The Secret Sky: A Novel of Forbidden Love in Afghanistan Read online

  “Then they’re khars!” I say, already furious at the men we have yet to meet.

  “Donkeys or not, they’ll be our bosses,” Zohra says with such ease it makes me even more agitated.

  “Don’t you have other dreams? Don’t you want more than just to be married off to someone you don’t know?” I ask. I’m confused at how simple it is for her to talk about giving up her life to a complete stranger.

  “What’s the point of dreaming about things we can’t have? We’ll only be disappointed. We might as well dream of the things that we’re bound for, things already in our destiny. Like dream that the man we marry isn’t old . . . dream that he’s kind . . . and dream that our destiny holds a mother-in-law who won’t be horrible to us—”

  “But what about love? What about the heart?” I know my question sounds foolish, but I can’t stand how resigned she seems. In the poems Zohra’s bibi reads us, there is always love, and it sounds wonderful.

  “The heart doesn’t count. Not with us. Forget about the heart. It’s as useless as the rocks scattered throughout our country.” Her words ring tragic and true, but I still hope to capture the rare gem in the pile of stones. “It’s our destiny.”

  “Maybe we can change our destiny,” I mumble quietly, knowing how absurd I sound. I know our fate as women in this country. But I would still like to fantasize about changing it.

  “Okay. Fine. Let’s play this game. If you had the power to do anything in the world, what would you do? How would you change your destiny?” Zohra asks with her dusty-brown eyes focused on me, ready for an answer.

  “I . . . I . . . uh . . . I don’t know. I was just trying to make a point.” I always hesitate in sharing my real feelings with Zohra, at least when it comes to the secrets of my heart. She may be my best friend, but I am still afraid of telling her—or anyone. I’m afraid they’ll all think I’m crazy. I mean, my mother already does, and I don’t tell her anything.

  “You can’t say that. Not after yelling at me about not wanting to marry a donkey. Tell me. I want to know what else you think is out there for us.” Zohra says, not backing down. I know I have to say something, because Zohra will keep pushing me until I do, and I am not in the mood for the game of back-and-forth.

  “I hear there are universities in Kabul—universities that girls can go to. They can become doctors, lawyers, midwives and even artists! They can read as many books as they want, and no one is jealous. My father told me that the capital has changed so much since the civil war ended and the Taliban government was chased away. There are even women on radio and television—”

  “Women on radio and television?” Zohra interrupts me. “They must be orphans! Their mothers and fathers would never let them be so exposed!”

  “Just because a woman is in the public spotlight doesn’t make her a whore!” I find myself yelling at Zohra.

  “I am not saying she is one, but she will be treated as one,” Zohra responds, unaffected by my tone.

  “That doesn’t make it right! Look at our friends—they can’t even leave their homes anymore because their families are afraid of what others will say. They probably already talk about us just for walking to each other’s homes.”

  “They do.” Zohra looks at me with empathetic eyes. “And that’s my point. We can’t change that. Especially not in our little village. Those women have the protection of the capital; we rely on the protection of our families.”

  We sit in silence sipping our tea, then Zohra clears her throat. “Would you think less of me if I got married?”

  “What? Of course not. Eventually that’s what people are supposed to do.” I look at Zohra, who is staring at her glass, sticking her finger inside and pushing a floating leaf down. “Zohra?”

  “My parents were talking to me last night,” she starts, hesitating. “They . . . they . . . they said that they want me to get engaged to a boy a few villages over . . .”

  I’m speechless. Zohra’s my age. She’s too young.

  “He’s a distant relative of my father’s. They say that he’s looking for a wife, and he could take care of me. They’re well- off too—they own a motorcycle.” Zohra adds the last part as if to justify her parents’ wishes. I can’t believe my best friend’s worth is calculated by whether someone owns a motorcycle or not.

  “When?” I choke out.

  “I don’t know. My grandmother’s not happy about it. She’s told my father that they should wait until I’m older, but my parents are afraid the opportunity will disappear if we ask to wait a few years. His parents want him to marry soon.”

  “How do you feel?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

  Zohra just shrugs. “It’s my fate.”

  I wonder if it will also be mine.

  Three

  FATIMA

  The next morning, I do something even though I know it’s wrong. I do it because I want to, ignoring the consequences. I do it because one day soon, I might not be able to anymore.

  But because of it, I am now running.

  I can feel the gravel against my callused feet, but I don’t stop. The sun is beating down on my head, and sweat flows in rivulets down my back. I’m gasping for breath. But I won’t give in, and I push harder.

  I finally make it to the river—if you can call it a river. Right now the heat is so intense it has dried up to the size of a small creek. But still, even in the scorching late-summer months, the water is ice-cold. I imagine the snow traveling down the mountains behind me, melting as it gathers speed, turning into our river. I am like the snow as I race across the shallow part of the river, picking up my dress and the pants underneath, moving faster and faster. The water barely reaches my calves, but my feet are numb as I make it to the gravel on the other end.

  I’m trying to catch my breath through my dry mouth. I can feel the thumping in my chest and the pulsing in my ears.

