My Name Is Parvana (4 page)

Parvana could only hold that picture in her head for a moment before it disappeared, and she wondered, for perhaps the millionth time, what had happened to her friend.

When the reception was over, the chairs back in place, the guests and students gone, Parvana sat at one of the dining-hall tables with her family — her mother, her sisters and her two adopted brothers.

Everyone was busy with some little project. Mother was working on the finances. Nooria was working on her lesson plans. Maryam was drawing pictures of dresses she would like to wear when she became a singing star. Asif was trying to teach Hassan how to write his name.

It was peaceful. Everyone was all right.

Maybe Shauzia
is
in a lavender field in France, Parvana thought, but it couldn’t be any nicer than right here, right now.

“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” she said out loud.

“What are you babbling about?” Asif asked.

Parvana almost hugged him.

FIVE

T
hey made Parvana stand for a very long time.

Her back was two inches from the wall, and whenever she appeared to be leaning against it, they would yell at her to stand up straight. She had to keep pretending not to understand. When they got tired of yelling, they would move her away from the wall themselves.

The man and woman in uniform kept staring at her as she stood. Every now and then they would ask, “What is your name?” and “What were you doing in that school?”

She didn’t answer, and the periods of silence grew longer and longer.

To pass the time, the man started to clean his weapon. Parvana watched him take apart the gun, polish it up and put it back together again.

Asif could do that better than you, she thought, although he wouldn’t have wasted his time on guns. Engines were his thing. He had started learning about engines in the refugee camp he and Parvana had ended up in. He hung around the clinic and helped take care of the truck. Every foreigner he met, he asked about their car, asked to see under the hood and asked if they needed someone to keep the car clean. He even managed to earn a little bit of money that way.

And he learned to read.

Parvana remembered the conversation they had about it.

They were sitting on a small hill overlooking the camp.

“Your mother says if I’m going to be part of your family,” Asif said, “I have to learn to read.”

“That sounds like something Mother would say,” Parvana replied.

“You probably think you’re really special, with all that reading and writing you do.”

“You should try it,” Parvana said.

“You say that because you think I won’t be able to, don’t you? You’d love it if I tried and couldn’t do it. You want to keep all the reading and writing for yourself. You’d probably hate it if I could read and write as well as you do.”

Parvana waited. She knew what was coming.

“I’m going to learn,” Asif said. “Just to annoy you.”

He stood up right then and went back down to the camp to find Parvana’s mother and get his first lesson.

A soldier brought food into the little room and gave it to the major and the interpreter. Parvana could smell the grilled meat from the hamburgers they bit into. They didn’t offer her any.

“Talk,” the man said. “Talk, then eat.”

Parvana kept silent. She’d been hungry before.

The questions started up again after they finished eating.

“What is your name? Who are your friends? What were you doing in that school? Why won’t you talk to us? What are you hiding?”

Parvana closed her ears. She tried to send her mind somewhere else. She tried to think about how exciting it was to wake up early each morning at the school and find a quiet place to read before her mother got up and the work started. She tried to think about how much she loved seeing the students come to school every morning. She would often stand at the gate with Mr. Fahir, the chowkidar, and say hello as they arrived, all clean and brushed, their white chadors washed overnight and pressed under their mattresses.

The girls would sometimes come on their own in a group, walking together for protection against the stares and insults. Usually they came with an adult — a mother or father or aunt or uncle — whoever was taking care of them. The parent would watch them go through the gate and keep watching long after the girl had gone inside.

Parvana knew without asking — she just knew — that the parents were wishing they could go to school, too. And why wouldn’t they? Inside the school gates everything was clean. Students cleaned it every day, washing the dust off the windowsills and the footprints off the floor. There was always the scent of cooking or nan baking. The place was bright, painted with the cheeriest assortment of colors Mother could find. The students had helped with that, too, since knowing how to paint was a skill that might earn them money one day.

No one yelled inside the school, unless it was to cheer someone on at games. There was always the sound of singing, and the walls were quickly covered with the students’ art work.

Parvana both wanted and didn’t want the parents to come in and be a part of it all. She wanted them to have the opportunity. Between the Soviet occupation, the civil war and the Taliban, probably none of them had ever gone to school.

