“There you are. It’s getting late, girls,” she chided, gently. “Sitara, I need you to stay with your brother so I can go downstairs. They’re serving dinner soon, and it won’t look right if I’m not at your father’s side.”
“But Kaka Daoud told us we could—”
The man I called Uncle Daoud was Neelab’s grandfather. For the past five years, he also happened to be the president of Afghanistan, and he granted us almost unlimited access to the presidential library with its irresistible floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
In truth, there was no blood relation between my father and President Daoud, but our families were so close that Neelab and I had been raised as cousins. My father was the president’s most trusted adviser. We often stayed overnight in the palace, especially when the president hosted evening functions. Neelab and I would find a corner of the palace to hide in on those nights and talk until we fell asleep, the sound of music streaming up from the garden. We exchanged secrets that bound us together more profoundly than blood would have. Neelab knew of the time I had taken one of my mother’s pearl rings and traded it with a classmate for a doll with eyelids that opened and closed. And only I knew that General Jamshid’s pimply-faced son had penned a love note to Neelab, song lyrics on a sheet of lined notebook paper.
Over the years Neelab, her brother Rostam, and I had explored every square foot of Arg, the name for the presidential palace. We would walk the perimeter, summoning moments from history and inserting ourselves into them. While Neelab and I fired imaginary bullets from our fingertips, Rostam pretended to be an invader trespassing the deep trench that was now filled in with green grass.
We conjured the silky voices of the king’s concubines in the building that was once a harem, then popped into the structure once used for army barracks and marched, high-kneed and saluting. Rostam read stories of Genghis Khan’s conquests in this land while we sat in a vacant turret, our eyes tracing the sawtooth mountains that guarded Kabul like palace walls.
If we could have moved through time, we would have visited every decade of Arg’s history to see how accurate we’d been in reenacting the signing of treaties, the betrayal of trusts, the never-ending fight for our country’s independence from foreign invasion.
One day we sat in a copse of trees in the orchard with one of Boba’s history books. Rostam had watched me thumbing through the pages in search of a conflict or period we had yet to stage.
“Whoever wrote this must have gone through his days with his eyes closed!” I’d said as I slammed the book closed and searched the spine for the author’s name.
“Here we go. And what’s wrong with this one?” Rostam had asked, one eyebrow raised. Neelab had been lying on the grass, one leg crossed over the other. She rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand.
“Think of all the people in the palace,” I’d said, waving at the grand buildings in the distance. “Are there only men in there? Or in Kabul?”
“What are you getting at?” Rostam asked.
“There are no women in the book,” Neelab had said, taking pleasure in explaining to her older brother something so obvious.
“Be reasonable. You cannot blame the book,” Rostam had argued. “Men are the kings and advisers, the warriors and the explorers. They make decisions and execute plans and make history. The books are a record of that. Last week, I picked the 1842 defeat of the British, remember? Both of you had to play the parts of men or you would have had no roles at all.”
It was one of our best performances because we did not simply revisit the Afghans driving the British and the sepoys out of the country. We re-created the tea parties and Shakespearean plays performed by British officers and their wives just before the fighting began. We used every word of English we’d learned from our tutors.
“Sitara will explain to you now,” Neelab said as she adjusted the imaginary top hat on her head and waddled parallel to a row of shrubs. She was channeling the stodgy, bespectacled British emissary with aspirations to colonize Afghanistan.
“Rostam,” I’d said, with the impatience of an overworked teacher, “a British poet warned soldiers they were better off dead than facing the wrath of Afghan women. If you think women are not creatures of action, you’ve got pumpkin seeds for brains.”
Rostam did not apologize, nor did he become indignant. But I know that he heard me, because he never excluded women from history again.
“You can return to the library tomorrow,” my mother offered. “But this is an important night, and I need your help. Faheem’s been terrified of sleeping alone lately. You don’t want him to wake up and find himself alone, do you?”
“It’s not fair. I always have to look after him,” I protested.
“Better not complain. I’d rather look after sweet Faheem than have Rostam looking after me,” Neelab said with a shrug.
Now that Rostam was thirteen years old, he didn’t want to be seen playing with girls. That suited my mother just fine, since soon people would read much more into our time together, ignoring the fact that we’d been playmates all our lives.
Even Neelab would suggest that she and I could become real sisters if I could just stomach marrying her brother. I hated when she made those comments, but more because I had started to look at Rostam a little differently. He didn’t carry himself like a child anymore. I missed his company and wondered if that meant I liked him more than I should. Though I shared every little thought with Neelab, I kept this one to myself.
“Girls, girls,” Madar admonished.
I released the curtain from its tasseled tieback and, sighing loudly enough for her to hear, slid the Arabic book back into its place between other Dari, English, and Cyrillic titles. I understood just how awful it was to be gripped by fears, even irrational ones. My fear of the dark drew me to the twinkle of stars.
“I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open anyway,” Neelab said. “Sweet dreams, Sitara. Good night, Auntie.”
“Good night, Neelab. Get some rest. Sitara will be up bright and early looking for you.”
Neelab circled her arms around my mother’s waist and squeezed before slipping into the hall.
I turned away then so Neelab wouldn’t give us away with a pert smile. Once she’d left, my mother turned her attention to me.
“Let’s hurry. You know,” Mother whispered conspiratorially, “your Kaka Daoud can’t butter his bread without your father’s input.”
“And Boba can’t butter his bread without yours. Maybe you should have an office next to Kaka Daoud’s as well.”
Mother beamed, her smile the finishing touch on her elegant appearance. She wore a navy blue dress, belted at her trim waist. The hem fell just past her knees and the sleeves flared slightly at the wrists. My father had purchased the material, a delicate brocade, during his most recent trip to Lebanon. The design was my mother’s own, though the stitching had been done by the same seamstress who had made her wedding dress and every other gown she owned. She’d paired her shift with tan sling-back heels and a simple necklace, a calligraphy of Allah in eighteen-karat gold. She had her hair pulled back in a twist and had softly teased her crown to add an extra inch of height. I touched my mother’s face, marveling at the way her hazel eyes shone from beneath the inky liner she’d used on her eyelids. Was it envy, vanity, or just a surfeit of love to want to be as beautiful as one’s mother?