The Pearl that Broke Its Shell (2 page)

Two weeks into our expulsion from school, the shop owners had gotten to know me. There were not many nine-year-old girls who would walk determinedly from shop to shop. And having watched my parents haggle prices down, I thought I could do the same. I would argue with the baker who tried to charge me double what I had seen him charge my mother. I bickered with the grocer trying to tell me that the flour I wanted was imported and, thus, subject to a surcharge. I pointed out that I could just as easily buy the same fancy flour from Agha Mirwais down the block and scoffed at the price he quoted. He gritted his teeth and put the flour in the bag along with the other groceries, muttering words under his breath that no child should hear.

Madar-
jan
was pleased to have my help with the market. She was busy enough with Sitara, who was just taking her first steps. Madar-
jan
had Parwin look after Sitara while she and Shahla took care of the household chores of dusting, sweeping and preparing the night’s meal. In the afternoons, Madar-
jan
made us all sit down with our books and notebooks and complete the homework she assigned us.

For Shahla, the days were isolating and difficult. She longed to see her friends and talk with her teachers. Shahla’s strengths were her intuition and her intelligence. She wasn’t at the very top of her class, but she usually charmed her teachers just enough to push her onto the short list of star pupils. She was average looking but put extra care into her appearance. She would spend at least five minutes brushing her hair every night, since someone told her it would make her locks grow longer. Shahla’s face was what people would call pleasant, not beautiful or memorable. But her personality made her glow. People looked at her and couldn’t help but smile. Polite and proper, she was a favorite in school. She had a way of looking at you and making you feel important. In front of family and friends, Shahla made Madar-
jan
proud as she would speak maturely and inquire after each member of the family.

“How is Farzana-
jan
doing? It’s been so long since I’ve seen her! Please do tell her that I was asking about her,” she would say. Grandmothers would nod in approval, praising Madar-
jan
for raising such a respectable girl.

Parwin was another story. She was striking. Her eyes were not the mud-brown color the rest of us had. Instead, hers were a hazel-gray blend that made you forget what it was that you were going to say. Her hair hung around her face in wavy locks with a natural luster. She was undeniably the best-looking girl in our whole extended family.

But she was completely lacking in social skills. If Madar-
jan
’s friends stopped by, Parwin would shrink into a corner, busying herself with folding and refolding a tablecloth. If she could manage to escape before company made it into the room, even better. Nothing was more of a relief to her than avoiding the traditional three-kiss greeting. She kept her answers brief and all the while kept her eyes on the nearest escape route.

“Parwin, please! Khala Lailoma is asking you a question. Can you please turn around? Those plants do not need to be watered at this very moment!”

What Parwin lacked in social skill, she more than made up for in artistic ability. She was masterful with pencil and paper. Graphite turned into visual energy in her hands. Wrinkled faces, an injured dog, a house too damaged to repair. She had a gift, an ability to show you what you did not see, even though your eyes graced the same sights as hers. She could sketch a masterpiece in minutes but washing the dishes could take hours.

“Parwin is from another world,” Madar-
jan
would say. “She is a different kind of girl.”

“What good is that going to do her? She’s going to have to survive and make her way through this world,” Padar-
jan
would retort, but he loved her drawings and kept a pile of them at his bedside to flip through from time to time.

The other problem with Parwin was that she’d been born with a bad hip. Someone had told Madar-
jan
she must have been lying on her side too much when she was pregnant. From the time Parwin started to crawl, it was obvious something was off. It took her much longer to learn to walk and to this day she hasn’t lost her limp. Padar-
jan
had taken her to a doctor when she was five or six but they said it was too late.

Then there was me. I didn’t mind the expulsion as much as my sisters. I suppose this was because it gave me opportunity to venture out on my own, without two older sisters to chastise me or insist I hold their hands as we crossed the street. Finally, I had freedom—even more than my sisters!

Madar-
jan
needed help with the errands and lately it was impossible to depend on Padar-
jan
for anything. She would ask him to pick up some things from the market on his way home and inevitably he would forget, then curse her for having an empty pantry. But if she went to the bazaar by herself, he went into an even worse rage. From time to time, Madar-
jan
asked the neighbors to pick up an item or two for her but she tried not to do that too often, knowing they already whispered about the peculiar way Padar-
jan
had of walking up and down our small street, his hands gesturing wildly as he explained something to the birds. My sisters and I wondered about his behavior too, but Madar-
jan
told us our father needed to take a special medicine and that was why he sometimes acted strangely.

At home, I could not help but talk about my adventures in the outside world. It bothered Shahla more than Parwin, who was content with her pencils and paper.

“I think tomorrow I’ll pick up some roasted chickpeas from the market. I have a few coins. If you like, I could bring you some, Shahla.”

Shahla sighed and shifted Sitara from one hip to another. She looked like a young exasperated mother.

“Forget it. I don’t want any. Just go and finish the chores, Rahima. I’m sure you’re just dawdling out there. In no rush to come home, I bet.”

“I’m not
dawdling
. I go and do the errands that Madar-
jan
tells
me to do. But never mind. I’ll see you later.”

It wasn’t so much that I wanted my sisters to be envious. It was more that I wanted to celebrate my new privileges to come and go, to wander through the shops without my sister’s supervision. If I had a little more tact, I would have found another way to express myself. But my loud mouth caught Khala Shaima’s attention. Maybe there was a higher purpose to my insensitivity.

Khala Shaima was my mother’s sister—her older sister. Madar-
jan
was closer to her than anyone else in her family and we saw her often. Had we not grown up around her, we probably would have been frightened by her appearance. Khala Shaima was born with a crooked spine that wiggled through her back like a snake. Although our grandparents had hoped to find a suitor before her shape became too obvious, she was passed over time and again. Families would come to ask about my mother or Khala Zeba, the youngest of the sisters, but no one wanted Khala Shaima with her hunched back and one raised shoulder.

