1 #3
“I was not that kind of girl,” she says, recalling a time in her life when she would play soccer with the boys in the neighborhood.
She wasn’t Marjan then. She was Rahima and, for a spell, Rahim, a bacha posh.
She has almost no nostalgia for her birthname.
It wasn’t a big deal to choose an alias.
Women in Afghanistan were trained not to be too attached to their names.
When they married, some would be given a new name by their husband’s family.
Women existed in relation to the men around them.
They began their lives as “daughter of” and then were expected to become “bride of” and “mother of.” Rarely did a woman exist for and of herself.
Without a husband, father, or son in her life, Marjan is a veritable ghost. Some days she questions her own existence.
“Well, good that your daughter’s in Kabul. Everything will be okay, Marjan. In a few weeks, it will all be sorted out. We
might not be soldiers if a few Talibs are brought into the government, but with our experience, maybe we’ll end up working
for one of those foreign organizations. Ask Ingrid. She can probably find you a job. Your English is much better than you
think.”
“Something’s got you in a very generous mood today, Soraya. I’m not accustomed to these compliments.”
“You can’t handle too much sweet talk. You’re like . . . like an emotional diabetic. I have to be careful with you,” she teases.
Marjan stifles a grin. It’s true. Soraya is quick-witted, always laughing. Marjan feels like a dowdy schoolteacher next to
her and sometimes doesn’t know what to do with Soraya’s affections. “Remember when I had to teach you to hug me back?”
Marjan hadn’t realized she was recoiling at physical contact until Soraya had pointed it out to her.
Sister, are you okay? It’s just a hug. I’m not kidnapping you, she had joked one day. But then Soraya had grown quiet. She was as perceptive as she was gregarious. You don’t like anyone’s hands on you, do you?
Marjan’s guard didn’t come down then. Her story unfurled slowly, and Soraya was the first person—the only person—privy to
the entirety of it. Her history had sharp edges.
They have reached the bus stop. Soraya tents her hand over her eyes to shield herself from the sun’s glare. Marjan wishes
she had thought to bring a bottle of water with her. Even in this sweltering heat, she is grateful for the light. She prays
Hawa will never experience the kind of darkness she has survived.
She steps onto the bus to return to her daughter and the life she has built for them together, an existence she never would have thought possible back when she first held her child.
Hawa. Marjan named her daughter after Eve, a woman created by God and without a father. Hawa is a ghost as well, an invisibility
that her mother hopes will protect her from harm.
“I have a few American dollars too,” a man says. “Come, come, and sit next to me.”
Soraya and Marjan pretend they do not hear him. Half of soldiering is knowing when to fight and when to lie low, and city
buses are sometimes even harsher territory than insurgent strongholds. Though the passengers on the bus didn’t know what they
did on the base, they were happy to make their own lurid assumptions. Their taunts were an impossible test. A woman who responded
in kind was trashy, unbecoming. A woman who remained silent was almost admitting to the sin she was accused of committing.
There was no winning, only less losing.
“I’m talking about the tall one,” the man announces, then coughs into the already-stale air. He has his eyes on Soraya. People
often do.
The bus jostles, and amid the crush of bodies, Marjan feels her panic rising. Were it not for Soraya’s steadying presence,
she might not survive these rides. Soraya has often told her the same. Marjan is grateful for her friend and terrified about
that as well, because if there’s one lesson this life has taught her, it’s that nothing good remains.
She gives Soraya’s hand a quick squeeze, then gets off the bus a bit early.
She makes her way down the street. Wonders if she should pick up some groceries or if she can pull together something from
what they have. She is lost in thought when she realizes she is standing at the gates of the zoo.
Marjan regards the statue of the legendary lion, perhaps Kabul’s best-known animal, near the entrance. Her namesake. People
step right or left to move around her; some curse her under their breath. Others out loud.
Marjan fidgets with her headscarf and thinks of the girl she was before she took on this lion’s name, a unisex name that meant “a precious stone.” Like a ruby or an emerald. Or a pearl. Back then, she was Rahima, the girl who was a boy and then a girl again.
She came here last year with Hawa and watched her daughter stare at the statue. She wonders even now what Hawa thought of
the animal’s likeness. She cannot settle on what she herself sees; the image changes and shifts before her. Is this a beast?
A myth? A victim? Exposure has turned the bronze cast a soft verdigris, leaving touches of brightness only on the lion’s nose,
the tips of her ears, and the curl of her tail. Marjan can almost feel a puff of air, an exhalation from the lion’s nostrils,
a breath of petrified sorrow.