My Name Is Parvana (12 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
here was too much to talk about and no time to do it.

“There is a safe house in a village thirty kilometers away,” Shauzia said. “You can stay there for a day or two until I can arrange to get you to the next place. It will take us a while to get you out of the area, but we’ll do it, don’t worry.”

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” Parvana asked.

“Mrs. Weera’s helpers.” Shauzia grinned. “You ought to know. You worked with her in Kabul.”

“But …” Parvana was struggling to accept what was right in front of her. “You’re supposed to be in France!”

“France?” Asif asked. “Is this that girl you’re always writing to?” He looked at Shauzia. “I thought she made you up!”

“You write to me?” Shauzia asked.

“Don’t pay any attention to Asif. He’s just an annoying boy I found in a cave. Why aren’t you in France?”

“I only got as far as Pakistan. I was waylaid by one of Mrs. Weera’s little jobs. You remember what that’s like.”

Parvana did. Mrs. Weera was a never-ending series of little jobs.

“Now I’m part of an organization,” Shauzia said. “We rescue girls from bad husbands and bad fathers and get them to shelters or other safe places. Some of the men are high up in the army or police. They would kill us if they found us. And the foreigners would back them up. No one wants a bunch of women messing with their plans.” She paused a moment. “I’m sorry about your mother.” Then she looked at Maryam. “You got bigger. And is this Ali?”

“This is Hassan,” Parvana said. “I found him, too. Ali didn’t make it.”

“What about your father?”

Parvana shook her head.

“Oh. Too bad. You liked him a lot.” Shauzia shifted gears. “I’m going to smuggle you all out of here.”

“Smuggle us out?” Maryam asked. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Living is dangerous,” Shauzia said. “But we’re all brave, aren’t we?”

Parvana looked at her old friend and tried to find the little girl she remembered in this confident young woman who moved with such speed and strength, as though there was no problem she couldn’t fix. Next to her, Parvana felt clumsy and old.

I’m just tired, she thought, as Shauzia told them how she had rescued a girl in another province who was being beaten by her father and brother.

The end of her story was cut off by the roar of fighter jets zooming low over the valley.

“Rude,” Shauzia said, when the noise had subsided. “I can’t stand these rude foreigners. It’s the middle of the night. Babies are trying to sleep.”

A moment later there was the sound of an explosion. Not nearby, but not far away, either.

“Let’s use this nonsense to our advantage,” Shauzia said. “How soon can you be ready?”

It was just a matter of packing up some food, water and blankets. Then there was only time for a quick prayer at her mother’s graveside before they all piled into the cart.

“Everyone under the tarps,” Shauzia said. “It will be a squish for a while, but as soon as we get out of this valley and away from whatever eyes are in the hills, then it will be easier.”

A short time later, under the buzzing of still more planes, and through the blackness of the pre-dawn sky, the peddler and his horse and wagon moved slowly out of the gate and down the road, away from the village. The pots and pans were tied down. They no longer jingled. The wheels glided over the dirt, and the horse’s hooves, wrapped in cloth and padding, made little noise as the animal pulled the wagon through the night.

Parvana was up at the front, covered by a blanket but able to peer out. Behind her, under the false bundles, the other children sat still and silent. The rhythm of the horse’s walk lulled the little ones to sleep between the sound of the planes, and they made it out of the valley without being shot.

“You want to take one last look at your school?” Shauzia asked. She turned the wagon around so they could look through the gap in the hills. The sky was lighter now. They were on a slight rise. The word SCHOOL could clearly be seen, painted on the roof in bright white against the black tarpaper.

The children flung back their blankets to take a look.

The scream of a low-flying jet came up the valley behind them.

It seemed to Parvana to happen in slow motion: the plane flying low over the school, the bomb dropping like poop from the plane’s belly, the explosion that burst the school wall open like a giant flower.

Shauzia didn’t wait for the dust to settle. She just turned the cart back around and they went on their way.

Parvana eased down under the tarp. She took Maryam’s hand and put her arm around Ava. She looked at Asif through the dim morning light and couldn’t think of anything to say.

The children moved through the day. Night was falling when Shauzia pulled the cart alongside a nondescript door in a nondescript wall.

She got down from the wagon, knocked on the door and said, “Mrs. Weera sent me.”

The gate opened and they were let inside.