But adults were unpredictable. They liked to make trouble, and Parvana had already had a lifetime of that.

“I know you are starting to feel some pain,” the major said. “It’s hard to stand in one place for a long time. Your back is aching. Your legs are getting sore and probably starting to swell. You probably need a latrine break, too. And I want you to have one. I want you to have a good meal and a good rest and no more worries. All you have to do is talk to me.”

He moved closer so that his face was just two inches from Parvana’s. She kept her eyes down but she could feel his breath on her. It was sour. She could smell the onions that had been on his hamburger.

He dropped his voice to a whisper. The interpreter moved in close and whispered her translation.

“Tell us we’ve made a mistake,” he said. “Tell us you don’t know anything. Speak one word. Just one! Any word you want, and you can rest and eat. And if you can’t talk, then rap your knuckles on the wall.”

He tapped the wall next to Parvana’s head.

“I know you can hear me,” he whispered. “I’m pretty sure you understand me. Now I need you to talk to me. One word. Say ‘stop’ or ‘flower’ or ‘puppy’ or ‘grenade.’ Say just one word. Talk to me, and I’ll let you rest.”

Parvana kept silent. She tried to breathe shallow to avoid the smell of sour onions.

And then he yelled, right into her face.

“Talk to me!”

It was a loud yell, a parade-ground yell, a yell designed to scare the enemy.

It scared Parvana. Her body jumped.

And then she’d had enough.

She closed her eyes, leaned back against the wall and fainted dead away.

SIX

“
Is that all you’ve done?”

Mother stood beside Parvana’s chair and looked down at her worksheet. It was supposed to be covered with fractions. Instead, there was one unfinished equation at the top of the page. The rest of the page held a map of the town Parvana would build if she ever got the chance, full of streams and bridges and hidden parks where a girl could get away by herself and not be bothered by anyone. She had forgotten that she was supposed to be doing arithmetic.

“Hanifa has done three worksheets. Sharifa has done four. And they have never been to school before.”

Mother’s voice had found its nag again after being silenced by the Taliban.

“You, who have been to school and had a teacher for a father, can’t be trusted to complete a simple sheet of fractions. Stay in at recess. If you put your mind to it, you could have all those questions answered before the bell rings.”

Hanifa and Sharifa smiled smugly and left the dining hall with Mother. They were two of the other teenaged girls in the school, and all they did all day — besides their schoolwork — was look at Parvana and smirk.

Parvana sat alone in the dining hall. The sound of children playing came in through the windows.

She slumped in her chair and banged the pen on the table. Then she threw the pen across the room.

Mother had no right to talk to her like that, especially not in front of the other students! She had worked so hard, helping to build the school. How was she to know that actually going to school would be so difficult?

Parts of school were easy. Reading books from the library shelves? Easy. Already her English had improved hugely, just from reading all the English books that had been donated. She loved the first-aid lessons, because she could clearly see a use for everything she was being taught. She liked knowing where everything was in the school and how to get things done. She loved it when students came and asked her questions, and she knew how to answer them.

But she hated being an ordinary student.

And she hated sitting still.

How could she be expected to sit at a table for hours, staring down at a bunch of numbers? She was used to
doing
things. She was used to working and scrounging, dodging and surviving.

Not sitting and staring.

Parvana looked down at her messed-up math assignment. Multiplying fractions. Why would anybody do such a thing? She couldn’t understand it and she was tired of trying. Mother had explained it. Nooria had explained it. Even the other teachers had explained it. She still could not understand how to multiply one-third by one-fifth, or why anybody would ever want to.

She could not stay in that room any longer. She couldn’t stand the thought of spending two more hours sitting with the Smirking Girls. Everything was closing in on her.

She had to get out.

So, she left.

She walked right out of the dining hall, past Mrs. Weera’s face on the Wall of Achievement, out of the school and through the gate, not stopping when Mr. Fahir called after her.

Parvana walked hard, needing to move her muscles and feel her heart pound. She walked without looking around, muttering under her breath about useless fractions and her mother’s unfairness.

She walked down a gravel road with fields on each side. Some of the fields were planted with opium poppies, which turned the valley green and pink when the flowers were in bloom. Rocky hills surrounded the area like the sides of a bowl.

Parvana stomped her way down the road to the village. By the time she reached the first of the shops and houses, her anger had been stomped out.

