Damsa remembered the silent meals at her old house, the servants slipping in with food, slipping out with empty platters. Her father would be preoccupied with business, often on his phone. Damsa’s stepmother sometimes tried to ask everyone about their day and corrected Damsa’s table manners. Damsa would keep her eyes on her plate, the heft of the expensive cutlery matching the heavy atmosphere.

  It was so different here that Damsa wasn’t sure how to behave. She felt shy to try. But everyone ignored her while at the same time passing her food and making sure she had enough to eat and drink. They included her in conversations through cheerful offhand comments like, “Now that Damsa’s here, we can get some order in this place!”

  The three sisters who had giggled while Damsa drooled sat across the table from her.

  “Oldest to youngest, Alia, age ten, Noosala, nine, and Rosta, who’s eight,” said Larmina. “They all ran away together after Alia was whipped for refusing to marry.”

  “I found them in a town on the border with the next province, hiding in a bakery storage room,” said Officer Shauzia. “They were covered in flour.”

  “Shauzia almost baked us in the oven,” piped up little Rosta.

  “Yes. I thought, how wonderful. Three delicious loaves of bread,” said Shauzia, which got the three sisters giggling again.

  Zahra sat beside Alia, with her child, Lara, in a baby chair next to her on the table. Zahra giggled with the sisters. The baby held a piece of nan that she alternately chewed on or stared at in fascination.

  Damsa tried not to stare at the young mother. That might have been her own fate, too, if she hadn’t run out on her engagement. She could not imagine being responsible for a baby at her age.

  Next to the baby, at the end of the table, Old Mrs. Musharef scooped up rice with her fingers.

  “Call me old, that’s right,” she said to Damsa. “My husband tried to kill me, but I got away! I am old and alive, so being old is a victory. We have to celebrate our victories!”

  At this, everyone applauded, and Damsa got the impression that clapping for each other was a routine thing here, the way they all did it, then went back to eating.

  Parvana sat at the other end of the table, and beside her was a girl Damsa supposed was Hadiah. Hadiah had a book open beside her and read while she ate, joining in the clapping when it happened, otherwise perfectly content to concentrate on the words on the pages.

  No one bothered her. They just let her read.

  No one bothered Damsa, either. They didn’t pester her with questions. They didn’t stare. They let her eat. She felt welcome. She felt that they had already decided she was one of them.

  It almost made her cry.

  Later in the evening, Damsa was given a tray of tea things and asked to deliver it to Parvana and Shauzia out in the yard. She found them sitting at a small table in a little garden ringed by white-painted rocks.

  “I’m supposed to bring you this,” Damsa said. She held out the tray with tea, two cups and a small plate of biscuits.

  “Welcome to France,” said Shauzia.

  That’s when Damsa noticed the little sign with France painted on it.

  “Yes, step into our lavender field.” Parvana waved her hands at the two dozen or so tall feathery plants heavy with purple blossoms.

  “That’s not lavender,” Damsa said. “That’s Russian sage.”

  “Some call it Afghan lavender,” said Shauzia. “Don’t be shy. Join us.”

  Damsa put the tray down on the table.

  “Have a seat.”

  A garden swing was near the table. Damsa sat and gently rocked back and forth. She spied a strange structure in the garden, a little taller than herself.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the Eiffel Tower,” said Shauzia. “Parvana made it for me as a birthday present. Like the sign says, we’re in France.”

  “Are you two all right?” Damsa asked.

  “You’d better explain,” said Parvana.

  “When we were children, I carried a magazine picture of a lavender field in France,” said Shauzia. “It looked like the most perfect place to be. My plan was to go there, sit in that field and no one would bother me ever again. I still might do that. But not today. Today is a good day. Parvana got a call from Asif. They’ve arrived at the safe house.”

  “I’ll really feel better when Asif is back here and Nooria calls to say she’s met Rafi at the airport in New York,” Parvana said. “Then I’ll be able to relax again.”

  “It’s been a long haul, getting their trip together,” said Shauzia. “Visas, paperwork, passports, tickets. All of it so complicated.”

  “And Maryam, who never makes anything easy.” Parvana passed the plate of biscuits to Damsa. “Have a cookie.”

  Damsa took one. “Is Maryam really so difficult?”

  “It’s my own fault,” said Parvana. “I didn’t want her to have to be as serious as me, but she needed to be a little bit serious. Every time I tried to push her in that direction, she went all-in on irresponsibility.”

  “You liked that she was irresponsible,” Shauzia said mildly. Clearly, the two of them had had this discussion before. “You said over and over that it was about time a woman in Afghanistan could finally act like there would always be enough for her — enough food, enough freedom and enough space. But between you and me, Damsa, Maryam is a lot tougher and kinder than she lets on. She’ll be just fine.” Shauzia took a swallow of tea and put her cup down. “Enough about her. How are you settling in?”

  “I like it here,” Damsa said. “I don’t know how to do anything, though. We always had servants.”

