Translated from the Pashto by Shekiba Habib and Zarghuna Kargar
It doesn’t matter what color your boots are—they could be red or black or blue. Or maybe for you it’s a dress or a notepad or an umbrella that you chose. The important thing is that you chose. And I chose a pair of boots.
I was about eight or nine. I heard my mother saying to my father, “This girl doesn’t have any shoes for the winter. Yesterday, I noticed that the ones she has are torn.” I hadn’t realized that my shoes were ripped—I didn’t like them anyway. They were very stiff and hurt my feet.
My father looked at me. He said, “OK, my daughter, tomorrow we’ll go and get you a good pair of boots so you can be nice and warm in the winter.” My father often said things like this, especially when we were sad: he would promise to buy us new clothes and shoes. But we knew there wasn’t much money in our family for buying new things and that he was just trying to cheer us up.
Sometimes for Eid, or at the start of a new school year, we would get something new. When he did buy us shoes, my father would usually try to choose a pair we could wear in both warm weather and cold. And we were five sisters in all, so our clothes were handed down from one to the next until they were quite worn out. But this time I felt that my father really would buy me new shoes. For one thing, my mother had asked him to and, for another, I wasn’t sad. So it couldn’t have been just to console me that he said he would buy me new boots.
I already knew that this winter I would be wearing the blue jacket my sister Farida had outgrown. My mother had told me this and had added, “I’ll ask your father to buy you a new pair of shoes and you won’t need anything else for the winter.” I didn’t care that much about clothes, so this was fine by me.
The next day, true to his word, my father took me shopping. We walked very slowly towards the bazaar. My father was a strong, broad-shouldered man. He always wore a white shalwar kameez with a black and white blazer. He’d broken his leg when he was young and it had been treated with traditional medicines, but the bone had healed in a curve. He limped when he walked and for me this made him special. It meant I could always recognize him in a crowd of other men. I wouldn’t lose him, walking in the bazaar.
Every time we had to buy something, we would come to this very same market. My father had many friends here. I’m not sure if it was just my impression but it seemed to me that most of the shopkeepers in this bazaar were elderly men. Or perhaps my father avoided younger shopkeepers. We went into the shops, and they would talk to him at length. Sometimes they talked about prices, sometimes about the crowd that day. Sometimes they shook their heads together over this new generation that was so demanding.
It was a busy place, the secondhand market, made up of single- and two-storey mud structures. The shops were old and you could smell them as you approached. Damp mixed with shoe leather—a smell that was annoying and particular at the same time. In bellowing voices, vendors promised cheap prices and quality that couldn’t be found anywhere else, whether they were selling sandals, laces, wax, and brushes, or enticing shoppers to taste their bolani and chickpeas. Walking past, you had to maneuver around carts heaped with plastic shoes. Cars hooted as they inched forward though the crowd, their horns chiming with the cacophony of calls to buy.
My father walked ahead, and I a few steps behind him. We had visited a number of shops already. I was tired and didn’t think we’d find anything suitable in this bazaar. It seemed that my father had brought me here just so he could talk to his friends.
We entered one more shop. This one was under the stairs and we had to bend down to enter. I looked around despondently. The shoes here were very old and faded. Then my eye was drawn to a pair of red boots hanging from a nail on the wall. I’d seen plastic boots in different shades, but it was the first time I’d seen colored boots in leather. The boots were secondhand, and stuffed with old cloth to give them shape, but they were beautiful. The leather was red and shiny; the shafts were made of red suede, with metal studs. They would reach my shins, I thought. I was captivated.
I immediately imagined what Farida’s reaction would be if I came home with these boots. And then, if I wore them in the morning and stood in front of our block of flats, all the other girls would be excited too. I imagined the faces of each of my friends. I thought I had found something no one else could find, however hard they tried. That is the special thing about secondhand goods: you can search the whole bazaar and never find a match.
I gestured to my father that I wanted those boots. He gave them a quick glance and dismissed them. “My daughter, let’s go to another shop.” But I knew my father. If I insisted, he’d pay attention. I said emphatically, “Aba, no! Those boots are fine.”
The shopkeeper looked from me to my father. My dad nodded, reluctantly. “Brother, can you hand us those red boots?”
