The ticking of the wall clock might have hypnotized her mother into a deep sleep, but it was keeping Zohra awake as usual. Their little room was slowly getting darker as the solar lamp started to die. Her mother stirred, and shouted to her to turn it off and save some power for tomorrow. She got up to switch it off, then scurried back to her side of the room. She turned away from the window, quickly pulling a thin flowery blanket up over her face to shut out the darkness.
It was two-thirty in the morning when her eyes finally closed, but at the same time something inside her awoke. She felt a coldness in her feet, and found that something wet and soft was rubbing against her toes. When she tried to look, all she could see was darkness. She tried to move her legs, but her body was frozen. And then she felt herself being pulled suddenly and forcefully from within, a twisting force squeezing her chest and making her struggle to breathe. Zohra tried to shout out and move her limbs, but her body would not obey her. Each time she would fall back into the blackness, as if she were being pulled down into the depths of a well, beyond where her eyes could see. She was afraid that if she gave in to it, she would never return to the surface, and she recalled her mother’s advice to recite the name of God when in need. She whispered, Allah, Allah, Allah… The words appeared before her, then vanished as quickly as they had appeared.
She sat bolt upright and threw the blanket away. She was covered in sweat. She turned on the flashlight of her phone and pointed it towards her feet. A long, dark brown worm was writhing in pain, half of its body ground into the rug beneath her.
When Zohra next awoke, it was to the peaceful, fresh scent of the morning breeze and the familiar sound of her mother sweeping their dusty yard. Her mother, Hakima, wore a long green cotton dress with tiny flowers on it, and white trousers with detailed khamak that she had embroidered herself down the sides. Although she was only in her thirties, hardship and loneliness had given her tired skin and graying hair. She still kept her hair long, and it covered her back.
Hakima walked over to the small glass bottles of homemade torshi, cucumber pickles, and chatni sauce that were lined up in a shaded corner of the tiny yard, ready to be picked up by the seller man.
“I heard you moaning last night,” Hakima said to Zohra in a still voice. “You had Bakhtak attacking you again? I told you that you must wash your hands and mouth after you eat meat at night.” Zohra had picked up a piece of broken mirror and was inspecting her face, prodding the acne on her chin. She occasionally glanced at her mother, but said nothing. Hakima started collecting the small pieces of cloth that were drying on branches, and tried again to get a response from her daughter. “You never talk about your dreams. You should have taken the mullah’s amulet—taken his message, folded the paper small and strung it around your neck. Or we could soak it in water for you to drink. Yes, that would help.”
Zohra looked away from the mirror and through the bedroom window, staring at the purple and white vases on the windowsill inside. She turned to look squarely at her mother and said: “Nanai, when I was a child, we used to live in a house with a big garden, right? I vaguely remember it. I used to bring you dead, dried-up worms, didn’t I?”
“What? No, I don’t remember such a thing. I do remember the day I pulled a cockroach out of your mouth, though!” Her mother laughed, not looking at her, and continued to gather up the washing. She handed a few pieces of cloth to Zohra. “Here, dried and clean. Hide them somewhere until you get your next cycle.”
“Nanai! Why are you like this? Why do you always avoid any conversation about the garden house?”
“What on earth are you talking about? What conversations? I don’t know what’s got into you recently.”
“Just any conversation—proper ones, real ones!” Zohra went back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Hakima stared at her wrinkled and dirty hands and saw that they were shaking.
It was around noon when the bell rang, marking the last of the morning lessons. The male students—especially the juniors—ran and jostled their way across the dusty schoolyard to their next class. Zohra was walking towards her lesson, which was in a room on the second floor, just by the outdoor stairs. She stopped in front of the classroom door with its sign that read “Seventh grade B, girls,” and looked at the morning glory with its purple flowers, twisting around the white iron bars of the stairs. One tendril had grown long and floated out into the air. For a second, she saw the stems turn to claws that grabbed at her, she heard the screams of a woman, and she felt footsteps thumping in her chest. She stepped backwards and was knocked down by one of the younger boys. Zohra watched him run away quickly as she got up and dusted off her black uniform.
