63
Mina’s back is stiff from sleeping on Kobra’s floor. There is little room to move around. She’s been spoiled by the comforts
of her own home, a plush mattress. Proper windows. A bathroom. But in their desperate situation, the space Kobra has made
for her is generous to the point of embarrassment.
Kobra and her children are already out, fetching water and preparing dough and playing outside before the sun makes it impossible
to do so. Today is just another day for them.
Mina pops a new SIM card into her phone and checks on her post anonymously, as if she’s a performer who’s taken a seat in
the audience. She would rather not do this, but it’s better she review the comments than subject Marjan to them. The interview
Hawa recorded has now reached twelve thousand views and has hundreds of responses.
Serves these women right working with Americans. Nothing but whores to their Western masters.
My brother served in our army. He wasn’t paid for months and then died in combat. Do you give a damn about him or is it only
women you care about?
Long live the republic. These monsters are a plague.
The Taliban will bring peace. Shame on a government that puts women on a battlefield. God is good.
Mina, why don’t you respond to my messages? You are my queen.
Screw your mother.
The real value is in the sub-comments and the sub-sub-comments, the digital bickering and self-righteous accusations and contrarianism by zealots and bots and souls seeking souls.
Their interactions trigger an algorithmic boost, a feeding frenzy in which scorn and rage are the chum, in an abyss turbulent with thrashing sharks, some real, some imagined.
There is one comment that she needs to show Marjan.
“You’re back,” Mina says, a hint of surprise and relief in her voice when Marjan walks through Kobra’s door in the morning.
Hawa stands up and puts her arms around her mother, closes her eyes when she feels her mother press her to her chest. “Did
you find everything you need?”
“I think so,” Marjan says, trying to catch her breath. This is no time to be out of shape. “How’s your post doing?”
“My viewers don’t disappoint. And before you ask, yes. I’ve removed the SIM card in case anyone tries to track my location.”
Marjan chews her lip and runs through any other precautions they should take. They cannot afford a single misstep.
“Lots of people are seeing the video. I need you to look at this comment. The user goes by Pious One. Does it mean anything
to you?” Mina says, as Marjan kneels beside her.
This woman deserves what is coming to her.
Pious One has tagged four other people, and each have responded to his post with a thumbs-up. One has a locked account. The
others haven’t posted much. There are pictures of a lake, religious calligraphy, a sports car. Marjan clicks around, scans
the photos on their timelines until she comes across one that stops her heart.
It is a picture of a man standing in front of a black SUV. He is looking into the distance, but behind him, Marjan makes out
the front of the compound she was dragged to as a thirteen-year-old bride. Marjan looks more closely at the man’s face, recognizes
him as one of the men who used to drive her and her sister wife to Kabul.
Marjan looks at Mina.
“It worked,” she says.
Hawa looks at the ground, ashamed and afraid of the father she’s never known. She’s also ashamed of how much she’s longed for him. She feels as if she needs to repent.
“Let’s give you some time to work on what you’ve got. Hawa, come with me. You and I have some work to do,” Mina says. Hawa
picks up her flute and follows her outside, where they sit under the dappled shade of a plane tree.
Kobra stands in the doorway, watching as Marjan empties the contents of two plastic bags onto the rug, items that have cost
her nearly all of the remaining cash she had. Kobra takes stock of the pieces and starts to understand her visitor’s plan.
She shakes her head, convinced this is a doomed mission. Then again, Kobra knows better than most how foolish it is to underestimate
a woman. This raised city, this hidden uprising, was built by underestimated women, and the city stands. Her children laugh
and learn. The summers are too hot and the winters too cold but they are warm in between.
She leaves so that Marjan can have a few moments to herself.
Marjan’s phone pings. It’s a reply from Jenna.
Okay. I’ve let our guy know. Today is the final day. Let’s make it happen.
Marjan once asked Jenna about their training. What had she gone through to qualify as a CST?
Jenna had laughed.
