The faded posters plastered across the walls of the dark room told of countless calamities—falling stones and dangling electrical wires, cars plunging headfirst into water or slipping down steep mountains, ominous black arrows twisting this way and that. One simply showed a very large exclamation point, screaming out its warning from the middle of a white triangle with a border as red as blood.
But Halajan wasn’t alarmed by the signs. She had learned what each and every one of them meant by heart, along with all the other rules and regulations for driving a car. She had been enrolled in the driving school for nine weeks already, and had only three more to go.
At first it had felt strange to be the oldest person in the class, the only one who could truly remember the days when a woman behind the wheel of a car was not such a rare sight, a time when a woman could even drive a public bus as a job. The others must have wondered what an old fool like her thought she needed with a driver’s license. But her age was forgotten the day she volunteered to give the teacher, Anisa, a break by offering to take a turn reading the manuals out loud to the class of women who, like so many other women in Kabul, could not read a word.
Now the others would wait outside for her and Najama to arrive each morning, greeting Halajan with kisses and showering the little girl with trinkets and sweets to keep her quiet in the classroom while they all tried to concentrate on their studies. Halajan’s favorites were Bita and Tamra. Bita, whose husband had been crippled by a roadside explosion, was determined to drive in order to save the hours she spent each day travelling around the city by foot, taking her children to and from school and shopping for her family’s needs. The driving school was the first school she had ever attended. Young Tamra told of being taunted by boys for her desire to drive a car. Lucky for her, her father and brothers were proud of her strength, and supported her wishes.
Halajan loved coming to the school, waking early to dress and feed herself and Najama, slipping out before Yazmina could find chores for her to do and before anyone had the chance to ask where they were going. They’d take the bus to the city center, just the two of them, past the armies of children on their way to school, the girls all in black, save for their little white headscarves. The first few times when the two of them had reached their destination the driver just kept going, despite Halajan rapping on the windows and shouting out her request to get off. There were no ropes to pull or assistants to help, like there were in the old days. She and Najama had had to practically run to get to the school on time. But by now the driver had come to know them, and treated them both like royalty, pulling right up to the curb without even being asked. Halajan and her granddaughter would descend into the cool morning air to walk the last two blocks that took them past the vendors arranging their carts for a day of commerce, Najama giggling as she and her nana dodged the bucketfuls of water being tossed from each storefront by the shopkeepers fighting a losing battle with the dust that invaded from the street.
After greeting the other students at the door of the school, Halajan would lead Najama inside to say hello to Anisa. Now there was a woman. The only female driving instructor in all of Kabul and not scared of a soul. She had been driving herself since the fall of the Taliban, taught by her kind and open-minded husband, who was a taxi driver. It was his sympathy for the women who were stuck without transportation—those who could not take a taxi because they were not allowed to speak to men other than those in their family, and those who were made uncomfortable by the stares and harassment they would often receive on public transportation—that had led him to encourage her to share what she had learned with others. The threats they had faced after opening the school, and the taunts Anisa still received when behind the wheel—male drivers trying to force her off the road and young boys pelting the car with pebbles and stones—only seemed to make her stronger. Halajan had witnessed it for herself, just last week, when Anisa had taken the class out, two at a time, in the Toyota Corolla for their first drive. As they pulled up to a stoplight, the two men in the car to their right had called out in singsong voices, “Jaan jaan, how much is it to Taymani?” Before she knew it, Anisa had leapt out of the car and marched straight over to their open window, hands on hips. “Come now, little boys, do you really think you can afford this ride?” Halajan hadn’t been able to stop herself from laughing on and off throughout the rest of the lesson.
There were plenty of driving schools in the city that were run by men, and women could, if their fathers or husbands and the schools themselves allowed, go there if they chose. But having a woman instructor made it easier for many, as the gossip that ran like sewer water through the streets of Kabul would be less. Of course, Halajan was too old to be the target of such gossip, not that she would have cared anyway. She had chosen Anisa’s school to show her support for this woman who she hoped would lead the way for many others to come.
And even though Anisa took her job as a teacher very seriously, she did allow Halajan and the other women in the class to have their fun. The best was when they would take turns sitting in the middle of the room on the stack of plastic chairs, their hands resting on either side of an old steering wheel that was connected to a skeleton of a car. There, in the privacy of the classroom, they would pretend to be kings of the road, shifting the unconnected gear knob quickly and with a firm hand, spinning the steering wheel sharply back and forth as if speeding up a mountain road, banging on the pretend horn at any imaginary person who dared to get in their way. Even little Najama would be given a turn, propped up by pillows and books to help her reach the controls.
Halajan loved every day at the school, and knew she would miss it terribly once the course was completed. But today’s lesson was giving her reason to pause.
She stood near the door, her ropy arms crossed beneath her sagging breasts and her wiry brows drawn into a knot. The grease-stained carpet in front of her was covered with nuts and bolts and wrenches and the guts of an engine, or maybe two, that looked like they had been vomited straight out of the hood of a car. Today’s lesson was to be in the basics of automobile mechanics.
Halajan rolled up her sleeves and prayed for the hours to pass quickly, hoping that, with a little luck, she’d soon be back on the bus with Najama at her side, reciting their story to each other as they did every time.
“And where did you go with Nana today, Najama?”
“We went to the magic city!”
“That’s right, we went to the magic city.” Halajan smiled at the little girl’s enthusiasm about the place they had dreamed up together, a make-believe city where anything could happen, and where nobody but Nana and Najama were allowed to go. Her stories about their adventures were so fanciful that nobody dared interrupt her to press for the truth.
“And what did we do there, in the magic city?”
“We captured the dragons!”
“Okay, we captured the dragons today. Yes we did, little one. And maybe we saw the prince dancing as well, right?” And they’d repeat it again, Halajan feeling slightly guilty at drawing her granddaughter into her own lies. She wasn’t sure how her husband would feel about her learning to drive. Rashif might worry a bit too much about her safety, fearing the kind of attention a woman driving a car would get in this city. Jack had brought in Poppy the dog for that very reason, to protect Sunny when she insisted on driving by herself. But Halajan did know how her son would react. Even with his opening mind and expanding views, he still remained stubborn in many ways. Sometimes he seemed like a child just learning to walk, taking two steps and tumbling before getting up to try again. No, she would keep this her secret until after it was done. She would fight any battle she might have to face to get behind the wheel once she had the license firmly in her hand. And there would come a time when she and her grandchild would share a laugh about their trips to the magic city, should Halajan live long enough to see that day, inshallah.