Her books and papers had been scattered, the wind blowing them across the schoolyard. Everyone was peering down at the pages with shocked expressions on their faces.
“Hey, hey. What happened here? Did someone push you again, Zohra? Amina, come here. Help her.”
Ustad Hafiz, the stick-thin principal, picked up one of the pages, gazed at it, let go of the small boy’s ear that he was pulling, and shook his head in disappointment. He stared at the unfamiliar shapes and figures on the paper: giant black worms between wild branches of trees.
All the students started whispering.
“Nobody pushed me, Ustad. I slipped,” Zohra said quietly.
“I am not touching her stuff, Ustad,” Amina said in her reedy voice. She became more animated. “In fact, I don’t want to be in the same class as her. My mother says she has jinn inside her.” Amina lived next door to Zohra. Sometimes, Zohra would hear Zahir, Amina’s father, blow his nose so hard and loud that, as she had once told her mother, she worried he would blow his brain out through his nose.
“Everybody go to your classes; the show is over.” Ustad Hafiz collected the few remaining papers and handed them to Zohra. He said to her quietly, “I think you should stop drawing. All you do—all day—is draw. You nearly failed calculus. You are disappointing me, Zohra. Drawing won’t help kids like you. Afghanistan needs female presidents, female politicians, female engineers, and female economists. Go focus on physics, or geometry or chemistry.” Zohra raised her eyebrows just enough that he wouldn’t notice as he embarked on another speech on the future of Afghanistan. His chapped lips moved up and down; white froth built up at the corners of his mouth as he talked. “Do you hear me, Zohra? Now go to your class.”
She held her drawings tightly in her arms as she hurried to her next lesson.
Zohra was staring at the blackboard as the class representative announced that their teacher was absent again, and the students started cheering. Azima, who was sitting next to Zohra, took a piece of damp cloth from her bag and started cleaning the dust from her shoes. She offered another piece to Zohra to clean her trousers.
“Zohra, do you want to come with me to Ms. Sharifi’s office? She gives good advice.” The other girl’s voice was friendly.
“You mean the Love Confessions office?” asked a voice from the front row, as Humaira turned her head to reveal a mocking smile before gazing again at her reflection in her pocket mirror.
“Ha. Funny,” Azima said. “Not everyone is like you, with your boy problems. Some people have other things to worry about—bigger things.”
“I’m fine. I don’t have time for it,” Zohra interjected. “I need to focus on calculus before midterm exams start.” Zohra looked down and pretended to read.
“Focusing on your studies? How? By not sleeping at night? By having constant headaches? Girl, you need to speak to someone. Open up a bit.” She leaned a little closer to Zohra. “Did your mother say anything about your father—”
“Azima! Enough. Why do you have to tell everyone?”
“Have I ever told anyone anything?” Azima said, her tone shifting. She paused for a moment. “OK, I will leave you be if I’m such a bother. See you around.”
Azima got up and pulled the wet cloth out of Zohra’s hand. Zohra kept staring at the blurry lines of the book she was holding, squeezing its pages hard.
The sound of the azan broke through the dark blue and orange atmosphere of the evening, and the first star of the night could be seen in the distance. The smell of onion and tomatoes filled the alley, where you could guess what each neighbor was having to eat. Hakima put the lid on the pot and went into the yard for wuzu and prayers, leaving Zohra to pace the room.
Zohra had stopped counting her sleepless nights long ago. She hated that something so ordinary had become so difficult. These nightmares were never going to let her be normal, she thought to herself. She walked quickly up to the cupboard where she kept her papers and pencils, took out all of her materials, and threw them into a black plastic bag. The principal’s words kept echoing in her head: We do not need female artists. Focus on your studies.
Hakima wiped away her tears as she stared at Zohra through the window, whispering prayers with her hand raised in front of her, looking up occasionally at the sky. When Zohra caught her mother’s gaze, Hakima quickly looked the other way.
