Madar-jan kept me at home for a couple of weeks, wanting me to get used to the idea of being a boy before she let me test the waters outside of our home. She corrected my sisters when they called me Rahima and did the same with my younger cousins who had never before seen a bacha posh. They ran into their houses to report the news to their mothers, who smirked. Each had given her husband at least two sons to carry on the family name. They didn’t need to make any of their daughters a bacha posh.
But Madar-jan ignored their looks and went about her chores. Bibi-jan hated that anyone in her family was forced to resort to the bacha posh tradition.
“We needed a son in the house, Khala-jan.”
“Hmmph. Would be better if you could just have one as the others did.”
Madar-jan bit her tongue for the thousandth time.
Padar-jan barely seemed to notice the change. He had been gone for a couple of days and came home exhausted. He sat in the living room and opened an envelope of small pellets. He squeezed them between his fingers and sprinkled the mix into a cigarette casing. He lit one end and sucked on it deeply. Thick, sweet smoke twisted around his face and wrapped around his head. My sisters and I came in from outside to find him sitting there. We stopped short and said hello, our heads bowed.
He looked at us and inhaled deeply. He squinted through the smoke as he noticed that something was different about his three daughters.
“So she’s done it then.” And that was all he said about the matter.
Khala Shaima was the reassuring voice that Madar-jan needed to hear.
“Raisa, what else were you going to do? Your husband is delirious half the time and of no use to you. You can’t send the girls to school or even to the market because you’re afraid of what will happen. Your in-laws are all too busy talking about each other to help you out. This is your only option. Besides, it’ll be better for her, you’ll see. What can a girl do in this world, anyway? Rahim will appreciate what you’ve done for him.”
“But my in-laws, I—”
“Forget them! The person who doesn’t appreciate the apple doesn’t appreciate the orchard. You’ll never please them. The sooner you figure that out the better off you’ll be.”
My first errand as a boy was an exciting one. I was to go to the market for oil and flour. Madar-jan nervously handed me a few bills and watched me walk down the street. My sisters poked their faces around either side of her skirt trying to get a look as well. I kept glancing over my shoulder and waved at Madar-jan cheerfully, trying to inspire a little confidence in both of us that I could pull this off.
The streets were lined with shops. Copper pots. Baby clothes. Sacks of rice and dried beans. Colorful flags hung from front doors. The shops were two levels, with balconies on the second floor where men sat back and watched the comings and goings of their neighbors. None of the men walked with any urgency. The women, on the other hand, moved purposefully and carefully.
I stepped into the first shop I recognized, a large sign overhead announcing the arrival of a new cooking oil.
“Agha-sahib, how much for a kilo of flour?” I asked, remembering to keep my shoulders straight. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look the man in the eye so I kept shifting my gaze to the tin cans he had stocked on the shelf behind him.
“Fifteen thousand afghanis,” he said, barely looking up. Not too long ago, a kilo of flour had cost forty afghanis. But money was worthless now that everyone had bags of it.
I bit my lip. This was double what I had seen him charge my mother, which she complained was already too much. I wasn’t surprised. I had come to this same man twice before when my mother had reluctantly sent me out to the market and I had been able to bargain him down to half of what he originally demanded.
“That’s too much, agha-sahib. Not even a king could pay that much. How about six thousand afghanis?”
“You take me for a fool, little boy?”
“No, sir.” My chest puffed to hear him call me a boy. “But I know that Agha Kareem has flour for sale too and he charges much less. I didn’t want to walk all the way down to his shop, but . . .”
“Ten thousand afghanis. That’s it.”
“Agha-sahib, it’s only one kilo I’m asking for. Eight thousand afghanis is all I’ll pay.”
“Boy! You’re wasting my time,” he barked, but I knew he had nothing else to do. He’d been picking dirt from under his fingernails when I entered his shop.
“Then I’ll pay you twelve thousand afghanis but I’ll need a kilo of flour and a kilo of oil to go with it.”
“And a kilo of oil? Have you—”
“I’m no fool, agha-sahib,” I said, and forced myself to look him in the eye, as a boy should. He stopped short and his mouth tightened. His eyes narrowed as he took a good look at me. I felt myself shrink under his stare. Maybe I’d gone too far.
