One Half from the East (8 page)

Y
esterday was the first day of spring, which is Nowruz. It's the first day of the year and always comes with a lot of excitement. When we lived in Kabul, Nowruz meant coloring hard-boiled eggs, eating white rice with seasoned spinach, and getting lots of sweets and even some money from the adults. I was looking forward to it again this year, but it ended up not being as festive as I hoped. My uncle asked us to come over, but my father didn't feel up to going, and my mother didn't want to leave him alone, so we stayed home.

We boiled some eggs but didn't bother to color them, deciding to play our egg-fighting game behind the house. My sisters and I tapped our eggs against one another's
to see whose would break first. I thought I might win this year, as if my egg would somehow be stronger than theirs in my boy hands. It doesn't seem to work that way, though. My shell was shattered by Neela's egg, and both Neela's and Meena's eggs surrendered to Alia's. She was so happy that she almost forgot all the other fun Nowruz activities we were missing out on.

Today, the day after Nowruz, is the first day of school and it is starting to drizzle. Not enough that they will call us in from recess but just enough to settle the dust on the playground. The other boys have splintered off into small groups. Most of the girls are huddled under an awning. Rahim showed up today in a very unmagical way. He walked onto the schoolyard as if what happened in my home last week was something I imagined. But I can't
not
say something about it.

“I didn't know he was going to be so upset. Sorry it was like that.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“He was having a bad day, I guess.” I don't know how else to explain what he saw. Rahim takes off his Wizards hat and runs his fingers through his shaggy hair.

“You want to know something? My father has pretty bad days too.”

“He does?”

Rahim nods. This is the first time he's said anything
about his father, and I'm curious what he's like, especially compared to mine.

“But, Rahim, my father called us freaks.”

“No one's called me anything like that,” Rahim says. “But maybe he's right. Maybe we
are
freaks.”

“Isn't there anything you miss about being a girl?”

“Nothing,” Rahim says. “You?”

I shrug.

“I guess I miss my hair sometimes.”

Rahim bites his lip and touches the back of his neck.

“I had really long hair,” he whispers. “It reached the middle of my back and was a little curly. Kind of like Neela's hair.”

“I used to get all my sisters' clothes. Meena's got this one dress now that's getting small on her. It's purple and pink with silver embroidery on the front and on the hem. Our neighbor in Kabul gave it to us as a gift. I've been waiting for my turn to wear it, and now that it's my size, I don't wear dresses.”

“Purple used to be my favorite color.”

“I bet purple would look good on you,” I tell Rahim.

“I bet that dress would look really nice on you,” he tells me. “Too bad no one makes really pretty pants, huh?”

I laugh, picturing my blue corduroys with pink and purple embroidery on them.

“That's the problem with being half things,” Rahim
admits. “It's hard if you think you're missing something. I don't want to be a half thing. I just want to be one whole normal me.”

So do I.

“Do you know what I heard last week? I heard there's a boy like us who is a grown man—as old as our fathers.”

I shake my head. That cannot be true. I know how Rahim feels about the idea of being turned back into a girl. Maybe he's making this up because he wants it to be true.

“That's impossible. No one is going to let a teenage girl hang around with teenage boys. What parents would let their daughter embarrass them like that?”

Rahim is convinced.

“Actually, my great-great-grandmother was like us too. She dressed as a man and worked as a guard for a king.”

“A king? King of what?”

“King of Afghanistan, you donkey!”

I'm pretty sure Rahim is making this up, but I don't feel like arguing today. Rahim's spine straightens. His right hand goes up like he's stopping traffic. He's got something serious he wants to talk about.

“You like this, don't you? Life as a boy is good.”

I have spent five months and three days as a boy. My ears don't seem as big anymore. My arms are stronger. I like the way the sun hits my face when I run. I have knocked out other players in
ghursai
. A lot of days my father smiles
when I come running home, my pants brown and worn at the knees, my hair matted with sweat. The teacher doesn't call me to the front of the classroom anymore because she knows I can solve the equations and, more important, that I will not turn white with my classmates staring at my back. I can climb trees and hang upside down, letting the blood rush to my head.

