Mud City (8 page)

“Into the shower with you,” Barbara said. She showed Shauzia
how to work the taps. “Use as much soap as you want. Leave your dirty clothes on
the floor. I’ll find you something clean to wear.”

Then she left her alone.

Shauzia was glad for some time to catch her breath. She gently touched her
finger to the blue-flowered wallpaper, then felt the smoothness of the tile.

There was a mirror over the sink. She walked over and looked into it.

She didn’t recognize the head that stared back
at her. It had been years since she had seen her face. The room she had shared with her
family in Kabul had no mirror.

In her mind, she was still a schoolgirl in a uniform with long dark hair
that curled up at the end. But the face that looked back at her now was older than she
remembered. It was longer and the cheeks were hollower. Shauzia wondered who this girl
was.

There were noises downstairs as the boys came back into the house. Shauzia
heard Jasper’s feet running up the stone staircase and whimpering outside the
bathroom door. She left her reflection and let him in.

“You don’t care what I look like, do you, Jasper?” His
wagging tail made her feel better.

She shucked her filthy clothes and got into the shower. She turned on the
taps and let the hot water stream over her body. The soap smelled of flowers and spices.
She lathered and rinsed, lathered and rinsed, washing the grime and stink off her
body.

“Why don’t you join the children in the garden?” Barbara
suggested when Shauzia appeared in the kitchen dressed in a woman’s
shalwar kameez. It felt great to be clean and dressed in clean
clothes. Her skin smelled good, like the soap. Barbara handed her a glass of cold milk.
“Dinner will be ready soon.”

Shauzia and Jasper went into the garden where the boys were playing. One
boy had a truck the other boy wanted, and they started to argue. Shauzia didn’t
like to look at them. They were chubby with good health, and their laughter and arguing
hurt her ears.

She tasted the milk. It was smooth and good. She poured some into the palm
of her hand and held it out to Jasper.

“Let me do that!” one of the boys yelled, and they both
crowded in on her, eager and demanding. Shauzia leaned back to get away from them, but
they kept pressing in on her.

She was rescued by Tom, who called them all in to supper.

“Shauzia, you sit here.” Barbara pulled out a chair for her at
the long wooden table. In front of her was a bright yellow plate and shining cutlery. On
the table were platters of chicken and bowls of vegetables. Barbara poured her another
glass of milk while Tom supervised the boys as they washed their hands.

“Have you used a fork before?” Barbara
asked.

Shauzia nodded. Many Afghans ate with their fingers, but her family had
been very modern. They had lost all their cutlery in a bombing and ate with their
fingers after that, but Shauzia still remembered how to eat with a fork.

She watched Tom and Barbara put napkins on their laps, and she did the
same.

Once she started eating, she didn’t think she could stop. At first
she tried to copy the adults and use her fork properly, but that was too slow, so she
used her fingers, too. She ignored everything except the food. Barbara kept refilling
her plate, and Shauzia ate it all, without really distinguishing between chicken, rice
or vegetables.

When she started to get full, she remembered to save some food for the
next day. The napkin came in handy for that.

“Do you still have room for dessert?” Barbara asked, placing a
bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of her.

“I want ice cream!” the smaller boy, Jake, whined.

“Eat your carrots first,” Barbara
said.

“No!”

“Eat just one bite of carrot,” Tom said.

Shauzia watched as Jake, frowning, put the tiniest piece of carrot into
his mouth. Barbara took his plate away and replaced it with ice cream. Shauzia eyed the
food that was still on the plate as Barbara carried it to the kitchen, then turned her
attention to her ice cream.

It was so good, she picked up her bowl and licked up the remains of
it.

“Paul, put your bowl down,” Tom said to the older boy.

“But she got to!”

“Never mind. You know better.”

Shauzia felt her cheeks burn. She had made a mistake. Would they throw her
out?

“I’ve made up a bed for you in the spare room,” Barbara
said. “Do you want to see it now? Then you can go to sleep any time you want
to.”

Shauzia nodded and got up from the table, holding her napkin full of food
down by her side.