People had set up camp on the edge of the village. Some had tents. Most just had tarps stretched across boards or bags full of straw or sand. A few goats rooted through the garbage. Children in grubby clothes sat in the dirt or kicked around an old tin can.

It was a smaller version of the camp for internal refugees where Parvana had finally found her family. The remnants of that camp were not far away, but Parvana had no desire to go back there. Living that way was very hard.

After the tents came the mud houses — low square buildings made from mud bricks. Dung patties had been pressed by hand against the walls to dry in the sun. They would be used as fuel to cook meals and heat the houses. Some of the huts had little shops operating out of a window — glass cases with gum, candies, crackers and soap.

Parvana passed a baker and smelled the nan fresh from the oven. She passed a butcher, with a skinned headless goat carcass hanging on a hook and a row of goat heads on a tray in front. Next came the fruit merchants, with oranges, onions and tomatoes piled up in pyramids. Bowls of spices and stacks of nuts were sold in the stalls around the fruit next to shops of hardware and household goods.

Parvana had grown up in Kabul and spent a lot of time working in the market there. This village had a smaller, quieter version.

Maybe I could find a job here, she thought. I know enough arithmetic to count the money I earn and to figure out how much things cost. I don’t need stupid fractions for that.

It would be nice to have money in her pocket again. Since the school project started, Mother handled all the money the family had, which wasn’t much.

Once, Parvana asked her for some. She felt like wandering into the village to buy some dried apricots or something for a little treat.

“You don’t need any money,” her mother had stated. “Everything is provided for you. Besides, you’re not going out in the market. You’ve done far too much running around the past few years. It will do you good to start settling down.”

That’s what I wanted, Parvana thought, as she walked by a peddler with a cart full of plastic sandals. All she had wanted, all those years, was a normal life. She wanted to sit in a school room, in clean clothes, and have her family with her.

And now that she had all that, all she could do was complain.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked out loud.

Parvana walked clear through the village and out the other side. Once more she was in barren hills, scrub grass and big sky. She knew how easy it was to get lost in the Afghan countryside, that all the hills could very quickly start to look alike.

She climbed up the nearest hill and stopped at the top. After checking to make sure there were no scorpions or camel spiders, she sat down and leaned her back against a big rock. From here she could see the whole village and, beyond it, her new school.

Her legs ached and felt good. They did exercises every day at school, but all the push-ups and jumping jacks could not make up for her need to wander, to move through the world and see it go by.

What’s wrong with me? she asked herself again.

War planes zoomed up from a valley behind her and screamed across the sky. Parvana didn’t even blink. They were as common as crows. So was the sight of smoke from an explosion rising in the distance.

Someone was tasting dirt, having their eardrums explode and seeing their world torn apart.

“But not me,” she said out loud. “Not today. I’ve had my share. It’s someone else’s turn.”

The ground beneath her was hard but comfortable. She knew how to sleep outside. Back at the school she shared a toshak with her sisters at night. She was always squished in the middle — between Nooria, who figured she had the right to the most space, and Maryam, who never stopped squirming, not even when she was sleeping. Many nights, Parvana just gave up and slept on the floor.

They wouldn’t miss me, she thought.

Building the school had been fun. She’d had a project, a purpose. But actually going to school? No, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life sitting across from those two awful girls, staring down at the same page of fractions.

“I’ll hire myself out as a school builder,” she said to the sky. “I’ll walk around the country. Whenever I come to a village without a school, I’ll go to the elders and offer to design it. They’ll find me a kind old widow to stay with. I’ll fetch water for her and help her out in the mornings and read to her in the evenings. During the day I’ll draw up plans for the school and tell the men in the village what to do. ‘Put the window in so it faces the garden!’ I’ll say. ‘Make the playground bigger. And build more shelves for that library.’”

She could see it all. The flat roof for playing, with a ledge tall enough that children couldn’t fall off, where they could fly kites during the spring festival and sleep out under the stars on hot nights. The giant vegetable garden with chicken coops at one end and a big tree to read under at the other. Any student who wanted could have a little piece of garden to grow flowers.

“And they could sell the flowers in the market. Make a bit of money.”

Parvana always felt more powerful with a bit of money in her pocket.

