23
“No, your mommy can’t hold you right now, but, look, we’re going to sit right next to her and you can hold her hand,” Wana
said to a very sullen Hawa.
It was barely twenty-four hours since the brutal attack at the university. Farrah and Wana had brought Hawa to the hospital
to see Marjan. The ambulance hadn’t expected Marjan to tumble into its path. The impact fractured her shin bones. Two medics
gathered Marjan and loaded her into the ambulance that had struck her alongside a student with a blood-soaked shirt wrapped
around his head wound.
Marjan was triaged and, hours later, underwent surgery. She woke to find her left leg elevated and in a thick plaster cast.
In this room, Marjan was one of three recovering patients, each separated from one another by a pale blue curtain.
Hawa’s eyes lingered on the cast, on this new mother who refused to rise from bed and wouldn’t even pick her up. Marjan tried
to make space on the stretcher for Hawa to sit next to her, but there was a bag on a pole beside her and a plastic tube that
fed fluids into her vein. She struggled to move herself a few inches.
“Let me see if I can help you,” Farrah said. The movement sent a shock of pain through Marjan, and she yelped despite her
best efforts to remain stoic.
“Mommy, let’s go home,” Hawa whimpered. If they were back home, surely her mother would act like her normal self. She wriggled
her way out of Wana’s arms and stood by the door, insistent.
“I can’t go home yet, janem,” Marjan tried to explain. Her mouth was so dry, her head still foggy.
Hawa looked disappointed. Farrah took her to the plastic chair by the bed. She opened a game on her phone and handed it to
Hawa, who took it with less than her usual enthusiasm.
“I thought it was the end,” Farrah said, her eyes puffy. She hadn’t been sleeping well since the attack. Wana slid her arm
around her cousin.
“God had mercy on you both,” Wana said.
Is this mercy? Marjan wondered, her mind still a flashing reel of images from the attack. She had heard the ambulance coming around the
corner, heard the siren getting louder. But she couldn’t have guessed that moments later she would be in that very vehicle
writhing in pain.
“How long will you be here?” Wana asked.
“Just know that we will look after Hawa,” Farrah interjected. “You don’t have to worry about her at all.”
Marjan blinked back tears. She didn’t have words for her gratitude and didn’t know how long she would have to rely on her
roommates to care for Hawa.
“Yes, it’s not like we’ll have classes again tomorrow. How long do you think before the university reopens?” Wana asked her
cousin.
“Well, the other campus closed for seven months after they were attacked,” Farrah said softly. “My mother almost didn’t allow
me to come to the university because of that one.”
Maybe classes would resume in a month. Maybe two. Some classrooms had gaping holes in the ceiling and walls that looked like
the cratered surface of the moon. Floors were splattered with blood and debris.
Hawa cried when Wana suggested it was time to leave. Marjan squeezed Hawa’s hand, begged her to be a good girl, and promised
to come home soon. She thanked her roommates with words that fell short. Once they had left, she sobbed herself into exhaustion.
On the order of the nation’s president, and to the surprise of anyone who had seen footage or images of the aftermath, the university reopened the campus and resumed classes just two days after the attack.
The decision was meant to signal resilience and a refusal to be deterred by terrorists, despite twenty-four dead and thirty-one wounded.
Some students were eager to go back. Farrah was not one of them.
The doctors told Marjan she would be released in a week. Farrah and Wana juggled caring for Hawa and awaited her return. But
a series of unexpected events derailed everyone’s plans.
Marjan developed a fever. It turned out she had a bladder infection, so she was started on antibiotics. No one could have
predicted that she would have an allergic reaction to the medication. Her body was aflame with hives. The itching beneath
her cast threatened her sanity. The doctors changed her medications and added some new ones to quiet the reaction. They even
removed the cast to check the condition of her skin and applied ointments. When Hawa returned with Wana and saw her mother’s
puffy face, her arms covered in raised, red markings, she cried.
