My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by the individual authors

  Introduction copyright © 2022 Lyse Doucet

  Afterword copyright © 2022 Lucy Hannah

  Cover design and endpaper illustration © Shreya Gupta

  Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First published in Great Britain by MacLehose Press, An Imprint of Quercus Editions Limited, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y0DZ

  “Please Turn the Air Conditioning On, Sir,” “Daughter Number Eight,” “The Late Shift,” and “Khurshid Khanum, Rise and Shine” were first published in English translation in Words Without Borders, in December 2020

  “Companion,” was first published in Dari in Nebesht, in August 2021

  First Grand Central Publishing Edition: October 2022

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-2682-2 (hardcover); 978-1-5387-2683-9 (ebook)

  E3-20220816-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  I Companion

  Daughter Number Eight

  Dogs Are Not to Blame

  A Common Language

  The Late Shift

  The Most Beautiful Lips in the World

  II I Don’t Have the Flying Wings

  Bad Luck

  What Are Friends For?

  D for Daud

  Falling from the Summit of Dreams

  An Imprint on the Wall

  III The Black Crow of Winter

  Silver Ring

  Sandals

  The Worms

  Khurshid Khanum, Rise and Shine

  My Pillow’s Journey of Eleven Thousand, Eight Hundred, and Seventy-Six Kilometers

  IV Ajah

  The Red Boots

  Blossom

  Haska’s Decision

  Please Turn the Air Conditioning On, Sir

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

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  “My pen is the wing of a bird;

  it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think,

  those dreams we are not allowed to dream.”

  Batool Haidari, Untold author, International Women’s Day 2021

  INTRODUCTION

  What do Afghan women want?” It’s a question so many now ask, and so many now feel they can answer.

  “Who speaks for Afghan women?”

  Not a week goes by—sometimes not a day—without a Zoom call, a conference, a statement from somewhere by someone about the rights of Afghan women and girls that must be promoted, protected. And all these words have multiplied since the Taliban swept back into power in August 2021, imposing new rules and restrictions on the lives of women and girls.

  Answers to these questions are arguments, analyses, a focus for activists. They’re rallying cries on battlefields: nasty battles online, and the even uglier war on the ground in Afghanistan.

  The Taliban accuse educated Afghan women of being a westernized elite, distant from the lives of the vast majority of the country’s women. Others draw stark, stubborn lines between urban and rural experiences in one of the poorest countries in the world. Metropolitan women activists have responded, stressing their umbilical ties to their sisters in the provinces.

  Now this remarkable collection of stories offers us different kinds of words. They give us narratives that can start to provide more nuanced answers to these urgent questions. They do so because, like all great writing in this genre, they take us into the small-but-ever-so-significant minutiae of daily life. They do so because they are by Afghan women writing in the language in which they feel most at home—in Afghanistan’s two principal languages, Dari and Pashto—impressively and painstakingly translated into English by Afghan women, and men, some of whom are writers themselves.

  This book is more than just a literary project. It’s a gift from the remarkable initiative of Untold: bringing Afghan women writers together, and allowing English-language readers to read their stories through translations that bring their words to life in another language. For most of these writers, even finding the space and peace of mind to write is a daily struggle. Literature is resilience, a release.

  Inside the small, sometimes suffocating worlds they create, there are much bigger stories and disturbing issues—misogyny, patriarchy, terrible domestic abuse, horrifying oppression in both private and public spaces.

  But this is first and foremost about storytelling, the art and joy of writing. It’s what draws us in. We smell onions frying in kitchens. We hear the jingle of an ice cream cart. We hold a purple handbag. We sit on the “soft chocolate-covered seats” of a luxury car which could only be afforded by someone else. These are details we may easily recognize, in our own lives. We may also have eyed a pair of boots that seemed to call our name in a shop. We convince ourselves they fit. Of course they don’t. What matters is that they make us feel so good.

  But there is much we don’t recognize and don’t want to. These are the stories that cause us to recoil, in shock, in sadness. We shift our gaze from the page. I did, more than once.

  A wedding is soaked in blood. Ordinary journeys between home and work are dangerous dances with fate. These are fictional accounts, not news reports. But it’s literature drawn from real life, real loss. For much of their lives, many Afghans have left home, hugging tight those near and dear, not knowing if they will return in the evening.

  We meet Hamed, a teacher, on his way to work on the same route he has taken for eighteen years. The margin between life and death is breathtakingly tiny, counted in minutes. And there’s a startling contrast between the reassuring rituals of hair and makeup in the life of Sanga, a state television presenter, and the rockets falling all around her. She just keeps reading the news.