She’d undergone basic training five years before she’d even heard of the CST program. For the Special Forces support role
in Afghanistan, she and the others had to make it through a rigorous assessment and selection process, grueling tests of their
physical, mental, and intellectual capacity, with little feedback in between. For five intense weeks, they trained in search
and seizure, room clearing, insertions and extractions, checkpoints, dismounted patrols, tactical movements, general medical
care, scenario training, reporting, software use, and with weapons including M4, M9, M203, and 0.5 caliber firearms. There
was more, of course, including a crash course in Afghan culture and languages. The CST recruits had been required to carry
a fellow soldier on their backs while in full gear to prove they would leave no one behind.
That was the code they lived by, Jenna had told Marjan. That was why she was still fighting for them.
Jenna tells her to stay tuned for gate instructions. She does not tell her whether her contact, a sleep-deprived and overwhelmed
official at the State Department, has agreed to signal his colleagues at the Kabul airport about this particular FTP or if
he’s even responded to her middle-of-the-night message. Marjan decides against asking her. She has no choice but to proceed
with blind faith.
Marjan removes her purchases from the bag. She wraps the elastic bandage around her chest as tightly as she can, trying to
flatten her breasts. It is not as easy as it was a decade ago. She slips into the tunic and baggy pants. She wishes she had
a vest to conceal her chest, but this will have to do.
She looks down at her body, tries to imagine how she will appear to others. She opens the door a crack and sees Kobra standing
on the other side of the threshold. She opens the door wider, and Kobra enters the room, looks her over.
“What are you going to do about your hair?” she asks.
Marjan touches her hair, makes a decision.
“Do you have scissors?”
Kobra reaches into a tin and pulls out a small pair of stainless-steel scissors, a hint of rust on the blades. She offers
them to Marjan.
“Can you do it, please?” Marjan asks.
Kobra obliges, leading Marjan outside and behind her home. She makes the first cut just above the elastic hair tie. Marjan
reaches back to touch the back of her head and feels the shaggy, uneven ends. She takes the bundle of hair, still bound by
the elastic, from Kobra and puts it in the plastic bag. This process, her undoing, feels familiar, and that brings her some
strange sense of relief.
Kobra continues clipping and snipping until it is almost all gone. She steps back to assess her work.
“Well, all I can say is it will grow back,” she says.
“I know,” Marjan replies.
“Not bad,” she says. “But you’re still too . . . pretty. Let’s go back inside.”
Marjan does as instructed. She needs all the help she can get right now.
Kobra examines Marjan’s face with one hand on her hip.
Then she kneels on the floor and retrieves a red tin from behind one of the floor cushions.
She sets it down and goes outside. Two minutes later, she returns with a pinch of cooking fire ash on a leaf and a lump of steel wool.
She sits cross-legged in front of Marjan with her tools arranged beside her.
“Tilt your face to the sky,” Kobra says, reaching first for the pen. With tiny strokes, she thickens Marjan’s brows, gives
them a bushy, untamed shape. She extends them so they come close to meeting in the middle and reach out toward her temples.
She touches the tip of her pinky finger into the ash and brushes it across Marjan’s new brows, darkening the skin between
the pen strokes. She picks up a rag, walks outside, and returns seconds later. She touches the rag to Marjan’s cheek, drags
it across the skin below her cheekbones and toward her chin, then smudges it with her thumb. Marjan can smell the ash on her
face, wonders what the dust was before it met fire. Kobra does the same across Marjan’s forehead and then in the hollow beneath
her browbones.
“Have you done this before?” Marjan asks.
Kobra chuckles. “I used to study my husband’s face as if I were a religious scholar and he was a holy book. I could tell from
the shape of his mouth, from the way he arranged his brows, if we were going to have an uneventful day or if I needed to make
sure the children didn’t test his patience.”
Next, she dabs the steel wool into the ash and then touches it twice, lightly, to the angle of Marjan’s jaw. She picks up
the pen again, stipples across Marjan’s upper lip, her chin, and the contours of her jaw. She withdraws her hand and considers
the effect.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t forthcoming with you when we first arrived,” Marjan says softly.
