Shekiba.
Your name means “gift,” my daughter. You are a gift from Allah.
Who could have known that Shekiba would become the name she was given, a gift passed from one hand to another? Shekiba was born at the turn of the twentieth century, in an Afghanistan eyed lasciviously by Russia and Britain. Each would take turns promising to protect the borders they had just invaded, like a pedophile who professes to love his victim.
The borders between Afghanistan and India were drawn and redrawn from time to time, as if only penciled in. People belonged to one country and then the other, nationalities changing as often as the direction of the wind. For Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan was the playing field for their “Great Game,” the power struggle to control Central Asia. But the game was slowly coming to an end, the Afghan people ferociously resisting outside control. Chests expanded with pride when Afghans talked about their resilience.
But parts of Afghanistan were taken—little by little until its borders shrank in like a wool sweater left in the rain. Areas to the north like Samarkand and Bukhara had been lost to the Russian Empire. Chunks of the south were chipped away and the western front was pushed in over the years.
In that way, Shekiba was Afghanistan. Beginning in her childhood, tragedy and malice chipped away at her until she was just a fragment of the person she should have been. If only Shekiba had been prettier, something at least pleasing for the eye to gaze upon. Maybe then, her father could have hoped to arrange a proper marriage for her when her time came. Maybe people would have looked at her with an ounce of kindness.
But Shekiba’s village was unforgiving. To get to Kabul, one had to ride one week, crossing a river and three mountains. Most people spent their entire lives in the village, in the green fields surrounded by mountains, walking the dirt roads that connected one compound to another. Their village was in a valley, dark soil nurtured by the nearby river and tall peaks giving a sense of enclosure, privacy. There were a few dozen clans, extended families who had known each other over generations. Most people were related to each other, somehow, and gossip was one way to keep busy.
Shekiba’s parents were second cousins, their marriage arranged by Shekiba’s paternal grandmother. Their family, like many others, lived off the land. Each generation splintered the family’s land so that people would have a place to build a home, if they decided to leave the clan’s main house. Shekiba’s father, Ismail Bardari, was the youngest in his home. His older brothers had married before him and filled the compound with their wives and children.
Seeing there was no room for him and his new bride, Shafiqa, Ismail picked up his chisel and set to work. He was lucky though, in that his father bequeathed him a lot with such fertile soil that his share of crops would be guaranteed. He was the hardest working of his brothers and his father wanted to ensure that the land’s potential would be realized. There were many hungry mouths to feed and a good yield could bring in extra income from the village. His brothers lacked Ismail’s instincts. He had a gift. He knew just the right temperature at which to plant, how often to till the soil and the perfect amount of water to make crops grow. Ismail’s brothers resented him for being their father’s favorite. They pretended to prefer living in the main home. In the end, he surrounded the house with a wall of mud and stones to give it privacy, as a proper Afghan home needed.
Ismail brought his nervous bride to their new home, surrounded by a small plot of land that bordered his brother’s. Standing outside, she could see her in-laws coming and going from the house, their burqas blue spots on a khaki landscape. When the women headed in her direction she would hurry inside and cover herself, embarrassed that her belly was swollen with child. But Shafiqa’s in-laws found her dull and timid, and over time they took less interest in her and her children. The women sighed heavily when they spoke with her and whispered to her husband when she wasn’t near. Had Shekiba’s father been like most other men, he might have heeded those whispers and taken a second wife. But Ismail Bardari was unlike some other men and stayed with the one wife he had, however his mother and sisters felt about her.
Shekiba’s brothers, Tariq and Munis, were the only real link to the clan. Shafiqa watched over Shekiba and her little sister Aqela, nicknamed “Bulbul” because her light, melodic voice reminded Ismail of the local songbird. Tariq and Munis would come and go between their father’s and their grandfather’s homes, acting as couriers of clothing, vegetables and news. The boys were well liked by their grandparents and valued as male heirs. Ismail’s mother, Bobo Shahgul, often said the two boys were the only good thing to come from Shafiqa. The boys overheard many hateful comments but they knew better than to share everything they heard. Shekiba and Aqela didn’t realize how little their father’s family cared about them since they spent their days close at their mother’s side. Sometimes, too close.
A clumsy two-year-old Shekiba changed her life in the blink of an eye. She woke from a midmorning nap and set off to find her mother. Shekiba heard the familiar sounds of peeling in the kitchen and stumbled into the cooking niche. Her small foot caught on the hem of her dress and her arm flailed into the air, knocking a pot of hot oil from a burner top before her mother could reach her. The oil flew out and melted the left half of Shekiba’s cherub face into blistered and ragged flesh.
Shafiqa screamed and doused her daughter’s face with cool water but it was too late. It took months to heal, as Shafiqa diligently kept Shekiba’s face clean, using a compound the local alchemist had mixed for them. The pain got worse as her skin fought to recover. The itching drove Shekiba mad and her mother was forced to wrap her hands in cloth, especially while she picked away at the dead, blackened skin. Fevers came, so high they made the toddler’s body tremble and writhe, and Shafiqa had nothing to offer, nothing she could do but pray at her daughter’s side, her body rocking back and forth, and beseech Allah for mercy.
