“When did Mrs. Weera say she would be back?”
Shauzia had asked that question so many times that the woman in Mrs. Weera’s hut didn’t even look up. She simply raised an arm and pointed at the door.
“All right, I’m going,” Shauzia said. “But I’m not going far. I’ll sit in the doorway until she comes back.”
But the woman at the makeshift table was absorbed in her work. Not only was this the office for the Widows’ Compound, the section of the refugee camp where widows and their children lived. It was also the office for a secret women’s organization that operated on the other side of the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. The Taliban were still in power there. Mrs. Weera’s organization ran secret schools, clinics and a magazine.
Shauzia was tempted to jump onto the table and kick the papers onto the dirt floor, just to get a reaction. Instead, she went outside and plunked herself down beside the doorway, her back slumped against the wall.
Jasper, her dog, was taking up most of the sliver of shade by the hut. He lifted his head a few inches off the ground in greeting, but only for a moment. It was too hot to do anything more.
The streets and walls of the camp were all made of mud, which soaked up the heat like a bread oven, baking everything inside, including Shauzia. Flies landed on her face, hands and ankles. Nearby, the resident crazy woman rocked and moaned.
“Remember when we were in the high pasture?” Shauzia asked Jasper. “Remember how cool and clean the air felt? How we could hear birds singing, not women moaning?” She reached under her chador to lift up her hair, which was sticking to the back of her neck. “Maybe we should have stayed with the shepherds,” she said, brushing off a fly and redraping her head and shoulders with the chador. “Maybe I should have kept my hair short like a boy’s instead of letting it grow back. That was Mrs. Weera’s idea. Mrs. Weera orders me around, has dumb ideas, and won’t even get me a decent pair of sandals. Look at these!” She took off a sandal and showed it to Jasper, who kept his eyes closed. The sandal was barely held together by bits of string.
Shauzia put it back on her foot.
“It’s not fair for you to be in this heat, either,” she told Jasper. “You’re a shepherding dog. You should be back in the mountains with the sheep or, even better, on the deck of a big ship, next to me, with the ocean wind all around us.”
Shauzia wasn’t completely sure whether there was wind on the ocean, but she figured there must be. After all, there were waves.
“I’m sorry I brought you here, Jasper. I thought this place would be a stepping stone to some place better instead of a dead end. Do you forgive me?”
Jasper opened his eyes, perked up his ears for a moment, then went back to his nap. Shauzia took that as a yes.
Jasper used to belong to the shepherds, but as soon as he and Shauzia met, they realized they really belonged together.
Shauzia leaned back and closed her eyes. Maybe she could remember what a cool breeze felt like. Maybe that would cool her down.
“Shauzia, tell us a story!”
She kept her eyes closed.
“Go away.” She wasn’t in the mood to entertain the compound’s children.
“Tell us about the wolves.”
She opened one eye and used it to glare at the group of youngsters in front of her.
“I said go away.” She never should have been nice to them. Now they wouldn’t leave her alone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting.”
“We’ll sit with you.” The children dropped to the dirt, closer to her than was comfortable in this heat. A lot of them had shaved heads because of a recent outbreak of lice in the compound. Most had runny noses. They all had big eyes and hollow cheeks. There was never enough food.
“Quit butting into me,” she said, pushing away a little girl who was leaning on her. The orphans Mrs. Weera was always finding and bringing into the compound were especially clingy. “You’re worse than sheep.”
“Tell us about the wolves.”
“One story, then you’ll leave me alone?”
“One story.”
It would be worth the effort, if they really did go. She needed some quiet time to plan out what she was going to say to Mrs. Weera. This time, she wouldn’t be put off by a request to do one of those “little jobs.”
“All right, I’ll tell you about the wolves.” Shauzia took a deep breath and began her story.
“It happened while I was working as a shepherd. We had the sheep up in the high pasture-land in Afghanistan, where the air is clean and cool.”
“I can make Afghanistan with my fist.”
“So can I.”
A dozen grubby fists were thrust into Shauzia’s face. The thumbs were stuck out to represent the skinny part of the province of Badakhshan.
“Don’t interrupt. Do you want to hear the story or not?” Shauzia said, waving the hands away.
“We were up in the pastureland, where everything is green – grass, bushes, pistachio trees, great oak trees – a beautiful green.”
Shauzia looked around for something to compare it to. The compound was all yellowish-gray mud. Most of the children had spent their whole lives there.
“Look at Safa’s shalwar kameez. Up in the high pastureland, the whole world is green like that.” There was green under the dirt of Safa’s clothes. The water supply was low, and no one had been able to do laundry.
The children oohed and aahed and started babbling about colors. Shauzia had to shut them up so she could finish the story. Then maybe they’d leave her alone.
She pictured the pastureland in her mind and, for a moment, she was taken away from the noise, dirt and smell of the refugee camp. “I was sitting up with the sheep one dark night, guarding them, because sheep are so stupid they can’t look after themselves. The other shepherds – big grown men – were asleep. I was the only one awake. I sat by a small fire, watching the sparks fly up into the sky like stars.
“There was an eerie silence in the hills. All I could hear was the sound of the shepherds snoring. Then, suddenly, a wolf howled!”
Shauzia howled like a wolf. Some of the children gasped and some of them laughed, and the women in the embroidery group nearby stopped chatting for a moment.
“That was followed by another howl, and then another howl! There was a whole pack of wolves in the forest, wanting to gobble up my sheep.
“I stood up and saw the wolves begin to creep out from the shelter of the trees. They wanted to eat the sheep, but first they had to deal with me. I counted four, then five, then six – seven giant wolves coming toward me, tense on their haunches, ready to spring.