Suddenly he let out a guffaw.
“You’re a little smart-ass, aren’t you?” he said with a smirk. “Whose son are you anyway?”
My shoulders relaxed. He saw the bacha posh but it was just as Madar-jan had promised—people understood.
“I’m Arif’s son. From the other side of the field, past the stream.”
“Well done, my boy. Here, take your oil and flour and run off before I come to my senses.”
I quickly counted out the bills, took my spoils and hurried back home to show Madar-jan. My walk turned to a jog as I realized I didn’t have to be demure and proper. I tested an old man walking by. I looked directly at him, meeting his squinted eyes and seeing that he didn’t react to my forwardness. Thrilled, I started to run faster. No one gave me a second glance. My legs felt liberated as I ran through the streets without my knees slapping against my skirt and without worrying about chastising eyes. I was a young man and it was in my nature to run through the streets.
Madar-jan smiled to see me panting and grinning. I laid the goods before her and proudly showed her how much money I’d returned home with.
“Well, well. Looks like my son bargains better than his mother!” she said.
I started to understand why Madar-jan needed a son in the home. Certain chores she had left for my father had not been done in months. Now she could ask me.
When my sister’s shoes came undone, the rubber sole flopping like an open mouth, I took them to the old man down the street. With only three fingers on his right hand, he could fix any shoe in any condition. I brought bread from the baker and chased the stray dog down the street. My father would come home, his eyes red and small, and laugh when he saw me.
“Bachem, ask your sister to bring me a cup of tea. And tell her to fix me something to eat too,” he said, ruffling my hair as he walked lazily to the corner of the living room and stretched out on the floor, his head thumping against the pillow cushion.
I was confused for a moment. Why hadn’t he asked me to bring the tea and food? But realization swept over me as I walked into the kitchen. I saw Rohila first.
“Hey, Rohila. Padar-jan wants some tea and something to eat. He’s in the living room.”
“So? Why didn’t you put a plate together? You know there’s some korma-katchaloo in the pot.”
“He didn’t ask me. He said for me to tell my sister. That’s you. Anyway, I’m going out. Don’t take all day. He looks like he’s hungry,” I said cheerfully. Rohila’s hazel eyes gave me a look even as she turned to heat up a bowl of potato stew for our father. She was angry and part of me knew I was being a brat, but everything I was experiencing was new and I wanted to enjoy it. I ignored the shadow of guilt and headed out to see if the stray dog had returned for another game of chase.
A month later, school was back in session and my nerves were again rattled. Madar-jan trimmed my hair and spoke to me cautiously.
“You’ll be in the boys’ classroom this year. Pay attention to your teacher and mind your studies,” she warned me, trying to make this little talk sound routine. “Remember that your cousin Muneer will be in your class as well. No one, the teacher, the students, no one will ask you about . . . about anything. Just remember that your father has decided to send you to school this year. You are one of the boys and . . . and . . . mind what the teacher tells you.”
It would be different, I understood. Khala Shaima’s plan had worked well within the confines of our family compound and even in my trips to the bazaar. School would put this charade to the test though, and I could sense my mother’s trepidation. My sisters were furious. Padar-jan had decided they were to stay home even though I could have accompanied them to school.
Muneer and I walked to school together. He wasn’t the brightest of my cousins and I rarely saw him since his mother kept her children away from the rest of us. That probably worked in my favor. He needed to be told only once that I was his cousin Rahim and always had been, and in his mind there never had been a Rahima. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to worry about his giving me away.
“Salaam, Moallim-sahib,” I said when we arrived.
The teacher grunted a reply in return, nodding as each student walked in. I wiped my moist palms on my pants.
I felt the teacher’s curious eyes follow the back of my head but it could have been my imagination. I scanned the room and stayed close behind Muneer, noting that none of the boys seemed fazed by me. I kept my head bowed and we made our way to the back of the classroom, where Muneer and I shared a long bench with three other boys. One boy was especially eager to show how much he knew about the teacher.