“I’m fine,” Marjan tried to tell her daughter. “It’s nothing.”
Hawa, a child who would sit rapt for story time, did not believe this tale.
“Mommy, we go home,” she insisted again and again.
“Don’t bring her again,” Marjan whispered to Wana. She was desperate for every second with her daughter, but the visits distressed
everyone. “I should be better in two days. Maybe they’ll even let me go home.”
Two days later, the hives had started to play a game of peekaboo. They would disappear for a spell, then reappear. The doctors
told her that sometimes the reaction went on, a persistent rebellion in the body.
Days later, Wana came to visit Marjan on her own and rested a hand on her friend’s. Marjan could see Wana had been picking
at her cuticles.
“Farrah’s been struggling. She puts on a brave face but that’s all it is, a mask for the world. She’s terrified that the terrorists
will come back.”
It had taken seven hours for the military to gain control of the university grounds. All four attackers were killed. The bodies
of the murdered students were returned to their families, and the injured were left to do the hard work of healing.
Marjan didn’t blame Farrah for her fears. The first couple of nights, when she was floating on a morphine high, her dreams were racked with images from the attack. Blood on walls. Gunshots echoing in her ears.
“Her parents have arranged for her to go back home. They think she needs some time,” Wana said quickly. “And the same goes
for me. I mean, I’m fine, but my family has decided that the universities in Kabul aren’t safe for us. For now, anyway.”
“Oh,” Marjan said, her stomach dropping. She should have seen this coming. Her roommates would be leaving the apartment, an
apartment she could not afford on her own even while she had been working. And with a broken leg, it would be weeks before
she could go back to the restaurant. Elyas would hire someone else to take her place, if he hadn’t already.
“Now,” Wana said, with concerted positivity, “we both know that you’re not yet able to look after Hawa. We found a good solution,
a temporary solution. There’s a really lovely place for children. They have a swing in the yard and games and teachers. They
provide warm meals.”
“But where . . . How soon are you both leaving?” Marjan had so many questions. She didn’t know which to ask first.
“In two days,” Wana admitted.
Marjan’s head, heavy with thoughts, fell back on the pillow.
“How will I take her to this school and bring her back? They haven’t said when they’ll release me. It doesn’t matter. I’ll
just . . . I’ll leave.”
“No, that’s the wonderful thing about the place we found. Hawa could just stay there. They have beds for all the children,
and the women who look after them are very kind. You can take your time and recover.”
“What kind of school . . . Wana, what is this place you’ve found?”
“It’s an orphanage, but there are many children there with families. Some just cannot afford to provide for their children
for the moment. They come and visit them, and the children are doing so well. They have classes and activities. They sing
songs and play games together. You should see it. It’s very sweet.”
“No, no, no. I can’t send her there. She’s going to stay with me. I’ll ask them to release me. They will have to,” Marjan
said.
“My friend,” Wana said gently. “You need time to recover. And the apartment will be . . . will be difficult for you on your own.”
“An orphanage,” Marjan whispered. She wanted to protest. She wanted to be outraged at Wana for even bringing up the possibility,
but her leg ached and her scalp itched and her bladder was full. If she couldn’t manage her own basic needs, how could she
possibly look after Hawa?
She cursed herself for going to the campus with Farrah that day, as if a girl who had never seen a high school classroom had
any business visiting a university campus.
The nurse looking after Marjan that evening was a round-faced woman with almond-shaped eyes and soft hands.
“My goodness, I thought you were finally turning the corner but your skin is angry and red again today! I’m going to see what
we can give you now. We’ll get you through this. God is merciful.”
Marjan could not wait for mercy. She needed to stand up. She had to find a way out of this mess. She needed . . . she needed
to be stronger.
She had been knocked down before, but never like this.
When the nurse offered her pain medication that evening, Marjan refused the chalky white pills. She wanted to feel the war
raging in her body, to endure the wounds and let the pain summon her back to the fight.