16
The knock on the door comes just as Hawa is pouring herself a glass of water in the kitchen. She immediately looks to her
mother.
“It’s Khala Soraya,” she explains, seeing the alarm on Hawa’s face.
Hawa breathes out in relief. She hasn’t seen Khala Soraya since they left the passport office, defeated. After hours of waiting,
someone emerged and announced that the office was going to close and would not take any more applications for the day. The
news whipped the crowd’s anxieties and frustrations into outrage. Marjan pulled Hawa close, trying to shield her from the
shouting, the cursing, the pointing of fingers. The stray dogs, lazy from their midnight prowling, watched the unrest with
disinterest. It came as no surprise to them that people could be feral too.
Soraya bursts in, pulling her sunglasses and headscarf off in one sweeping motion. With her other hand, she pulls Hawa to
her in an embrace.
“My little songbird, how are you?” she asks, kissing the top of Hawa’s head. She is affectionate but not her usual bubbly
self.
“My mother won’t turn on the news. What’s happening out there, Khala Soraya?” she asks. “Are the Taliban in Kabul?”
Marjan shoots Soraya a warning look.
“Stop trying to hide things from me,” Hawa gripes. “Well? Are they attacking the city?”
“No,” Soraya says. “But they’ve taken Kandahar. What we thought might happen slowly is happening quickly. We thought we had months, or weeks, at least. We do not. We’ve got to move now. Jenna is calling me in a few minutes with instructions. Marjan, please tell me you’re ready.”
“It won’t take me long,” Marjan promises.
Soraya nods, her impatience evident. Hawa has never seen her act this way. Today is not just another day, she thinks.
“Are we going to the airport, Madar?” Hawa asks. Despite her mother’s attempts to shield her, she’s seen chilling footage
on the television, the crush of bodies trying to squeeze themselves through the gates of Kabul airport.
“When the moment is right—” Marjan starts to say, but Khala Soraya cuts her off.
“The moment will never be right.”
Soraya walks into the living room, looks out the window onto the street below. Her hair is pulled up in a loose bun that still
looks refined. With her hands on her hips, her elbows are angular. Insistent.
“Soraya, you’ve seen the same warnings I have,” Marjan says.
“What warnings?” Hawa asks, but her mother only raises a finger, as if she’ll answer Hawa’s question in a moment. She won’t,
of course.
“Yes, I’ve seen the warnings about the airport, but I’ve also seen the warnings about the whole goddamned country,” Soraya
retorts.
“Who of our group has gotten through so far? Only one. And you know what she described.”
People trampled. A pregnant woman fainting in the heat. A man lifting up his baby, offering him to the American marines guarding
the walls of the airport as if he were making a sacrifice to the gods. They took the baby, but then came warning shots from
the Taliban and the family was swept away in a surge of movement—the baby on one side of the wall, his parents on the other.
“It’s completely unsafe,” Marjan says.
“If it’s safety you’re looking for, staying in Kabul won’t help you. It’s just a matter of time, Marjan. You know this as
well as I do.” Soraya’s caution echoes like a single plucked note in a silent room.
Marjan takes slow, deliberate breaths. She needs to think. She looks around her apartment, at the few possessions she has gathered, at the space she managed to secure for her and her daughter. No one wanted to rent to a single woman with a daughter.
But Elaha, the platoon captain, used her brother’s connections to put in a good word for her here. Marjan and Hawa have slept
side by side in the bedroom, dreaming and resting and rising. Hawa’s school uniform is folded neatly in the dresser Marjan
purchased from a neighbor. In her cabinets are the three glass plates and four mugs she purchased with her first paycheck
as a soldier. She is reluctant to leave, she realizes. Maybe she’s letting emotions cloud her judgment.
“Khala Soraya’s right. We need to get on one of those planes,” she tells her daughter. “Maybe by the time we get there, instructions
will come through.”
Soraya’s purse rumbles on the table. She quickly digs her phone out of her bag.
“Is it Jenna?” Marjan asks.
Soraya looks at the screen and shakes her head.
“No, it’s my brother. Just one second,” she says, turning away as she answers the call. She takes a couple of steps toward
the kitchen, though it gains her no privacy. “Yes? No, I’m not there yet. I promise if I get through the gate, I’ll beg someone
on the inside to add your name. Okay. Yes, I will. Just please don’t answer the phone if he calls. You cannot let our idiot
cousin get into your head.”
Soraya hangs up the phone and mutters something Hawa cannot make out.
“Your brother?” Marjan asks.
Soraya nods.