Zohra crushed the white papers in her fists. She wanted to shout, but nothing came out, and her tears refused to fall. Instead, there was just a dark cloud around her head.
“Bachim, the food is ready. Let’s eat dinner,” her mother shouted.
Zohra ignored her and lay down, covering her face with her blanket.
Zohra starts to walk slowly towards the big trees at the end of their garden. They smell different at night. They look different in darkness. She is barefoot, and her feet are numb with the cold, covered in mud. She can feel the worms and damp leaves moving beneath her when she drops to her hands and knees and crawls on the floor. As she makes her way towards the apricot trees, the darkness deepens and the air becomes thicker. The sound of her parents arguing comes as always from the house. She starts to cry, and the sound twists between the branches, in and out of their shadows. She can feel her body suddenly growing in size, her surroundings getting smaller and tighter. She lies on the floor gasping for air, gazing at the monstrous claws of the trees merging into one giant hand rushing towards her. She wants to give up this time. She closes her eyes and lets herself sink into the darkness. Then something pulls her up, and she finds herself in the arms of her mother, swaddled in a thin scarf. She pulls back the material from her face and looks back over her mother’s shoulder to see the hands of a man chasing her. A motorbike roars, and the figure, the trees and the darkness grow more distant.
“Wake up, Zohra. Wake up. Open your eyes, my daughter.” Hakima had tears in her eyes as she hugged her and kissed her head. She sat beside her and held Zohra’s hands in hers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you alone with him in that house. It was just once. Your father had beaten me and forced me out. He wouldn’t let me come back.” She stroked Zohra’s forehead, looking deep into her eyes. “Then I heard he wanted to sell you.”
Zohra looked at her mother.
“I came back, just for you,” Hakima continued. “And I promised that I would never leave you alone again.”
Zohra remembered how her mother would hold her tight as they lay by the apricot trees and looked up at the branches as the wind shook them. She remembered her mother’s beautiful long thick black hair, which would occasionally escape her orange zari dozi scarf. She remembered her smile, the lullabies she used to sing to her, and the soft hands that would caress her.
“Please know that I had no other choice. I had to escape him, and the village, before they killed me for running away. I did it for us.”
She remembered her father beating her mother as she screamed for help. She remembered hiding in the bathroom and pressing her little hands so hard to her ears that they hurt.
Zohra looked again at her mother and saw the same beautiful woman, one with a crooked smile and tears in her eyes. “I know.” She held her mother’s bony hands and kissed them.
Zohra ran her fingers along the walls of the school as she walked. She felt them become warm and numb after a few steps. She looked at her hands, opened her arms and embraced the wall, looking up to the sky. It was almost sunset, and the last rays of the sun were fading on the newly painted cement wall. She pressed herself against it, closed her eyes, and smiled as she smelled the fresh paint.
Azima came over to her as she collected the dirty brushes.
“Hey, are you licking the wall again? Is it dry?” Azima said, pressing on Zohra’s right shoulder.
“Not dry enough that the smell of paint has gone. Want to try?”
They both laughed and looked at the mural they had just painted. It was a girl in a light blue uniform, holding books and pencils in one arm, her other arm raised upwards, touching a rainbow over her head.
Hakima woke in the middle of the night to the sound of footsteps. She saw a dark shape moving in the corner of her eyes. The shadow moved quickly towards the yard. Her heartbeat quickened. What would she do if it were thieves? There was no man in the house. She grabbed the small torch from under her pillow and crawled slowly to the window. The shadow was moving back and forth. She pointed the light at it and saw a familiar figure.
“For god’s sake! What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? I thought it was thieves or balla.”
Zohra turned to her mother, holding the purple vase in her hands. She said calmly, “I think it is better for it to be out here, rather than inside on the windowsill. Its soil contains worms. It should be outside, in the garden.”
Hakima sighed as she made her way back to her bed. She lay down on her side, looking out of the window, squinting to see her daughter better. Zohra was still holding the vase, her gazed fixed on it, as little worms crawled on the ground.