Bobo Shahgul came to see Shekiba when she heard about the incident. Shafiqa anxiously waited to hear any helpful advice her mother-in-law might offer but Bobo Shahgul had none. Before she left, she suggested Shafiqa pay closer attention to her children and muttered thanks that it hadn’t been one of the boys.
Shekiba’s survival was nothing short of a miracle, another gift from Allah. Though her face healed, she was not the same. From then on, Shekiba was halved. When she laughed, only half her face laughed. When she cried, only half her face cried. But the worst part was the change in people’s expressions. People who saw her profile from the right would begin to smile, but as their view turned the corner, beyond her nose, their own faces would change. Every reaction reminded Shekiba that she was ugly, a horror. Some people would step back and cover a gaping mouth with a hand. Others would dare to lean in, eyes squinted, to get a better look. From across the road, people would stop in their tracks and point.
There. Did you see her? There goes the girl with half a face. Didn’t I tell you she was horrid looking? God only knows what they did to deserve that.
Even her aunts and uncles would shake their heads and cluck their tongues every time they saw her, as if every time they were freshly disappointed and shocked to see what she looked like. Her cousins came up with twisted names for her. “Shola face,” as her skin resembled the lumpy soft rice. “Babaloo,” or monster. That one she hated more than the others, since she too was afraid of the babaloo, the creature that frightened every Afghan child in the night.
Shafiqa tried to keep her sheltered from the comments, the jeers, the stares, but it was too late to save Shekiba’s self-esteem, a commodity people didn’t value much anyway. She covered Shekiba with a burqa when she saw people approaching their home or on the rare occasion when the family ventured into the village.
Remember, “Shekiba” means “a gift.” You are our gift, my daughter. No need to let others gawk at you.
Shekiba knew she was horribly disfigured and that she was lucky to even be accepted by her immediate family. In the summers, the burqa was hot and stifling but she felt safer within it, protected. She was not exactly happy but was satisfied to stay in the house and out of sight. Her days passed with fewer insults that way. Her parents withdrew even more from the clan, and the resentment toward Shafiqa’s aloofness grew.
Tariq and Munis were both energetic, and being just a year apart in age, they could pass for twins. When they were eight and nine, they were helping their father with the fieldwork and running errands in the village. They usually ignored the comments they heard about their “cursed sister” but Tariq had been known to throw back insults from time to time. On one occasion, Munis came home with scattered bruises and a foul temper. He’d had more than he could take of the local boys pestering him about his half-faced sister. Padar-jan had gone to the boy’s home to make amends with his parents but he never reprimanded Tariq or Munis for defending their Shekiba.
Aqela, always smiling, would sing nursery rhymes in her sweet bulbul voice and kept her mother and Shekiba’s spirits lifted as they did the chores. They were happy keeping to themselves. They didn’t have much, but they had everything they needed and never felt lonely.
In 1903, a wave of cholera decimated Afghanistan. Children shriveled up within hours and succumbed in their mothers’ weak arms. Shekiba’s family had no choice but to use the poisoned water that coursed through their village. First Munis, then the others. The illness came quickly and it came strong. The smell was unbearable. Shekiba was stunned. She saw her siblings’ faces grow pale and thin in days. Aqela was quiet, her songs reduced to a soft moan. Shafiqa was frantic; Ismail quietly shook his head. Word came from the compound that two children had died, one from each of Shekiba’s uncles.
Shekiba and her parents waited for their own bellies to begin cramping. They nervously cared for the others, watching each other and waiting to see who else would become ill. Shekiba saw her father put his arms around his wife’s shoulders as she rocked and prayed. Aqela’s skin was graying, Tariq’s eyes were sunken. Munis was quiet and still.
She was thirteen when she helped her parents wash and wrap Tariq, Munis and Aqela, the songbird, in white cloth, the traditional garb for the deceased. Shekiba sniffled quietly, knowing she would be haunted by the memory of helping her moaning father to dig the graves for her teenage brothers and delicate Aqela, who had just turned ten. Shekiba and her parents were among the survivors.
It was the first time in years that the clan made an appearance. Shekiba watched her uncles and their wives come in and out of the house, paying their obligatory respects before moving on to the next home grieving their dead. It went without saying that they pitied Shekiba’s parents, not so much for the loss of their three children, but for the disappointment that Allah could not have spared one of the sons instead of the defective girl. Luckily, Shekiba was numb by then.
Thousands died that year. Her family’s losses were notches on the epidemic’s belt.
One week after her three children were buried, Shafiqa began to whisper to herself when no one was looking. She asked Tariq to help her with the water pails. She warned Munis to eat all his food so that he would grow up to be as tall as his brother. Her fingers moved through the yarn of the blanket as if she were braiding Aqela’s hair.
