My Name Is Parvana (9 page)

SEVENTEEN

A
strange noise pulled Parvana from her sleep.

At first she thought some kind of animal had come into the room and was whimpering because it couldn’t find its way out.

As she grew more awake, she thought it might be Ava, scared from a bad dream. But Ava and Maryam were both sound asleep beside her on the toshak.

Then she realized the noise was coming from her mother.

Parvana wriggled out from beneath the quilt, careful not to disturb the younger ones, and knelt in front of her mother.

Mother was sitting in a corner looking at a photograph of Parvana’s father. The photo had been ripped apart by the Taliban and its pieces scattered in the wind. Parvana had found most of them on her journeys around Kabul. A few pieces were missing, but there were enough left to see that it was her father’s face. Even in the scant light of the candle flame, Parvana could see the strength and kindness in her father’s eyes.

“I’m afraid, Nasrullah,” her mother whispered at the photo. “What have I taken on? I’m afraid …”

Mother talking to photographs was not a good sign.

It used to worry Parvana when it happened in Kabul.

Now it just annoyed her.

She picked up the photo. “I miss him, too, Mama.”

“How did he die, Parvana? You were with him. The last time I saw him, he was alive.”

“The last time you saw him, he was being arrested.” She wanted to say, “And you left him in prison so that your precious Nooria would have a better life.” But she didn’t say that because 1) for a long time, Nooria did not have a better life and 2) because she wanted to get a few more hours of sleep. She knew from experience that arguments with her mother could last for a long time and lead absolutely nowhere.

She put the photo back on the shelf.

“Can’t you sleep?” she asked her mother. “Do you want me to make you some chamomile tea?”

Chamomile was one of the herbs they grew in the school garden. It made a very soothing tea.

“I don’t like your tone,” Mother said.

“Everything is fine,” Parvana said. “Our numbers are down, but we’re keeping the school open. The students we still have are learning and doing really well.”

“It was wrong to let you be a teacher. Now you think you know everything.”

Parvana actually had to put her tongue between her teeth and clamp down hard. Otherwise, she would have said, “You didn’t let me be a teacher, you needed me to be a teacher. And I’m a much better teacher than Nooria ever dreamed of being.”

She had to bite hard until she was sure the words would stay unsaid.

For a long time, Mother didn’t speak. Parvana got tired of sitting in silence and moved to head back to the warmth of her bed.

Then Mother said quietly, “Our students are being harassed in their homes. Their parents are harassed for sending their daughters to us. We’re losing students. If our numbers keep going down, the charities that fund us will stop giving us money. We’ll have to close the school and we will be back to living in some filthy camp.”

Parvana suddenly felt full-body tired, weighed down by her mother’s despair.

Then she had an idea.

“The people who hate us can’t see through the walls,” she said.

Her mother sighed. “Just go back to bed.”

“They can’t see us, so they think that what we’re doing here is bad,” Parvana said with growing excitement. “Maybe we should have a sort of school festival. Invite the whole village. Students could prepare the food. Different classes could recite poetry or multiplication tables. Students could give speeches on Afghan history or geography. It could be fun!”

“And, Mama, I could sing!” chirped Maryam from the toshak.

Mother just sighed again. “I wish Nooria was here,” she said. “She would know what to do.”

Parvana had heard enough. She got up off the floor and left the room. She didn’t care that it was still night and she would be cold. Her anger would keep her warm.

Mother was never going to see her as a person with important things to say. Why did she even care anymore?

She stomped around the yard, hitting walls with her fists and kicking at stones. Then she rounded a corner at the back of the school and stopped in her tracks.

There were men carrying boxes into the storage shed. They wore traditional clothes and had the black turbans of the Taliban on their heads and rifles slung over their shoulders. Mr. Fahir was with them.

“Please don’t do this,” Mr. Fahir said. “We are a school!”

One of the rifle-carrying men shoved Mr. Fahir out of the way.

Parvana dropped back behind the building, her brain and her heart rushing a mile a minute.

Should she run and tell her mother? Should she try to find some kind of weapon? She had a ridiculous vision of grabbing the thick collection of poetry and bashing the men over the head with it.

Think, she told herself.

She peered around the corner again.

The men were gone.

The shed door was closed.

Moving as quietly as she could, she inched her way over to the shed. She touched the padlock that was back on the door.

She heard the front gate close and a truck engine start up. Sticking to the shadows, she got to the guardhouse just in time to hear one of the men snarl at Mr. Fahir, “You say one word about this to anyone, your whole family dies.”

The truck sped off.

Parvana waited a moment, then raised her hand to knock on the guardhouse door.

Then she heard a sound and dropped her hand. She moved in close to be sure.

Mr. Fahir was crying.