She understood early in life that she would not catch anyone’s eye and decided not to bother fussing with appearances at all. She let her eyebrows grow in, left those few stray chin hairs and dressed in the same drab clothing day in and day out.

Instead, she focused her energies on her nieces and nephews and taking care of my grandparents as they aged. Khala Shaima supervised everything—making sure we were doing satisfactorily in school, that we had proper clothing for the winter and that lice hadn’t nested in our hair. She was a safety net for anything our parents might not have been able to do for us and she was one of the few people who could stand being around Padar-
jan
.

But you had to know Khala Shaima to
get
her. I mean to really
get
her. If you didn’t know that she had the best intentions at heart, you could be put off by the lack of pleasantries in her conversation, by her sharp criticisms or by the doubtful squint in her eyes while she listened to you talk. But if you knew how she’d been spoken to her whole life, by strangers and family, you wouldn’t be surprised.

She was good to us girls and always came with candy-laden pockets. Padar-
jan
would comment snidely that her pockets were the only sweet thing about Khala Shaima. My sisters and I would feign patience while we waited for the rustle of chocolate wrappers. When she arrived, I had just returned from the market, and in plenty of time to get my share of the sweets.

“Shaima, honest to God, you’re spoiling these girls! Where are you getting chocolates like these from these days! They can’t be cheap!”

“Don’t stop a donkey that’s not yours,” she fired back. That was another thing about Khala Shaima. Everyone used those old Afghan proverbs, but Khala Shaima could hardly speak without them. It made conversations with her as circuitous as her spine. “Stay out of it and let’s let the girls get back to their homework.”

“We’re done with our homework, Khala Shaima-
jan,
” Shahla said. “We’ve been working on it all morning.”

“All morning? Didn’t you go to school today?” Shaima’s eyebrows furrowed.

“No, Khala Shaima. We don’t go to school anymore,” Shahla said, averting her eyes since she knew she was throwing Madar-
jan
into the fire.

“What does that mean? Raisa! Why aren’t the girls in school?”

Madar-
jan
lifted her head from the teapot reluctantly.

“We had to take them out again.”

“In God’s name, what ridiculous excuse did you come up with this time to keep them from their studies? Did a dog bark at them in the street?”

“No, Shaima. Don’t you think I would much rather have them going to school? It’s just that they’re running into foolishness in the streets. You know how boys can be. And, well, their father is just not happy to send them out so they can be toyed with by the neighborhood boys. I don’t blame him, really. You know, it’s only been a year that the girls are even able to walk in the street. Maybe it’s just too soon.”

“Too soon? How about too late! They should have been going to school all this time but they haven’t. Imagine how far behind they are and now that they can catch up, you’re going to keep them at home to scrub the floors? There will always be idiots in the street saying all kinds of things and giving all kinds of looks. You can believe that. If you hold these girls back for that, you’re no better than the Taliban who closed their schools.”

Shahla and Parwin shot each other looks.

“Then what am I supposed to do? Arif’s cousin Haseeb told him that—”

“Haseeb? That moron who’s dumber than a Russian tank? You’re making decisions for your children based on something Haseeb said? Sister, I thought more of you.”

Madar-
jan
huffed in frustration and rubbed her temples. “Then you stay here till Arif gets home and you tell him yourself what you think we should do!”

“Did I say I was leaving?” Khala Shaima said coolly. She propped a pillow behind her uneven back and leaned against the wall. We braced ourselves. Padar-
jan
hated dealing with Khala Shaima’s intrusions and he was just as blunt as she was about it.

“Y
ou’re a fool to think these girls are better off rotting in this home instead of learning something in school.”

“You never went to school and see how well you turned out,” Padar-
jan
said facetiously.

“I’ve got a lot more sense than you,
engineer-sahib
.” A low blow. Padar-
jan
had wanted to major in engineering when he finished high school but his marks didn’t make the cut. Instead, he took some general classes for one semester and then dropped out to start working. He had a shop now where he fixed old electronics, and though he was pretty good at what he did, he was still bitter about not making it as an engineer, a highly regarded title for Afghans.

“Damn you, Shaima! Get out of my house! They’re my daughters and I don’t need to listen to a cripple tell me what I should do with them!”

“Well, this cripple has an idea that may solve your problem—let you keep your precious pride while the girls can get back into school.”

“Forget it. Just get out so I don’t have to look at your face anymore. Raisa! Where the hell is my food?”

“What is your idea, Shaima?” Madar-
jan
jumped in, eager to hear what she had to say. She did respect her sister, ultimately. More often than not, Shaima was right. She hurriedly fixed a plate of food and brought it over to Padar-
jan,
who was now staring out the window blankly.

“Raisa, don’t you remember the story our grandmother told to us? Remember Bibi Shekiba?”

“Oh, her! Yes, but how does that help the girls?”

“She became what her family needed. She became what the king needed.”

“The king.” Padar-
jan
scoffed. “Your stories get crazier every time you open your ugly mouth.”

Khala Shaima ignored his comment. She had heard much worse.

“Do you really think that would work for us too?”

“The girls need a brother.”

Madar-
jan
looked away and sighed with disappointment. Her failure to bear a son had been a sore spot since Shahla’s birth. She had not anticipated that it would be brought to everyone’s attention again tonight. She avoided Padar-
jan
’s eyes.

“That’s what you’ve come here to tell me! That we need a son? Don’t you think I know that? If your sister were a better wife, then maybe I would have one!”

“Quit jabbering and let me finish.”

But she didn’t finish. She only started. That night Khala Shaima started a story of my great-great-grandmother Shekiba, a story that my sisters and I had never before heard. A story that transformed me.

CHAPTER 2