Shauzia Read online

  Shauzia was glad of Barbara’s chatter. She felt shy amid so much wealth. The house had a living room with big windows that looked out onto the garden. The chairs looked soft, and there were lots of cushions in pretty colours. A television set was showing cartoon characters singing a bouncy English song. Toys littered the floor.

  ‘Here is our dining room,’ Barbara said as they passed through a room with a long wooden table surrounded by chairs. Shauzia looked at all the dishes stacked in a glass-windowed cupboard. ‘And this is our kitchen.’

  They walked into a large sunny room, the source of the good smells Shauzia had been sniffing since she had walked into the house. Tins of food and fancy boxes of cookies and crackers were stacked neatly on shelves. A bowl overflowed with fruit.

  Shauzia just wanted to look at everything and smell the good smells, but Barbara kept her moving.

  They went upstairs, where there were more rooms and more toys on the floor. Children’s clothes were scattered everywhere.

  ‘Please excuse the mess,’ Barbara said, as Shauzia stepped over a toy truck. ‘I’m trying to teach the boys to clean up after themselves, but they simply refuse to cooperate.’ Then she showed Shauzia a lovely blue room with a pattern of little flowers on the wall. There was a Western toilet, gleaming taps and a shower stall with a blue curtain.

  My family lived like this once, Shauzia thought, a long, long time ago, before the bombs started falling. The memory of it seemed like another person’s life, not her own.

  ‘Into the shower with you,’ Barbara said. She showed Shauzia how to work the taps. ‘Use as much soap as you want. Leave your dirty clothes on the floor. I’ll find you something clean to wear.’

  Then she left her alone.

  Shauzia was glad for some time to catch her breath. She gently touched her finger to the blue-flowered wallpaper, then felt the smoothness of the tile.

  There was a mirror over the sink. She walked over and looked into it.

  She didn’t recognise the head that stared back at her. It had been years since she had seen her face. The room she had shared with her family in Kabul had no mirror.

  In her mind, she was still a schoolgirl in a uniform with long dark hair that curled up at the end. But the face that looked back at her now was older than she remembered. It was longer and the cheeks were hollower. Shauzia wondered who this girl was.

  There were noises downstairs as the boys came back into the house. Shauzia heard Jasper’s feet running up the stone staircase and whimpering outside the bathroom door. She left her reflection and let him in.

  ‘You don’t care what I look like, do you, Jasper?’ His wagging tail made her feel better.

  She shucked her filthy clothes and got into the shower. She turned on the taps and let the hot water stream over her body. The soap smelled of flowers and spices. She lathered and rinsed, lathered and rinsed, washing the grime and stink off her body.

  ‘Why don’t you join the children in the garden?’ Barbara suggested when Shauzia appeared in the kitchen dressed in a woman’s shalwar kameez. It felt great to be clean and dressed in clean clothes. Her skin smelled good, like the soap. Barbara handed her a glass of cold milk. ‘Dinner will be ready soon.’

  Shauzia and Jasper went into the garden where the boys were playing. One boy had a truck the other boy wanted, and they started to argue. Shauzia didn’t like to look at them. They were chubby with good health, and their laughter and arguing hurt her ears.

  She tasted the milk. It was smooth and good. She poured some into the palm of her hand and held it out to Jasper.

  ‘Let me do that!’ one of the boys yelled, and they both crowded in on her, eager and demanding. Shauzia leaned back to get away from them, but they kept pressing in on her.

  She was rescued by Tom, who called them all in to supper.

  ‘Shauzia, you sit here.’ Barbara pulled out a chair for her at the long wooden table. In front of her was a bright yellow plate and shining cutlery. On the table were platters of chicken and bowls of vegetables. Barbara poured her another glass of milk while Tom supervised the boys as they washed their hands.

  ‘Have you used a fork before?’ Barbara asked.

  Shauzia nodded. Many Afghans ate with their fingers, but her family had been very modern. They had lost all their cutlery in a bombing and ate with their fingers after that, but Shauzia still remembered how to eat with a fork.

