Words in the Dust (18 page)

Zeynab almost smiled. Then she pulled her chadri back down over her face, adjusting it so she could see through the little mesh window. “Khuda hafiz, Zulaikha.” She turned and started walking.

“Wait. Maybe —”

But Zeynab lifted the front hem of her chadri and ran. She had said good-bye, and she meant it.

That night at home, I tried to tell Baba that something was wrong with Zeynab, but when he asked me what she’d said that made me so worried, I didn’t have a good answer. The problem wasn’t in what she said, but in the way she was. We were sisters, and I could tell she was hurting. By the time I tried to explain this, though, Baba had gone back to checking figures on some papers for his business trip to Nimruz Province with Hajji Abdullah.

I spent the next morning and into the afternoon helping him get ready. Malehkah and I packed his clothes and cooked food to put into pots. Baba rushed from the main room of our house to his bedroom and back, checking to make sure he had all the papers he needed.

“Baba-jan?” I asked. He took off the jacket of his Western-style suit, unbuttoned the cuffs on his white shirt, and pushed up his sleeves. He rolled out some construction plans on the window ledge in the main room and mumbled to himself, tracing some of the lines on the paper with his finger. I stepped closer. “Baba?”

He looked up. “Hmm?” He turned back to his papers, shuffling through the stack.

I took a deep breath. I never asked my father for anything, but this would be my last chance to talk to him for weeks.
“Baba-jan, if I can get all the housework done early sometime, may I go to visit Zeynab? Maybe Najib could drive me if he catches up on work?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he rolled up the first big paper and flipped through the stack again. “Najibullah!” he yelled. “Go out to the Toyota! Get me my map of Nimruz Province.” In a moment, Najib ran out the front door.

“Baba?”

“What?” Baba shouted. “No, you can’t go visit Zeynab. Everyone is too busy. Now, you make sure you help Malehkah while I’m away.” He smoothed the ridiculous-looking tie. “If I hear that you didn’t obey her, I’ll be very angry when I get back.”

“Bale, Baba,” I said, though I thought if I could just get his full attention, I might be able to convince him. I wanted to get him to understand about my encounter with Zeynab in the bazaar. How tired she’d looked. How hollow she’d sounded.

“Will you be gone for a long time, Baba-jan?” Khalid asked.

Baba stood up straight and rubbed the cuff of his shirt over his shiny belt buckle. “Hard to say. The Americans haven’t even selected a site for the clinic yet. Then we’re required to hire local laborers, and you know what kind of lazy good-for-nothings you’ll find down south in Nimruz. After that, we have to stop by Farah City for a few days.” He bent down and picked up Habib and Khalid. I wished he would come and hug me too, so that I could talk to him. “We may be gone several
weeks. While I’m away, Najibullah is in charge, but you listen to your madar too.”

I watched Malehkah huff when Baba-jan slapped Najib on the back. My brother only nodded.

“Baba-jan?” I cut in. “Are you sure I can’t —”

“Zulaikha!” Baba shouted. “You are acting like a little baby. Why do you think it is so important to bother me about visiting Zeynab today? Anyway, you said last night that she said that she’s fine and her husband is kind.”

“But Baba —”

“Enough! I am a busy man and I will not have my own daughter arguing with me.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll arrange for you to go see her after I return from my business trip.”

My cheeks were hot. “Bale, Baba,” I said.

A car horn sounded outside our compound.

“Hajji Abdullah is waiting!” He rolled up the rest of his papers and tied them with string. “Najibullah, help me carry all this to his car.” Baba ran out with his papers while Najib carried a trunk containing some of his tools.

“Don’t be lazy!” Malehkah snapped at me. She handed me a rolled-up toshak and a sack of food. “Take this out to the compound door so your father and brother don’t have to walk so far.”

“Bale, Madar.” I hoped Najib would be around the house a lot while Baba was gone. I carried the armload of my father’s belongings out to the street door. Najib took them from me and handed them to Baba out in the road.