“I bent down and grabbed two burning sticks from the fire. I held them up just as the wolves jumped at me. They were hungry and strong, but I was angry that they had disturbed my quiet night, so I was more than a match for them. I kicked at them and waved the burning sticks until they were so tired out that they collapsed at my feet and fell asleep. In the morning, they were so embarrassed, they simply slunk away back into the forest, grateful that I didn’t laugh at them.”
“Hello, children!” Mrs. Weera swept into the compound like a strong wind. “Every time you tell that story, you add another wolf,” she said, whooshing past her into the hut.
Shauzia jumped to her feet and followed her inside.
“Mrs. Weera, I need to talk to you.”
“Another one of our secret girls’ schools has been discovered by the Taliban,” Mrs. Weera was saying to her assistant. “We must see what we can – ”
“Mrs. Weera!”
But Mrs. Weera ignored Shauzia.
Shauzia felt Jasper’s solid dog-body beside her, and it gave her strength.
“Mrs. Weera, I want to be paid!” she shouted.
That got Mrs. Weera’s attention. “You want to be paid? For telling stories? Whoever heard of such a thing?”
“Not for telling stories.”
Mrs. Weera was already striding away on those strong, phys-ed teacher legs of hers.
“Mrs. Weera!” Shauzia shouted. “I need to be paid!”
Mrs. Weera came back. “Which is it? Want or need? I’m sure we all want to be paid, but do we need to be? And are you not already being paid? Did you not eat today? Will you not sleep under a roof tonight?”
I will not back down this time, Shauzia vowed to herself. “I told you my plans when I first came here. I told you I’d need to earn some money, but you’ve kept me so busy with your little jobs, I haven’t had time to look for real work.”
“I would have thought bringing comfort to your fellow Afghans in a refugee camp could be considered enough real work for a lifetime.”
“A lifetime!” Shauzia exclaimed in horror. “You expect me to do this for a lifetime? I didn’t leave Afghanistan just to live in mud!” She flung her arms at the mud walls surrounding the Widows’ Compound, knowing that on the other side of them in the regular part of the refugee camp were more mud walls. Maybe the whole world was mud walls now, and she’d never get away from them.
Mrs. Weera gave Shauzia a hard look. “This isn’t that France nonsense again, is it?”
“It’s not nonsense.”
“She thinks she’ll just go to the sea, hop on a ship, sail to France and be welcomed there with open arms,” Mrs. Weera announced to the growing crowd that had gathered to see what the excitement was. As others laughed, Shauzia realized that was what she hated the most about living in a refugee camp. She couldn’t even have an argument in private.
“She wants to spend her life sitting in a cornfield!” Mrs. Weera continued.
It’s a lavender field, Shauzia thought, but she didn’t bother saying anything. And I don’t want to spend my life there. I just want to stay there long enough to get the sound of your voice out of my head.
“Why won’t you go into the nurses’ training program like I arranged for you? In a few years, you might be able to work as a nursing assistant and earn money that way. The sea isn’t going anywhere. Neither, as far as I know, is France.”
“A few years? I can’t spend a few years here! I’ll go crazy! I’ll be like her!” Shauzia pointed at the crazy woman. A woman with no name, she had been found rocking and moaning on the streets of Peshawar. Aid workers had brought her to the Widows’ Compound. She still rocked and moaned but, as Mrs. Weera said, “At least she’s safe here from the beatings the street boys gave her.”
“Shut up!” Shauzia yelled at the woman, unable to stand the noise any longer. The woman ignored her.
“Use some respect in your voice when you speak,” Mrs. Weera said sternly. “Why can’t you be more like your friend Parvana? She always spoke most respectfully.”
Parvana didn’t like you any more than I do, Shauzia thought, but again, she kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Weera, she’d discovered, had the talent of hearing only what she wanted to hear.
“If you can’t pay me for the work I do here, I’ll have to leave and find work that will pay me money.”
Mrs. Weera’s voice softened. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. You’ve always been taken care of. You won’t be able to manage on your own.”
“What do you mean, I’ve always been taken care of? I’ve always taken care of myself! My family certainly didn’t take care of me.” An unwanted image came into Shauzia’s mind, of coming home after a day of working in the streets of Kabul to a dark, crowded little room, to people saying, “How much money did you make?” instead of “How are you?”
“Your family, flawed though they were, also waited for you to come home every evening. You earned money to buy them food, but they cooked the food for you and provided you with a place to be each night. When you lived in the mountains, the shepherds watched out for you, and now all of us in the Widows’ Compound watch out for you.”
“Watch out for me? You don’t even get me proper sandals like you promised. All you do is boss me around. Why don’t you go back to Afghanistan and boss the Taliban around instead of me?”
“Shauzia, stop this. You are far too old to be acting like a child.”
“Then stop treating me like a child! Stop treating me as though I were one of them!” Shauzia gestured toward the group of small children who were following the argument with open-mouthed delight. She suspected they found it even more entertaining than her wolf story.
Mrs. Weera took a deep, slow breath. “You want me to treat you like an adult?” she said calmly. “All right, I will. As an adult, make your choice. If you decide to stay here, you stay without complaint. You will contribute your time and talents to the best of your ability, without expecting money, because you’ll understand that there isn’t any. If you decide that life here is not for you, you know where the main gate of the camp is. We have enough problems helping those who want our help. Take a few days to think about it, then give me your decision.”
Shauzia was stunned into silence. She stared hard at Mrs. Weera, and Mrs. Weera stared hard right back at her.
“I don’t need a few days to think about it,” Shauzia said coldly, hoping she sounded braver than she felt. “I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’m going to find a great job and become rich, and go to France, and never come back here again!”
“Very well,” Mrs. Weera said quietly. “We’ll have a farewell party for you tonight.”
With that, she walked away.