  That’s when I see it, the rock—my old rock. I run to it until I am out of sight. I curl up behind it. The rock will hide me, not just from him but also from the searing sun. It’s a roofless cave, right next to the mountain, only one way in and only one way out.

  He will never find me now.

  Minutes pass, but it feels like hours. As I listen for his footsteps, I stare at my henna-stained nails. They look so pretty even as the color fades, like the orange-and-cream sherbet ice cream they sell in town. My mother made me color them last week. “Every woman needs to look her best, even if it is just for her own family, Fatima,” she told me, for what was probably the millionth time. She has always felt that I needed to act more like a girl instead of yet another son, and never lets me forget it.

  I wonder if Samiullah has noticed my nails when we’ve seen each other. Ugh, why do I care if he noticed? What’s wrong with me?

  Splash . . . splash . . . splash!

  Oh, Khudaya, is he going to find me? I curl my body up tighter, praying for God to help me. I’m almost as round as the rock protecting me. I squeeze my eyes shut just as tight as I’ve squashed my body.

  “Salaam, Fatima.” I open my eyes, and he is there. He is shadowed in darkness as the sun’s rays glare behind him, straining my vision. Samiullah.

  How did he find me? This is the third time I’ve hidden from him this morning, and the third time he’s known just where to look. But perhaps I’ve been hiding in places where I knew he would find me . . .

  I’m glad I chose to spend my day with him today, rather than head to Zohra’s. I didn’t think I should, but Samiullah put me at ease the second that he met me in the woods this morning. He said he’d protect me. That he wouldn’t let anything bad happen while we were together. And I believed him. Or at least convinced myself I did. Besides, I didn’t want to go back and hear more about Zohra’s wedding.

  “Did you really think that by closing your eyes you somehow could hide from me?” Samiullah says, laughing and mim
icking my expression. He looks enormous from my crouched position. He’s squinting, but I can still see the twinkle of his eyes. They make him look a little less fierce, more like the gentle Samiullah I’ve known since we were babies.

  “No, I was just . . . just . . .”

  “Praying? I don’t blame you. If I were you, I would pray for the day you could win as well,” he says with a smirk. At first I want to wipe that grin off his face, but then I realize that his smile makes the defeat more acceptable. I blink to block out his face. Why am I thinking these things?

  Samiullah clears his throat. “Anyway, now that I’ve found you, what do you want to do next? I’m bored.”

  “You’re always bored!” I say as I stand, slapping the dirt off my bright red payron and the green tumbon. “Well . . . I mean . . . you always used to get bored. I guess some things never change,” I add, hoping to sound playful.

  “Well, then stop being so boring,” Samiullah quickly counters as he evens out my head scarf. I smack his hand off the brown fabric and march down to the river. Who does he think he is, convincing me to spend the day with him and then calling me boring?

  Samiullah laughs again. “Oh, come on! You know I’m just joking!” He begins to run after me. “You’re not boring, I swear!”

  I have to smile—I can’t stay mad at him; I never could. But I really shouldn’t be here today. This could get us into big trouble. If our families find out . . . If the villagers see us . . . We are no longer at the age that they would consider this okay. I shouldn’t even be talking to him. My smile begins to fade. I’m reminded of how unlucky my life really is.

  The thought of Zohra being married off was frightening enough. But then my parents’ conversation last night gave me bad dreams. I didn’t think my simple questions about Samiullah’s return during dinner would lead my mother to want to marry me off too. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

  But I did. And then I overheard my madar talking to my baba as I was lying on my mattress pretending to sleep. I felt her eyes on me, even through the thickness of the wool blanket that covered my head. I could see her shadow as she leaned in front of the oil lamp and whispered, “Mohammad, she’s too old to be seen with that boy again! And I know your daughter, she will want to play together as if they were still five! I didn’t like it then, and I won’t stand for it now! It will be hard to find her a suitable husband. They will think she has been tainted—and of all people by a Pashtun boy! It’s time we think of her marriage. You even said that Karim has found Zohra a suitor. It’s time we find Fatima one too.”

  They always talk about things they don’t want me to hear when they think I’m sleeping. But they don’t know that I’m usually faking sleep. I heard them the time my madar told my baba that it would be best to send my older brother, Ali, to Iran to make money for the family. She was wrong then, and she is wrong now.

  I’ve been trying to ignore what she said all day, but I can’t, and every time I think about it, my stomach turns and I begin to feel nauseous. God, I miss Ali. He would have told my mother that I was too young to get married. But because of her, I don’t even have him anymore.

  Anyway, my madar’s words won’t matter. My baba loves me too much to send me away to a family I don’t know, like Karim is doing to Zohra. But I can’t imagine how even he would react if they knew I was out with Samiullah now. Alone. The thought sends a shiver down my spine. When my madar told my baba last night that she wanted to forbid me from seeing Samiullah, he said that I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do something like that. I guess I am.

  Samiullah has caught up to me now, and he’s standing with his face tipped toward the sun. The rays hit his nose and cheekbones and throw the rest of his face into shadow. It makes him look older, somehow. I can even see his little prickles of facial hair. Right now he looks more like his father or even his cousin Rashid than the Samiullah I know.

