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Rahima. Her original name comes from the word for “mercy,” one of the ninety-nine names of Allah. And derived from the same
root is rahm, the word for “womb.” But rahm is all she can hear in her name, and she resents it with all her body. She does
not want to be a vessel for life. She has experienced so much cruelty in the past three years that mercy has become hard to
recognize.
Rahima was not much older than Hawa when she slipped away from the Kabul apartment where she had been staying, guarded by
her husband’s men. She had tried to summon the confidence she had as a young bacha posh, those five years she had spent dressed
as a son so that she could walk her sisters to school. Had those five years as Rahim really happened? She doubts her own memories of playing soccer and darting into shops in the bazaar and horsing around on
the school playground. As a daughter, these behaviors would have brought shame upon her family. As a son, her assertiveness
was applauded.
But then came her undoing. At thirteen, her opium-addicted father gave her and two of her four sisters away in marriage.
Her mother, rendered feeble and numb by the same drug, mounted no resistance.
For three years, Rahima lived as the fourth bride of Abdul Khaliq, a warlord.
Rahima hated the man, but she had to admit he was clever, organizing the election of an obedient but unschooled wife to Parliament to advance his personal interests.
Rahima had been her assistant, present only for her literacy.
She might have survived that life, if her small son hadn’t fallen ill while she was away.
Somehow, the blame fell upon her shoulders, and it was made perfectly clear that Abdul Khaliq was preparing to bury her beside their son.
Rahima’s escape had been harried. Dressed in stolen boys’ clothing, she tried not to look over her shoulder as she opened
one door and then another, finally stepping onto a sidewalk, into the light of day. She fully expected a hand to clamp down
on her shoulder or for a familiar guard to step directly into her path.
Rahima arrived breathless at the location the American woman, a woman who supported female parliamentarians, had given her.
Ms. Franklin had done a poor job of concealing her anxieties. Rahima saw her hands trembling as she gestured for Rahima to
share her story with the two women seated before her. She hadn’t realized she would need to organize a story.
Who were these women anyway? What if they turned her away? What if they called Abdul Khaliq?
There was no time for her questions. The two women were bombarding her with theirs.
What is your name?
Who are you running from?
What is your husband’s name?
Do you have any children?
Where is your nearest family?
You will have to turn in all your personal belongings. Do you have a cell phone?
Rahima answered some, but not all. Ms. Franklin observed, intermittently squeezing her shoulder or offering an encouraging
nod.
Within thirty minutes, Rahima was ushered into a car. Perhaps they told her Ms. Franklin wouldn’t be joining them. If they
had, Rahima hadn’t heard them. She nearly jumped out of the car as it pulled away, fearful this was a trap and the driver
was going to deliver her to the guards she had escaped, men surely aflame with anger that she’d slipped away on their watch.
Abdul Khaliq was not known for his forgiving nature.
Etched in her memory is the image of her hand on the car door handle as she debated hurling herself out of a vehicle that seemed to be collapsing in on her. She did not, but not because she chose to stay in the car. She simply lacked the will to leap out of it.
It would be years before she recognized that moment as the seismic shift that it was—the point in time she stopped feeling
brave or capable of wanting something for herself. Deciding to run away from the guards might have been her last demonstration
of agency. From that moment on, she was a paper bag blown about by a storm.
The driver must have sensed her nerves. He promised he was taking her to a safe place where women would care for her. Rahima
had started to cry then, her head bowed so he would not see. He drove her through a set of gates, arriving at a large building.
It looked like some kind of office, one without signage or other outward clues as to what it contained. A woman had opened
the front door and led her inside while the car quietly retreated.
Marjan’s heart hurts to think of her teenage self standing in the vestibule of that building. She cannot recall what the woman
said to her, only remembers the pounding of her heartbeat and the cackling voice in her head warning that her husband would
find her no matter where she went. No matter where. What made her believe a sixteen-year-old girl could escape a man like
him?
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
It took nearly two hours for Samia’s voice to reach her.
Samia came dangerously close to giving up on her newest resident that day.
She had seen women in all conditions and had an arsenal of different approaches.
She began with her quiet, gentle reassurances—what anyone would use with a child.
Finding Rahima impossible to soothe, she became stern, commanded her to calm down.
Some women responded to harsh measures, tones they were familiar with and accustomed to obeying.