  These are chronicles about the day-to-day for Afghan women—and men, too. Cruel war doesn’t discriminate by gender. Above all, these untold stories tell us about a society where men, and a web of societal rules and expectations, control so many aspects of so many women’s lives, no matter their standing in society. And remember—they were written even before the Taliban returned to power. Afghan women will tell you: their fight didn’t begin, and won’t end, with the ultra-conservative Taliban fixing the limits of their lives in a deeply conservative society. But now, for many, it is much worse. The end of aerial bombing and ground raids by US-led
NATO forces and Taliban attacks brought relief, especially in rural areas. But the battles at home go on.

  We read how so much of life is lived inside—inside rooms; inside heads and hearts. In this interiority, characters reveal fantasies and fears, their dread and dreams. Women look into mirrors; they look inside themselves. They yearn for silence and space. They venture, like Zahra, “onto the balcony of her imagination, a queen.” But even the mind isn’t step-son-proof: “Crazy woman,” her step-son taunts her, laughing, “come back to the real world.”

  Everyday places are crime scenes; kitchens can provide refuge but also pose risks. Knives and boiling oil are weaponized. Everyday objects possess outsized importance. Zahra dreams of buying a ruby red ring—to feel the “weight of the ring on her finger,” to make the eyes of her husband’s first wife “burn with envy.”

  There are turns of phrase to break your heart: “head hanging down as if she has been deprived of the right to raise it.”

  So many sentences will give you pause. So much so, I started searching—hoping—for happy endings, to feel good about Afghan women, about all women, about ourselves. They are there, too, even in the worst of times. You’ll read of two girls’ friendship, forged in the heady days of high school. This fictional account was inspired by the all-too-real and savage attack on the Sayed al-Shuhada high school in west Kabul in May 2021. Suicide bombers struck at a time and place designed to kill as many girls as possible from the minority Hazara community. I visited the school soon after the attack, braced to see and feel palpable sadness and aching loss. It was there. But so too was impressive courage and strength among its young female students, a generation of women ready to fight for their right to be educated, to have a future. It was unforgettable. So too, in this book, is the young girls’ friendship, and an indomitable “spirit in the face of our struggles.”

  This is how one writer so wonderfully describes some of the people you’ll meet in these pages: “a people full of joy and sadness and wishes and God.”

  To an extent, this book sets to rest the argument over “Afghan women.” Of course there is no absolute uniformity; there are as many different lives as there are women. But in this collection, there are pressures and problems that transcend class, ethnicity, and social standing.

  The way a society treats women is often a measure of that society. There is possibly no greater example of this than Afghanistan. Never have I worked in a country where the situation of women both dazzles and depresses. The heights of their achievements are awesome, the lows in their lives utterly shocking. Afghan women address the UN Security Council and top tables the world over in fluent English, their second or third language. But I’ve also met ambitious young women chained to their beds by their fathers for refusing to marry a man of his choice, or sent to prison for trying to escape abusive husbands—some even take refuge there.

  For millions of Afghan women, it is a struggle just to get through the day.

  This book reminds us that everyone has a story. Stories matter; so too the storytellers. Afghan women writers, informed and inspired by their own personal experiences, are best placed to bring us these powerful insights into the lives of Afghans and, most of all, the lives of women. Women’s lives, in their own words—they matter.

  Lyse Doucet, BBC chief international correspondent

  I

  COMPANION

  Maryam Mahjoba

  Translated from the Dari by Dr. Zubair Popalzai

  Nuria opens the fridge for a bottle of mineral water. Moments later, the water is boiling on the stove. She brews tea and sets a cup down, with a plate of dried berries and walnuts. Sitting with the tea, Nuria looks across at the photos on the wall.

  In one picture, Arsalan is riding a bicycle and seems to be screaming. In another, her eldest son and daughter-in-law are holding Mahdi, three or four years old at the time. Nuria wasn’t there when he was born or when he took his first steps. In the picture, they are all sitting on a sofa in California, a cake in front of them. They are smiling for the photographer, except for the child, who is looking at the cake. In another picture, Yusra is in traditional Afghan clothes, her green chador tied around her waist. Smiling, she is standing in the corridor, next to a vase that is taller than her.

  Nuria gets up slowly and walks towards the TV. She removes the embroidered cloth draped over the set to keep off the dust, and presses the red button on the remote control. Seven members of Moby Media Group have been killed—the Taliban has taken responsibility for the attack. Images of the scene are broadcast, one after another. Nuria is saddened but at least nobody she knows has been wounded or killed. All of her children are abroad. Indeed, this is not a place to live. It is good they left, she thinks to herself. She feels satisfied: I did well to send them out.

  She switches off the TV before she has to hear the statement from the Taliban. She puts the remote control down on the table and looks at the wall again. There is another picture, of herself with her sister and nephew. Nuria is wearing a short skirt and a loose blouse. Her legs are bare to the knee and her hair is short and wavy. Her sister’s legs are also bare, but she is wearing a chador. Her nephew has brown hair and red cheeks and lips. His mouth is slightly open and he is staring at the photographer.