Sometimes grown-ups are too sensible. They only want undamaged goods and those that serve their intended purpose. For them, a cardboard box is for storing things and it takes a child to show them that a cardboard box is good for playing in, or making a toy car out of, or turning into a house for dolls or toy animals. For a grown-up, winter boots should be comfortable and warm. But if they listened to their children, they would realize that other things are important: that boots are great for sliding on snow, or perfect for showing off to friends.
The elderly shopkeeper reached with his shaky, wrinkled hands and pulled the cloth stuffing out of the boots before handing them to my father. They were old, their soles worn so smooth it would make walking on the snow almost impossible. My dad examined them and measured them against his palm. He paused, then he said, “My daughter, these will not last you to the end of winter.” I didn’t reply, so he told me to try them on.
When I put them on, they looked bright and shiny, and it was the first time I’d ever felt I had something beautiful. They came up to my shins.
My father asked, “How are they? Do they fit you?”
I didn’t know if they were the right size at all but I knew I wanted them. I could only look at my feet. I didn’t say anything. My father knelt and pressed the pointed toe cap of the boot. He shook his head. “No, they feel tight around your toes, I don’t think they’re the right size. They’ll only hurt your feet.” He said, more gruffly: “Let’s go to another shop.”
While I’d been trying them on, the shopkeeper hadn’t stopped talking. He said we’d never find anything of the same quality in the whole bazaar, that he would reduce the price for us, and that when a person bought something from him, they remained his customer forever.
I took the boots off and handed them to my father. He passed them to the shopkeeper, who tried a softer approach. “Didn’t you like them?”
“You can see they are too small for my daughter,” my father replied.
“But brother, these boots are so nice and soft. You can see the child loves them. Buy them for her.”
My father pretended he didn’t hear. He took me by the hand and made for the door, saying to the shopkeeper: “She’s a child—by the middle of winter, she’ll want another pair. These boots are not her size, and aren’t meant for winter.”
I said, “Aba, they fit me fine, they didn’t hurt my feet.”
I could see the irritation in my father’s eyes. We came out of the mud hut but I left my heart inside with the red boots.
My father took me to many other shops but I refused to try on anything else. He tried to convince me of the virtues of other pairs of boots. He even asked the shopkeepers to help him with their patter, but I wouldn’t budge. I wasn’t going to accept defeat. It was past midday and we were still walking around the bazaar. My father gave me a long look.
“OK, tell me what you want to do.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I want those red boots.”
Again, my father walked ahead, and I followed him back to the shop. The shopkeeper seemed to be waiting for us. “I told you that the girl likes these boots.” My father frowned in response. He helped me put the boots on again and repeated that they were not my size and that I’d suffer all winter. I just kept looking happily at my feet from every angle, and this was how my father knew I wouldn’t change my mind. I had my moment of triumph: he bought me the boots and I carried them proudly out of the shop.
When we got home, my sister Farida was the first to look inside the bag. She ran up to my father. “Aba, Aba, you must buy me the same boots!”
Farida was ahead of me in everything. She was good at maths, she was even good at shopping—she had good taste. She made wooden dolls with beautiful clothes. Everyone liked Farida: our teachers did, our neighbors did. I thought even her name was prettier than mine. This was the first time I had had something better, something I had chosen.
My father replied wearily: “OK, I will take you shopping next time, but bring me a glass of water. She was so stubborn—she made me buy her those.” I was sure that even if they combed the bazaar, my sister wouldn’t find a pair of boots like mine. I told Farida so, confidently. I would be the only girl to have such nice boots that winter.
The night passed slowly, as it always does for someone waiting for a good thing to come in the morning. I woke at dawn; unusually early for me. I had breakfast and got dressed. I put on my red boots and tucked my partoog bottoms inside them, so that the whole of each boot could be seen.
When I went outside, no one noticed me at first. I wasn’t sure how to get the others’ attention. I decided that instead of going up to my friends, I would stand proudly by the wall, pretending to be upset. This caught the girls’ attention—first they saw me and then they saw my boots. One by one, they came towards me saying, “Wow! Wow!” They gathered around me and I tried to act normal.
“Your boots are very beautiful!”
“Are they new?”
“Yes, I went out with my father yesterday to buy them.”