  She watched Tom and Barbara put napkins on their laps, and she did the same.

  Once she started eating, she didn’t think she could stop. At first she tried to copy the adults and use her fork properly, but that was too slow, so she used her fingers, too. She ignored everything except the food. Barbara kept refilling her plate, and Shauzia ate it all, without really distinguishing between chicken, rice or vegetables.

  When she started to get full, she remembered to save some food for the next day. The napkin came in handy for that.

  ‘Do you still have room for dessert?’ Barbara asked, placing a bowl of chocolate ice cream in front of her.

  ‘I want ice cream!’ the smaller boy, Jake, whined.

  ‘Eat your carrots first,’ Barbara said.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Eat just one bite of carrot,’ Tom said.

  Shauzia watched as Jake, frowning, put the tiniest piece of carrot into his mouth. Barbara took his plate away and replaced it with ice cream. Shauzia eyed the food that was still on the plate as Barbara carried it to the kitchen, then turned her attention to her ice cream.

  It was so good, she picked up her bowl and licked up the remains of it.

  ‘Paul, put your bowl down,’ Tom said to the older boy.

  ‘But she got to!’

  ‘Never mind. You know better.’

  Shauzia felt her cheeks burn. She had made a mistake. Would they throw her out?

  ‘I’ve made up a bed for you in the spare room,’ Barbara said. ‘Do you want to see it now? Then you can go to sleep any time you want to.’

  Shauzia nodded and got up from the table, holding her napkin full of food down by her side.

  ‘Jasper’s sleeping with me tonight,’ Jake announced.

  ‘No, he’s not. He’s sleeping with me,’ insisted Paul.

  Shauzia left them to their argument. Jasper trotted along beside her as they went upstairs.

  After brushing her teeth with a new red toothbrush, she saw her bedroom. It had a real bed in it, with sheets and blankets and a pillow. Barbara handed her a nightgown to put on. She was suddenly very tired.

  Barbara gave her a hug. ‘Sleep well. We’re very glad to have you here.’

  Shauzia’s arms remained at her side. She wasn’t sure if she should return the hug. She wasn’t sure if she could remember how.

  Barbara showed her where to turn off the light, then left her alone.

  Shauzia hid the food under the bed. She changed into the nightgown and slid into bed between clean sheets. Her belly was so full it hurt, and her skin still smelled of the soap from the shower.

  Jasper hopped up on the bed and stretched out beside her.

  ‘I think they’re going to ask us to stay here with them,’ she whispered. ‘I could clean for them, and at night, when everyone is asleep, I could play with some of those toys. I could go back to school, and learn to be... anything!’

  She leaned on her elbows and looked into Jasper’s face. ‘We’ll still go to the sea. We’ll still go to France But would it be all right with you if we stayed here for a little while?’

  Jasper thumped his tail and licked her hand.

  Shauzia put her head back on the very soft pillow. ‘I wish Mrs Weera could see me now,’ she whispered. Then she smiled and fell asleep.

  She woke up a few hours later. After listening carefully to make sure everyone was sleeping, she tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. The garbage was full of perfectly good food. She rescued it, took it upstairs and hid it under her bed.

  She could never tell when she would be hungry again.

&n
bsp; NINE

  The next few days passed by in a haze of eating and sleeping.

  Shauzia hadn’t realised how tired she was. Inside this walled-in paradise there were birds and flowers and no piles of garbage to search through.

  She ate three meals a day at the big table, plus the snacks that Barbara handed out between meals.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ she told Shauzia. ‘We want you to be comfortable.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Shauzia asked.

  ‘Tom’s salary goes a long way over here,’ Barbara told her. ‘We like to share what we have. Besides, us girls have to stick together!’ She gave Shauzia another hug, and this time, Shauzia hugged her back.

  Sometimes beggars would ring the bell outside in the street, and Tom or Barbara would open the door in the gate and hand out oranges or coins. The gate was high and made of thick steel, so Shauzia never saw the people who came to the door, but she was glad they were getting some help.