At the school’s opening-day ceremony, the government man would make another long speech. This time, though, his speech would be all about Parvana, about her skills and talents, and how she was able to accomplish so very much without even knowing how to multiply fractions.

Everyone would applaud and look for Parvana so they could give her a plaque, but she wouldn’t be there. She would have slipped away, and would be walking alone down the road, off to the next village, to build the next school.

“Or maybe I’ll just cut my hair again,” she said. “Asif has an extra shalwar kameez that would fit me. I’ll take it from his room when he’s at supper. Mother has scissors in her desk. I’ll turn myself back into a boy, then go out into the world and get any job I can. I’ll save my money and …”

She had nowhere to go with that thought. When she was dressed as a boy, when she was younger, there was a point to earning money. She had a family to feed and a father to get out of prison.

Now what would she save for? She had a feeling that this time, simply surviving would not be satisfying. She needed a bigger dream.

What she really wanted was to build things — things people could live in that would make them feel safe and happy and …

Part of her brain was on the verge of admitting that to do that, she would probably need to know how to multiply fractions. And a whole lot of other things.

She pushed that thought aside.

“I’ll do what Shauzia did,” she decided. “I’ll earn money as a boy and then I’ll go to France. I’ll start building things there, and when we meet up at the top of the Eiffel Tower in …” — she paused to count — “sixteen years, I’ll be a successful architect.”

That dream was enough to make her stand up, brush the dust from her clothes and head down the hill. She held that image in her head as she headed back through the market.

All she needed to do was make a quick stop back at the school to pick up her father’s shoulder bag. It was all she had left of him, and it contained all the letters she had written to Shauzia — a record of her life over the past few years. There was no way she was leaving that behind for Nooria to paw over and laugh at.

She headed down the hill and back through the village. She was deep into a daydream where she was pointing out all the design flaws in the Eiffel Tower when a man stepped in front of her and started to yell.

“Cover your head!”

Parvana stopped. “What?”

She pulled her brain out of Paris and back into Afghanistan.

“Cover your head!”

Parvana had let her chador fall into a shawl around her shoulders. She liked the feeling of air around her head and ears.

“The law says I don’t have to,” she said.

“The foreigners say you don’t have to. We say you do!” His shouts drew the attention of other men.

“She’s from that school,” another man said. “All those women together. Up to no good.”

“You can’t just walk through our village like that,” a third man yelled. “Cover up and get out.”

In a matter of moments, Parvana was surrounded by men. Shouting, cursing, angry men.

“She’s come from seeing her boyfriend,” one of them said. “Brings her dishonor right into our village.”

Parvana tried to move through them. They closed ranks. The circle of men was three, then four deep. All she could see when she looked down were sandals on big dusty feet. All she could see when she looked up were angry mouths and eyes.

Someone thumped her in the back. More thumps landed on her shoulders and arms.

They weren’t full on hitting her yet, but they were certainly warming up to it.

She started to realize that she needed to be afraid.

But before she became afraid, she decided to get angry.

She took a deep breath, got herself ready, then yelled out, as loud as she could, “Get out of my way!”

In the moment of shock that followed, Parvana saw a gap in the mob and pushed through it. Then she ran.

They ran after her.

Maybe if she had walked, they would have been shamed into leaving her alone. But she had too much adrenaline rushing through her body to be able to walk away with dignity. And that adrenaline pushed her through the village. She ran like the gazelles that used to dash across Afghanistan’s plains.

She ran through the market, past the goat heads and past the tents of the refugee camp. She ran out along the open dirt road toward the school.

The men chased after her.

But she outran them. They were angry but so was she, and she was young and used to moving fast.

The men threw rocks. Some of them hit her back and bounced off into the dirt. Parvana just laughed.

She turned around to show them she was laughing at them.

“You are all living in the past!” she called out, almost at the school, waving her chador in her hand and feeling her hair tangle and toss in the wind. “I am the future! And I am leaving you far behind!”

She laughed again as the men’s stones failed to hit her. Then she ran the rest of the way home.

She ran right into her mother, who had been watching the spectacle from outside the gate.

“Get inside.”

Parvana waited until they were behind the school walls before saying to her mother, “I’m not a child.”

“That’s exactly what you are,” Mother said. “You have just proved it.”