“Jasper’s sleeping with me tonight,” Jake announced.

“No, he’s not. He’s sleeping with
me,” insisted Paul.

Shauzia left them to their argument. Jasper trotted along beside her as
they went upstairs.

After brushing her teeth with a new red toothbrush, she saw her bedroom.
It had a real bed in it, with sheets and blankets and a pillow. Barbara handed her a
nightgown to put on. She was suddenly very tired.

Barbara gave her a hug. “Sleep well. We’re very glad to have
you here.”

Shauzia’s arms remained at her side. She wasn’t sure if she
should return the hug. She wasn’t sure if she could remember how.

Barbara showed her where to turn off the light, then left her alone.

Shauzia hid the food under the bed. She changed into the nightgown and
slid into bed between clean sheets. Her belly was so full it hurt, and her skin still
smelled of the soap from the shower.

Jasper hopped up on the bed and stretched out beside her.

“I think they’re going to ask us to stay here with
them,” she whispered. “I could clean for them, and at night, when everyone
is asleep, I
could play with some of those toys. I could go back to
school, and learn to be... anything!”

She leaned on her elbows and looked into Jasper’s face.
“We’ll still go to the sea. We’ll still go to France But would it be
all right with you if we stayed here for a little while?”

Jasper thumped his tail and licked her hand.

Shauzia put her head back on the very soft pillow. “I wish Mrs.
Weera could see me now,” she whispered. Then she smiled and fell asleep.

She woke up a few hours later. After listening carefully to make sure
everyone was sleeping, she tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. The garbage was full of
perfectly good food. She rescued it, took it upstairs and hid it under her bed.

She could never tell when she would be hungry again.

The next few days passed by in a haze of eating and sleeping.

Shauzia hadn’t realized how tired she was. Inside this walled-in
paradise there were birds and flowers and no piles of garbage to search through.

She ate three meals a day at the big table, plus the snacks that Barbara
handed out between meals.

“Make yourself at home,” she told Shauzia. “We want you
to be comfortable.”

“Why are you doing this?” Shauzia asked.

“Tom’s salary goes a long way over here,” Barbara told
her. “We like to share what we have. Besides, us girls have to stick
together!” She gave Shauzia another hug, and this time, Shauzia hugged her
back.

Sometimes beggars would ring the bell outside in the street, and Tom or
Barbara would open the door in the gate and hand out oranges
or
coins. The gate was high and made of thick steel, so Shauzia never saw the people who
came to the door, but she was glad they were getting some help.

She kept intending to help out around the house, but she kept dozing off
instead. She would sit down for a moment after breakfast or lunch, in the living room or
on the porch, and wake up several hours later.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Barbara, after sleeping away
the afternoon and not helping with dinner.

“You’ve been tired for a long time,” Barbara said,
putting her arm around Shauzia’s shoulders. “You’ll get caught up on
your rest soon, and then you’ll feel better.”

Shauzia liked it when Barbara smiled at her. She liked to watch her and
Tom wrestling with their boys, or playing trucks with them, or reading to them at
bedtime.

Tom and Barbara spoke Dari to her, but the boys knew only English. Shauzia
turned over each new word she heard in her head, and whispered it to Jasper until she
felt comfortable saying it out loud. Bit by bit, her English improved.

No one spoke about the future. Shauzia didn’t
want to ask. Maybe they had forgotten that she was an outsider. Maybe they already
thought of her as one of their own children. She didn’t want to remind them that
she wasn’t.

One day, Shauzia woke up in the morning and felt really awake.

“I think I’ve caught up on my sleep,” she said to
Jasper. Jasper looked good, too. He’d been eating well, and his coat was soft from
lots of washing and brushing.

“You look bright-eyed this morning,” Tom said to her at
breakfast.

“I’d like to start helping out,” Shauzia said, pleased
to be noticed. “I’m very good at cleaning.”

“We already have a cleaning woman,” Jake said, his mouth full
of scrambled eggs.

“Waheeda only comes twice a week, which is not enough to keep this
place clean,” Barbara said. “If you two boys would only pitch in and pick up
your toys now and then.”