  “You want to see who can keep their hand in the water longest without freezing their fingers off?” I challenge him—because I know this is the one thing I can beat him at. He turns away from the sun, and he’s my Samiullah again.

  “Fine. But I don’t want you to ruin your delicate hands in the ice water,” Samiullah says, half joking, as he gets down on both knees at the edge of the river and dips his hands into the shallow river. I lift my payron and tumbon up slightly so I won’t get them wet as I kneel by the water and follow suit.

  It’s hard to believe that this trickling river is our village’s lifeblood. Farther downstream, manmade canals bring the water into some of our courtyards so we can all use it for cooking and bathing. Samiullah once told me that no other town he traveled to with his father while they delivered their farmed goods has water as delicious as ours. It has an icy sweet taste that pinches at the inside of your cheeks.

  The tips of my fingers are going numb, and the rest of my hand tingles from the cold, but I force myself to focus on the gravel digging into my knees and the sweat dripping underneath my head scarf—anything to distract me from the pain in my hand. I sneak a glance over to Samiullah, and his eyes are squeezed tight with determination. He can’t beat me, though. He never did then, and he won’t now.

  “Do you hear that?” Samiullah’s eyelids pop open, and he’s staring directly at me, green eyes wide and frightened.

  I’m about to say “hear what?” when Samiullah grabs my warm arm with his cold, wet hand and drags me toward my rock. He’s holding on so tightly that I know it will leave a bruise. I can barely keep up with him.

  “What’s the matter? Why are we run—” And that’s when I hear it too. The distant buzzing. I feel my heart start to race. That noise can only mean one thing: danger.

  My feet are about to give way when we finally make it to the rock, falling hard behind it. I can taste the dirt flying up into my mouth. But the boulder is protecting us from the rumbling that is getting closer.

  “Stay quiet until they pass.” Samiullah whispers to me, short of breath. “Sounds like there’s only one motorbike, but it has to be one of Latif’s men.”

  This scares me more. No one else in our village uses motorbikes—he’s right, it has to be one of Latif’s criminals. They call themselves God’s soldiers. Those words are like an evil pass to condone their wickedness. Instead, they should be called Satan’s stooges. Shayton’s henchmen. Some say they are the Taliban, but we don’t know if they’re connected to the real Taliban. All we know is that they are dangerous.

  Whatever their label is, they are thugs who steal lives, money and spirits. I close my eyes and start to pray. I’m suddenly terrified. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were just supposed to enjoy the day like we did as children. No one was supposed to see us, no one. And especially not these thugs. My breathing intensifies. If they catch us, they will use God and religion as their excuse to do anything they want, including kill us. By being alone together, without any supervision, we’re breaking the rules of not just our parents but of Taliban morality—it doesn’t matter that we’re young. I wrap my head scarf around my nose and mouth to quiet my breathing. They can’t find us here. Like this. Together. Please, God, I say inside my head. Please, God, keep them away. Khuda Jaan, please keep us hidden.

  I wonder if this is my punishment from God for meeting Samiullah today and lying to my parents.

  The motorbike slows down a few yards upstream from our rock. I hear two pairs of boots crunching on the gravel. One set of footsteps gets closer and closer to where we are hiding before it stops. My heart races faster, and I start to feel dizzy.

  “Dilta rasa!” a voice belts out in the Pashto language, calling his companion over.

  “What? I need to pee!” another voice yells back.

  “I don’t care what you need to do, come here now!” the first man orders. “Look at this.”

  Oh, God. He must have seen our footprints. Will they lead him to our rock? If the men find us, they will
accuse us of adultery. They could jail us. Murder us. I heard up north in Kunduz province just a year ago a young couple was stoned to death for being in love—not that Samiullah and I are in love, but they lie about everything. What’s to stop them from lying about this?

  “Those are donkey pellets.” I hear the second voice say.

  “Yes, genius. And if this water is good enough for donkeys to drink, it’s good enough for you.” I hear him slurping. “Oh, this is good water! Get me the jug from the bike. It will last us until we get home.”

  I can’t help but feel some relief. This time they are just craving water, not blood. I let my breath out slowly and pull my scarf away from my mouth. Now that the initial fear has passed, I’m annoyed that he is savoring my village’s water. His dirty lips shouldn’t have the pleasure of our sweet water. Sensing my agitation, Samiullah holds me tighter to contain my anger.

  “Look! Mayan wogora! Hurry, give me your gun. It’s time to go fishing!” the first voice yells enthusiastically.

  “Really? With a bullet?” the second voice says skeptically. His voice sounds almost familiar, but I can’t place it.

  “Well, how else are we going to get the fish?”

  “I . . . uh . . . don’t think a bullet. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t waste our ammunition on fish. It may enrage Mullah Latif.” The second voice sounds cautious.

  “What do you know about Mullah Latif, young one? You haven’t even met him yet. Give me the gun.” I hear a snort followed by bullets being loaded. “God, they’re moving so fast, those little devils.”

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  I’ve never heard a gunshot from so close before. My body tenses. I squeeze Samiullah’s arms as he tightens his grip around my waist. What if they find us here? Will they shoot us like they’re trying to shoot the fish right now?