PROLOGUE
WHENIWAS A GIRL, I dreamed.
Running through my father’s orchard in pursuit of my brother, ten years older and newly returned from school.Shrieking his name when he refuses to slow down, churning my stubby legs harder.
“Farshid, Farshid, Farshid!”
The sound of his laughter floating ahead of me, till suddenly I round a leafy tree heavy with bright red pomegranates and there he is, planted squarely in the middle of the path to sweep me up and swing me around.I giggle.He twirls faster.I laugh and beg him to stop, which only makes him gain speed, till both of us topple to the ground.
We lie in the late fall grass, the sky impossibly blue overhead.In the distance the snow-capped mountains beckon like teeth, while to the other side the flat plains sweep on and on in an endless apron of white-frosted earth.My country is beautiful, but I don’t understand any of this yet.I just consider it home.
Collapsed on the ground, my brother tousles my dark hair, then demands to know what sort of trouble his favorite little shekambu has been causing.
“I’m not always hungry!”
“Of course you are.”He pats my tubby little belly while I scowl at him.
“And I’m not greedy!At least I wouldn’t be if I could go to school!”
“You are too young.”
“How do you know?”
“Because schools have rules, everyone knows that.”
“I don’t know that.See, you must take me to school so that I can study these things.”
“You want to go to school to learn why you can’t go to school?”
“Exactly!”
“Soon, shekambu, soon.Next year you can have lessons on anything you want.Just remember that when the sun is calling and you’re stuck with a pile of boring texts.”
I wrinkle my nose, because I know already there’s no such thing as boring texts.There are only wonderful and more wonderful novels to read.I’ve already learned this from my father, a literature professor in Kabul who practically lives with his nose stuck between pages, and my mother, who spends each night flipping through glossy fashion magazines before retiring to her sewing machine to tackle her next inspiration.
I have my own stack of brightly colored children’s books.I diligently peruse them when my parents are watching, then steal from their piles when they are not.I love words.All words.I love ideas.All ideas.I love worlds.All worlds.
I love this world, and my larger-than-life big brother and brilliant baba jan and gorgeous maadar jan and crowds of aunts,uncles, cousins who talk too loudly and lecture too much and swirl through our lives as busily and prettily as petals in the wind.We live part of the year in a walled compound in the hustle and bustle of Kabul and the other months in my father’s favorite place on earth, his country estate in Herat, where roses bloom and the orchards bear fruit and there are so many places for a little shekambu and her brother to run wild and free.
Two halves of one whole, my madar calls us.And this sunny afternoon, lying side by side in the shade of a bushy pomegranate tree, that feels exactly right.
When I was a girl, I dreamed.
During the school year, my father trims his sharply pointed beard and buttons up his vest before heading to the university each morning.Half out the door, a distracted, befuddled mess, he will pause, turn back around.
He and my mother share a look.My brother and I have studied it many times.It is their look.We don’t understand it, but on some level, we know it’s good and we’re happy they have it.
Then my father heads off to teach, while my mother prepares more tea for her and me to enjoy.Her long black hair is carefully coiffed and pinned at the nape of her neck.Her brown skin is flawless, her dark brows perfect arches framing her lustrous gray eyes.My mother is beautiful.Everyone says so, even my aunts, though they fuss over her choice in clothes and make faces that communicate both stern disapproval and powerful longing.
My mother loves fashion.She reads, she studies, she designs.Late into the night, I can hear her sewing machine whirring away.In a matter of days, she’ll produce the next stylish outfit, an ode to decades past and cities far away such as Paris, London, New York.
My mother never just goes to the market.It’s an adventure of high art, where she’ll riffle through piles of beads, rows of shoes, and boxes of hats in order to perfectly punctuate her chosen ensemble.
“Chin up,” she states each time we prepare to depart, her in a perfect hat, me in a coordinating hajib.We exit my family’s compound to enter a sea of bustling humanity, where waves of Western blue jeans and dull-colored tunics part before my mother’s sapphire wrap dress or saffron-colored jumpsuit.Like my aunties, the other shoppers eye my mother with expressions that are a mix of awe and disapproval.Some gazes, under the thickly furrowed brows of darkly dressed men, follow her too long and too intently.Their stares are filled with a kind of heat I don’t understand and already don’t like.But when my mother catches them, she stops and skewers them with a look of her own, till one by one, they glance away.
My mother has many duties at the market.Picking out perfect cucumbers and ripe tomatoes for the evening’s chopped salad.Inspecting the fresh herbs for just the right bundle of mint.But there are other activities, too.A pause here, a whisper there.A discreet passing of one palm across another.Like children everywhere, I know when to fade into the background.
Later my mother will smile at me and nod approvingly.
