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Reshmina stared at her brother in horror. He knew the Taliban planned to attack? Did other people in the village know?
“Pasoon, the ANA are Afghans! Our own people! And I have no more love for the Americans than you do,” she went on before her brother could speak, “but this betrayal will only make things worse for our village. The Americans will blame us for the attack.”
“The Afghan soldiers made their choice when they agreed to do the Americans’ dirty work for them,” Pasoon said. “Besides, it’s not like we’re the ones carrying out the attack.”
“No, we’re just the ones not telling anyone about it,” Reshmina said. “And if you won’t, I will!”
“No! You can’t!” Pasoon said. He grabbed for her again, but Reshmina was too quick. She broke free and ran up the steps, Pasoon close on her heels.
Pop-pop! Pakoom. Pakoom.
The familiar sounds of gunfire and explosions made Reshmina duck and pull up short, her heart racing.
“It’s started already!” Pasoon cried. Reshmina heard shouting and saw ANA soldiers scrambling down the steps for cover.
Pasoon grabbed Reshmina’s hand and pulled her back toward their house. “Run, Reshmina!”
Reshmina raced back down the stairs and into their home, where her family was gathering in the front room. Baba wasn’t there, and Reshmina realized Pasoon hadn’t come inside with her.
THOOM. The ground rocked from a nearby explosion, and dirt rained down from the ceiling.
“It’s safer in the back,” Anaa said, leading them into the women’s room. Mor disappeared into the kitchen.
PAK! PAK! PAK!
Gunfire erupted close enough nearby to rattle the dishes, and Reshmina and Marzia huddled together against the wall. Anaa pulled Zahir into her lap to sing to him, but the shooting and explosions didn’t seem to bother the baby. He was already used to it. Reshmina didn’t know if she would ever stop flinching at the sounds.
The earth shook again, and Marzia squeezed Reshmina’s arm.
Dear God, please keep Baba and Pasoon safe out there, Reshmina prayed. And Mariam, she added, remembering the translator.
Even as the fighting continued outside, Reshmina found herself wondering what it would be like to go to Kabul someday and study to become a translator. She might be able to work for the Americans, like Mariam did. That had to pay well and would be worth more to her parents than bartering her off as a bride. Reshmina could put her English skills to work and support her entire family. It was an almost-impossible dream, but if Mariam could do it, so could Reshmina.
And without a dream, without ambition, what point was there to living?
Rifles and rockets boomed outside. Reshmina slid away from Marzia and pulled her blue English notebook from between the sleeping mats stacked in the corner. If becoming a translator was her way out, she wouldn’t waste a second when she could be studying.
Reshmina’s mother came into the room carrying a broom. “Oh no, none of that now,” she said, spying Reshmina’s notebook. She snatched it away and put the broom in Reshmina’s hands. “You focus on your housework, not your schoolwork. And you get back to sorting that rice,” she told Marzia. “Keep your heads down and learn how to be good wives. That’s how a woman survives.”
Mor left for the kitchen again, and Reshmina threw the broom down in frustration.
“Forgive your mother, Mina-jan,” her grandmother told her. Zahir had fallen asleep in her lap, and Anaa took up her needlework again while Marzia returned to the rice.
“Why?” asked Reshmina. “All she wants is for me to learn how to be a good wife and marry a successful man. She has no dreams in her heart. No hope for something more!”
“You must understand, Mina-jan,” Anaa said. “Your mother has never been allowed to dream. Me, I was born in Kabul long before the Americans came, or the Taliban. Before the Soviet invasion even. It was a golden time in Afghanistan,” Anaa continued dreamily. “Women went to school and got jobs. One of my sisters became the principal of a school. Another woman I knew became a poet. We dressed differently too, like they do in Europe and America. I once wore a skirt that didn’t even reach my knees. They called it a miniskirt.”
“Outside?” Reshmina asked. She shared an astonished
look with Marzia. Reshmina couldn’t imagine wearing such a
thing in the house, let alone out.
“Oh yes,” their anaa said, laughing. “The boys rather liked it. And I did too.”
Marzia blushed, and Reshmina got up and started sweeping. The sounds of fighting still filtered in from outside.
“Some women wore the chador, but only if they wanted to,” Anaa told them. A chador was a robe that covered a woman from head to toe, with only her face visible. “We were all Muslims, but in those days no one tried to force their beliefs on anyone else. There was real tolerance of others. We were brothers and sisters, working toward a better future. A better Afghanistan.” Her face fell. “Then, forty years ago, the Russians invaded, and I fled to the mountains with your grandfather, God shower blessings on his grave.” Anaa closed her eyes. “Afghanistan has known nothing but war ever since. That is the world your mother was born into.”