  She kept intending to help out around the house, but she kept dozing off instead. She would sit down for a moment after breakfast or lunch, in the living room or on the porch, and wake up several hours later.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Barbara, after sleeping away the afternoon and not helping with dinner.

  ‘You’ve been tired for a long time,’ Barbara said, putting her arm around Shauzia’s shoulders. ‘You’ll get caught up on your rest soon, and then you’ll feel better.’

  Shauzia liked it when Barbara smiled at her. She liked to watch her and Tom wrestling with their boys, or playing trucks with them, or reading to them at bedtime.

  Tom and Barbara spoke Dari to her, but the boys knew only English. Shauzia turned over each new word she heard in her head, and whispered it to Jasper until she felt comfortable saying it out loud. Bit by bit, her English improved.

  No one spoke about the future. Shauzia didn’t want to ask. Maybe they had forgotten that she was an outsider. Maybe they already thought of her as one of their own children. She didn’t want to remind them that she wasn’t.

  One day, Shauzia woke up in the morning and felt really awake.

  ‘I think I’ve caught up on my sleep,’ she said to Jasper. Jasper looked good, too. He’d been eating well, and his coat was soft from lots of washing and brushing.

  ‘You look bright-eyed this morning,’ Tom said to her at breakfast.

  ‘I’d like to start helping out,’ Shauzia said, pleased to be noticed. ‘I’m very good at cleaning.’

  ‘We already have a cleaning woman,’ Jake said, his mouth full of scrambled eggs.

  ‘Waheeda only comes twice a week, which is not enough to keep this place clean,’ Barbara said. ‘If you two boys would only pitch in and pick up your toys now and then.’

  ‘Talk to the hand,’ Paul said, stretching his arm, palm out, to his mother.

  ‘You know I don’t like that. He got it from a video,’ Barbara told Shauzia.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t watch videos for awhile,’ Tom said. Paul slammed his fork onto the table, scattering bits of egg. He made the loud whining sound that hurt Shauzia’s ears.

  Shauzia took advantage of the distraction to take more eggs from the platter, and to put them and some toast into her napkin. The pile of food under her bed was getting bigger every day. If Tom and Barbara ever asked her to leave, she’d have food to last for quite awhile. Maybe it would last until she got to the sea.

  ‘I’d like to take the boys swimming this afternoon,’ Barbara told Shauzia when they were doing the lunch dishes together. ‘We go to the American Club. I wish I could take you, but it’s only for ex-patriots. You know, foreigners? Would you be all right here on your own for a few hours?’

  Shauzia found the question funny. After all, she had been looking after herself for a long time.

  ‘I will be all right,’ she said.

  She waved goodbye as they drove away and closed the gate after they left.

  She was almost back in the house when the gate buzzer rang.

  ‘Don’t answer the doorbell,’ Barbara had said. ‘I have a key for the gate, so we’ll let ourselves in.’

  Shauzia was going to do as Barbara said, but the buzzer sounded again. She couldn’t just leave someone out there.

  She opened the door in the gate. An Afghan woman was holding a baby, her hand stretched out.

  ‘Can you give me something for my children?’

  ‘Yes, I can. Come into the garden.’ Shauzia ran into the house and filled a plastic bag with fruit and biscuits from the cupboard. She handed it to the woman, who thanked her many times, then left.

  ‘That was fun,’ Shauzia said to Jasper. She went into the house and was just settled on the living-room floor, getting ready to play with the toys, when the bell rang again.

  This time it was a group of children carrying junk sacks, looking for cardboard or cans to add to their collections.

  Shauzia had an idea.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Come in and play.’

  She got food for everyone and showed them the toys. The children looked like they didn’t know what to do with them. Shauzia closed a small hand around a toy car and made it move across the floor.

  The bell rang a few times more. She brought a heavily pregnant woman into the house and took her up to one of the beds to sleep in a cool, dark room. An old man drank a glass of milk and fell asleep in the shade of the garden.

  More women and children came to the door. Shauzia invited everyone in. ‘The people who live here like to share,’ she said. Jasper greeted them and made everyone feel welcome.