“Moallim-sahib is very strict. Last year he gave four boys bad marks because their fingernails weren’t clean.”
“Oh yeah?” his friend whispered. “Then you better keep your finger out of your nose!”
“Boys! Sit up straight and pay attention,” the teacher said. He was a rotund man, his shiny bald head rimmed with salt-and-pepper hair. His neatly groomed mustache matched his sparse hairs. “You’ll begin by writing your names. Then we’ll see what, if anything, you learned in your last class.”
I quickly realized the male teachers were just as strict as the women. Class wasn’t much different except that there was more whispering and shooting each other looks than I’d ever seen in a girls’ classroom. I wrote my name carefully and watched Muneer struggle from the corner of my eye. His letters were awkwardly connected and an extra dot had changed “Muneer” to “Muteer.” I debated correcting him but the teacher looked in my direction before I could even begin to whisper. He walked around the room and looked at everyone’s names, shaking his head at some and grunting at others. Very few seemed to meet his standards.
He looked over my shoulder and I could hear the air whistle through his nostrils, his belly casting a shadow over my paper. My name got no reaction, which I could take only to mean it had not severely disappointed him. Muneer’s notebook, however, made him groan.
“What is your name?” he demanded.
“M-M-Muneer.” He stole a glance upward at the teacher but quickly looked down again.
“Muneer,” he said dramatically. “If you come back to this class tomorrow and make a single mistake in your name, I’ll send you back to repeat last year’s work. Understood?”
“Yes, Moallim-sahib,” Muneer whispered. I could feel the heat from his face.
So the boys weren’t learning much more than the girls, I realized.
After class, the boys were more interested in racing outside and kicking a ball around than questioning who I was or where I’d come from. Muneer and I walked home with two boys named Ashraf and Abdullah. They were neighbors who lived a half kilometer from our family’s house. This was the first time I’d met them, though they knew Muneer and my other boy cousins.
“What’s your name again?” Ashraf asked. He was the shorter of the two and had light brown hair and round eyes. He was pretty enough to make me wonder if he was like me, a girl underneath those pants.
“My name is Rahim.”
“Yeah, his name is Rahim. He’s my cousin,” Muneer added. The teacher’s warnings had shaken him up but now that we were outside, he was breathing easier.
“Abdullah, have you ever seen Rahim before?”
Abdullah shook his head. He was dark haired, slim and calmer than his neighbor.
“No. Are you any good at soccer, Rahim?”
I stole a sidelong glance and shrugged my shoulders.
“Oh, he’s really good at soccer,” Muneer said emphatically. His reply caught me off guard. “I bet he could beat you.”
I looked at Muneer, wondering if he was trying to set me up.
“Oh, yeah?” Abdullah grinned. “Well, he doesn’t have to beat me but it would help if he could beat Said Jawad and his friends. They’re probably over in the street playing if you want to join them.”
“Yeah, let’s do it!” Muneer picked up his pace and headed down the side street that led to the makeshift field and away from our house. The field was actually an unused side street, too narrow for a car. The boys were accustomed to meeting there for pickup games.
“Muneer, don’t you think we should—”
“C’mon, Rahim. Just for a little while! It’ll be fun,” Abdullah said, giving my shoulder a light shove.
I suppose I could have been worse. The only thing I knew how to do was to run. Luckily, I did that well enough that the boys didn’t notice that my foot never made contact with the ball or that I never shouted for the ball to be passed to me. I ran up and down the street, my shoulders scraping the clay wall of the alley. I kept expecting my mother or father to appear and drag me back home angrily.
I liked feeling the breeze on my face. I liked feeling my legs stretch, trying to catch the others, trying to race ahead of them. My arms swung by my sides, free.
“Over here! Pass it over here!”
“Don’t let him get by! Catch him!”
I neared the ball. There were six feet kicking at it, trying to knock it back in their direction. I stuck my foot into the melee. I felt the leather against my sole. I kicked at it, sending it flying in Abdullah’s direction. He stopped the ball with his heel and nudged it toward the opposite goal. He was running.
I felt a thrill as I chased after him. I liked being part of the team. I liked the dust kicking up under my feet.
I liked being a boy.