Nadia Hashimi - The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

I knew I couldn’t trust Shahnaz or anything she said but I was lonely too. She was the only person around me most of the time. Her son, Maroof, took to me quickly and I passed my time showing him how to kick a ball. Shahnaz would watch me suspiciously, as if waiting for me to do something wrong.

And somehow it seemed I did everything wrong. I sat wrong, I cooked wrong, I cleaned wrong. All I wanted to do was get back to school and back to my family, my friends. I felt clumsy in a skirt, my breasts pointy in the brassiere my mother had purchased for me before my nikkah . I wanted to tie my chest down again. A lot of days, that’s exactly what I did. I would wrap a long strip of fabric around my chest and pin it tight, trying to prevent full womanhood from setting in.

My mother-in-law came back often. When the house wasn’t cleaned to her standards, she would pull me by my ear and make me scrub the floors while she watched. Shahnaz blamed everything on me and Bibi Gulalai was more than happy to believe anything she said.

Abdul Khaliq returned, as determined as his mother to make me into a proper wife. I hated to feel his breath on my face, my neck. His teeth were yellowed and his beard rough on my face. I sometimes tried to pull away, to squirm from him like the fighters in the magazines. But the more I struggled, the more forceful he became. And worse than that was the smirk on his face. As if he enjoyed when I put up a fight. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a man of war, after all.

Each time, I felt dirty and weak. I hated that I was powerless under him. I was supposed to be this man’s wife and that changed everything. I wasn’t supposed to fight back. And the look on his face told me that fighting back would only make matters worse.

So many nights I lay curled on my side, crying quietly and waiting for morning to come so the man snoring beside me would stretch his arms and leave.

“Now taste this. See? It has no flavor at all. You’ve got to add some salt. Everything tastes better with a little salt. Mmm.”

Shahnaz stirred the pot once more, the tomatoes melting into the simmering oil. She was teaching me a few basic dishes. It wasn’t easy but I realized she took well to flattery. It was much better than antagonizing her.

“You see the difference? Now just touch the edge of the potato. It should be soft. See? It’s cooked. My God, it really amazes me that you don’t even know this much. You must have been so spoiled at home. I hope your sisters aren’t such oafs in the kitchen!”

I wasn’t worried about that at all. Shahla and Parwin could cook nearly as well as Madar- jan . But the mention of them made my heart ache. It had been two weeks since we were taken away from our home. I wondered what my mother was doing. I could picture my father, asleep in our living room with a satisfied smile on his face, clouds of heady smoke around him and his stomach heavy with food.

“Shahnaz, how can I see my sisters? I miss them so much! Parwin is so close by. Can I go to visit her?”

“Not a question to ask me. Ask your husband. Or your mother-in-law,” she said. I wasn’t sure if that was really a good idea or if she was setting me up again.

I saw my mother-in-law most afternoons. My third day at the compound, I was summoned back to the main house but this time by my husband’s first wife, Badriya. There was laundry to be done. Badriya was also Bibi Gulalai’s second cousin and, therefore, her favorite bride. Abdul Khaliq treated Badriya well, since she had been a good wife to him and because there was a family relation to respect. But as he added newer, younger wives to his compound, she spent fewer and fewer nights in his bed. This was a point of contention, though I couldn’t understand why.

Badriya was nothing near pretty. Her cheeks hung low and she had two moles above her mouth, a constellation that looked to me like the letter tay. Her face was as thick as her hips, but she didn’t need looks. Now in her thirties, she was heavyset, her girth widened by the five sons and two daughters she had proudly borne her husband. Bibi Gulalai loved the grandchildren Badriya had given her and boasted about them to the other wives. This fed the tensions among Abdul Khaliq’s wives and kept life interesting for Bibi Gulalai.

“Make sure she does a good job, Badriya. This girl has a lot to learn. She was a bacha posh, don’t forget. Can you believe that? A bacha posh at this age! No wonder she has no clue how to carry herself as a woman. Look at the way she walks, her hair, her fingernails! Her mother should be ashamed of herself.”

Badriya was resentful of Abdul Khaliq taking me on as a fourth wife, but he was a warlord and this was common practice for anyone, so she bit her tongue as any good wife did. Badriya had nothing to complain about anyway. She had the best house in the compound, the one with an actual bed and sofas in the living room. She had a cook and a housekeeper to tend to all the chores in her house. She was the most esteemed wife, the one Abdul Khaliq would discuss matters with, and she made sure the others knew as much.

There was a rhythm and routine to life in the compound. The wives tended to their children while Abdul Khaliq tended to his affairs, whatever that meant. There hadn’t been any armed fighting lately, but nearly every day he and his bodyguards sped off in his three black SUVs, clouds of dust in their wake. His entourage circled him as he walked, nodding when he gave out orders and keeping away from any of the women in the compound. The men ate meals together, served by the housekeepers that Abdul Khaliq had brought on. They ate in Abdul Khaliq’s entertaining room, a carpeted room with a perimeter of cushions and pillows on which the men reclined, licking their fingers and sipping their tea as they discussed the day’s affairs. When they were finished, the women and children ate what was left. The servants were the third round, hoping enough had slipped through the many greedy fingers before them.

The women never left the compound. The children played together and fought together as brothers and sisters but subdivided. Half brothers got along most of the time but a casual game of soccer could quickly disintegrate into a scuffle where the sons of the first wife teamed up against the sons of the second. The same held true for the girls, who could become catty in the blink of an eye.

Badriya had no problem putting me to work. Nor did anyone else. Though they had plenty of help at the compound, the women seemed to derive a special pleasure from making me take on the most menial of tasks, especially since I fumbled with them. I swept the floors, washed the diapers and cleaned the western toilets as best I could. My hands burned at the end of the day and all I wanted to do was lay my head down. Most nights, that wasn’t possible. Abdul Khaliq called for me to join him in his bedroom to repeat what he had done the night before. And the night before that.

My insides burned and I walked as if a shard of glass was stuck in my underwear. Sometimes I would wake up in the night remembering. It made it impossible to go back to sleep. I would pull my thighs together tight and curl up, praying he would tire of me. I wished my monthly bleeding would come more often but it had only started six months ago and came infrequently. My only escape was training my mind to wander when I was with him. I would close my eyes or stare at a stain on the wall, like seeing shapes in the clouds.

During the day I watched the compound’s walls, hoping for a glimpse of my sister. I prayed Parwin would hobble into our courtyard unannounced and surprise me with a visit, a drawing, a smile. I couldn’t bear to think of what her days were like. I hoped she didn’t have to do all the things I had to do. Parwin’s legs moved slowly, clumsily. People didn’t like that. If the people around her were anything like the people around me, she was sure to be punished. I’d been smacked around more than once for a job not done well enough.