Andrea Busfield - Born Under a Million Shadows

“But she tries so hard…,” I said, feeling the need to defend her.

“I know she does, son. We all realize Georgie makes sacrifices for Haji, and her respect for him makes her the person she is and the person we love. But although we know she stays inside the house more than other foreigners and she takes care of herself more than other Western women who drink and party here like it is Europe, she is still a world away from us and always will be. Every time Haji spends evenings with Georgie, every time she comes to his house, he takes a risk. He also commits a terrible sin that rests heavy in his heart for days after. The fact is that people talk, Fawad, and when you’re a man whose standing in the community is as important as Haji’s, talk is dangerous. It is not something that can be easily ignored. Power is a difficult balance of wealth, honor, and respect. If you lose just one of these elements, you risk losing it all.”

“So he’s scared of losing his power and his money, then? That’s what you’re saying. That’s how much Haji Khan loves Georgie?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Ismerai corrected, taking up his tea and blowing hard, which isn’t really allowed in Islam because of the germs. “Haji loves Georgie. But what can he really give her? And what can she give him? No, what they should have done a long time ago is give each other up, but they were too scared or too stubborn to let go, and now both of them are trapped in a world where they have no future. They can’t walk forward and they can’t walk back, so they stand still, holding on to each other with no place to go.”

“But why do they have no future if they love each other?”

“What kind of future do you think they could seriously have? Marriage? Here in Afghanistan?” Ismerai laughed harshly and relit the cigarette that had died in his fingers.

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s impossible, you know that, Fawad. They are too different, and both of them are far too strong to change for the other. Haji once described Georgie as a bird, a bright, beautiful bird whose very song brings a smile to your face and happiness to your heart. Would you have him cage that bird within our customs and traditions? Do you imagine, even if she converted to Islam, that Georgie could live as the wife of a high Pashtun man, locked behind the walls of her home, unable to go out, unable to see her male friends, unable to work? It would kill her. You know that.”

“They could move…,” I offered, silently admitting that Ismerai was right and that if she did marry Haji Khan in Afghanistan he would probably be forced to shoot her within a week for bringing dishonor on the family.

“Where should they move to?” Ismerai asked. “Europe?”

I shrugged and nodded.

“And can you see Haji being able to live that life, away from the country he has fought for, that he has lost family for and whose soil is as much a part of him as his skin and bones? If he left to live with a foreign woman, how could he ever return and still keep the respect he and his family have earned over all these terrible years? He would have to live in virtual exile, and that would destroy him.

“The fact is, Fawad, Haji and Georgie are two people who fell in love at the wrong time and in the wrong place. The question they must now ask themselves is what do they do next?”

As Ismerai lit his second cigarette, Haji Khan appeared in the garden. His brown face was white, and tears hung in the corners of his eyes, waiting to be freed. My blood froze when I saw him, and I bowed my head as he walked over to us to take Ismerai’s cigarette from his hands.

“I didn’t know,” I heard him whisper to Ismerai, who had got up from his chair. “She never told me, and now I can’t reach her.”

“She needs time,” Ismerai replied, causing me to look up, remembering my mother’s own words.

“No,” Haji Khan corrected, his voice sore and rough. “She needs someone better than me… we both know that. But how can I even let that happen? She’s my life.”

As Haji Khan turned away he paused to look at me, and that’s when the tears fell, spilling out quietly from his dark brown eyes like two small rivers, kissing the edges of his nose as they ran to his lips.

“WHAT IN THE name of Allah is that noise?” I asked, finding James hiding in the yard after I’d finished the morning shift at school. Afternoon lessons were for girls.

“That, my dear Fawad, is the Sex Pistols,” he informed me, which I took to be the name of the noise screaming English words from Georgie’s room. “Count yourself lucky,” James added. “It was Bonnie Tyler this morning.”

“Bonnie who?”

“Big hair, big shoulder pads, big headache—”

“Hey! I like Big Bonnie Tyler!”

Georgie appeared at the door. She was dressed in blue jeans and a tight long-sleeved T-shirt, and she was eating a piece of naan bread, which, if I wasn’t mistaken, was painted white with Happy Cow cheese.

“God, I’m starving,” she added.

As she walked past us carrying a box in one hand and her lunch in the other, I noticed her finger and her neck were empty of the jewelry Haji Khan had bought her just a few short months ago. I also noticed a pack of cigarettes sticking out from the back pocket of her jeans.

“What’s in the box?” James asked as she placed it near the outside trash can.

“Stuff,” she replied. “I’m spring-cleaning.”

Once she’d disappeared back into the house and into the noise, James and I looked at each other and raced to the box. James got there first, but his legs were twice the size of mine and he’d also pushed me to the ground before we set off.

“Ahhh,” he said as he reached it, pulling open the cardboard flaps for me to see.

“Ahhh,” I agreed.

Inside was a pile of neatly folded shirts of the finest silk, several perfume bottles, too many rainbow-colored scarves to count, and a bone-carved jewelry box.

On top of them all sat Haji Khan’s photo.

As Georgie welcomed in the spring by cleaning away her memories, my mother greeted the season by shaving off my hair. It happened every year, but it didn’t make the experience any easier.

May laughed when she saw me. “Who loves ya, baby?”

“Kojak,” explained James, which didn’t actually explain anything.

“It’s for health,” I insisted, touching my head to rub away the humiliation my so-called friends were adding to.

“It’s for lice, you mean,” corrected May.

“Whatever,” I said, doing the W sign with my thumbs and fingers as James had once taught me in the kitchen after Georgie had teased him about Rachel.

May laughed again.

“Here,” she said, throwing me a blue suede coat, “see if you can find a happy home for this!”

“It’s beautiful,” I replied as it landed in my arms, feeling the softness of it between my fingers and looking at the yellow pattern embroidered around the edges. “Why don’t you want it?”

“I so do!” May insisted. “But Ismerai brought it round for Georgie, and she doesn’t want it. Sadly, I don’t think she’d appreciate me wearing it either. Women can be unpredictable creatures when they’re angry, Fawad.”

“You’re a woman,” I noted.

“Barely,” muttered James, who received a punch in the ear from May.

“Why didn’t Georgie just give it back then?”