They all got down from the wagon and crossed a courtyard with gardens and a children’s swing. Shauzia led them right into the house.

The women who ran the place greeted her with hugs and smiles. It was a house of warmth and light and the scent of good cooking.

Parvana took the tea that was handed to her and sank down on a toshak. All around her was kindness and calm, with grown women caring for each other and for children. She heard laughter and women talking about arrangements for beds.

Asif leaned his crutches against the wall and lowered himself to the toshak beside Parvana.

“I like your friend,” he said.

“I told you she was real.”

Shauzia wasn’t sitting. She was bouncing around, talking with the women who ran things, helping with the young ones. She seemed bright, cheerful and at home.

All Parvana felt was loss. The loss of her mother, the loss of her job, the loss of her school. Even the loss of her friend, because although Shauzia was right there in the room with her, the Shauzia she had been having conversations with in her head and in her notebook was the Shauzia who was sitting in a field of lavender and planning a trip to the Eiffel Tower.

That Shauzia didn’t exist, and now Parvana felt like she had no one to talk to.

Then she sat up so suddenly that she spilled the last of her tea on Asif’s leg.

“Hey!”

Parvana went over to Shauzia and pulled her away from the women she was talking to, out into the quiet of the yard.

“I forgot something,” she said. “I need to go back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have to go back.”

“Why?”

“I left my father behind.”

“Your father?”

“His bag. I left my father’s shoulder bag behind. It’s all I have of him. I have to go back.”

Shauzia grabbed her arm.

“You can’t! There’s nothing there. They bombed it, remember?”

“The bag might still be there,” Parvana said. “I’ve looked through rubble before and found good things. I found Hassan in the rubble of a bombed-out village.” She shook Shauzia off.

“The foreigners destroyed it,” Shauzia said. “Maybe they made a mistake or maybe they thought it should be bombed. Either way they’ll be swarming all over it. And if the foreigners aren’t there, the Taliban will be, or some other stupid army. Whoever is there, they won’t like you!”

“I’ve lived in Afghanistan as long as you have,” Parvana told her. “I know how to look after myself.”

“Wait and see how you feel in the morning,” Shauzia said.

“No. I need to leave now.” Parvana knew that if she waited until the morning, she would talk herself out of it. It was a foolish trip, but she had to make it.

Shauzia looked like she wanted to keep talking Parvana out of going. But instead she said, “Give me a minute.”

Parvana stood in the yard. She looked in the window. Hassan had climbed into Asif’s lap and fallen asleep. Kinnah cradled her baby. Maryam and Badria were doing one of their dances. One of the women was brushing Ava’s hair. Everyone was all right.

If anything happened to her, at least she had done her job. Everyone was safe.

Then Shauzia was back with a blanket and a pack full of food.

“It’s not hard to find your way back there,” she said. She told Parvana how to do it. “Better not to have a written map. The fewer things written down, the better. We don’t want any armies showing up here.”

She handed Parvana the food.

“I can’t go with you,” she said. “I have to get the others to the next safe house. Don’t talk to anyone. You won’t know who you can trust. And if you are captured, by the police or anyone else, say nothing for as long as you can. Not a word. Your silence will help keep you calm. And no matter what you say, they’ll jump on it and twist it and make you crazy. Give me a chance to get everyone moved. Better still,” she added. “Don’t get caught. Do what you need to do and then get back here. Someone will know where I’ve taken everyone.”

Parvana gave her friend one quick hug. Then she started walking. She did not look back through the window and she did not tell anyone goodbye.

She walked all night, hid out among some boulders during the light of the next day, then started walking again.

By dawn after the second night of walking, she arrived back at the school. She knew it had been blown up, but it was still a shock to see it.

No one else was around. She walked right through what had been a wall.

She picked up broken cups and dropped them again, set chairs and broken bits of chalkboard right side up. The remains of a padlock lay not far from where the shed used to be. She moved through the rubble, shuffling it around until she found her father’s shoulder bag under the remains of a table.

The shoulder bag was still intact.

She opened it up and took out the old copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. It was the last of her father’s books. She and Asif and Hassan had tried to eat pages of it when they were wandering alone and hungry.

“I guess we can eat you again if we have to,” Parvana said.

She slung the bag across her shoulders and turned to leave.

