One Half from the East (5 page)

I
think about him all weekend. I dread going back to school because I know what awaits me there. Inside the classroom things are bad, and outside the classroom things are even worse. I can't talk to my mother about anything. Just a few days ago, I overheard her telling one of my aunts that she wasn't sure if she'd done the right thing by making me a
bacha posh
. And the last time I tried to talk to her about being a
bacha posh
, she got so anxious that she didn't even seem to be making sense.

My sisters can't help me. Things have totally changed at home. My parents act as if they have no idea that I'm a girl. My mother's been sliding the biggest chunks of meat my way, and sometimes there's none left for my sisters. Alia
whines and pouts, but Neela just shakes her head. I haven't washed any dishes or swept the floor in almost a month. The chores I used to do have been divided up among my sisters. This
bacha posh
thing has put a big wall between us.

Alia and Meena are in our bedroom. Meena is braiding Alia's hair as they sing.

“Meena, do you want to watch a movie?” There is electricity today, and it's been so long since we used our precious DVD player. When we were in Kabul, my sisters and I would borrow DVDs from anyone who had them and watch anything we could get our hands on. “You remember, Meena, the one where the father dresses up like an old woman so he can play with his kids.”

“That movie was ridiculous,” she says. She shoots me a skeptical look. “It made absolutely no sense. What man would ever dress up as a woman?”

Meena has a point but I don't want to admit it. Even if it's not at all a believable story, it made me laugh, especially when he was cooking and the stove set his fake breasts on fire.

“Oh, his voice was so funny. And his lady stockings!” Alia is giggling at the thought of it. Meena tugs at Alia's braid as if to rein her in.

“Fine, then what can we do? We've all finished our homework. Do you want to go sit in the courtyard? Maybe play jacks?”

“O-bayd,” she says, making her mouth a perfect circle to say the first syllable of my name. It's dramatic, which is not usually her thing but I guess things can change. “If you want to go and play outside, then you should do it.
You
can do it. We're staying inside because we have to help Madar and listen in case our father needs anything, and we might have to help Neela, too. Since you don't have to do any of that stuff, you should go out and play whatever you want.”

“Meena, what's wrong with you? I just asked if you wanted to do something.” Meena is testy, like she's mad about something but won't say what it is so it comes out in different shapes and colors. I don't think she's really mad about me going outside into the courtyard. Alia looks over at Meena. She noticed too.

“I want to go—”

“Well, you can't!” Meena snaps. She shuts Alia down like a lid slammed on a pot. Alia hunches forward, her brows knitted together in frustration. The younger you are in a home, the worse you have it. There are just that many more people who can tell you what you should or shouldn't do. I don't know how many times I've heard my grandmother say,
God have mercy on the youngest in the house.

“Meena, leave her alone!”

Meena glares at me.

“Stay out of it. We
sisters
are talking. Go and do your . . . your . . . your boy stuff!” Meena's seething as if this was something I chose.

Alia keeps her mouth shut. It's no fun being in the middle, either.

“Leave that meat for Obayd. Let Obayd go and play. Fold Obayd's clothes,”
she says, mimicking my mother. “As if we don't know that Obayd is not really OBAYD!”

“It's not my fault, Meena,” I whisper. It is an awful feeling to think your sister is starting to hate you. “It's not what I wanted. I'm not even good at it.”

I turn to leave the room. Just as I hit the hallway, I hear Meena call after me, but I don't go back even though she sounds like she's sorry for what she said.

The next morning, I'm back in class ready to be humiliated again, but my teacher does not call on me. She has a new victim, a boy not as timid as me but much worse at math. To act like you know the answer and then get it totally wrong is even worse, I think. It looks as though my teacher agrees.

I wish that could happen to the boy with the hat. I wish I could find a way to knock that smug look off his face. He knows what I am, but he did not scream it out to the others. Maybe he's telling the boys in whispers I don't hear. Maybe they'll all be staring at me when I get out there today. It won't take long for word to travel.