She backed away and returned to her bed. She didn’t know what else to do.

The next morning, Mother announced at the staff meeting that the school was going to have a festival and invite everyone from the village. Parvana didn’t even think about being bitter for not getting credit for the idea. She had much more serious things on her mind. She threw herself into the preparations and stayed away from the storage shed.

Whatever was in there, she didn’t want to know.

EIGHTEEN

T
he festival was just a week away.

“I know it’s not much time,” Mother said when she announced the plans to the rest of the school during morning assembly, “but you are all well prepared already. Your teachers tell me you are working hard in your studies, and this will give you a chance to show off your talents and knowledge to the whole community.”

The girls were enthusiastic. Many of them had tried to explain to their parents what they did all day, but if their parents had never gone to school, it was hard for them to understand.

Now they could show them.

First, villagers would arrive and be formally welcomed by Mother. Then they would visit the classrooms and sit in on a lesson.

Parvana decided her class would do an arithmetic lesson. She had been teaching them about earning and spending money.

She gave them problems to solve: If you have twelve Afghanis, and oranges cost three Afghanis each, how many oranges can you buy? And, if each orange has twelve sections and there are fifteen people in your house, how many sections will each person get?

Or: If it takes twelve spools of thread to embroider a shawl, and each spool costs twenty Afghanis, how much should you charge for the completed shawl to be sure you are making money?

After sitting in the classrooms for a short while, the villagers would be invited to the dining hall for tea and sweets prepared by the students. There they would be entertained by student presentations.

All classes were going to begin by reciting passages from the Holy Qur’an. The little ones were going to sing a song about the animals of Afghanistan. Parvana’s class would talk about Afghan geography. The older girls would give speeches about ancient Afghan history. Girls who were keen on singing were going to perform a few Afghan folk songs.

They cleaned the school from top to bottom and decorated it with drawings of flowers, the Afghan flag and traditional Islamic patterns.

The students hand-lettered posters and flyers. Parvana, Asif and Maryam went to the village one day to hand them around. Whenever they could, they taped the festival notices over the threatening notices that were still stuck to the walls.

“Come to our festival,” they said to the shopkeepers and to people in the market. “It’s free. Come and share the morning with us!”

Asif concentrated on the men. Parvana could see him talking with the butcher, standing close to the headless, upside-down goat. He pointed at the flyer and then up the road to the school. The butcher shook his head and tried to turn away, but Asif wouldn’t let him go. He kept talking to the man calmly, until Parvana saw the butcher raise his hands in surrender and say, yes, he would be there.

Parvana smiled and went on with her work.

“Stay with me,” she ordered Maryam. Her little sister rarely went to the village, and she kept wandering off.

“I want to explore.”

“We’re not here to explore. We’re here to work.”

“I never get to come here,” Maryam said.

“You’re too young.” But as she said those words, Parvana realized that Maryam was almost the age she had been when she first cut off her hair and went to work in the marketplace in Kabul.

“I’ll bring you back here after the festival,” she promised.

“Mama won’t let you. She’ll be too afraid.”

“She won’t be afraid when the festival is over,” Parvana said. “People will be so impressed they’ll throw flowers in the street for us to walk on.”

They put up a few more posters.

Parvana noticed a girl a little younger than herself. She carried a baby in her arms.

“Would you like to come to our festival?” Parvana asked her, holding out the flyer. “It’s at the school outside of town.” She pointed the way. “Not a far walk. You can bring the baby. There will be food and lots of things to see.”

She held out the flyer, but the girl just looked at her, shaking her head slightly and even backing away a step.

“You are absolutely welcome,” Parvana said, thinking the girl might be ashamed of the shabbiness of her clothes. “Come just as you are. I promise you’ll be safe and comfortable.”

The girl’s eyes shifted to the side and she shook her head no again.

At that moment, a man who had been buying fruit at a nearby stall turned around and stood by the girl. He was very tall, very old, and he had an angry look on his face.

He glared down at Parvana and growled, “Get away from her.”

Parvana shrank back.

He turned and walked away. The girl with the baby hunched herself over and quickly followed him.

Parvana watched them go, wishing she could snatch the girl away from the old man and stick her in a classroom.

Maryam had disappeared again. Parvana found her at a music stall looking at a girl singing on a small television screen.

“Maryam, let’s go.”

“It’s a singing competition,” Maryam said. “Singers from all over Afghanistan get to sing on TV, and people vote on who they like the best. The winner gets a big prize. Oh, Parvana, couldn’t I enter? I could win all the money we need!”

“Mother won’t let you go to the market by yourself. You think she’ll let you go on television?”

She pulled her little sister away from the TV. They met up with Asif and walked back to the school.