She stubbed her toe against the broken school sign. All the words were smashed.
Leila’s Academy of
were now all trash. The only word still intact was
Hope
. Parvana picked it up, placed it on a high piece of rubble and dusted it off.

She had almost cleared all the dust from the nooks and crannies of the word when the American army trucks rolled up.

The soldiers got out, and Parvana left her school for the very last time.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“
Any last words?” the major asked.

They were outside, in the bright sunshine. Parvana had shackles on her ankles, a chain around her waist and handcuffs around her wrists. Two strong soldiers held her on each side.

“You’re being transferred to the prison north of Kabul,” he said. “I tried to protect you, but you left me no choice. You could have talked to us but you chose not to. I hope whatever you are hiding is really worth it.”

Parvana thought of Kinnah, who would no longer be raped by the old man she had been forced to marry. She thought of Ava, who would always now be with people who appreciated her. She thought of Badria, and knew that Shauzia’s friends would find a teacher who could see how smart she was. She thought of Maryam, who would find some way to sing whatever she wanted to sing, of Hassan, who would grow up to be kind to the women in his life, and of Asif, who was acting more like a man than all those crazy bombing, shooting, yelling and hitting men that gave everyone such a pain.

And she thought of Shauzia, who would continue to bring the good taste of real freedom to the girls who just wanted a chance to live.

“Yes,” she replied, and she smiled. “It’s worth it.”

She did not want to cry.

And then she heard something else.

It was the sound of a car horn blaring. It came closer and stopped right next to Parvana. She could feel the heat of the motor against the backs of her legs.

“You let her go this instant!”

A loud, bossy woman’s voice hit Parvana’s eardrums like birdsong.

“Get those guns out of my face. What do you mean, treating a minor Afghan child in her own country this way? Under whose authority do you dare do this? Get those chains off her!”

There in front of Parvana was the beautiful, furious face of Mrs. Weera, Member of Parliament.

“I represent the Parliament of Afghanistan. I have a letter in my hand from the president of the country demanding you release this child into my custody right now, and if you hesitate even a second, if you take the time to blink or breathe before obeying this order, I will have Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations International Children’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and every television station in the world come down on you like a ton of bricks!”

The major started to argue, but Mrs. Weera stepped right into his face and kept shouting until he gave the order and Parvana was released.

The grip Mrs. Weera held her with was as strong as any chain. There was no way anyone was taking Parvana away from her.

“Get in the van,” she ordered.

Parvana climbed into the government van and Mrs. Weera got into the seat beside her. The door slammed and the car took off.

They passed the garbage bins.

“Stop!” Parvana shouted.

The van stopped. She jumped out and grabbed her father’s shoulder bag from the top of the trash heap. She got back in the van and they sped away, off the base and out into the world.

“I can see that getting older hasn’t meant you get into less trouble,” Mrs. Weera said.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Parvana told her.

“Of course you didn’t. You’re much tougher than they are. How would you like to get out of those army clothes? I think if you look on the seat behind you, under that blanket, you’ll find what you need.”

Parvana turned around and lifted the blanket. There was Shauzia’s laughing face.

“I figured we still had some catching up to do,” Shauzia said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fantastic,” Parvana said.

She didn’t know how they had found her. And just now, she didn’t need to know.

“What now?” Mrs. Weera asked.

“Oh, I’m ready for France,” Shauzia said. “I’ve had enough adventure. How about you, Parvana? Want to go to France? Climb the Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes,” Parvana said. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”

“Let’s do it,” Shauzia said. “It’s time.”

Parvana sat back on the seat and looked out the window at the rocks, dust, poverty, wildness and hard-working people of her country. People who only wanted to live and laugh and not hurt too much.

France would be calm, clean and peaceful. She could learn to speak French, walk wherever she wanted and build her own future.

It would be a good life. A life anyone would envy.

She wondered whether it would be enough.

“On the other hand,” she said, “maybe we could rescue a few more girls first. After all, we already know how to do that.”

“I guess we could save a few more,” Shauzia agreed. “France isn’t going anywhere.”

“There are some brochures that need folding in one of the boxes on the floor back there,” Mrs. Weera said. “You won’t mind doing a little job while we drive.”

Shauzia got out the brochures and handed a stack to Parvana.

“So,” Parvana said, “more of the same, then. More hunger, more fear and more work.”

“This is Afghanistan,” Shauzia said. “What do you want — a happy ending?”