Mud City (2 page)

“There was an eerie silence in the hills. All I
could hear was the sound of the shepherds snoring. Then, suddenly, a wolf
howled!”

Shauzia howled like a wolf. Some of the children gasped and some of them
laughed, and the women in the embroidery group nearby stopped chatting for a moment.

“That was followed by another howl, and then another howl! There was
a whole pack of wolves in the forest, wanting to gobble up my sheep.

“I stood up and saw the wolves begin to creep out from the shelter
of the trees. They wanted to eat the sheep, but first they had to deal with me. I
counted four, then five, then six – seven giant wolves coming toward me, tense on
their haunches, ready to spring.

“I bent down and grabbed two burning sticks from the fire. I held
them up just as the wolves jumped at me. They were hungry and strong, but I was angry
that they had disturbed my quiet night, so I was more than a match for them. I kicked at
them and waved the burning sticks until they were so tired out that they collapsed at my
feet and fell asleep. In the morning, they were so embarrassed, they simply slunk away
back into the forest, grateful that I didn’t laugh at them.”

“Hello, children!” Mrs. Weera swept into
the compound like a strong wind. “Every time you tell that story, you add another
wolf,” she said, whooshing past her into the hut.

Shauzia jumped to her feet and followed her inside.

“Mrs. Weera, I need to talk to you.”

“Another one of our secret girls’ schools has been discovered
by the Taliban,” Mrs. Weera was saying to her assistant. “We must see what
we can – ”

“Mrs. Weera!”

But Mrs. Weera ignored Shauzia.

Shauzia felt Jasper’s solid dog-body beside her, and it gave her
strength.

“Mrs. Weera, I want to be paid!” she shouted.

That got Mrs. Weera’s attention. “You want to be paid? For
telling stories? Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“Not for telling stories.”

Mrs. Weera was already striding away on those strong, phys-ed teacher legs
of hers.

“Mrs. Weera!” Shauzia shouted. “I need to be
paid!”

Mrs. Weera came back. “Which is it? Want or need? I’m sure we
all want to be paid, but do
we need to be? And are you not already
being paid? Did you not eat today? Will you not sleep under a roof tonight?”

I will not back down this time, Shauzia vowed to herself. “I told
you my plans when I first came here. I told you I’d need to earn some money, but
you’ve kept me so busy with your little jobs, I haven’t had time to look for
real work.”

“I would have thought bringing comfort to your fellow Afghans in a
refugee camp could be considered enough real work for a lifetime.”

“A lifetime!” Shauzia exclaimed in horror. “You expect
me to do this for a lifetime? I didn’t leave Afghanistan just to live in
mud!” She flung her arms at the mud walls surrounding the Widows’ Compound,
knowing that on the other side of them in the regular part of the refugee camp were more
mud walls. Maybe the whole world was mud walls now, and she’d never get away from
them.

Mrs. Weera gave Shauzia a hard look. “This isn’t that France
nonsense again, is it?”

“It’s not nonsense.”

“She thinks she’ll just go to the sea, hop on a ship, sail to
France and be welcomed there
with open arms,” Mrs. Weera
announced to the growing crowd that had gathered to see what the excitement was. As
others laughed, Shauzia realized that was what she hated the most about living in a
refugee camp. She couldn’t even have an argument in private.

“She wants to spend her life sitting in a cornfield!” Mrs.
Weera continued.

It’s a lavender field, Shauzia thought, but she didn’t bother
saying anything. And I don’t want to spend my life there. I just want to stay
there long enough to get the sound of your voice out of my head.

“Why won’t you go into the nurses’ training program like
I arranged for you? In a few years, you might be able to work as a nursing assistant and
earn money that way. The sea isn’t going anywhere. Neither, as far as I know, is
France.”

“A few years? I can’t spend a few years here! I’ll go
crazy! I’ll be like her!” Shauzia pointed at the crazy woman. A woman with
no name, she had been found rocking and moaning on the streets of Peshawar. Aid workers
had brought her to the Widows’ Compound. She still rocked and moaned but, as Mrs.
Weera
said, “At least she’s safe here from the beatings
the street boys gave her.”

“Shut up!” Shauzia yelled at the woman, unable to stand the
noise any longer. The woman ignored her.

