3 #2
Behind Layma, a group of girls are playing a game of chase.
On the other side of the field, boys are kicking a soccer ball into a goal marked by two cones.
There are shouts and a dull thud as a foot connects with the ball.
It was on this field that Hawa first met Layma, who noticed her standing against a wall and taking in the school grounds.
Layma, dressed in the school uniform—a slate gray tunic and pants—wore her chestnut hair drawn back into a ponytail.
Tiny wisps curled around her temples and the dainty dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.
She looked like a perfect girl from a perfect family, the kind who would want nothing to do with a child from the orphanage.
Would you like me to show you around? she had offered, much to Hawa’s surprise. She’d nodded, and Layma showed her the different parts of campus—the auditorium,
the cafeteria, the classrooms, and the rehearsal rooms. She had pointed out the tabla instructor and warned Hawa that the
mathematics teacher was the toughest at the school.
Layma thinks that Hawa chose the rubab because of her, but that’s only partly true. Hawa first saw the rubab when Layma took
her into the practice room and played a few notes on the instrument she was learning. To Hawa, it was the most honest, earnest
sound she’d ever heard, a story from which she could not turn away. She became Layma’s classmate.
“So you’re not mad,” Hawa repeats, feeling relieved. She was certain she had spoiled this precious friendship, the one that
bordered on having an actual sister, like just about everyone else. Layma sits on the grass, her clasped hands hooked around
her right knee. Hawa sits beside her, close enough for their shoulders to touch.
“It wasn’t your fault, Hawa. I’ve already told you that.”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe you.”
“Why wouldn’t you believe me?”
Hawa blinks instead of admitting to her friend that she finds it hard to believe anyone. People speak so many untruths that
she finds it prudent to be skeptical.
“Do you believe what the principal said this morning?” Hawa asks. The principal spent time during the morning announcements reassuring the children that despite the unrest in far parts of the country, Kabul would be safe from the militants.
Layma’s eyes are fixed on the game of chase.
“Not at all. I’ve already told you. My father says there will be trouble if the Taliban become part of the government. But
he also said there will be more trouble if they do not.”
Hawa was once confused by this idea, but she understood it better after watching the neighborhood boys play soccer on a small
patch of grass, which their apartment window overlooks. One boy, Nadir, went too far in his pushing and shoving and knocked
a teammate’s tooth out. The boys refused to let him join in after that, which worked until Nadir ran off with their ball and
spoiled their fun completely. A week later, he was back in the games, pushing and shoving his way around the field.
“Do you regret the video?”
Layma scoffs. “The video wasn’t the problem.”
When the Ministry of Education announced that girls over twelve would no longer be allowed to sing at public events, the school’s
principal had organized a campaign of protest. Under the hashtag #IAmMySong, they posted videos of girls singing. Their voices
were their defiance. Hawa had walked by a classroom where two girls were recording a video. She’d pulled Layma in to join
her, because since that first day on the campus of the music institute, she had always felt her confidence buoyed by Layma’s
presence.
They made at least a dozen attempts, half of which ended with the girls in fits of giggles. They would clear their throats
and start fresh, and finally created a thirty-second clip of a peppy, insistent song.
We are girls.
We are signs of spring, tall trees in the sunlight.
We turn stones into stars.
“You always forget that I’m older than you and that I make my own decisions,” Layma chides.
Her family had been supportive at first, but then the comments started coming in.
“I’m glad we made the video. But my mother has given strict instructions to everyone in the family not to let me near a phone.
As if I would want to post my face online again. ”
“My mother’s still angry too,” Hawa shares. “I didn’t think so many people would be interested in watching a video of girls
singing. And besides Sohaila, none of us even have a good voice.”
Layma laughs.
“My father says people cannot resist a scandal. Imagine that. It’s a scandal for a handful of girls to sing a song,” she says.
“What would they do if they saw the way Fatima dances?”
Hawa smiles thinking of the way Fatima mimics Bollywood dancers, batting her eyelashes and cocking her head to the side coyly.
The video had been seen by a few people and then hundreds. By the following day, it was being reshared by people outside the
country, and other women were posting videos of themselves singing and using the same hashtag. The girls of the music institute
had made enough noise that the ministry announced it was going to rescind its decision. Hawa felt powerful, like a strong
politician or a movie star. Or a soldier.
Her defiance and short-lived fame did not impress her mother, though.
How could you be so reckless? she had yelled. She’d been on her phone, tapping and scrolling furiously, searching for ways to erase the video from existence,
but it was too late. Even if the original clip had been taken down, it had been shared and reshared so many times that she
would have had better luck ridding the streets of litter. She’d slid from anger into silent tears. Hawa had spent the day
in her room feigning sleep and wishing her mother weren’t so meek.
A soccer ball heads straight toward the girls. Hawa and Layma pitch their torsos in opposite directions and cover their heads
with their hands.
“Basheer!” Layma screams when the ball lands just inches from her. “You play as if you’re blindfolded!”
Basheer, the school’s most gifted tabla player, shouts an apology. Another classmate claps him on the back. The girls cannot
hear the teasing but watch the boys burst into laughter.
“If these sneakers weren’t new . . .” Layma mutters, and Hawa feels her face relax into a smile.
Hawa has lived in an orphanage, away from her mother. She has also lived in three different homes with her mother, who, at
work, is surrounded by soldiers. And yet, she has never felt as safe as she does here, behind the high walls that guard the
music students from street view, inside the enormous building with its warren of classrooms, and among the teachers who speak
in a language Hawa did not know existed until only two years ago.
She wonders how much more she can learn before she graduates from this institute. Will she rise like Rona, from playing a
violin to holding a baton and conducting the orchestra? Will she play on grander stages than the one in their auditorium and
hear the applause of a real audience?
Hawa hasn’t even tried to imagine graduating from this institute, because this school is like a dream she does not want to
end. She wonders if Layma feels the same, if she worries about what her life will be like when she is handed her diploma.
She opens her mouth to ask her friend about her distant tomorrows but her question is swallowed by a resounding boom. The
school grounds shake. Hawa’s classmates have become still on the field, resembling pawns on a chessboard. They are children,
trained not only to recognize sharps and flats and chords but also to recognize the roar of a bomb and the rattle of gunfire,
a refrain that sends them running into their sacred school for cover.