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Reshmina and her brother ran up the steps of their village, Reshmina’s thoughts racing faster than her feet.
Americans were here.
Reshmina had encountered Afghan National Army soldiers before—they had a base nearby and checked in occasionally with the village elders. The Americans were a different story. Reshmina had seen their helicopters flying over the valley, heard the pops and booms from their far-off gunfights with the Taliban. But in her eleven years, the Americans hadn’t once come to her remote little village. Why were they here now?
Like most other villages in the province, Reshmina’s was built into the side of a mountain. Flatland for farming was scarce, so houses were stacked one on top of the other, like a pyramid of square pieces of sweet bread. To get from the bottom to their house near the top, Reshmina and her brother had to climb a long set of switchback stairs cut into the rock.
Reshmina and Pasoon turned a corner and saw a group of ANA soldiers just ahead. They looked very young—almost
like teenagers. Boy-men, Reshmina thought. Like Darwesh and Amaan, Pasoon’s friends.
Two of the soldiers held an old man named Ezatullah outside his home while other soldiers went inside.
“They’re searching all the houses,” Reshmina whispered.
But what were they looking for?
Ezatullah started to argue with the soldiers, and Pasoon took Reshmina by the hand and pulled her along past them, up the stairs.
At the house just below theirs, Reshmina saw an American soldier giving instructions to a team of Afghan soldiers. The American’s uniform was sand-colored, unlike the green camouflage the ANA soldiers wore. He had more equipment too—and a bigger gun.
Reshmina pulled her headscarf over her face and looked away as she and Pasoon slipped by.
“Did you see that?” Pasoon hissed. “Afghans taking orders from an American in our own country!”
They came at last to their house, a squat square home made of mud and brick and wood. Pasoon threw open the door, and Reshmina followed him inside.
There were only three rooms in their house—a front room where the family ate their meals, a room beyond that where the women spent most of their time and where the family slept, and their tiny kitchen in the back with its cooking pit. Each room had a dirt floor with rugs on it but no other furniture.
Reshmina ran to the women’s room. Her older sister Marzia sat on the floor picking the bad bits out of a bowl of uncooked rice, and their anaa—their grandmother—did needlework and sang softly to Reshmina’s little brother, Zahir, who rolled around on a rug beside her. Marzia looked pretty in her pink dress and teal headscarf. Anaa wore a blue-and-white flower-print dress and a blue shawl.
“The Afghan army is here!” Reshmina cried. “They’re searching everyone’s homes!”
Marzia stood. “What? Why?”
“It’s the Americans. They’re the ones in charge,” Pasoon said. “They don’t need a reason!”
Reshmina’s father came into the room on his wooden crutch. The rugged mountains of southern Afghanistan had stolen years from their baba, carving the lines and wrinkles of an older man into his reddish-brown face. His beard was short and bushy, more gray now than black, and he wore baggy pants, a long olive-green tunic, and a gray turban.
Someone pounded on their door. Boom boom boom!
Reshmina’s mor—her mother—hurried out of the kitchen. Mor was clutching a gray scarf around her face. “What is it? Who’s come?” she asked.
“The army,” Baba told her. “I will speak to them.”
Pasoon followed Baba to the front door while Reshmina waited nervously with the rest of her family in the women’s room. A few minutes later, Reshmina heard the soldiers enter her home and begin to search the family room. She could tell that Baba had come inside with them but not Pasoon.
Reshmina couldn’t make herself stop shaking. What did the soldiers want? She and her family had nothing to hide! Marzia took her hand and squeezed it, and Reshmina knew her older sister was frightened too.
Baba led the Afghan soldiers into the women’s room. The American soldier Reshmina had passed on the stairs was with them. He had brown skin and was short, with wide shoulders.
“Baba, where is Pasoon?” Reshmina asked her father. “They’re keeping him outside,” Baba said.
Anaa continued to do her needlework, unperturbed, but Reshmina’s mother snatched up little Zahir, then pulled
Reshmina and Marzia to her, like the soldiers had come to take them all away from her.
“Tell them we’re not here to hurt them,” the American soldier said in English. Despite her fear, Reshmina felt a small thrill go through her. Her English lessons had paid off. She understood what he said!
“The soldiers are not here to hurt you,” someone said in Pashto, and Reshmina’s jaw dropped as the translator stepped out from behind the American. The translator wore tan camouflage pants, tan body armor over a black long- sleeve shirt, and a green headscarf.
The translator was an Afghan woman!
“The Americans were told there is a cache of Taliban weapons in this village,” the translator told Reshmina and her family in Pashto. “The Afghan National Army is here to search your house. The American sergeant is here as an advisor.”
“There are no weapons here,” Anaa said to the translator. “No Taliban either.”
Reshmina was barely listening. All she could do was stare wide-eyed at the translator. All the Afghan women Reshmina knew were mothers, wives, and daughters. None of them had jobs outside the home—and especially not important jobs like translator, where they worked and talked with men outside their families.
“Who are you?” Reshmina whispered to the translator.
The woman smiled. “My name is Mariam. I’m from Kabul.”