  “It’s more fun to be able to look after ourselves. You’ll soon learn,” said Parvana. “Try to relax and enjoy this place. No one will hurt you here or force you to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re with us now, for as long as you want. We take care of each other. Tell us about yourself. Did you go to school?”

  “I was a good student,” said Damsa, then hesitated. “Well, I got distracted a lot. Sometimes I studied. Sometimes I didn’t.”

  “What did you enjoy studying?”

  The two women looked like they were truly interested.

  “The microscope,” Damsa said. “Our school shared one with the boys’ high school down the road. We didn’t get a chance to use it very often, but my science teacher once let me look at slides through it for an entire lunch hour, all by myself.”

  “And what did you like about that?” asked Shauzia.

  No one had ever asked Damsa questions like these. She had to think before she knew the answer.

  “I liked that there are whole other worlds that we don’t always see.”

  Shauzia and Parvana nodded.

  Shauzia’s cell phone rang. She answered it.

  “Hello? . . . Really . . . Well, that was sooner than expected. Anything I can do? . . . Yes, I certainly will stay hidden, at least for now. You, too . . . Take care.”

  She hung up and put the phone on the table beside her cup of tea.

  “That was one of my colleagues,” she said. “A policewoman in the city. She called to tell me the news.”

  “What news?”

  Damsa watched Shauzia take Parvana’s hands in hers and hold them tight.

  “The Taliban have taken Kabul. They’ve got the whole country now. They’re back.”

  6

  “I’ve never painted in the dark before,” whispered Parvana.

  “I’ve never painted at all,” said Damsa. That was yet another item on a long list of things she had never done and had never even thought about doing, until today.

  “I hope this is unnecessary,” said Parvana. “Hadiah, if this was unnecessary, you have my deepest apology. Even if it turns out to be necessary, I am truly sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” said Hadiah. “I can always paint it again.”

  Those were the first words Damsa had heard Hadiah speak.

  Damsa watched Parvana and Hadiah dip their wide brushes in the paint can and smooth away the drips. There was just enough moonlight to see the words “Green Valley” disappear under the paint.

  “I can’t tell what color this is,” she whispered, as she mimicked their actions at the paint can.

  “It’s a very dull gray,” said Parvana. “We’ll start with the words to make sure we have enough paint, then work our way out to the flowers. We need to paint over the address numbers, too.”

  Damsa brushed a line of paint across some letters. Two of them vanished.

  I’m painting, she thought with amazement. Her line dripped, but she smoothed out the drips with another stroke of the brush.

  “If they have taken over Kabul, they have taken over the offices of the organizations that have helped us over the years,” Parvana said. “We are very small now, but you should have seen us, Damsa, when we operated a full-service women’s center. Those were busy times, right, Hadiah? The Taliban probably won’t bother us now, Inshallah, but we need to do what we can to confuse them. If they can’t find us . . .”

  “They can’t get us,” finished Damsa.

  There was enough moonlight to see Parvana’s smile.

  “I feel like I’ve been fighting the Taliban and people like them my whole life,” said Parvana. “When the Taliban first came to power, I was living in Kabul with my family, all of us stuck in one room together — my father, my mother, my older sister, Nooria, Maryam, who was a very little girl, and our baby brother, Ali. It was hard before our father was arrested. After he was arrested, it was even worse.”

  Damsa wanted to ask why he’d been arrested, but she didn’t want to be rude.

  Parvana told her without her asking.

  “He was educated in England. He taught history and literature and he loved stories. The Taliban thought he was an enemy. They kept him in prison for a long time. When they finally let him go, it was just him and me on the road. The rest of my family were in Mazar-e-Sharif. Then he died, and it was just me.”

  “Is that when you met Shauzia? Larmina told me you were girls together.”

  “Boys together is more like it,” said Parvana with a little laugh. “I knew Shauzia from school, but we really got to know each other after my father was arrested. We turned ourselves into boys in order to move freely on the streets and find work. Our families depended on us.”

  “That’s incredible,” said Damsa.

  “Poor Hadiah has heard this story too many times,” said Parvana. “But, yes, Shauzia and I go way back. Mrs. Weera, too. She was our gym teacher when we were little girls in school. When the Taliban came, she led women working in secret and then later she was elected to Parliament. So the lesson, dear Damsa, is that where we think we are going when we start out our journey is often not where we end up.”

  Damsa painted some more. She liked the feeling of spreading paint, even though they were covering up something beautiful with a color that was not.

  Safety is beautiful, though, she thought, and then she was surprised that her brain, something that had never felt like much use to her, could produce a thought that profound.

  She wondered what else she could do.

  They worked quickly. The flowers disappeared under the gray, and soon the beautiful, bright, special gate was dull and anonymous.

  Green Valley was down a little lane all its own. Outside its walls, a pathway to the right led to a thicket of trees and small plots of cultivated land, growing vegetables and fodder for sheep and goats. The path to the left led to a collection of three-story shells of apartment buildings, which either had been bombed or not quite completed.

  They were far away from other homes, but it still seemed like a good idea to be quiet.

