Still Come Home. Katey Schultz
across her chest and waits for what may come.
“Just look at you,” Shanaz says, “letting the heat of the day spoil your womb! Walking around unattended! What next?”
Aaseya holds herself steady. Admonition or otherwise, attention of any kind provides an odd balm. If it weren’t for Shanaz, Aaseya might feel invisible most days. When no further insults come, Aaseya nods bitterly at the remains across the street. There it sits, a historic stain marking her as a Western sympathizer. Piles of rocks avalanche onto the sidewalk—the only reminder of her childhood home. Seeing it always feels like another explosion. So much had been lost, though Aaseya remembers finding part of the radio afterward, sifting through the rubble. Sometimes, she imagines that if she could get it to work again, she could tune in and hear the voices of her family, their laughter.
But she can’t bring them back. She can’t piece her parents together out of pebbles and mud. Here, her father with his wide palms. There, her mother’s soft face. Alamzeb’s dusty knees. Her cousins, aunts, uncles, reconstructed from chalky remains. She’ll never know why she was spared but certainly not just to be subjected to Shanaz stomping her foot or the ridiculing stares of her daughters aimed like arrows at Aaseya’s throat. Certainly not to spend the rest of her life in Imar, a place weighing on her like so many stones over a grave.
“Well,” Aaseya says, growing brave, “look at it!”
“I look at it every day,” Shanaz says. She takes in a sharp breath. “But you should know, Aaseya, there are worse things than losing your family.”
Aaseya studies Shanaz’s face—how suddenly slack it appears. The old woman’s cheeks burn with color. The only thing worse than death is shame, but what would Shanaz know about that? Aaseya has felt her share of shame. Someone had tipped off the Taliban, certain Janan was colluding with the Americans. True, her brother, Alamzeb, had angered a squad one afternoon, but he was so young. True, Janan had welcomed soldiers into his family compound but only for cultural conversation. Could kindness get you killed? An Afghan prided himself on hospitality and good impressions. Janan modeled that—perhaps too much. Many nights, Aaseya lies awake trying to guess who might have spread the rumor. Sometimes, she even imagines it was Shanaz, whose meddling authority extends from block to block, surrounding their homes. There’s an odd logic to it—the way one family can bring down another, though there was never anything afoul between Janan and his neighbors. Trying to pinpoint blame in a village that’s at the mercy of history and culture seems about as effective as praying for rain. Aaseya hustles away from the gate, and already, Shanaz has turned her back, a dark cloud in retreat.
Aaseya reaches the crossroad and knows she should turn around. Leaving the water pail with Shanaz is a necessary exception—even Rahim grants her permission. But it wasn’t so long ago she left her burqa at home and walked in public with her father. Now, to remain outside the home unattended, Aaseya should shrink at the thought. She’s one of only a few women who still pushes this boundary in Imar. It’s not in her nature to hold anything back. Not hope. Not fear. Perhaps most of all, not ambition.
She turns down the main thoroughfare where a few rusted cars are parked haphazardly, half on the pedestrian pathway, half in the road. A blue scooter lies in a ditch, its kickstand mangled. She crosses the street to avoid its path; no one has dared go near it for years, the prevailing rumor being that it was planted with a bomb. Imar had only seen two such ambushes in Aaseya’s lifetime, both manned by a suicidal mujahideen on a scooter aiming for Americans who patrolled the village frequently during those early years of fighting. Seeing the scooter sets Aaseya’s suspicions reeling again. She’s heard about fellow villagers swapping allegiances throughout the war. Her father was resourceful enough to outwit such dishonesty, though in the end, what did his skill matter? The abandoned scooter—in a village with no gas stations, no electricity—only confirms one thing: betrayal and indignation share the same bed in Imar.