When he came back and locked the door, I heard the car outside pulling away. I’d have to wait a long time to be able to see Zeynab now.

“Zulaikha!” Malehkah shouted from the front porch. “Go to the bazaar and get some rice. When you get back, Torran needs to be milked.”

I looked at Najib and my shoulders slumped as I sighed. “Bale, Madar.”

My brother frowned at Malehkah. “I’ll drive Zulaikha to the bazaar.” Najib grinned at me when he saw my smile. He opened the compound gate doors and gave me the same thumbs-up sign he’d given the doctor at Kandahar. “We’ll probably be gone a long time. We’ll milk Torran when we get back. Or have Khalid do it.”

Malehkah stepped forward. “Zulaikha!”

We didn’t wait around to hear Malehkah’s outrage, but instead climbed into the car. Najib drove down the street, then stopped, reached under his seat, and felt around for something. I felt so free and happy that I clapped my hands. Najib smiled at me. Finally, he pulled out a cassette tape and waved it around. He slipped the tape into the player and then squeezed my arm. Music unlike anything I’d ever heard came on. It wasn’t the usual strings, drums, and high-pitched Indian women’s voices. Instead, it was a group of men singing in a different language.

“You like?” Najib asked. “I talked to one of the soldiers at Kandahar. He said someone sent him this cassette from America. He says this is
rock and roll
.”

I smiled and shrugged. It sounded great. I hardly ever had the chance to listen to music. We stopped and bought the rice, along with orange Zam Zams and lamb kabobs. Then we just drove around listening to the music, Najib singing loudly in a terrible imitation of English.

After a while, he stopped singing. “I hope you are enjoying your vacation day,” he said. He pulled the Toyota onto the road that circled the perimeter yard of the Citadel.

“Why are you taking me along with you?” I asked.

Najib shrugged as he pulled a chunk of lamb off the stick with his teeth. He spoke with his mouth open as he chewed, trying to avoid burning his tongue on the hot food. “When I went with you to Kandahar, it was fun because for a few days I did not have to weld. I thought I would try to pay you back a little.”

I smiled. I never knew my older brother was so nice.

“I like your smile,” Najib said. “And you do not cover your face anymore. This is good. Allah is kind to you.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is.” Najib was talking more on this single ride in the car than I had heard him talk in years. The road wound its way down a little ravine and then up and to the left, bringing us around so that we could see past one of the big towers of the Citadel. “Right after the Americans first came to An Daral, Khalid ran off.” I pointed at the wall, tugging my upper lip with my other hand. “I found him halfway up the wall right there and then he got stuck. He was scared. When I climbed up to get him, he nearly fell, and the Citadel police almost caught us.”

Najib turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised. “You climbed all the way up there?”

I shrugged. “What else could I do? Malehkah would have been furious with me if I let Khalid fall.”

We laughed at my mean little joke. Then Najib turned the car away from the Citadel. “I want to show you something,” he said. He drove back down the hill, winding among the walls of An Daral until we had passed the last compound on the east side of town.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” He drove the Toyota up a long, winding road, over bumps and ruts, until finally we turned out onto a little flat place partway up the mountain. Then he pulled the lever up between our seats and shut off the engine.

Ahead of us, down below, all of An Daral lay stretched out with its streets and houses. And above it all, in the distance, rose the high walls of the ancient Citadel.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said. “Like flying.”

“I used to sneak up here when I was a boy. Whenever I could get away.” Najib spoke slowly and quietly, looking straight out the windshield. “I mean, before I started working. Now all I do is weld.”

I frowned and turned toward my brother. “Don’t you like welding?”

Najib took a deep breath. “Does it matter? Since I was ten years old, and for the rest of my life, that’s what I’ll do. That’s who I’ll be. Najibullah the welder.”

He sounded so sad. I wanted to put my arm around him. “But you and Baba-jan are making more money. The business is doing well.”