Festival day arrived, clear and bright. Parvana was thrilled to see how many people came through the door. Students led their parents in by the hand. Women in burqas walked through the gate on their own and flung their burqas back from their faces once they were in the courtyard. They held onto the flyer as if it was a ticket, in case anyone challenged their right to be there. Even the butcher showed up. Parvana watched Asif welcome him in.

Ava, all dressed up in her school uniform, took the hands of women as they came through the gate and led them to a seat.

Everything went according to plan. The students did what they were supposed to in the classrooms, the guests enjoyed the tea and sweets, and the concert started as scheduled.

And then Maryam took the stage.

She was supposed to sing a traditional folk song.

She was dressed in a tribal dress. Her hair was brushed and looked even longer and thicker than Nooria’s.

Why am I the one who got stuck with a head full of string, Parvana thought, as she watched her sister cross to the middle of the open space they were using for a stage.

Maryam took up her position. Then she started to sing.

It took a long moment for Parvana’s brain to believe what her ears were hearing.

Maryam was not singing the folk song.

She was singing some pop song she had heard on the radio.

And in English.

It was a love song with a catchy beat, and while she was singing she started to dance.

The dance was simple. Most of it was waving her arms, bouncing her head and jigging her feet in time to the song.

She’s pretty good, Parvana thought, listening to her sister’s clear, strong voice and seeing the joy on her sister’s face. Maybe we
should
put her on television.

She looked at the audience.

The other students were smiling.

Ava, off to the side, had a big grin on her face as she mimicked Maryam’s movements.

“Shameful!” a man yelled from the audience. “Shameful!”

The parents sitting around him tried to get him to be quiet. Maryam looked startled for a second, but she kept on performing. The more the man yelled, the louder Maryam sang.

When she finished, the applause from much of the audience was uncertain.

They’re not used to enjoying themselves, Parvana thought.

Maryam ran off the stage. Parvana’s class was next, and she moved her students quickly into place.

“Afghanistan is a nation that borders Pakistan to the east and Iran to the west. It is made up of many provinces,” the first girl said, loud and clear. “Here are the names of the provinces.”

The other girls joined in this part, each one saying a province’s name in a loud, confident voice. They moved easily from the names of the provinces to the names and length of the rivers, the highest mountains and the major crops. The whole thing was done with speed and joy, and the applause at the end was good.

Parvana’s fear eased off, and then the concert came to an end and she was too busy to think about it.

Lunch was served. Mother moved through the crowd answering questions and saying nice things to parents about their children.

Finally, the guests headed out, many carrying little bundles of leftover sweets. Mother closed the gate and leaned against it, sighing with relief.

“I had five people tell me they would send their daughters next week,” Mother said. “I think we’ll get even more new students than that.”

“And Maryam’s dance?”

“I’ll speak to her. She should not have done it, but your geography class saved it, I think. Well done.”

Mother’s brief words of praise were so rare that Parvana was shocked into stillness as her mother hurried off to start the clean-up.

Take that, Nooria, she said in her head.

She wandered through the rows of chairs, picking up a fallen napkin, a stray flyer. She was so much in her head, dreaming up other ways she could earn her mother’s praise, that she almost walked right by the little girl who was sitting quietly by herself in the third row.

She was not wearing a uniform, so she wasn’t a student. Her clothes were shabby but clean, and her hair was brushed and in a neat braid down the middle of her back. Her chador hung across her shoulders like a scarf.

“Waiting for someone?” Parvana asked her.

“Yes.”

Parvana looked around. The yard was empty.

“Who are you waiting for? I think everyone has gone.”

“The person I’m waiting for hasn’t left.”

The girl was tiny, but her voice was big, like the voice of a bird that knew it had the right to sing.

“Oh. Well, come with me and we’ll look for whoever brought you. They may be wandering around the classrooms. Do you want to come to school here?”

“I am coming to school here.”

I’d like her in my class, Parvana thought.

“Come on, then.”

She held out her hand.

The girl did not take it.

Parvana noticed that the girl’s eyes were focused up and away. She waved her hand a bit. The eyes didn’t react.

“Who are you waiting for?” Parvana asked her. “Your parents?”

“Oh, no. They’re dead.”

“Who brought you?”

“My uncle. But he’s gone.”

“He left you?”

“I’m waiting for a teacher. Could you get one for me? Tell them Badria is here.”

“You’re Badria?”

“I sure am.”

Parvana decided to take a guess.

“Badria, can you see?”

“Not a thing. Are you a teacher?” Badria asked.

“I am.”

“Well, then,” Badria said, “don’t just stand there. If you’re a teacher, get busy. Teach me to read.”

Parvana sat down in the chair beside Badria.

She had no idea how to explain this to Mother.