here, on this patch of dirt in her country.

Parvana looked at the screws and bolts holding it together. The label also said the cell had been inspected by Inspector 247.

Inspector 247 must have found everything correct, because here it was.

Parvana wondered about Inspector 247. Was it a man or a woman? Did they think about who would be held inside the gray walls they inspected? Did they have a family they went home to at night? A family who was all there because no one had been shot or had stepped on a land mine or just got too tired to keep on living? When they were younger, did they dream about becoming a portable-prison inspector?

It must be a good job, one with some authority. They got to say, “This cell is good, send it off,” or, “This cell has problems. Back to the factory.”

At the other end of the room was a toilet with a sink on top. Parvana gently touched the tap.

Water came out! She had running water! She let it flow over her fingertips.

A piece of paper above the sink told her that wasting water would result in further punishment. She quickly shut off the tap and waited for the boots in the hallway. None came.

“What more can they do to me?” she whispered.

She turned the tap back on and splashed water on her face. She turned it off again when she was done. Not because she was afraid of being punished, but because this was a dry part of the country, and water was never a thing to be wasted. And while the prison may have come from America, the water came from Afghanistan. It belonged to her.

The bed looked inviting. Oh, to stretch out on a bed that belonged just to her, in a room with a closed door and running water! But she could not allow herself to sleep, not yet. Not until she knew what was going on.

She stood for a while by the door, looking for any opening that might let her peer out into the hallway. There was none. There was a metal screen, but the covering to it slid open on the other side of the door. Her captors could slide it back and look at her whenever they wanted, but she could not look at them.

When she finally permitted herself to sit down on the bed, she perched on the edge, half sitting and half ready to spring into action if the situation called for it. The bed had a metal ledge to hold the mattress in place.

She was tired and scared, but this was the first time in her life that she had had a room of her own, and she wanted to enjoy it as much as possible.

If she had been asked to design this room — if Inspector 247 had asked her opinion — Parvana would have had something to say about the color.

Blue, she thought. A bright blue, the color of the sky on a brilliant winter morning before the clouds rolled in from the mountains. She would add a few splashes of red here and there. A cheerful red, like the red of the fancy shalwar kameez she had to part with when she was a child because her family needed the money.

That was years ago, but she could still see it fluttering away through the market — a bright splash of color in an otherwise dismal place. Her last splash of childhood, sold to a stranger.

She would have designed the bed in such a way that it could be folded against the wall, giving her room to walk or dance or do exercises. She was used to doing hard physical exercises at school and would like to keep on doing them if she could.

And, of course, the window would be bigger. It would look out over an orchard and a river, and beside it would be a door that she could open and walk through whenever she wanted.

But then it wouldn’t be a jail cell.

The bed became a little too comfortable, and her chin started to drop to her chest. She brought it up with a jerk, then stood up. She stamped her feet a little to wake herself up.

She needed to stay awake. She needed to be alert for whatever was coming.

Everyone had heard the stories. Everyone knew somebody who knew somebody who had disappeared behind the walls of one of these places. Sometimes they came out again, angry and vowing revenge. Sometimes they came out trembling and scuttled off into the corners to mumble to themselves. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody. It was a secret that everybody knew.

What went on behind prison walls was bad. Parvana had seen the scars, the marks of torture. The peddler who pushed his cart through the refugee camp each day would show his scars to anyone who tried to buy a pot or a brush from him.

“This is not the Taliban,” he said. “This is from the ones who saved us from the Taliban. Who will save us from the saviors?”

Parvana had heard his story three times, since she often took care of the housekeeping for the family. On and on he went, showing his battered wrists and ankles over and over.

“I’m just a peddler,” he would say. “I just push a cart. I don’t know what is in the heart of the person I sell a shoelace to. When a man buys a bar of soap, I don’t ask him if he is the devil. Why did they arrest me? Why did they hurt me?”

The first time she heard the story, Parvana was fascinated, shocked and sympathetic. She wanted to do something for the old man. All she could think of was to tell him to keep the change from her purchase, but she couldn’t do that because her family had so little money. So she listened to his story until he tired of telling it, picked up the handles of his cart and went on his way.