He smiled at me. “It is. Praise Allah. We are doing very well. Only, when I was with you in Kandahar, I saw all these soldiers. Not just regular Americans either. Americans from China, Africa, everywhere. And they weren’t just fighter soldiers. There were doctor soldiers. Computer soldiers. Mechanic soldiers.”

“You want to join the army?”

He chuckled a little. “No! No, I could never do that. Only I wonder sometimes what I might have done if Baba had not made me a welder.”

“Sometimes I wonder what I might do with my life,” I said. He folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to continue. I told him everything. I told him all about Meena and the poetry and about trying to learn to read and write. Then, although I almost lost my courage to keep going, I even told him about the school in Herat.

“That’s wonderful! Did you ask Baba about it?”

“How could I?” I said. “It’s a crazy idea anyway. He’ll probably say no.”

“But you said the school would be free?”

I nodded.

Najib clapped his hands. “Baba will say yes. I know he will. He’ll be so happy when this Nimruz project pays off that he’ll agree to anything.”

“You think so? It just feels like an impossible dream.”

“Zulaikha, people used to say the same thing about you having your mouth fixed. I would have said that about flying in a helicopter to an army base in Kandahar. It’s like Baba always says, these are good times. A new Afghanistan!”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I couldn’t hold back my smile.

“
I
know. We’ll talk to Baba together when he returns. If he can be convinced to get you your surgery, he’ll agree to let you go to a good Herat school.”

“Bale, Najib!” I practically squealed as I squeezed his arm.

My brother started the engine and turned the car around. “And we’ll make sure to invite Zeynab back home to visit us too!” Then he turned the music up loud and we both sang along in our own made-up English. It was one of the happiest afternoons I could remember.

We pulled up outside our compound as the sun was setting. Najib honked the horn and waited for Malehkah or Khalid to open the big double car doors. He waited and then held down the horn button longer.

After the third horn blast, the doors swung open and Najib drove the car in. He shut off the motor and both of us climbed out as Malehkah closed the doors behind us. Waiting for her angry words, I stepped around the car, but instead I heard only her sniffling. She wiped tears from her eyes. We’d hurt her feelings, leaving her like that.

Somehow, even after all she had done to me, I felt bad for her. “Malehkah,” I said. “I’m sorry we —”

“Zeynab has been burned. They came with the news maybe twenty minutes after you left. I sent Khalid out to find you, but …” She struggled to speak. “They say it’s pretty bad.”

I couldn’t move. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t breathe.

“Where?” Najib asked.

“All over her body.”

“Where is she?” Najib shouted.

Malehkah took a step back. “At the hospital in Farah.”

Najib ran to the corner of the compound and grabbed a big white plastic jug. He opened the gas cap and stuck in a plastic funnel. But even with that, his shaking hands still spilled some fuel. After a few minutes, when gas overflowed and splashed back out, Najib cursed. “Get me a wet rag!” he snapped. He dumped the extra gas on the ground. When Malehkah returned with a dripping cloth, Najib washed his hands the best he could before running around to the driver’s seat.

I rushed forward to the passenger side. Malehkah grabbed me as I opened the door. “Zulaikha, you should —”

“She’s my
sister
!” I slapped her hand away and slammed the door closed behind me. The motor was already running and Najib leaned against the horn, screaming curses at Malehkah to open the door.

“Najib?” I asked. He didn’t answer, backing the car out of the compound before driving off down our street. “Najib?”

“Be quiet!” He leaned forward, staring carefully ahead as he drove the car faster and faster, spinning the back wheels out in loose rocks on some curves, slamming the brakes
when we came upon a deep rut in the road. Every time he had to slow down, he cursed or hit his fist down on the dashboard.

I rubbed my hands together and then put them over my face. My legs shook. The afternoon’s kabob wanted to come back up. Zeynab was burned. What did that mean? How was she burned? What happened?

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” I said. Then the tears came.