“Use some respect in your voice when you speak,” Mrs. Weera
said sternly. “Why can’t you be more like your friend Parvana? She always
spoke most respectfully.”

Parvana didn’t like you any more than I do, Shauzia thought, but
again, she kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Weera, she’d discovered, had the talent of
hearing only what she wanted to hear.

“If you can’t pay me for the work I do here, I’ll have
to leave and find work that will pay me money.”

Mrs. Weera’s voice softened. “You don’t know what
it’s like out there. You’ve always been taken care of. You won’t be
able to manage on your own.”

“What do you mean, I’ve always been taken care of? I’ve
always taken care of myself! My family certainly didn’t take care of me.” An
unwanted image came into Shauzia’s mind, of coming home after a day of working in
the streets of Kabul to a dark, crowded little room,
to people
saying, “How much money did you make?” instead of “How are
you?”

“Your family, flawed though they were, also waited for you to come
home every evening. You earned money to buy them food, but they cooked the food for you
and provided you with a place to be each night. When you lived in the mountains, the
shepherds watched out for you, and now all of us in the Widows’ Compound watch out
for you.”

“Watch out for me? You don’t even get me proper sandals like
you promised. All you do is boss me around. Why don’t you go back to Afghanistan
and boss the Taliban around instead of me?”

“Shauzia, stop this. You are far too old to be acting like a
child.”

“Then stop treating me like a child! Stop treating me as though I
were one of them!” Shauzia gestured toward the group of small children who were
following the argument with open-mouthed delight. She suspected they found it even more
entertaining than her wolf story.

Mrs. Weera took a deep, slow breath. “You want me to treat you like
an adult?” she said
calmly. “All right, I will. As an
adult, make your choice. If you decide to stay here, you stay without complaint. You
will contribute your time and talents to the best of your ability, without expecting
money, because you’ll understand that there isn’t any. If you decide that
life here is not for you, you know where the main gate of the camp is. We have enough
problems helping those who want our help. Take a few days to think about it, then give
me your decision.”

Shauzia was stunned into silence. She stared hard at Mrs. Weera, and Mrs.
Weera stared hard right back at her.

“I don’t need a few days to think about it,” Shauzia
said coldly, hoping she sounded braver than she felt. “I’m leaving tomorrow,
and I’m going to find a great job and become rich, and go to France, and never
come back here again!”

“Very well,” Mrs. Weera said quietly. “We’ll have
a farewell party for you tonight.”

With that, she walked away.

There was no escaping the sound of Mrs. Weera’s snoring, and by
now Shauzia knew better than to try. She used to put a pillow over her ears, or toss and
turn and make loud sighing noises, hoping to wake Mrs. Weera, but nothing worked. Mrs.
Weera slept the way she did everything – full out – and she didn’t
waste time worrying about whether she was bothering anyone else.

Shauzia sometimes went to another hut to sleep, but Mrs. Weera’s hut
gave her something no other place did – a little bit of privacy. Shauzia slept on
a toshak spread out under the table. A blanket hung over the side of the table created a
tiny, private space.

“It doesn’t keep the snoring out,” she said to Jasper,
who usually slept with her. “But it does make me feel like there is some place in
the world that is mine.”

Shauzia lay awake in her little room late on
the night
after Mrs. Weera left her in the courtyard. The rest of the day had gone from bad to
worse.

At Shauzia’s goodbye party that evening, everyone in the compound
ate together around the cook fire in the courtyard. Mrs. Weera made a speech about how
much she had appreciated all of Shauzia’s hard work.

“I know Shauzia will be successful in reaching her goal of getting
to the sea, and of building a fine new life for herself in France.” She went on to
talk about how beautiful she had heard France was, and how she was sure Shauzia would
have a marvelous time wandering through the cornfields.

All the time she spoke, Shauzia’s fists were tightly clenched in
anger.

After Mrs. Weera had finished talking, the other women also said nice
things about Shauzia. How helpful she was, how clever, how they knew she had a brilliant
future ahead of her.

And then the children piped up.

“Don’t go, Shauzia!” they cried, the little ones sobbing
and crowding in on her. “Stay and tell us stories!”