  Shauzia gave out food until the cupboards and the fridge were empty. When there was no more food to give away, she handed out toys, clothes, blankets – anything the beggars could use.

  With everyone eating, the children playing with toys and with Jasper, the house felt like it was having a party.

  ‘Here’s a pillow for your back,’ she said to one woman, handing another a pair of Barbara’s sandals to replace the ripped ones she had come in with. She took people up to the bathroom so they could shower, and found a supply of bars of soap in a cupboard. She handed these out, too.

  Shauzia was up in the bathroom, helping two little girls shower and wash their hair, when Barbara and the boys came home. The girls were giggling so much at the soap bubbles in their hair, Shauzia almost missed Barbara’s shriek. Then Barbara shrieked a second time, and Shauzia definitely heard that.

  ‘What is going on here?’ Barbara yelled. ‘Shauzia!’

  Shauzia, her hands full of hair she was rinsing, called down to her. ‘I’m up here.’

  Barbara was in the bathroom in seconds.

  ‘Look how clean they are,’ Shauzia said, wrapping the little girls in towels.

  ‘Who are all these people? What have you been doing?’

  Shauzia smiled up at her. ‘Sharing. Like you shared with me.’

  ‘Sharing?’

  ‘They came to the gate. They needed things.’

  ‘And you just invited them in?’

  Shauzia didn’t understand. ‘I thought you would be pleased. I thought this is what you like to do. You have so much.’

  ‘Where are their clothes?’ Barbara’s face was hard as she looked down at the little girls, dripping water on her bathroom floor.

  Shauzia pointed to the sink. She had put the clothes in water to soak before washing them. She was planning to wrap the girls in sheets while the hot Peshawar sun dried their clothes.

  Barbara wrung the excess water out of the clothes and handed them to Shauzia.

  ‘Get the girls dressed,’ she said, and then she went downstairs. Shauzia heard her telling the other people to get out.

  ‘Mummy! There’s a lady sleeping on my bed!’ Jake hollered, and soon the pregnant woman was out of the house, too.

  Shauzia helped the little girls get dressed in the wet clothes, and she ushered them out the gate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to them.

  ‘That wa
s fun,’ one girl said. ‘We smell good now.’ Shauzia watched them walk down the lane, dragging their junk bags behind them.

  ‘Look at this mess,’ Barbara said, picking up the toys and dishes that littered the room.

  ‘I’ll help,’ Shauzia said, bending down to pick up a plate.

  Barbara put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’ve done enough. Please go and sit in the garden.’ There was no warmth in Barbara’s voice or face.

  Tom came home an hour later. Shauzia stayed outside, but she could still hear their voices, rising and falling.

  ‘No food left in the house! Things missing – toys, clothes. Strangers in our beds!’

  In a little while, Tom came out with the boys.

  ‘We’re going to get pizza!’ Jake said. ‘Can Jasper and Shauzia come with us?’

  ‘No, we’ll be right back,’ Tom said, and they drove away.

  That evening, Shauzia finally got to taste pizza. She liked it very much, but the atmosphere at the table was too tense for her to really enjoy it.

  After supper, Shauzia washed the dishes. Barbara and Tom took the boys upstairs to get them settled for the night. Shauzia heard another shriek, this one from one of the boys.

  A moment later, Tom called down the stairs. ‘Shauzia, could you come up here?’

  They were all in her room. A swarm of ants was moving on her floor and under her bed.

  ‘Why were you hiding food?’

  ‘So I’d have something to eat when. . . ’ She stopped talking.

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When I didn’t have anything else to eat.’

  ‘I’ll get the broom,’ Tom said after an awkward silence. He swept up the rotten, ant-infested food. Barbara washed the floor. Shauzia stood in a corner, watching them and feeling small.

  Breakfast was delayed the next morning while Tom went out to buy groceries. It was the middle of the morning by the time they ate.

  ‘We’d like to get you some new clothes,’ Barbara said when they were gathered around the table. ‘We’d like you to have something new to take with you to the refugee camp.’