The second time she heard his story she also felt sad and sympathetic, but she remembered the tongue-lashing her mother had given her the last time for standing around and talking instead of working. So she kept looking for a spot in the man’s story when she could politely back away.

The spot never came. He talked and talked, showing his scars, describing his pain and demanding answers: “Why was this done to me? I am nobody. Why would they do this to such a nobody?” Parvana grew frustrated that she had no answers and could not help him. She finally backed away on her own, leaving him screaming at the sky.

The third time, she pretended not to know the man. She chose the tea and thread that she needed, looked down at the dirt and paid without speaking. She could feel the loneliness coming off him in waves, and she shut herself against it.

She did not want to end up like the peddler. She did not want to end up angry and howling for revenge. Who would she get revenge from, anyway? How far back in time would she need to go before she was satisfied? Did a word like revenge have any real meaning in a country like Afghanistan?

Parvana doubted it.

To howl for revenge would be a waste of time. And enough of her time had been wasted already.

She didn’t want to lose her mind behind these walls. Afghanistan already had plenty of lost minds, floating like invisible balloons in the air above the land, leaving behind empty-minded people moaning and lonely in the dirt.

“How do I come out of this?” she asked herself in a whisper.

She had to believe they would one day let her out.

She could not admit that it was quite likely they would not.

After all she had been through she knew only one thing for sure.

She knew she could not trust them.

All she could trust was herself.

THREE

T
hey came in the night.

Parvana was ready for them.

The metal bar of the bedframe stuck into the back of her thighs while she sat on the edge of the bed. The pain helped to keep her awake.

But it pressed on the nerves in her legs and made her feet numb. When the two uniformed women, flanked by men with guns drawn, burst into her cell and each grabbed an arm to take her out, her legs buckled underneath her, forcing the guards to drag her along the corridor.

“Stand up!” one of them ordered.

Parvana gave no sign that she understood their English. It wouldn’t have mattered. Her feet were quite asleep.

“This is ridiculous,” the other guard said. “I didn’t sweat through Basic Training to deal with stubborn teenagers.”

A silent signal must have passed between the two guards because they both released their grip on Parvana at the same time. She dropped to the floor like a sack of rice.

“On your feet!”

Parvana stayed where she was.

I’m not going to help you, she thought. She was fine on the floor. She’d had many a good night’s sleep on rougher surfaces.

She was picked up again and the drag continued.

Parvana’s chador came off. Now she had no way to hide her face. She didn’t like that they would be able to see her.

She was hauled back into the little office and dumped onto the same hard chair. She was surrounded by boots and legs and torsos.

Nineteen times seven is …

She was too nervous to work it out, so she went for something easier. Two times two is four. Two times three is six. Two times four is eight.

She multiplied and she breathed. She got herself under control.

“There’s an awful lot of people in here for one little girl.”

Parvana heard the voice of the man who had questioned her earlier.

“Sir, she gave us some trouble,” one of the guards said.

“Anything you can’t handle, soldier?”

“No, sir. No problem, sir.”

“Good. Return to your duties.”

“Yes, sir.”

Parvana watched the pairs of boots march out of the room.

She suddenly remembered a counting song she had used to teach the young ones. It was a good song because they learned counting and English at the same time.

The ants came marching two by two,

Hurrah, hurrah.

Parvana had to work really hard not to smile. She had no chador to cover her.

“So you’ve decided to let us see your face, have you?” The man said it in English, without the interpreter in the room, so he was talking more to himself than to Parvana. “We want to show respect for your culture while we are guests in your country, but I find it awfully hard to talk to someone when I can’t see their face.”

The feeling was starting to come back into Parvana’s feet and legs. It was a mixture of tingling and pain. It was not pleasant, but Parvana welcomed it. It gave her something to concentrate on.

The interpreter entered the little room. “I found this in the hall.”

Parvana could see a corner of her chador, trailing on the floor.

“Do you want me to give it to her?”

“Do you want your head covering?” the man asked.

The interpreter repeated the words in Dari, Pashtu and Uzbek. Parvana concentrated on the pain in her legs.

