My Name Is Parvana (5 page)

Mother left her and went into the dining hall.

Parvana’s joy and energy drained out of her like air from a slashed tire. She followed her mother meekly.

The students were all at the tables, doing a review of the day’s work. They had no place to study at home, so they did homework at the school. They would be served tea, bread, fruit and nuts before they went home.

“May I have your attention, please.”

Mother was speaking.

The girls put down their pens and lifted their eyes from their work. Parvana stood against the dining-hall wall, afraid of what was about to happen.

“From now on, no one will leave the school grounds without permission,” Mother said. “No one will go out or come in without first checking with me or Mr. Fahir. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Headmistress,” the girls all said.

“No, Headmistress,” Parvana whispered.

“Would everyone please turn around and look at the girl standing against the wall.”

All heads turned and all eyes landed on Parvana.

“That girl is not allowed to use the library for three weeks,” Mother declared. “If anyone sees her with a library book, report her to me. If anyone sees her and doesn’t report her, there will be trouble. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes, Headmistress.”

Parvana didn’t need to look at Hanifa and Sharifa to know they were smirking like earthquakes.

She stayed against the wall while supper was brought in, then joined the end of the line of students winding past the nan and orange slices.

As she reached for a piece of bread, her sheet of fractions was put into her hand instead.

“Your mother says you have to do your work before you can eat,” the cook said. “I’m sorry.”

Parvana didn’t hold it against the cook.

“I ate in the village,” she said loudly, in case anyone was listening. “I won’t be hungry again for a long time.”

She put the page of arithmetic on top of the platter of nan and left the dining hall.

The sheet of fractions followed her around.

When she went to the latrine, it appeared on the sink. She left it there.

When she went to the room she slept in with her family, it was on top of the blankets in the cupboards.

She crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into a corner of the room.

Mother watched her do this. Then she retrieved the paper and smoothed it out.

“You have to know this,” Mother said, handing it back to her. “Like it or not, you need to know how to do this. Your future depends on it. You give up on this, you will give up on the next difficult thing, and you are too smart and too strong to start giving up. So until you get it done, you don’t eat and you don’t sleep.”

Mother folded the paper into a neat square and pressed it into Parvana’s hand, folding her daughter’s fingers around it.

“Go,” Mother said. “Find a place to work. I have to get the young ones to bed.”

She practically shoved Parvana out of the room. The door clicked shut behind her.

Parvana’s first instinct was to toss the square of paper, maybe even toss it over the school wall where it would disappear forever. Then she thought of going to the kitchen, finding a match and setting the fractions on fire.

But she knew her mother. Mother probably had a drawer full of fractions, and she would take great pleasure in tormenting her daughter with them until they were both old ladies, bent over and toothless.

I’ll just leave, Parvana decided. I’m all done. I’ve tried to fit in, but now I’m all done.

Asif had a cot in his workshop. Parvana went to the back of the yard, saw that his kerosene lamp was still lit and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said.

Parvana opened the door. Asif was at his workbench, surrounded by little bits of metal.

“I’m fixing Hassan’s toy truck,” he said. “I promised him, so don’t bother me.”

Parvana came right to the point.

“I want you to give me your spare shalwar kameez.”

“My new white one?”

“No. Your other one.”

“Why?”

“None of your business.”

He put down his wrench and looked at her.

“You’re the biggest fool to ever walk the earth,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“You’re going to cut your hair off and put on my clothes, and you think then that you can just be free to do what you want.”

Parvana pushed past him to where his spare shalwar kameez hung from a nail on the wall.

“I’m taking this,” she said. “And keep your mouth shut. After all, you owe me.”

“I owe you? For what?”

“For saving your life. For finding you in that cave and for saving your life.”

Asif folded his arms across his chest and looked at her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right. I guess you saved my life. Okay. I’ll keep quiet. Have a good journey. I wish you every success. Good luck getting through the gate without waking Mr. Fahir.”

Parvana opened the door. Then she paused and turned.

“I guess this is goodbye,” she said. “I …”

“Of course, you could stop being a fool and just do the fractions.”

