Mud City

DEBORAH ELLIS

To children lost and wandering,
far from their homes.

“When did Mrs. Weera say she would be back?”

Shauzia had asked that question so many times that the woman in Mrs.
Weera’s hut didn’t even look up. She simply raised an arm and pointed at the
door.

“All right, I’m going,” Shauzia said. “But
I’m not going far. I’ll sit in the doorway until she comes back.”

But the woman at the makeshift table was absorbed in her work. Not only
was this the office for the Widows’ Compound, the section of the refugee camp
where widows and their children lived. It was also the office for a secret women’s
organization that operated on the other side of the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. The
Taliban were still in power there. Mrs. Weera’s organization ran secret schools,
clinics and a magazine.

Shauzia was tempted to jump onto the table
and kick
the papers onto the dirt floor, just to get a reaction. Instead, she went outside and
plunked herself down beside the doorway, her back slumped against the wall.

Jasper, her dog, was taking up most of the sliver of shade by the hut. He
lifted his head a few inches off the ground in greeting, but only for a moment. It was
too hot to do anything more.

The streets and walls of the camp were all made of mud, which soaked up
the heat like a bread oven, baking everything inside, including Shauzia. Flies landed on
her face, hands and ankles. Nearby, the resident crazy woman rocked and moaned.

“Remember when we were in the high pasture?” Shauzia asked
Jasper. “Remember how cool and clean the air felt? How we could hear birds
singing, not women moaning?” She reached under her chador to lift up her hair,
which was sticking to the back of her neck. “Maybe we should have stayed with the
shepherds,” she said, brushing off a fly and redraping her head and shoulders with
the chador. “Maybe I should have kept my hair short like a boy’s instead of
letting it grow back. That was
Mrs. Weera’s idea. Mrs. Weera
orders me around, has dumb ideas, and won’t even get me a decent pair of sandals.
Look at these!” She took off a sandal and showed it to Jasper, who kept his eyes
closed. The sandal was barely held together by bits of string.

Shauzia put it back on her foot.

“It’s not fair for you to be in this heat, either,” she
told Jasper. “You’re a shepherding dog. You should be back in the mountains
with the sheep or, even better, on the deck of a big ship, next to me, with the ocean
wind all around us.”

Shauzia wasn’t completely sure whether there was wind on the ocean,
but she figured there must be. After all, there were waves.

“I’m sorry I brought you here, Jasper. I thought this place
would be a stepping stone to some place better instead of a dead end. Do you forgive
me?”

Jasper opened his eyes, perked up his ears for a moment, then went back to
his nap. Shauzia took that as a yes.

Jasper used to belong to the shepherds, but as soon as he and Shauzia met,
they realized they really belonged together.

Shauzia leaned back and closed her eyes. Maybe she
could remember what a cool breeze felt like. Maybe that would cool her down.

“Shauzia, tell us a story!”

She kept her eyes closed.

“Go away.” She wasn’t in the mood to entertain the
compound’s children.

“Tell us about the wolves.”

She opened one eye and used it to glare at the group of youngsters in
front of her.

“I said go away.” She never should have been nice to them. Now
they wouldn’t leave her alone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting.”

“We’ll sit with you.” The children dropped to the dirt,
closer to her than was comfortable in this heat. A lot of them had shaved heads because
of a recent outbreak of lice in the compound. Most had runny noses. They all had big
eyes and hollow cheeks. There was never enough food.

“Quit butting into me,” she said, pushing away a little girl
who was leaning on her. The orphans Mrs. Weera was always finding and
bringing into the compound were especially clingy. “You’re worse than
sheep.”

“Tell us about the wolves.”

“One story, then you’ll leave me alone?”

“One story.”

It would be worth the effort, if they really did go. She needed some quiet
time to plan out what she was going to say to Mrs. Weera. This time, she wouldn’t
be put off by a request to do one of those “little jobs.”

“All right, I’ll tell you about the wolves.” Shauzia
took a deep breath and began her story.

“It happened while I was working as a shepherd. We had the sheep up
in the high pasture-land in Afghanistan, where the air is clean and cool.”

“I can make Afghanistan with my fist.”

“So can I.”

A dozen grubby fists were thrust into Shauzia’s face. The thumbs
were stuck out to represent the skinny part of the province of Badakhshan.

“Don’t interrupt. Do you want to hear the story or not?”
Shauzia said, waving the hands away.

“We were up in the pastureland, where
everything
is green – grass, bushes, pistachio trees, great oak trees – a beautiful
green.”

Shauzia looked around for something to compare it to. The compound was all
yellowish-gray mud. Most of the children had spent their whole lives there.

“Look at Safa’s shalwar kameez. Up in the high pastureland,
the whole world is green like that.” There was green under the dirt of
Safa’s clothes. The water supply was low, and no one had been able to do
laundry.

The children oohed and aahed and started babbling about colors. Shauzia
had to shut them up so she could finish the story. Then maybe they’d leave her
alone.

She pictured the pastureland in her mind and, for a moment, she was taken
away from the noise, dirt and smell of the refugee camp. “I was sitting up with
the sheep one dark night, guarding them, because sheep are so stupid they can’t
look after themselves. The other shepherds – big grown men – were asleep. I
was the only one awake. I sat by a small fire, watching the sparks fly up into the sky
like stars.