“Talk to the hand,” Paul said, stretching his arm, palm out,
to his mother.

“You know I don’t like that. He got it from a video,”
Barbara told Shauzia.

“Maybe you shouldn’t watch videos for
awhile,” Tom said. Paul slammed his fork onto the table, scattering bits of egg.
He made the loud whining sound that hurt Shauzia’s ears.

Shauzia took advantage of the distraction to take more eggs from the
platter, and to put them and some toast into her napkin. The pile of food under her bed
was getting bigger every day. If Tom and Barbara ever asked her to leave, she’d
have food to last for quite awhile. Maybe it would last until she got to the sea.

“I’d like to take the boys swimming this afternoon,”
Barbara told Shauzia when they were doing the lunch dishes together. “We go to the
American Club. I wish I could take you, but it’s only for ex-patriots. You know,
foreigners? Would you be all right here on your own for a few hours?”

Shauzia found the question funny. After all, she had been looking after
herself for a long time

“I will be all right,” she said.

She waved goodbye as they drove away and closed the gate after they
left.

She was almost back in the house when the gate buzzer rang.

“Don’t answer the doorbell,”
Barbara had said. “I have a key for the gate, so we’ll let ourselves
in.”

Shauzia was going to do as Barbara said, but the buzzer sounded again. She
couldn’t just leave someone out there.

She opened the door in the gate. An Afghan woman was holding a baby, her
hand stretched out.

“Can you give me something for my children?”

“Yes, I can. Come into the garden.” Shauzia ran into the house
and filled a plastic bag with fruit and biscuits from the cupboard. She handed it to the
woman, who thanked her many times, then left.

“That was fun,” Shauzia said to Jasper. She went into the
house and was just settled on the living-room floor, getting ready to play with the
toys, when the bell rang again.

This time it was a group of children carrying junk sacks, looking for
cardboard or cans to add to their collections.

Shauzia had an idea.

“Come in,” she said. “Come in and play.”

She got food for everyone and showed them
the toys.
The children looked like they didn’t know what to do with them. Shauzia closed a
small hand around a toy car and made it move across the floor.

The bell rang a few times more. She brought a heavily pregnant woman into
the house and took her up to one of the beds to sleep in a cool, dark room. An old man
drank a glass of milk and fell asleep in the shade of the garden.

More women and children came to the door. Shauzia invited everyone in.
“The people who live here like to share,” she said. Jasper greeted them and
made everyone feel welcome.

Shauzia gave out food until the cupboards and the fridge were empty. When
there was no more food to give away, she handed out toys, clothes, blankets –
anything the beggars could use.

With everyone eating, the children playing with toys and with Jasper, the
house felt like it was having a party.

“Here’s a pillow for your back,” she said to one woman,
handing another a pair of Barbara’s sandals to replace the ripped ones she had
come in with. She took people up to the
bathroom so they could
shower, and found a supply of bars of soap in a cupboard. She handed these out, too.

Shauzia was up in the bathroom, helping two little girls shower and wash
their hair, when Barbara and the boys came home. The girls were giggling so much at the
soap bubbles in their hair, Shauzia almost missed Barbara’s shriek. Then Barbara
shrieked a second time, and Shauzia definitely heard that.

“What is going on here?” Barbara yelled.
“Shauzia!”

Shauzia, her hands full of hair she was rinsing, called down to her.
“I’m up here.”

Barbara was in the bathroom in seconds.

“Look how clean they are,” Shauzia said, wrapping the little
girls in towels.

“Who are all these people? What have you been doing?”

Shauzia smiled up at her. “Sharing. Like you shared with
me.”

“Sharing?”

“They came to the gate. They needed things.”

“And you just invited them in?”

Shauzia didn’t understand. “I thought you
would be pleased. I thought this is what you like to do. You have so
much.”

“Where are their clothes?” Barbara’s face was hard as
she looked down at the little girls, dripping water on her bathroom floor.

Shauzia pointed to the sink. She had put the clothes in water to soak
before washing them. She was planning to wrap the girls in sheets while the hot Peshawar
sun dried their clothes.