I hit the playground with the others. I think of what I might say if anyone asks me if I'm a girl. He's here. He sees me. No, he doesn't just see me. He's gloating over me, looking at me like I'm an algebra equation and he's already figured out the value of
x
. I want to scream.

“Hey, boy!” he yells out. He walks toward me. My hands ball up, not into fists, but into things I will use to cover my eyes if I start crying. With the way my sisters have been acting, I'm starting to feel really lonely.

“Why did you turn around?” he asks me.

“Didn't you call me?”

“You answer to
boy
? Are you a boy?” His tone is sarcastic, teasing, and there's no perfect reply to his question.

“What do you want? Why do you have such a problem with me?”

He laughs, big enough that I see his teeth and the pink of his mouth. I hate that I'm shorter. Even when I'm not on the ground, I'm always looking up at this boy. I lower my eyes to his knees.

“I'm not the one who has a problem with you,” he says snidely.

“You're not? Then who is?”

“You.
You're
the one that has a problem with you.”

“Stupid. What do you know?” My words sound ridiculously small, like I'm throwing pebbles at a mountain.

“Little boy,” he whispers. “I don't think any part of you is a boy.”

He gives me a quick shove. I'm not expecting it and fall back a step. He grunts.

“You see how easily you fall? You stand like you're not sure you should be here. Are you supposed to be here, Obayd?”

“You . . . you know my name.”

“Yes, I know your name.”

“How do you know my name?” I'm puzzled. He is older than me. Not enough that we can't play
ghursai
together, but enough that he shouldn't care to know my name or anything else about me. Other than being someone to knock over on the schoolyard, I should be invisible to him. But I'm not.

“And why are you staring at my feet? Look at
me
.” With a quick chuck under my chin, he flips my gaze upward. Our eyes meet.

His are bold, shiny. Mine are fluttering, frightened little things.

“You just sit there and let things happen to you. If we were playing soccer instead of
ghursai
, you would look more like the ball than a player.”

My face burns. I'm feeling exposed—like he can see my insides from where he stands.

I should walk away. But I can't because every word
from his mouth is true, and it's hard to walk away from someone who knows me so well. Part of me wants to know what he'll say next, as much as it might hurt.

“Don't you have anything to say? Where's your voice?” he mocks. “If you don't have anything to say, maybe you should run home and play with your sister's dolls.”

Was he talking about Alia?

“What do you know about my sister?” My head is spinning. My breaths are shallow and tight. I get the words out with a whole lot of effort. “Why do you think you know me?”

The boy grabs my shoulders with both of his hands. His fingers are so strong, I can feel them pressing into the ligaments that connect my arm to my body. I think he might throw me to the ground and walk away, but he doesn't. Instead, he brings his face to my ear and whispers a truth that will be mine and his.

“I
know
you because I
am
you.”

I
know
you because I
am
you.

I hadn't expected him to say that.

My mother watches me. When school started I dragged my feet. I wanted to go but wasn't sure what people would say to me. All that changed after that boy breathed that one heavy sentence into my ear.

I have to see him again.

My mother tries to decipher my new enthusiasm. She hasn't seen me this eager to go to school since we were in Kabul, but I was a girl then and our family was different.

My sisters and I leave the house together. It's chilly and I'm glad I have a boys' sweater on over my shirt. At the end of the main road, Neela turns left to go toward her
school. When we were in Kabul, my parents had started talking about her going to college. There's nothing after high school in this village, though, and Neela knows that. In the village, we take what we can get. Water, electricity, schooling—none of it's guaranteed.

I duck into my classroom. My teacher already seems to have lost interest in me. I'm just another student to her now. The boy next to me is sharpening his pencil.

We're instructed to recite our multiplication tables. I don't mind the math, so the morning goes by quickly.

Recess comes and I'm the first one out the door. The sun is bright and heat radiates from the earth. I look for him, but he's not in the yard. I scan from left to right, searching for figures of the right height, looking for a blue hat and reminding myself he might not be wearing it today. When my eyes fall on him, I feel my heart pause.