“But so were we,” Reshmina said, glancing at Marzia and Zahir.
As if to prove it, there came the thump thump thump of an American helicopter, and an even louder BOOM that made Reshmina flinch.
Anaa shook her head.
“When your mother was six, her father was killed by a missile while he was praying in his backyard,” she said softly. “When she was your age, her older brother was killed by the Taliban for no reason that has ever been explained to her. Her husband—your father and my son—had his leg mangled by an old Soviet mine right after they were married. Two of her children died before they reached their fifth birthday, and her eldest daughter, your sister Hila, was killed by an American bomb.”
Anaa closed her eyes again and sighed. She wore her sadness like a chador.
Reshmina swallowed. She knew about her sister and her father, of course, but her mother had never spoken about the rest.
“Is it any wonder your mother wishes only for you to be a good wife and married to a good husband?” Anaa asked Reshmina. “She has never known a better Afghanistan, as I have, and cannot trust in the promise of a brighter Afghanistan, as you do. She expects your life will be just as hard as hers, and she would protect you from anything so dangerous and painful as hope.”
Reshmina suddenly felt sorry for her mother. Not only because of all the awful things she had lived through, but because she had never had anybody in her youth like Anaa or Reshmina’s teacher—or even Mariam—to show her things could be better.
“When you’re done sweeping, you can get back to gathering firewood, which you still haven’t finished,” Reshmina’s mother said, making her jump. Mor had come back into the room while Reshmina was lost in thought. “They’re done with their shooting,” Mor said. “For now.”
Reshmina realized her mother was right—there were no more shots or explosions. The battle was over.
“Yes, Mor,” Reshmina said meekly.
I will try to be nicer to my mother in the future, she thought. But I will not give up on my dreams.
When Mor was gone, Reshmina picked up her English notebook and tucked it under her tunic before ducking out the back door to go collect firewood. As she made her way around the mountain, she read her English lessons aloud.
“Palwasha uses a computer to write an email. She talks to her friends on Facebook.”
Reshmina had never used a computer, but she knew what one looked like. Some of the older girls at school practiced for when they would finally get a computer by tapping letters drawn on a piece of cardboard and reading books about the Windows operating system. Reshmina didn’t know what Facebook was, but apparently it was very important.
Reshmina picked up a dry twig. “There is a party on the beach,” she read aloud from her notebook. “Palwasha drives her mother to the party in her car.”
“Nnnnnnnn,” someone groaned.
Reshmina froze and looked around for the source of the sound. A few meters away, lying on his stomach among dried leaves and dirt, was an American soldier. His face was charred like a scorched pot, and there were dark, wet spots on his uniform. Blood, Reshmina realized. He must have been injured in the battle.
The soldier groaned again and dragged himself forward. Where was he going? He twisted his head this way and that, as though he was looking for something, but there were only scrub trees as far as Reshmina could see.
The soldier’s head turned toward Reshmina, and she held her breath—but his eyes swept past her like he hadn’t even seen her.
He’s lost his eyesight, Reshmina realized. The black marks on his face—he had been wounded and couldn’t see. If someone didn’t help him, he would die out here in these woods. Or the Taliban would find him, and his death would be far more painful.
Reshmina frowned. Why should she care? The Americans had killed her sister, after all. Pashtunwali, the way of the Pashtun people, said that it was right and just to seek revenge against someone who had done you wrong. In Pashto, that revenge was called badal, and it never ran out.
Reshmina could wait a dozen years—a thousand—and still take her revenge on someone who had wronged her.
Why not just slip away, then, and let this man die?
Reshmina flipped her notebook shut to leave, but she fumbled it. Her notebook hit the ground with a flump, and the soldier’s head turned in her direction again.
“Is someone there?” he asked in English. “Hello? I can’t see, and my ears are ringing. I’m hurt. Hello? Can you help me? Please?”
Reshmina silently cursed her clumsiness. If she had been able to slip away without him hearing, she could have left the soldier to die and been done with it. But now he had heard her and had specifically asked her for help. Just as Pashtunwali gave her the right to revenge, it also said that when a person asked for help or protection, no Pashtun could refuse—no matter who was asking, friend or foe. That was nanawatai. What the Americans would call “refuge.”
Reshmina sagged. She could still slip away and have her revenge, but now it would mean denying aid to someone who had asked for it.
“Hello?” the American soldier asked again, his voice weak. “Please,” he begged. “Whoever you are, will you help me?”