To my cousins, my neighbors, my aunts and uncles, I am Obayd. I want to be nothing else.

“Of course, Rahim. Why are you even asking? What else is there to be?”

Rahim doesn't look at me. He kicks at the ground.

“There's nothing else to be. Not for me. I only want to be what I am now.”

“Honestly, Rahim. I can't picture you as anything else.”

My comment makes him happy. I wonder if he's talking about this stuff because of what my mother said—about us being one half from the east and one half from the west. I really didn't think she meant anything bad by it.

“Neither can I. But I don't know if everyone would agree with us. Other boys like us have to change. I've heard it's bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“They say we're not supposed to stay like this forever. They say we're supposed to be girls again. Before we get too old. I heard my mother talking to my aunt about it.
My mother said she's heard some boys like us don't know what to do when they're changed back. They get confused and act really weird. I don't like the sound of that, so I've been thinking about it, and last night I had an idea.”

“I'm not confused, and I don't think you are either,” I snap at him, ignoring the fact that he had an idea. I wish he hadn't brought up what might happen when kids like us are changed back.

But we both turn quiet, wondering if I'm right or if we would even be able to see this in ourselves. I don't think my head is scrambled. And, although he may be a bit smug at times, I'm pretty sure Rahim's head is fine too. We've spent mornings, afternoons, and evenings together, believing that what we are is the most normal thing there is. We know we're smarter than the boys and stronger than the girls. It's not something we say in words. It's something we say in the way we pat each other on the back or laugh when one of the boys fumbles playing soccer. It's in the look Rahim shoots me when we run past a group of girls trying to keep the wind from blowing their head scarves away. It's in the way we take our time going home after school, knowing we don't have to rush. While boys play in one courtyard and girls play in another, Rahim and I skip along the imaginary high wall that divides them, closer to the sky than anyone else. We are untouchable.

“I don't feel messed up at all,” Rahim says confidently. “But I can promise you this—if someone tries to tell me I'm a girl, I'll be so angry that I'll mess
him
up in the head.”

And that's why I love Rahim.

“I'd like to see that!”

“Consider yourself invited, my friend.”

I start to wonder how we wound up here, Rahim inviting me to the match between my best friend and the imaginary person who dares to call him a girl (even though he is one). When I remember, I become curious.

“Wait, you said you had an idea. What was it?”

Rahim juts his chin out and beams.

“You want to know, don't you?”

“Sure, why not?”

“I remember my mother telling us about a legend once—about Rostam's bow. The legend says that passing under a rainbow changes boys to girls and girls to boys. Even if a pregnant woman walks under the rainbow, the baby in her belly changes.”

This sounds vaguely familiar. I bet my grandparents told me this story when I was little.

“I think we should do it,” Rahim whispers.

“Do what? Pass under a rainbow?”

“It's easier than passing over one.”

“You're serious.”

“I am. I want to go under the rainbow and be changed
forever. I don't want this to be temporary. Do you?”

“Of course not . . . You know that. But is it just a story or is true? Do you know anyone who's been changed by going under a rainbow?”

Rahim shakes his head.

“No. But I think it's true. Everyone knows the story. My mom and aunt heard it from their grandparents. Imagine how long ago their grandparents must have first learned about it—at least a hundred years ago. If it weren't true, people wouldn't still be talking about it. There are probably people we know who have done it but aren't saying a thing about it. It's not like you can tell by looking at a person.”

“I don't know. What made you come up with this idea?”

Rahim looks at the ground.

“I have this feeling . . . like something's going to happen. My mother saw me playing in the street yesterday with the guys. We were just messing around, doing some karate moves, play wrestling. It wasn't a big deal, just normal stuff. But my mother had this look on her face like I was running through the streets naked or something. She wouldn't even talk to me when I went home.”