He . . . Should I call him he or she? He, I decide, because that's what he wants to be. He is walking with his three friends. I've seen them playing soccer, reading magazines, and kicking at each other as if they were kung fu masters. Having seen one or two American movies starring Bruce Lee, the gravity-defying actor, I am ready to tell them they look amateurish. Their kicks are askew, their arms choppy. I watch the boy in the blue hat. He manages to catch his friend's foot as it flies toward him. He laughs and pushes the foot to the right, sending his
friend spinning. I feel myself start to smile.

Not bad . . . for a girl
.

I watch his body. Even though he is about three years older than me, his body is not. I don't see knobs on his chest. I don't know what else to look for. If he hadn't told me, I never would have known. He moves as the rest of them move. I wonder how he's trained his body to do that. I feel meek and flimsy watching him.

I move closer to his friends. Are they girls too? I stare at them, trying to analyze the angles of their jaws, the shapes of their hands. I narrow in on their upper lips and eyebrows, hoping hair will separate reality from disguise. In the end, I'm not sure either way. If the boy with the blue cap managed to trick me, everyone is a question mark.

“Hey! Hey, you! What are you staring at?”

I'm startled when I realize one of the boys has noticed me. I run my fingers along the bark of a mulberry tree that shades the schoolyard and turn my eyes to the ground.

“Don't act like you didn't hear me!”

The blue hat boy turns around and realizes I'm the gawker his friend has caught. I raise my hand and shrug my shoulders in a messy gesture of admission and apology. I don't know if he understands, but the blue-hat boy's face goes serious. He says something to his friends and walks in my direction.

“What are you doing?” he says when he gets close
enough that I can hear him.

“I was hoping . . . I wanted to talk to you some more because . . . Did you mean what you said?”

He raises his eyebrows. He wants me to say it.

I take a deep breath in and exhale my question, careful to lower my voice even though there's no one within yards of us.

“Are you a
bacha posh
?”

“Of course I am,” he says with a funny smile. His voice is softer than it was the last time we spoke. Something heavy in the air between us disappears. I can't help but stare at his lips and his face. Just for a second, I can see him as a girl. I picture him with long hair and his face makes total sense. “But I'm not new to this like you are. You better get used to it quickly or you'll attract a lot of attention—and it won't be good attention.”

I bite my lip. I know he's right. Several kids look at me with curiosity. Others don't notice me at all. Then there are the rare ones that stare outright, like they've spotted an extinct animal.

“What should I do?”

“You're a
bacha posh
. Forget everything else and be a boy.”

“But I've been a girl my whole life. How can I forget everything?”

“It's not as hard as you might think.” He fidgets with
his hat, adjusts the rim so it shields his eyes from the sun. “I think I can help you.”

“What's your name?” I ask him.

“Rahim.” His grin is mischievous.

“Rahim,” I repeat. “And before?”

“Rahima,” he says. His grin fades. Her grin fades? What should I call this person? I figure he won't like me very much if I refer to him as a girl in any way, even if it's just in my head. I make up my mind that Rahim will be a boy and nothing else. “But now that name sounds like it belongs to someone else. I don't think I would even turn my head if I heard someone calling
Rahima
on the street.”

Is it possible to leave your name behind? Could I ever
not
be Obayda? I can't imagine it. That might be what's holding me back from being like Rahim.

We sit on an old tire left on the side of the schoolyard. Rahim is wearing jeans thinned at the knees and a polo T-shirt. I'm wearing cargo pants meant for a boy younger than me, so my ankles stick out.

“Was it hard for you?”

He does not ask me what I mean. He does not shy away from the question. He knows why I'm asking. It's nice being able to talk to someone who gets me.

I know you because I am you.

“In the beginning I was a girl dressed in boy clothes. That was really hard. I didn't know how to act. I wanted to cross
my legs and fix my head scarf.” He laughs at the thought of it. I laugh too, trying to imagine what Rahim would look like with a head scarf tied over his
W
-
I
-
Z
-
A
-
R
-
D
-
S
hat. It's as silly as the American actor dressed like a grandmother.