I started calmly, but then I told them the whole story: how my father hadn’t wanted to buy these boots but I had insisted. The whole day became about my boots. But their story didn’t end here; there was to be more of it. By evening, my toes were hurting. The next morning, I had trouble putting the boots on. My feet seemed to have swollen. With the greatest difficulty, I pulled them on and tried walking. I felt like my toes and heels were burning.
School closed for winter break. This was our time to play games but it was hard to focus on winning when I was constantly distracted by the pain in my feet. I wanted to write on the walls that the winner of the game is the person whose feet are comfortable!
Because I lagged behind, girls started to refuse to have me on their teams. But I couldn’t do anything about it: I didn’t want to admit that the reason I couldn’t run fast was that my famous red boots hurt my feet. Even walking was difficult: I would have to take small, slow steps. One day, when I was playing a game of hopscotch with my friends, I had to stop suddenly and forfeit my turn. I sat in a corner of the yard and took my boots off. My feet had blistered.
It wasn’t even easy getting the boots on and off. I had to stamp on the floor to get my feet in and tug relentlessly to get them out. The situation got worse when I jumped into a puddle one day and got water inside my boots. When they dried, they were even tighter than before. I didn’t say a word to anyone. Only God and I knew how much trouble those boots were causing me.
My favorite of all our games was sliding on the snow. One person would run along the snow, their arms stretched back to hold the hands of another person, crouched and ready to slide in their wake. If you’re at the back, you just put your feet together and let them pull you along. But even in this game I fell over, because the worn soles of my boots were so slippery that I couldn’t keep my balance.
Winter slowly ended and a new school year approached. The weather was warming up and eventually the season of my red boots would end. I didn’t want to let them go. They would barely last a moment longer, but I loved them as much as when my father had first bought them for me. At school, we were getting ready for the usual beginning-of-year celebrations. We practiced reciting poems and hoped we would be chosen to perform at the festival, in front of all our teachers and families and friends.
This year, I was on the list, along with some of my friends, to perform in a choir made up of students from different years. We were twenty in all and every day we practiced our song. We already knew it by heart: the blue sky song. We had to stand in lines, grouped by height. Our teachers wanted us to look neat and well organized.
On the day of the festival, I woke early again. I put on my black uniform and wrapped my white scarf around my head. I pulled on my red boots and went to school.
The schoolyard was crowded, everyone seemed to be rushing. We were all worried that we had forgotten something we needed for the festival. Some students were going over their lines, sure they’d forget them. Some were exercising their voices, worried they wouldn’t hold steady for the show. Others were fixing their hair or fretting about their clothes.
The festival began and we all stood ready. Our choir would be performing last.
Suddenly an older girl spotted my boots. I hadn’t noticed her before—she was tall, with ginger hair tied up in a ponytail. She stood up and said, “Hey! We are all wearing the same sort of shoes and you’re wearing red boots! We’re all supposed to look the same!”
She caught the ear of the teacher in charge. The teacher was now looking in our direction and seemed to be studying us. “Don’t talk so loud!” I hissed. “The teacher heard you, don’t get me taken out of the group!” I looked helplessly at a friend of mine. My friend said, “Don’t worry, we have time. Go and switch shoes with another girl.”
This was common practice. Girls and boys would exchange shoes all the time at our school, especially for playing sport, as trainers were expensive and this was the only way we’d have enough pairs to go around. I could easily have asked someone to swap, but I hesitated. It was different this time. How could I give someone else my boots to wear: the red boots only I had, the ones I’d chosen myself? I decided that, even if I had to forfeit my place in the choir, I wouldn’t exchange my boots with anyone.
The time came for us to go up on stage and take our designated spots. I felt nervous as I walked up. I kept looking at the teacher, expecting her to take me by the hand and walk me out of the group. And so it happened: the teacher put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Stay here.”
I resigned myself to losing my place. But the teacher smiled. She gave me the microphone and said: “Take this and stand in front of the group.” I did as she told me but when I looked back, I saw everyone else standing on their spots, while I stood alone out front. The teacher took me by the shoulders and turned me to face the audience. That was how I became the leader of the choir.
The song began. As the whole school looked on, I stood proudly in the red leather boots I had chosen, singing to celebrate the beginning of the new year.