  “There’s a little village that way,” Parvana said, when she saw Damsa looking at the uncompleted buildings. “There are some shops, some houses. When we get the chance, I’ll take you for a walk so you’ll know how to get around.”

  “In case you have to escape,” said Hadiah.

  “That’s right,” said Parvana. “It’s important to know your options.”

  “I already escaped,” said Damsa. She had been thirsty, hungry and so, so scared. “I didn’t like it.”

  “But it brought you here,” said Parvana. “You took a chance and now you are making a whole new life for yourself.” She stood back. “I think we are done with this gate. We’ve got some paint left. As soon as it gets light in the morning I’ll come back out and touch up any spots we’ve missed.”

  Parvana opened the door in the gate and put the paint can and the gray-covered brushes inside. She came back out with a small pot of white paint and another brush. With deft strokes, she painted over the address markings.

  “You girls go inside. I’ll just zip down the lane and paint over the sign that’s posted there.”

  “Buddy system,” said Hadiah. “I’ll come with you.”

  They started walking. Damsa tagged along with them.

  “Buddy system?” she asked.

  “No one goes out alone,” said Parvana. “That way, if anything happens, there is someone to run for help.”

  Damsa felt so, so good, walking down the dark lane with a purpose and with people who seemed to like her. It was a new experience.

  At the end of the lane, Parvana flattened herself against the wall of the mechanic’s shop. Damsa and Hadiah did the same.

  Parvana peered around the corner. There was more light in front, from a naked bulb over the shop door. It made their darkness seem darker.

  “We’re clear,” Parvana whispered. She opened the paint, handed the lid to Damsa, then quickly painted over the small sign that read Green Valley with an arrow pointing up the lane.

  “Hadiah, think of something I can write on here in the morning when the paint is dry,” said Parvana.

  “How about Oranges, with the arrow going the other way?” Hadiah suggested.

  “That’s nice and confusing,” agreed Parvana. She took the lid back from Damsa, and they hurried back up the lane.

  By the time they saw the Talib waiting for them in the dark, it was too late to run away.

  7

  He was big. His gun and his turban made him bigger.

  Parvana stopped. She silently bent down and put the can of paint and the brush in a clump of weeds, then stood tall and took a strong grip on Damsa and Hadiah, one girl in each hand. She walked them toward the Talib.

  “Salaam alaikum,” she said, bobbing her head in greeting.

  She kept them walking, almost right up to the man with the gun. Then she turned them onto the pathway going to the left, toward the shells of buildings.

  “It is unusual for you to be out so late,” said the Talib.

  “These are unusual times,” replied Parvana. Weeds slapped Damsa’s trembling legs with each step she took along the narrow path.

  “We bid you good night,” said Parvana. “We must get home.”

  “Parvana.” The Talib spoke the word quietly and without a question mark.

  Parvana kept herself and the girls moving. Damsa stayed close.

  “You were my teacher.”

  They kept walking.

  “‘O beauty, I asked, what makes you cry?

  Life is too short for me, it answered.’”

  The Talib continued, “That is by Nazo Tokhi. She was born in Kandahar in 1651 and died in 1717.”

  Parvana turned around then. She pushed Damsa and Hadiah behind her, guarding them with her body.

  “I remember you,” she said. “You attended our adult women’s literacy classes, slipping in so quiet and well behaved it took us months to realize you weren’t attached to any of the women there. Even as a boy, you were drawn to the ancient poets. Your name is Gulam. Am I remembering right?”

  “You remember,” said Gulam, the Talib. “The poetry I learned here is just as you said, an umbrella in the rain, a blanket in the snow, sunshine on a dark day, and a companion in my despair. Thank you.”

  “But now you are with them.” Parvana’s words were not an accusation, just a statement.

  “Take your own lessons, teacher,” said Gulam. “You told us we are all individuals. If I joined the Taliban, it is because the corruption and the ruin that is Afghanistan pushed me into it. Where else could I go to have a life?”

  “We are all individuals,” said Parvana, her voice stronger now. She took steps forward. Damsa and Hadiah stayed behind Parvana’s back. “You are an individual who loves poetry and has joined an organization that burns books and closes schools. Why are you here?”

  The Talib stepped to one side.

  Two small children quivered in a clump, clinging to one another so tightly that they looked like one girl with two heads.

  “I found them beside their dead grandfather,” he said. “They have no one. They are better off with you than anywhere else.”

  Parvana knelt down in front of the children. Their whimpering sounded to Damsa like the mewing of kittens.

  “If I take them in, get them fed and cleaned up,” said Parvana, looking at the children but speaking to Gulam, “how do I know that you and your brother Talibs won’t be back, wanting them for wives? If that is your plan, be merciful. Kill them now instead of subjecting them to a life of pain and servitude and abuse.”

  “It does not matter what I say,” said the Talib. “You will not turn these children away. It is not in you to do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you did not turn me away when I was a child, every bit as filthy and hungry and unlovable as these.”

  “They are not unlovable,” said Parvana, her voice softening, “and neither were you. But what was the point of all that care if you have just gone and joined the enemy of life and beauty?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13