  Nuria sips her tea. How old is this photo of us two? Thirty-five or forty years? How many years has it been since Dr. Najib’s government? She takes a breath and wraps her scarf tightly around her head. She looks at the clock, which shows it is ten in the morning.

  She moves on to the next photo. It’s Lailoma with three other women in Germany. Two of them have blond hair and the other woman is Black and has dark hair. All three are wearing trousers. Lailoma is also wearing trousers. They took this photo in the classroom, laughing at the camera. Their mouths are open and their teeth exposed. What good dress sense Lailoma has! She is better dressed than the foreign women are. A slight smile appears on Nuria’s lips.

  The doorbell rings and takes Nuria out of her children’s world. It has to be the cake and biscuits she ordered. She opens the door to the delivery man from the restaurant. He greets her, takes her money, and leaves. The sound of his motorcycle engine mixes with the hum of other vehicles on the road.

  Next to the kitchen door is a desk and on it is a laptop that is permanently plugged in. Nuria uses the laptop only to chat on Skype. Each time she receives a call, she sits on the chair facing the laptop camera, constantly tightening her scarf. Each time she sits on that chair, she cries at the screen and kisses the air, saying, “I kiss you from afar, mother’s flower, my dear, my darling, my precious.”

  It’s Tahmina calling again. Her mother kisses her from afar again. Everything is fine at their end. The children are healthy and busy with school and sports; the men and women of the house are busy with their work and responsibilities. Only Arash, with a pounding heart, has a special story for his bibi jan. He sits in front of the camera and begins his sweet talk. He tells his grandmother that their neighbor, the lady who gave him chocolate and wore glasses, had been dead for several days and they only found out when a strange smell came from her house. Tahmina hurries to the camera to correct Arash. “She had not decomposed and she had not been dead for several days when they found her,” she tells her mother. “The poor lady was ninety years old and sick. Everyone found out when she died.”

  Liza demands, “Food, Maadar.” Tahmina kisses her mother from afar and disconnects the call. Nuria wanted to say, “Let me hear the sounds of your household, let me be in this corner of your room while you do your work and feed Liza and Arash. I will just sit here as if you are in one room and I am in another room.” But it was not possible and she does not know why not.

  She gets up and looks at the pictures again. In the hallway is a photo of Jahid and her, together. He had not gone yet. He had accompanied her to the studio to have this photograph taken to make her happy. On the day the photograph was taken, a strange sadness settled in Nuria’s heart. God, what if Jahid goes abroad and
leaves me alone, like all his brothers and sisters have? She had blinked while the photo was being taken, so the photographer had taken another. It was the second photograph that was framed.

  And Jahid did leave.

  What if I die alone and no one knows that I am dead? This thought brings a deeper sense of loneliness. She tightens the knot of her three-cornered scarf.

  Nuria puts on her coat and leaves the house. There is a white dog standing at the entrance to the block. It is accustomed to hearing Nuria tell the guard, “Remove this dog from here so it doesn’t enter the building.” But today Nuria does not say anything. It is getting on for noon. Many women have come out to buy chiles and tomatoes to make salads for lunch. The shopkeepers are constantly sprinkling water on the vegetables they are selling, to make them look fresher and more appealing. The air is filled with the smell of mint and coriander and with the noise and motion of the crowd.

  When Nuria buys vegetables from the shop, she feels like telling the shopkeeper, a young man: “Son, if I die—no, if you notice that I haven’t come to buy vegetables for two days in a row—come and check on me to make sure I am alive.” It seems a little funny to her, to say “make sure I am alive.” What am I saying? She decides in her heart that she should leave the house every day for some reason, so that on the day she dies everyone will realize that Khala Nuria is missing and ask why they haven’t seen her.

  It is still only noon when she returns home. Into a small pot she empties the bag of lemons and peppers she has bought. She washes them. She dries her hands, rests her arm against the window and looks out at the mulberry tree, whose berries have ripened and fallen. What is left is memories of those sweet berries and their dark purple stains on the ground. The leaves will also fall soon, autumn is approaching. Another berry falls from the tree, unseen by Nuria. The height of her window and its distance from the tree in the street make it impossible for Nuria to see the mulberry fall. Taking a deep breath, she reties the knot of her triangular scarf and pulls a mirror out of her pocket. She glances at her eyes and cheeks, opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue. She whispers to herself, “I may die. What if I die? What if my body begins to smell? What should I do, God? What could Nuria have done to not die alone? God, if no one finds out, if nobody is informed, I will die a bad death. My poor body, my poor body.”