The neighborhood itself remains quiet today. Hardly a hint of human occupancy other than the occasional tails of smoke rising from courtyards. Like little prayers. So many women tend those fires amidst various daily tasks. Most of them never knew Ms. Darrow, the visiting English teacher who came about the time the tap stands were installed. Most of them weren’t born to such a worldly father. Most don’t look at the horizon and see a line to follow either. Aaseya longs to have classmates again, or at least another girl with whom to share her dreams of progress. She can’t afford to let go of hope, its private comfort like the lead thread in an embroiderer’s hand. Lose that and the entire pattern gets disrupted. So much gone to waste.
A few blocks ahead, Aaseya hears the cries of animals for slaughter, sons bargaining on behalf of their mothers. It’s a spectacle of activity: the smell of dung, the dry taste of the desert, people coming and going—enlivening the mud-cooked pathways in flashes of teal, maroon, sun gold, deep purple. Men loiter, scuffing their dirt-coated sandals against the ground. At the edge of the bazaar, beggars wait.
“Food?” a girl pleads. Her bone-thin back presses against the corner post of a bazaar tent. The girl stares at Aaseya and whimpers her incantation, “Allah. Allah. Allah.”
Behind the girl, narrow rows of tents and tables form a humble economy. Aaseya remembers studying her father as he bargained kindly but firmly, Aaseya often the only young girl in sight. Walking arm-in-arm with Janan through the bazaar, she thought then she might marry a man like him. Someone who is respected and lives openly, escaping ridicule. Someday, she might even command as much independence herself.
“Please,” the begging girl speaks again. “Sister, please.”
Aaseya brushes past, unnerved. The girl’s voice rings like a threat in her ears. Where are those English teachers now? Where are any teachers for that matter? No one cares to educate girls in Imar anymore. Finding water. Raising boys. Hatching rumors. Exacting revenge. These things matter. An orphan girl is just another kicked up rock along the road.
Aaseya tries conjuring the bird in her chest. Its gentle tugging and sweet song. My shining smart one. With the bird, she can draw herself out. She can press her heels into the warm skin of the Earth, open her lips to the sun, and keep walking—ba haya be damned. She can make purchases or trade. She can even wander home the long way just to remind herself that another way is possible. One step at a time. Block by block. Like verbs forming at the tip of her pencil, lead pressed hard into the pages: ran, run, ran, run, run.
She placed her hand over a particularly ripe apricot when she saw them. Both stand nearly six feet tall, lean and limber as the cougars rumored to patrol the nearby slopes. How many years has it been since she has seen Taliban fighters in public? They’re even laughing as though one fighter has just told the other a joke. It’s not so much their ammo and weapons as their iron stares and meticulously draped turbans that give them away, black kohl ringing their eyes. Both men have bundled their turbans at the top, swooped them below their chins, then swaddled them across their faces, leaving only a slit for the eyes. She doesn’t dare look directly, but that tiny opening of fabric, that suggestion of identity makes her feel fused to its possibility. If given the chance to show only one thing about herself, what might she reveal?
The fruit vendor tisk-tisks, and Aaseya feels a slap across the top of her hand. So few vendors will sell to her—this un-right, supposedly Pashtun woman wandering the streets—and certainly not this vendor, not now that she’s lingered too long, coveting the apricot immodestly. She turns from the booth and crosses to the other side of the path. Here is Massoud. Maybe he will sell to her today. The naan smells so fresh she can almost taste it, and she’s drawn to its doughy, charcoaled musk. She reaches out to select one of the toasted loaves. Of all the people she suspects could have started the false rumor about her family, she has never considered Massoud. His daughters also went to Ms. Darrow’s language lessons. He even speaks to Aaseya sometimes if there’s no one in line, and he can busy himself with tasks as they whisper. But Massoud has spotted the fighters too, and as quickly as Aaseya approaches, he turns his back. She angles her body closer to his table display as if the loaves of bread might stand in for her family, but Massoud offers no indication that he’s going to help her.
From the corner of her eye, she sees the fighters make purchases several booths away.