“But then I realized I couldn't be a girl dressed in boy clothes. I had to
be
a boy wearing my clothes. This is the best thing. You can wake up and throw on those ugly, too-short pants and run to school. You should jump up and down and be loud when you want to be and eat all you can. You should tell people what you think and score goals and let your father look at you like you're the future president of Afghanistan.”

“How do I do that?”

Rahim stares at me. He bites his lip. I start to regret my question. I feel like he's about to pick me apart in that painful way that he does.

“Stand up,” he says. His voice goes from delicate to rough in no time.

I do it, wondering for a split second if I have tire treads on my backside.

“Do you remember what I told you the other day? Look at the way you stand, the way you hide your eyes. Being a boy is not all in your pants. It's in your head. It's in your shoulders.” He's jabbing at me to make his point.

“Cut it out,” I mutter.

“What?” Rahim cocks his head to the side and flicks my earlobe. I swipe at his hand, but I'm too late and get nothing but air.

“I said cut it out!” I'm annoyed. Rahim has a way of spoiling conversations with his antics. I don't want to be his punching bag.

He palms my forehead and pushes me toward the ground.

This time I kick at him. I fall to the ground but manage to bring my foot to his shin on my way down. He lets out a howl and claps triumphantly.

“Better,” he says. “Stand tall. Stick your chin out like you're daring me to hit it. Set your feet apart. You've got boy parts, don't forget. Keep your palms open and let your arms swing while you walk. If you hear something behind you, turn around and look for it. When you run, slap your whole foot on the ground, not just your toes. Are you carrying eggs in your pockets?”

Eggs?

“No? Then don't walk like you are. Run like you're not afraid of cracking any shells!”

He points at my feet, nudges my chin and my elbows. I listen to his words and feel my body loosen. It's easier to breathe. Why is that?

“What else?”

“You're a boy, not a
bacha posh
, Obayd. If you get that,
there is nothing else. You know your weaknesses now, don't you? Boys aren't supposed to have weaknesses. Boys are built of rock and metal. We eat meat and show our teeth.”

“And girls?”

“Girls are made of flower petals and paper bags. They eat berries and sip tea like something might jump out of the hot water and bite them.”

I was torn—half of me angry at his depiction of girls and the other half of me proud not to be one for now.

“I don't know if that's true,” I say. I don't want to contradict him, but I've never thought of myself as a paper bag. “Tell me honestly, you're happy being a
bacha posh
?”

“Is that even a question? Why would I want to be anything else?” He looks at me as if I've got potatoes for ears. “You're new to this, which means you know what it is to be a girl. Was it anything worth being?”

I'm not sure how to answer. He starts to stroll the length of the schoolyard. I follow, trying to synchronize my pace with his. Left foot, right foot, left foot . . . his legs are longer than mine and I fall off beat often.

“Me? I didn't like it one bit. I didn't realize I had a choice or I would have asked my mother to change me years ago. Do you know what I used to do when I was a girl? Help in the kitchen, help with the laundry, serve tea to guests, run from the boys in the streets . . .”

I did all those things just a few weeks ago. Did I hate it? Maybe I did. Maybe it was all awful and I didn't know any better. Maybe everything had been blurry till this exact moment, this one conversation.

“It just feels so strange right now,” I confess.

“It'll get easier. It sort of just happens. For me, it happened the day I got this hat.” He points to his blue cap. “The day I got this hat, I knocked over four boys playing
ghursai
and stayed on my feet for the whole game. I haven't fallen once as long as I have this hat on. It's like a good-luck charm. Stick close by and it'll rub off on you too.”

Rahim looks over at his friends, who are heading back into the school. I feel lucky to have this exciting new friend. If we were girls, we wouldn't have ever met. It's only because we're a special kind of boy that we have found each other. Maybe his hat has rubbed off on me already. When he turns back to me, I can see the girl in his eyes. He takes my hand and squeezes it between his long, thin fingers.

“Nobody helped me when I first changed. But I'm going to help you. We'll be like brothers!” He laughs. I laugh too—not because he's funny, but because I'm happy.

He always seems to have a look on his face, and now that I can stare at him straight on and not out of the corner of my eye, I can see what the look really is. Rahim looks like he can do anything.