“Don’t start.”

“Really, Parvana, you already know how to do them. You can multiply in your head. I’ve heard you do it often enough.”

“But this is different!”

“No, it isn’t. You’re just telling yourself some stupid story about not being able to do them. Just like you are telling yourself some stupid story about being able to dress like a boy and pass for a boy — at your age! Some religious fanatics will kill you before the week is out. They’ll stone you in the street. You say you saved my life? All right. Let me return the favor. Let me show you that you already know how to do the fractions so you don’t have to leave and end up dead.”

Parvana started to answer back. She hesitated. Admitting that Asif was right would be almost as awful as admitting that Nooria was right. But she remembered the angry men in the market. She knew what such men were capable of.

Maybe she could head out on her own again and be all right. Maybe.

Maybe she didn’t really want to try.

Parvana knew then that she had to make a real choice. If she stayed tonight, she was staying, period, through multiplying fractions and whatever fresh horror was ahead. And if she was leaving, she wouldn’t be coming back.

She was about to choose her future.

“You are the most awful boy in the world,” she said, tossing the shalwar kameez onto the cot.

“And you are the most awful girl.”

He waggled his fingers for the sheet of fractions. Parvana handed it to him. He unfolded it, smoothed it out, and handed Parvana a pencil.

Parvana moved in closer to the workbench, looked down at the fractions, and let herself be taught.

SEVEN

P
arvana woke up on her cot to the sound of someone opening a metal flap at the bottom of her door and sliding something inside.

She lay still. She could tell that someone was still outside the door, watching her.

She was glad to be lying down. She was so completely tired she didn’t think she would ever get up off the cot again. All she wanted was to stare up at the ceiling and not think about anything.

“It’s all right.”

The person watching whispered to her through the little screen. The whisper sounded like it came from a girl.

Parvana started to sit up. Her brain was too foggy at first to remember that she wasn’t supposed to be able to understand English. She remembered when she was halfway up and lay back down on the bed again.

Her heart started pounding in her chest.

She had given herself away! The sound of her heart filled the little cell, making the walls shake and loosening all the screws so properly checked by Inspector 247.

“The food,” the whisper said. “It’s all right. It’s an MRE, the same food we get. You’ll have to eat yours cold because we had to take out the thing that heats it up. But it’s okay. Just open the packets.”

“Have you delivered that meal yet, Private?” Parvana heard someone yell.

“All done, sir.” The voice was definitely young and female.

The soldier moved away from Parvana’s cell.

Parvana forced herself to stay on her cot. She went through all the multiplication tables from one through twenty-five. Then she recited the first surah of the Qur’an to herself.

Finally she could stand it no longer. It was quiet in the hall. No one was watching her. She got up, went over to the door and picked up the tray. She put it down on the little table and inspected it.

It was a bag.

They had already opened it for her.

She looked inside.

More bags.

She took one out and read the label. Cheese Tortellini in Tomato Sauce.

She didn’t know what tortellini was, but she liked cheese, and she liked tomatoes.

There were lots of words on the bag and Parvana read them all. She learned where the meal had been made, what the ingredients were, and what the expiry date was. She learned how to open it, what the vitamin content was and that it contained no trans- fats.

It was dull reading, but any reading was better than none.

They should print poems on these packages, Parvana thought. Soldiers on a battlefield would probably like to have something to read. And a good poem at the right time could change a person’s life.

Who would want to shoot somebody after reading “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “Casey at the Bat”? She’d read both in her book of American poetry and loved them.

“Hey, you!” the soldier would shout out to whoever they were supposed to be killing. “I’ve just read a great poem. Let me read it to you. You’re going to love it!”

The army could put jokes on the food bag, she thought, or short stories. Or chapters of novels, and the soldiers could swap until they had all read the whole book.

She could picture them sitting on top of their tanks, having a meal break.

Maybe a bunch of them would get chapters from
Little Women
, and they’d be eating and sniffling when Beth died. Or they would laugh when poor Anne of Green Gables dyed her hair green.