Reshmina couldn’t believe it. It was like a whole new path had appeared before her that she hadn’t known was there before. A whole new person she could become.
Mariam.
The two Afghan soldiers searched the women’s room, and then the American soldier sent them to search the kitchen
and the goat pens. The American certainly acted like he was in charge, just as Pasoon had said.
Reshmina studied the American again. This time she noticed a silly-looking stuffed animal tucked into the gear on his vest. The doll was all mouth and tongue and long spindly arms and legs, and it had a wild, mischievous look in its eyes. It was shabby and faded and dusty, like everything else in Afghanistan, and it was coming apart at one of the seams. Reshmina frowned. Why would the American be carrying something as strange as that? And what did it mean?
One of the Afghan soldiers came back into the room with a small object in his hand. Reshmina recognized it immediately—it was a toy airplane their sister Hila had bought Pasoon as a gift two years ago. Now that Hila was gone, that plane was Pasoon’s most treasured possession in the world.
“I found this in a hole, high up on the back wall of the house,” the soldier said in Pashto to Mariam, who translated for the American soldier.
The American took the toy and turned to Reshmina’s family. “Why was this hidden?”
Mariam translated, and Anaa laughed. “It’s my grandson’s. He’s a boy. He hides things.”
Reshmina nodded. Anaa was right. Why should the soldiers care what Pasoon did with the little airplane? It was none of their business!
“It’s only a toy,” Baba told the Afghan soldier.
The American frowned and handed the airplane to Baba. “Tell them not to hide things from us,” he told Mariam in English. “It makes them look suspicious.”
The soldiers finished searching the house, and Baba escorted them and the American and Mariam back to the front door. Reshmina pulled away from her mother and
followed them. Mor hissed, but Reshmina ignored her. She wanted to watch Mariam. Hear her.
Mariam and the American soldier stopped outside the house to speak to Baba. Reshmina saw that Pasoon was there too, flanked by two other ANA soldiers. Pasoon was scowling. His fists were clenched tight, and his arms were straight down at his sides. Reshmina could tell he was ready to fight.
“The sergeant says that he appreciates your cooperation,” Mariam said to Baba and Pasoon, gesturing to the American. “He hopes we can put the past behind us and start over with a clean slate.”
“A clean slate?” Baba asked. “When they force their way into our homes? When they kill our people?”
“They killed my sister Hila!” Pasoon cried, glaring at the American. He turned to the Afghan soldiers. “And now you betray our country by working for them!” he snapped.
Reshmina’s father put a hand on Pasoon’s shoulder to calm him, but Pasoon shook him off
“This ‘past’ they speak of is our present,” Baba told Mariam. “Are we supposed to forget about our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters the Americans have killed in their attacks? If someone came along and killed a village of their people, would they say, ‘Ah well, time to start over with a clean slate’? Or would they swear revenge and promise never to forget?”
Reshmina wanted to cry. She hated the idea of revenge, but she too could never forget how the Americans had killed her sister. Sometimes she wished they could hurt as much as she did, just so they’d understand.
Mariam translated everything for the American soldier, expressing all their sorrow and frustration in English.
“Tell them not to let the Taliban into their village, and we’ll leave them alone,” the American said.
“Not let the Taliban in?” Reshmina cried in English, not waiting for Mariam to translate into Pashto. Baba and Pasoon couldn’t understand her words, but they looked surprised that she was speaking up. “How can we stop the Taliban when you won’t let us have weapons?” Reshmina asked.
“You always have a choice,” the American told her. “You can pick our side, or their side.”
“That’s no choice at all,” Mariam told the sergeant. “If these villagers side with the Americans, the Taliban will kill them. And if they side with the Taliban, you and the ANA will kill them. You’re telling them to choose death!”
“I’m sorry,” the sergeant said with a shrug. He moved on to the next house up the stairs, and the ANA soldiers followed him.
Mariam took a deep breath and looked at Reshmina. “I’m sorry too,” she said, and she left to join the soldiers.
“What was all that about?” Pasoon asked Reshmina. The last part of the conversation had all been in English.
“Nothing,” Reshmina said. Telling him would just make him angrier.
“I hate them,” Pasoon said, and he spat on the ground.
Baba went back inside the house, and Reshmina started up the stairs.
“Wait—where are you going?” Pasoon asked her. “I’m following that translator,” Reshmina said.
“No, you can’t!” said Pasoon. He grabbed her arm and glanced over his shoulder.
“Pasoon, what are you doing?” Her brother was suddenly acting very strange.
“Nothing,” he said. “You just need to get your chores done. Come on. I’ll help you sweep the floor.”
Now Reshmina knew something was up. Pasoon never offered to help with her chores. She pulled herself free.
“Pasoon, what’s going on?”
Pasoon looked around warily, then pulled Reshmina into a shadow on the stairs.
“It’s the Taliban,” he whispered. “They started the rumor there were weapons in our village, to lure the soldiers here. Darwesh and Amaan told me yesterday. It’s a trap, Reshmina—the Taliban are going to attack the soldiers on their way out of the village!”