“Yes, my brother. My cousin has been calling me everything from a traitor to a harlot ever since I joined the platoon. And
my brother has apparently stopped thinking for himself. He told me I was dishonoring our dead father. But now that he sees
I might have a chance of getting onto a plane because of my work, he doesn’t seem too upset to be the brother of a ‘harlot.’
Maybe I should tell him that’s the code phrase to get across the gate—I’m a harlot! I’d love to see him wave his arms and shout that for the world to hear.”
Hawa’s ears are burning. She has never heard Khala Soraya use such language.
“Toba, toba,” Marjan says, repenting on her friend’s behalf. Soraya is suddenly aware of Hawa and covers her face with one
hand. She groans but doubts this is Hawa’s first encounter with the word. It is too handy, like a slim pocketknife that lives
in a man’s pocket and unfolds to reveal its many tools, its many uses and functions. It can discredit, silence, shame, and
maim a woman. It is a red target on a white wall.
“Forgive me, my sweet,” Soraya says, squeezing Hawa to her. “It’s just hard to fight every hour of every day. If I were my
father’s eldest son, my cousin would not dare open his foul mouth to say a word about me. Instead, this idiot, who cannot
tell a hammer from a nail, feels he has the right to tell me what I should or should not do. In his mind, I should have been
given away as a bride long ago, before I could become a problem.”
Hawa may sometimes want to pound the wall in anger for the life she has not had—a father and siblings, an extended family
with cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. She has never attended a wedding or had her hair brushed by a grandmother.
She has never been carried on anyone’s shoulders or touched a stubbled cheek. She does not have a brother to walk with her
in these streets or a grandfather to tell her she is the light of his eyes.
But Hawa also knows she has been spared other experiences. She cannot name them specifically, but she recognizes them when
they crash-land at her feet. Soraya’s brother calling her a harlot is one of those moments, even if she is not entirely certain
what a harlot is. She senses that, of all the ways a woman can be wicked, it is the worst way. She is grateful that Soraya’s
brother is not her brother or uncle. She is grateful that her mother has only herself to answer to.
Two phones chime at once. Marjan and Soraya both swipe their phones open and stare at their screens. Hawa tries to read their
expressions. Does she need to gather her belongings too? She wishes she could talk to Layma. She wonders what her family is
doing.
Her mother surveys the apartment. There’s something odd about her breathing, as if she’s having trouble letting go of the
air she’s taken in.
“We can trust Jenna,” Soraya says, one hand on Marjan’s forearm. “Remember, one bag. Stay light.”
Marjan nods.
“You have fifteen minutes,” Soraya says.
“We’ll be ready in five,” Hawa’s mother says as she takes her daughter by the hand and leads her into the bedroom. She grabs
her duffel bag. “Hawa-jan, we don’t have time. Empty your school bag and pack a few pieces of clothing, tops and bottoms.
Essentials only.”
Hawa’s heart races. She has so many questions. If they leave now, will they ever come back? And how can she possibly fit everything
into her schoolbag?
“I . . . I don’t know what to . . .”
“Hawa-jan, tops and bottoms. Come on. Not too many pieces. Pick out your favorites.”
Marjan rifles through the bundle of papers she’s pulled out of her duffel. Satisfied, she sets them aside and plucks two more
shirts from an open dresser drawer.
“Soraya, can you bring me the phone charger? It’s next to the television.”
Soraya delivers the cord, coiled and compact. Both phones chime again. Soraya reads through the messages they are both receiving.
“What are they saying?” Marjan asks as she stuffs two pairs of rolled-up pants into her bag.
“That we need to go to the airport now.”
Hawa watches her mother’s movements, steady and focused. She feels both a bit assured but also a shade unnerved.
“Hawa, bring the toothbrushes and toothpaste from the bathroom.”
Hawa feels outpaced. She cannot keep up with this tempo.
Leaving in five minutes? What about the rest of their belongings?
What should she start with? Isn’t there a different bag she can use?
Her schoolbag is small. It will never hold everything, her drawing book and colored pencils, her green pencil case with two compartments, the clothes her mother allowed her to pick out for herself in the secondhand store, the stuffed bear she is too old for but cannot let go, the beaded bracelets Ingrid gave her.
Should she pack her sheet music? She wants to tell her mother that she needs more time, a bigger bag, more information, she needs . . . she needs . . .
She needs her mother’s help, but she’s choking on the words. She stares at the stuffed bear in her hands, fingers the two
dainty buttons sewn onto its fuzzy chest, feeling like one of them might be lodged in her throat. She is tugging at the collar
of her shirt, hungry for air, when her mother enters the room.
“Madar—”
“Please, Hawa. I need you to help me now,” she pleads.
Hawa swallows her words. She keeps her eyes on the rug and nods.