I should send a letter to the army, she said to herself. This is a good idea. Maybe they could hire me to choose the books.

She put that thought away to amuse herself with later and looked at the rest of the bags. There was a plastic spoon, bread, sliced Georgia peaches and a chocolate brownie.

It’s a trick, she thought. Why would they give me so much food? And such fancy food!

Maybe she shouldn’t eat it.

The girl at the window had said it was okay. And she had whispered, which meant she probably wasn’t supposed to be talking to the prisoners.

If I don’t eat, I won’t have the strength to get through this, Parvana told herself.

That settled it. She opened up the tortellini. She saw red tomato sauce and little round balls of pasta. She dipped her little finger in the sauce and tasted it. The tomato and spices on her tongue kicked her appetite into high gear, and she couldn’t spoon the food into her mouth fast enough.

When the tortellini was all gone, and she had scraped out as much of the sauce as she could with her spoon, she opened the edges of the bag and licked up all the rest of it.

She sat back and sighed. She could feel the energy coming back into her body. She’d be all right. She could do this.

She took a closer look at the ripped-open bag. If she took the plastic foil lining away, she would have a sheet of paper. Although she had no pen — and no way of even imagining how she would get one — it felt good to know she had some paper.

She stacked the remaining food on the little shelf above the table to eat later and got to work taking apart the bag. It was delicate work. She didn’t want to rip the paper. It kept her calm and busy, and for a while she was something like happy.

They didn’t come for her again. They left her alone for some time.

Meals came now and then, and once, a soldier came right into the cell and took away the remains of the old meals. By then, Parvana had four sheets of bag paper smoothed out and hidden under her mattress. She expected them to find the paper and take it away, but it gave her something to do.

Parvana kept track of the days by watching the light change through the little window high up on the cell wall.

This window was wider than it was high and not much of either. Most of it was covered with narrow metal slats that were tilted in a way that made it hard for anyone to see in or out. A bit of fresh air got in, making the cell cold at night.

Parvana discovered that by standing with her right foot on the cot and her left foot on the table, she could see out the window. Her view was chopped up by the shutters, but she could see the sky and the rocky hills in the distance. Close up, she could see trash bins, sheds and several layers of razor wire to close everything in. She could stick her fingers through the gaps in the shutters and wiggle them in the sunshine. She stood there for as long as she could keep her balance, looking out at the world.

On the third day of being left alone, the cover over the door grate slid open.

“Come over to the door.”

It was the young private again, but this time she spoke loudly.

“Prisoner, come to the door.”

Parvana was sitting on the side of the bed. She did not respond.

The door was unlocked. The young private had another female soldier with her. They each took one of Parvana’s arms.

They tried to lift her to her feet. Parvana gripped the side of the bed. She felt safe in her cell. She did not want that man to yell at her again.

“Drag her,” one soldier said.

“She’s just a kid.”

“She’s not a kid. She’s a terrorist.”

One of the soldiers knelt down beside her.

“We’re just taking you to get a shower,” she said quietly. “It’s just a shower. I’ll be with you the whole time. Don’t worry. I’m the woman who brings you your meals. You know you can trust me.”

“She doesn’t speak English. You gotta talk to her in Arab.”

“Shut up. If she doesn’t understand the words, she understands the tone.”

The two soldiers kept up their arguing while they led Parvana out of the cell and to a small shower room at the end of the row of cells. She was handed a bit of soap and some shampoo and told to go behind a curtain and shower. They also handed her clean clothes — a pair of green army pants, green T-shirt and a long-sleeved green shirt.

“Your clothes will be washed and returned to you,” they told her, but she didn’t care. Her school was gone. She didn’t need her school uniform anymore.

Parvana took as long in the shower as she dared. The water was cool, the soap smelled good, and the lather felt soft in her hair.

She rinsed off and put on the clean clothes. Then they led her back to her cell.

The cell had been cleaned. The floor was still damp from the mop and the medicinal smell of disinfectant hung in the air. Clean sheets and blankets were folded and stacked on the end of the bed.

Her pieces of paper were on top of her bed.

She got the message.

Nothing was safe.