Then Shafiqa started sitting idly, plucking individual hairs from her head, one by one, until her scalp was bare; then her eyebrows and lashes disappeared. With nothing left to pluck, she resorted to picking at the skin of her arms and legs. She ate her food but gagged on pieces that she had forgotten to chew. Her whispers became louder and Shekiba and her father pretended not to notice. Sometimes she would listen and then giggle with a lightheartedness alien to their household. Shekiba slowly became her mother’s mother, making sure she bathed and reminding her to go to sleep at night.
A year later, in the same dismal month of Qows, Shekiba’s languishing mother decided not to wake up from sleep. It came as no surprise.
Ismail held his wife’s hands and thought how tired they must be from all the wringing they had endured. Shekiba brought her cheek to her mother’s and saw that her eyes had lost their desperate glassiness. Madar-jan must have died looking at the face of God, Shekiba thought. Nothing else could have brought the look of peace so quickly.
The house sighed in relief. Shekiba bathed her mother one last time, taking care to wash her bald head and realizing that her mother had even plucked the hairs from her womanly parts. The weight of sadness lifted. Her corpse was shockingly light.
By the following day, Shekiba and her father were back in the field to open the earth once more. They did not bother to tell the rest of the family. Her father read a prayer over the mound of dirt and they looked at each other, quietly wondering which of them would join the others first.
Shekiba was left with her father. A cousin stopped by to tell them of an upcoming wedding and took back news of the new widower to the rest of the clan. The hawks descended on the house within days, extending their condolences, but only after they advised Shekiba’s father that he now had the opportunity to begin again with a new wife. They named a few families with eligible daughters in the village, most of them only a few years older than Shekiba, but her father was so heartbroken and fatigued that his family could not manage to arrange a new wife for him.
Shekiba came of age with only her father to turn to, his sparse words, his lonely eyes. She worked beside him day and night. The more she did, the easier it was for him to forget that she was a girl. He began to think of her as a son, sometimes even slipping and calling her by her brothers’ names. The village chattered about them. How could a father and daughter live alone? Sympathy gave way to criticism and Ismail and Shekiba grew even more distant from the outside world. The clan did not want to be associated with them and the village had no interest in a scarred old man and his even more scarred daughter-son.
Over the years, Ismail lulled himself into believing that he had always lived without a wife and that he had always had only one child. He managed by ignoring everything. He was the only person who did not see Shekiba’s marred face and did not notice that, as a young woman, she might need some direction from a female. When she bled every month, he pretended not to smell the soiled rags that she would keep soaking and hidden behind a stack of logs in their two-room home. And when he heard her shed tears, he shrugged her sniffles off as a touch of flu.
Shekiba’s father took his daughter-son to the fields to help him manage their small plot of land. She hoed, she slaughtered and she chopped as any strong-backed son would do for his father. She made it possible for Ismail to go on believing that life had always been father and son. Shekiba proved to be able-bodied, affirming her father’s confidence in her ability to manage the farm. Her arms and shoulders knotted with muscle.
Years passed. Shekiba’s features grew coarser; her palms and soles were thick and callused. Every day, Ismail’s back hunched more, his eyes saw less and his needs grew. There were days Shekiba was left to run the entire farm and house on her own.
Had Shekiba been any other girl, she probably would have felt lonesome in this solitary life, but her circumstances were different. The children nearby would always point and tease, as would their parents. Her appearance was shocking everywhere, except at home.
People who are beset by tragedy once and twice are sure to grieve again. Fate finds it easier to retrace its treads. Shekiba’s father became weaker, his voice raspier, his breaths shallower. One day, as Shekiba watched from the wall of stone and mud, he grabbed his chest, took two steps and crumpled to the ground with a sickle in his grip.
Shekiba was eighteen years old but she knew what to do. She dragged her father’s body back to the house on a large cloth, stopping every few steps to adjust her grasp and to wipe away the tears that trickled down the right side of her face. The left side of her face remained stoic.
She laid his body in the living room and sat at his side, repeating the four or five Qur’anic verses that her parents had taught her until the sun came up. In the morning, she began the ceremony she had performed too often in her short life. She undressed her father, careful to keep his private areas hidden beneath a rag. The ritual washing should have been done by a man but Shekiba had no one to call on. She would rather have invited Allah’s wrath into her home than turn to those vile people.
She bathed him, turning away as she poured water onto his man parts and blindly wrapping his stiff body in a cloth, as she and her mother had done with her sister. She dragged him back outside and opened the earth one final time to complete her family’s interment. Shekiba chewed her lip and debated digging one more spot for herself, thinking there would be no one left to do so when her turn came. Too tired to do anything more, Shekiba said a few prayers and watched her father disappear under clods of earth—disappear like her sister, her brothers and her mother.
She walked back to the hollow house and sat silently—afraid, angry and calm.
Shekiba was alone.