FIVE

“You need a bath,” Parvana said to Asif. “Don’t tell me what to do,” Asif snapped.

“You stink.”

“So do you.”

“No, I don’t,” Parvana said, although she probably did, at least a little. Not as bad as Asif, though.

“If you don’t wash, you don’t eat,” she declared.

“I don’t need your lousy food. I’ve got lots of food in the cave. Good food, too. Not the swill you cook.”

“All right, rot away in your stink. I don’t care. We’re leaving you today anyway, although we’ll have to walk miles and miles to get away from your smell. We’ll probably have to walk all the way to France.”

“France? There’s no such place as France.”

“You’ve never heard of France? And you call me stupid?”

Asif threw the blanket at her. It didn’t go very far, because in mid-throw he started coughing. His shirt was ripped in the middle, and Parvana could see his ribs straining with the effort of trying to breathe between coughs.

She spun on her heels and snapped the blanket in the air to shake the dirt out of it. The dust made her sneeze, which only made her more angry.

“You made my blanket stink,” she accused Asif, who was too busy coughing to take any notice of her. She spread the blanket out in the sun to make it smell better. It was something her father had taught her.

“You stink, too,” she snarled at Hassan. At least there was someone who had to do what she said. She snatched him away from the stones he was happily bumping together and began undressing him roughly.

Hassan screamed with rage.

“You’re doing that all wrong.”

Parvana jumped at the suddenness of Asif’s voice and turned to see that he had slithered over to the stream on his backside.

“How dare you sneak up on me!”

“You’re doing that all wrong,” he said again.

“I know exactly what I’m doing. I have a younger brother and sister.”

“They must hate you.”

“They love me. I’m the best big sister in the whole world.”

“They’re probably jumping for joy that you’re lost out here, because they’ll never have to see you again.”

Parvana plopped the howling Hassan into Asif’s lap. “You think you can do better? Go ahead and try.”

Hassan immediately stopped crying. Parvana stared, open-mouthed, as the rage disappeared from Asif’s face when Hassan’s little fingers reached up and grabbed his nose.

“Go find my crutches,” he said to Parvana.

She was about to yell at him for ordering her about, but the crutches seemed like a good idea.

“Where are they?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you to go and look for them,” he said with annoying logic.

She found them a little ways from the mouth of the cave. They were not together.

He must have dropped them while he was escaping from whatever was chasing him, she thought. She took the crutches down to the stream.

Asif was sitting in the stream in his clothes, holding onto Hassan. The baby gurgled as Asif rubbed him clean.

She put the crutches down and opened a bundle to take out clean clothes for Hassan. Under the baby’s clothes was her spare shalwar kameez. She took that out, too, then got the bar of rose soap from her father’s shoulder bag. She unwrapped the soap and put the wrapping back in the bag. It smelled nice.

“You might want this,” she said, putting the soap and clothes on the edge of the stream. She added a clean diaper for Hassan. “Don’t eat the soap,” she couldn’t help adding in a slightly nasty tone.

Asif took the soap from her, but ignored her comment. He was too busy playing with the baby.

Parvana went downstream a little ways and scrubbed Hassan’s clothes with sand. She was spreading clean wet diapers in the sun to dry when Asif called out, “He’s clean. Take him.”

She waited for Asif to hand the baby over to her, then realized he didn’t have the strength to do so. She waded into the stream and picked Hassan up.

“Now go away, so I can wash in private.”

She took Hassan to the mouth of the cave and dressed him there. He looked rosy and cheerful from his bath. There was still some stale bread left, and she gave him a small piece to chew on.

“Hey, stupid one. Get over here!”

I don’t have to answer him, she thought.

“I said, get over here.”

Parvana played a little clapping game with Hassan and ignored the boy in the stream.

“I can’t remember your name,” Asif said in a tone that wasn’t quite so nasty.

Parvana picked up Hassan and went down to the stream. Asif had taken off his shirt and tossed it on the shore. He was slumped over, almost as though he couldn’t hold himself up any more. His hair was full of soap.

Parvana fetched one of the drinking cups and waded into the stream. He turned his face away from her when she came up behind him.

She gasped when she saw the scars that criss-crossed his back. Some were old and were now a permanent part of his body. Some were fresh, still scabby and infected.

He really was being chased by a monster, Parvana thought.

“Don’t just stand there,” he growled.

“Put your head back.” She dipped the cup into the stream. “Close your eyes,” she ordered, “and your mouth.” Then, doing for Asif what her mother used to do for her, she rinsed the soap out of his hair.

The effort of washing wore Asif out. He fell asleep in the sun soon after putting on Parvana’s spare shalwar kameez.

With the laundry done and spread on the rocks to dry, Parvana put Hassan down on a blanket and took out her notebook and pen.

Dear Shauzia:

It’s getting harder and harder to remember what you look like. Sometimes when I think of you, I can only picture you in your blue school uniform with the white chador, back when we were students in Kabul. You had long hair then. So did I.

Sometimes I put my hand behind me on my back and try to remember how far down my hair grew. I think I know, but I could be wrong.

It’s hard to remember that I used to sleep in a bed and had to do my homework before I could watch television and play with my friends. It’s hard to remember that we used to have ice cream and cakes to eat. Was that really me? Did I really leave a big piece of cake on my plate one day because I didn’t feel like eating it? That must have been a dream. That couldn’t have been my life.

My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days of searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be.