When that failed as well, she left the room to give Rahima space.
Standing in the hallway just out of view and listening to the girl gasping for air made Samia uneasy, though.
She hurried away and returned with the shelter’s doctor, who put her hands on Rahima’s wrist, pressed a stethoscope to her back, and echoed Samia’s commands to breathe.
It seemed Rahima had forgotten how.
Finally, Samia spoke to Rahima the way a spent mother would speak to a child who will otherwise suffer the wrath of an even
angrier father—harsh but with a merciful purpose.
Calm yourself or I’ll send you back out to the street! I won’t have the neighborhood thinking we’re torturing someone behind
these walls. I’ve got twenty-three other women to think about. Whatever safety you need, they need as well, so stop this huffing
and puffing and breathe as God has instructed you to!
In many ways, entering the women’s shelter was akin to being born again. Rahima learned to breathe anew, the way a newborn
adapts from fluid to air. Her movements were clumsy. Her hands trembled. She startled so easily. She would wake with scratches
on her arms.
Every face was a stranger, every conversation a confrontation.
Rahima was assigned to a room with a woman in her thirties with two children, an infant and a toddler. The woman would watch
Rahima suspiciously and would tug on her daughter’s arm if she began to wander across the room to Rahima’s side. It hurt Rahima
to see the children, to hear the little girl’s tiny voice and follow her waddling steps.
She kept to her bed for most of the day, her face turned toward the wall.
Samia and other staff members would, from time to time, sit with her and ask a few questions. Rahima gave very little information,
which they were accustomed to, just as they were accustomed to stories that shifted with time, some points affirmed and some
retracted.
Where did you say your husband lives?
What kind of business does he run?
She had given them very little the first couple of days—her name, the name of a province, and the assurance that her husband
was making every effort to end her life even before she ran away.
You must not contact anyone. No one can know where you are or you’ll put everyone here at risk.
Rahima had no way to contact anyone. She had no phone and no phone numbers. The only person she wanted to reach out to was
her aunt, Shaima, the single thread that remained to her life before she was wed to the warlord. Khala Shaima’s visits were
few and far between, but her aunt had kept her from feeling entirely lost. She would arrive at the compound for those brief
visits, winded and sweating, one shoulder arched higher than the other by a wayward spine. Rahima wished Khala Shaima was
sitting beside her now, telling stories of her brave ancestor, a woman who had stood guard over the king’s harem.
You are strong like her, Khala Shaima had told her more times than she could recall. She could hear her aunt’s voice echo in her mind, clear and insistent.
“I’m not like her,” Rahima whispered while the world slept. She was most awake then, in the hour of spirits. “I’m not even
like you. What am I supposed to do now?”
She listened but heard no reply.
During the day, the shelter thrummed with bickering, accusations, sniffles, footsteps, and milk-hungry cries. Rahima confined
herself to her bed.
Samia grew impatient. One morning, she appeared in the doorway clucking her tongue.
“Enough is enough,” she declared. “Get up this instant or I’ll summon all the staff to pry you out of bed.”
When Rahima did not respond, she called out for three of the staff members, including the woman who mopped the floors and
cleaned the bathrooms. Someone asked Samia if they were to take her to the infirmary.
Rahima had relented then. She stood up only to be brought to her knees by a wave of nausea. Her roommate’s daughter looked
at the small puddle of bile on the floor and began to cry. Samia stood before Rahima, lifted her chin, and searched her face
for a sign. She drew back and sighed.
“Oh, pure and perfect God, was this really necessary?” she muttered, lodging a cautious complaint against a silent overseer.
The air was foul, sour, which only added to Rahima’s nausea.
She knew she had been pregnant when she was still at her husband’s home.
But the night he’d summoned her to his quarters and driven his foot into her abdomen, she’d been certain he’d ended whatever had started to grow within her.
In the small medical room of the shelter, the doctor dipped a thin paper strip into a cup of Rahima’s urine.
The doctor didn’t need to speak. The look on her face was confirmation enough.
Rahima let out a howl that slipped under the closed door, out of the clinic, and into the street, where it caused two women
to pause their steps, but only briefly. As if they had heard a car honk or a door slam.
The cry of a girl wronged by the universe was hardly remarkable.
Rahima made fists of her hands. She wasn’t done escaping Abdul Khaliq, but she would do anything necessary to salvage her
life.