Kobra dabs a bit of ash onto the back of her hand, then rotates her hand for a different view.
“I don’t blame you,” Kobra says. “And if it makes you feel any better, I lied to you too. I told you we had no room for you, but there is an empty room. I could have sent you there but I needed to keep you close so I could figure you out.”
Marjan chuckles. “And what did you figure out?”
Kobra rests her hands on her lap. “I didn’t guess the soldier bit. But I did know you were in danger. I guessed that if we
turned you away, there was a good chance one or both of you would end up on another kind of hill in this city.”
Marjan looks down, thinks of the freshly tossed soil on Soraya’s hillside grave. She doubts her mother will be able to afford
a dignified headstone.
“Let me try something,” Kobra says as she adds a bit more ash to the steel wool and covers Marjan’s chin. She pauses again
to bite her lip. She cannot decide if the effect is convincing or ridiculous. She has Marjan turn her head left and right.
Kobra hands her a small mirror, no bigger than the palm of her hand. Marjan holds it at arm’s length to see her face. She
turns her head side to side. Kobra’s work is not perfect, but it might just do the trick. She puts on the cap she purchased,
tilts the rim down to hide her face.
When she steps outside, she sees Hawa and Mina beneath the tree. Even from this distance, she can see Hawa’s mouth fall open
and Mina’s shoulders pull back, and she knows she is transformed. She walks to them in her sneakers, shoes she plans on darkening
with the same ash Kobra has applied to her face, to blur their feminine shape.
“You look so different,” Hawa says. She sounds spellbound. Marjan looks to Mina.
“It’s good. It’s . . . it’s actually very good,” Mina says, peeking under the cap for a full view.
“Why do you sound surprised?” Kobra huffs. “I could make an ugly man out of your pretty face too. Your viewers would never
know.”
Mina smiles.
“I appreciate the offer but I need my viewers to recognize me,” she says.
One hour later, they bid the widows farewell, some skeptical that this trio of visitors will be leaving for good.
Even Mina has her doubts, but she keeps them to herself.
The ride to the airport is quiet, each of them anxious about this plan that requires them to separate once they are out of the car.
Marjan braces herself, watches Hawa. Her daughter stares straight ahead.
Marjan dares not ask if she is afraid. She doesn’t want to poke holes in Hawa’s courage.
They approach the long road to the airport and encounter a Taliban checkpoint manned by two men younger than Marjan, men who
were once little boys, she reminds herself.
“Show your documents!” one of them barks.
“Here. I have an official letter by email,” Mina replies, showing him her phone screen. He looks from her to the small writing
on the phone, shields his eyes from the sun’s glare. He squints then looks at his companion. The second boy comes over. He
drags a grimy finger along the phone screen, closing out the email.
“Where is it?” he says, glancing into the car. He looks at Marjan curiously. She clears her throat roughly and tries to avoid
his gaze.
Mina looks at her phone, realizes what he’s done, and reopens the email she’s received from the organization committed to
protecting journalists. It is addressed to her because she is on their mailing list, a declaration of their commitment to
help journalists trapped in a crumbling Afghanistan.
“Here it is,” she says, and seeing the way the boy’s brow furrows at the screen, she takes a leap. “As you can see, it says
very clearly that I am to make my way to the airport with my brother and his daughter. Our travel has been cleared by the
Americans and our names are on their lists.”
The first boy has lost interest. He moves to speak to the driver of a car approaching behind them, one full of men in collared
shirts and pants. They look like government officials, puppets of Western masters, and he’s eager to wave his rifle in their
faces.
The Talib pounds on the hood of the taxi, and Marjan sees Hawa’s head sink forward in relief as they are allowed to proceed.
When they reach the airport limits, they step out of the vehicle.
Marjan exits from the passenger side. Hawa follows Mina and exits on the driver’s side.
The taxi drives away, kicking up a cloud of dust between mother and daughter just before they step onto a most treacherous stage to give the performance of their lives.