Shauzia was furious. She knew Mrs. Weera had staged
this party to make her want to stay in the refugee camp.

Then Mrs. Weera said, “I have good news, Shauzia. I’ve
arranged a job for you in Peshawar. You will be a housemaid in a women’s
needlework project and daycare center. You can live at the center, and the job will pay
enough that you’ll have a bit of money to save even after you pay for your rent
and food. Isn’t that wonderful? Plus, I’ll be able to come and visit you
every week when I meet with the project. I’ll take you there tomorrow and help you
get settled.”

The other women applauded and talked about how lucky Shauzia was, but
Shauzia was seething.

She was still seething as she lay on her mat, with Mrs. Weera’s
snores all around her.

“She thinks she can control everything,” she whispered to
Jasper. “She thinks she can control me.”

She remembered her first day at the Widows’ Compound. She had been
wandering around the camp after being dropped off there by the shepherds, and was
directed to the compound by an aid worker.

As soon as she walked through the door in the compound
wall and saw Mrs. Weera, she wanted to back out, but it was too late.

“I know you!” Mrs. Weera exclaimed in her loud, booming voice.
Everyone in the compound stopped what they were doing and stared at Shauzia.
“You’re Parvana’s little friend.”

Mrs. Weera had been a physical education teacher and field hockey coach
before the Taliban closed all the schools for girls and made the female teachers leave
their jobs. She had lived with Parvana’s family in Kabul for awhile. Shauzia
remembered how bossy she had been then, and wasn’t surprised that she was still
bossy.

In a few strides, Mrs. Weera’s long legs crossed the courtyard. She
stood in front of Shauzia. Shauzia could imagine what the older woman saw – a
skinny girl whose face carried on it months of living out in the sun and the wind,
clothes filthy and tattered, but with her back straight and her head up high.

“You stink of sheep,” Mrs. Weera said, “but we can fix
that. And I see you still look like a boy. We can fix that, too.” She hollered out
an order for hot water and girls’ clothes.

“I’d rather keep looking like a
boy,” Shauzia said. “If I look like a girl, I can’t do
anything.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Weera said. It was a word Shauzia was to hear
her use many times. “The Taliban are not in charge here. I am. Oh, you have a dog,
too.” She bent down and peered intently at Jasper, who wisely took two steps back.
“A most adequate dog,” was her verdict.

She turned away, and Shauzia allowed herself a small smile of relief. Mrs.
Weera obviously didn’t remember how angry she had been with her the last time they
had met in Kabul.

The smile came too soon.

“You left Kabul without a thought to how your family would survive
without you.”

“They didn’t like me!” Shauzia yelled. “They were
always shooting, and they were going to marry me off to some old man I didn’t even
know, just to get some money. I meant nothing to them!”

“You don’t abandon your team just because the game isn’t
going your way,” Mrs. Weera replied. “Now then, before you get settled, I
have a little job for you.”

Shauzia had been doing Mrs. Weera’s little jobs
ever since.

“No more,” she told Jasper. “And I won’t be a
housemaid for her, either. I don’t need a house to sleep in. I slept outside with
the shepherds. I can sleep outside in the city. Then all the money I make can go toward
getting to the sea.”

She reached under her pillow, where she kept her most valuable possession
– a magazine photo of a lavender field in France. She couldn’t see the
picture in the darkness, but she felt better with it in her hand.

That was where she needed to be, in a field of purple flowers, where no
one could bother her. She would sit there until the confusion left her head and the
stink of the camp left her nostrils. When she had had enough of that, she would go to
Paris and sit at the top of the Eiffel Tower until her friend Parvana joined her there,
the way they had promised each other. They would spend the rest of their days drinking
tea and eating oranges and making fun of Mrs. Weera.

She pushed herself up on her elbows. “Let’s leave
tonight,” she said to Jasper. He thumped
his tail, and that
was all the encouragement she needed.

She got up and groped around in the corner until she found the bundle of
her old boy clothes. She changed into them. Then she grabbed a fistful of hair and,
using the scissors from the table top, cut and cut until the hair on her head felt short
again. She put on her cap, tossed the blanket shawl around her neck and picked up her
shoulder bag. She didn’t have any other belongings.