“She seems fine without it,” he said. “If she wants it, she’ll ask for it. Perhaps, in exchange, she’ll tell us her name.”

The woman translated what he said.

“You know what?” said the man. “I think you speak Dari. That’s the language in those notebooks we found, so that’s the language we’re going to use. Corporal, repeat this one last time in all three languages. Tell her this is her last chance. If she doesn’t speak Dari, she has to let us know now. We’ve given her a nice long rest. Now she has to give us something. I’m tired of pussy-footing around.”

The interpreter stumbled over the translation of “pussy-footing” and finally came up with “wearing the feet of a cat.” Parvana looked at the army boots and managed not to laugh.

She concentrated on her multiplication tables.

They all sat in silence for a long time.

There was a sudden loud bang. She jumped in her chair.

“So. You can hear.”

The man picked up the thick book he had dropped on the floor.

“You’re not deaf. You are refusing to talk to us.”

While he talked, the woman translated. Parvana blocked out the woman’s voice and concentrated on the man’s. Her English was not as good as she wanted it to be. She had to pay attention to be able to understand him. The mental effort kept her calm.

“Why are you refusing to talk? That’s the first question we have to answer. Are you refusing to talk because you’re an ignorant country girl, too ignorant even to protest at being locked up? Or are you a person to worry about? Is your name Parvana?”

The question about her name again came at her fast. She wasn’t prepared and almost answered it. But she managed to hold her tongue.

“You’re wasting my time, little girl, and you need to start talking. Although you are hardly a little girl. How old do you think she is, Corporal? Fifteen?”

“Not more than that, sir.”

“She’ll age fast in this country. I’ve seen women who are twenty look forty, and women who are forty look seventy. The average woman here lives only to be forty-six. Did you know that, Corporal? Forty-six.”

The poor corporal wasn’t sure what she should translate and what was simply the major making conversation, so she translated everything. Words came out of her mouth in Dari moments after the man said them in English. To Parvana it sounded like two similar but different recordings being played, one just ahead of the other. When it happened in short spurts, it was okay. When it went on for a while, it made her brain a little dizzy.

“What are the other names we got from those pages?” the man asked.

“Sir, I made a list.”

“Let me see it.”

There was the sound of sliding paper.

“Is your name Shauzia?”

Parvana kept her eyes focused on the floor. She thought of her friend, swift-footed and determined, hair cropped short against her scalp, running around the marketplace with a tray of tea cups. She pictured her friend’s face, laughing, crying and angry, pinched in concentration as she counted up her money, calm and dreamy as she planned her trip to France.

But she kept her breathing shallow and even, not giving anything away.

“Is your name Nooria?”

Older sister Nooria, bossy and sure of herself, with beautiful long hair. Nooria could boss the both of you right out of here, Parvana thought.

“Is your name Maryam?”

Little sister Maryam, bouncy, clever, exasperating.

“Is your name Leila?”

Parvana was glad she had no tears left. It meant she could hear the name of the little girl who had died in the minefield and not react.

I’m turning to stone, she thought. I’m sitting here turning to stone.

“Is your name Asif?”

“Sir, Asif is a boy’s name.”

“You sure? All right. Is your name Hassan?”

“Also a boy’s name, sir.”

“What about this one? Ali?”

“Also a boy’s name.”

“It’s also a girl’s name,” the man said. “Haven’t you ever heard of Ali McGraw?
Love Story
? Steve McQueen’s girlfriend? Don’t you ever watch old movies?”

“Sir, in Afghanistan, Ali is only a boy’s name.”

“Well, ask her anyway. Maybe she uses it as a nickname.”

“Is your name Ali?”

Parvana wished they would shut up. Couldn’t they just accept that she wasn’t going to answer their questions and let her go? After they gave back her shoulder bag, of course.

“Any names left?”

“Just one. But I don’t think it would apply.”

“Ask it anyway. We need to get some sort of reaction out of her.”

“Is your name Mrs. Weera?”

Parvana almost laughed out loud at that one.

I’m not Mrs. Weera, she thought. And you’re very lucky that I’m not.

They all sat in silence again for a good long while.

Then the man said, “Take her chair away.”

Parvana was made to stand.

And stand.

And stand.