“You think she's going to change you back.” I understand now why Rahim is digging up legends and looking for ways to save himself from being undone. My friend might talk tough, but at the end of the day, we both know
we're not in charge once we walk through our front doors and back into our homes. Everything changes then. We go from being kings of our own fates to children ruled by parents. And parents have good days and bad days, or moments when they're not sure if they're doing the right thing. Those doorways, they're the opposite of a rainbow. They're thick black nets across a blue sky.

Rahim feels it now. His mother is looking at him differently. He needs to act before she does.

I hear the slow roll of thunder in the distance. The sky has darkened without my noticing. Rahim takes a deep breath. Each drop of moisture catches a speck of dust, making the air just a little bit softer going through our lungs.

The raindrops are fatter, heavy enough that I feel each drop as it hits my head, a tiny, cold tickle on my scalp before it slides down the back of my neck. Across the yard, I spy one girl as she peeks out from under the awning. She reaches her right hand out, palm up. She takes a step away from the shelter and into the yard, both palms to the sky. She turns her face upward and lets the rain fall on her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. She sticks out the very tip of her tongue and her nose crinkles playfully. She looks incredibly happy, as if a few silly drops of rain might be the very best thing that's ever happened to her.

In that moment, I'm convinced. It's time for us to chase down a rainbow.

I
can tell my sisters are awake when I hear them moving, coughing, or talking. With my father, it's the opposite. He rarely makes a sound when he's awake, but that's not true when he's sleeping. When his eyes are closed, his breathing turns into a rough, raspy snore. I bet our neighbor can count his breaths, since the courtyards outside our homes are separated only by the thin clay wall. She probably does, too. She's really nosy. That's her thing.

I stand in the hallway knowing my father must be awake because all is quiet—I don't even hear the sound of normal breathing. I picture him on his mattress, staring at the ceiling or at the family picture hung up on the wall. I inch closer to the doorway and peek in. My father is lying
on his side. His eyes are closed, but there's no snoring.

“Padar?” I whisper. I tread carefully, afraid of another outburst.

His eyelids open as if he'd been waiting for me to speak.

“Yes, my son.”

I can tell he's not upset with me today. Relieved, I step into the room and sit in a wooden chair with a fabric seat. My mother sits in this chair when she wants to talk to my father. My sisters and I pretend not to hear her begging him to come to the everything room or to let some of his cousins drop by for a visit. The walking stick I made is in the corner of the room, against the wall. I'm sure my mother put it there. I turn away. Looking at it is like going back to that day.

“Padar, how are you?” My father's eyes lighten softly. “How is your pain?”

“I'm fine, Obayd. Hearing you talk makes me feel better. How is school?”

I hear my Kabul father, not my angry, one-legged father. I can breathe.

“Good. My teacher says my handwriting is much better than it was just a few months ago. She even asked if I spent the winter months practicing. And I got a really good score on the first science test to see what we remembered from before winter break.”

“Science, eh? That's good. I never had a head for science.
Still, I wanted to be a doctor. Did I ever tell you that? I wanted to walk through a hospital and have sick people feel happy to see me.”

“You would have been a good doctor, Padar
-jan
.”

“Maybe. Too bad we only get one life.”

I've stared at the picture behind me for hours. It's etched into my memory in painful detail. The photograph was taken while we lived in Kabul and in the picture there are six of us—my parents and their four girls. My father and mother are sitting on a love seat, with straight faces and straighter backs. My father is wearing an olive-colored suit and he has a neat little mustache. My mother is wearing a black dress with faint gray flowers across the collar. She has on a light gray head scarf just behind her bangs, which are brushed to the side and tucked behind her ear. She has small emerald earrings that she sold before we left Kabul. Neela and Meena are standing on either side of my parents in floral-print dresses. Alia and I are kneeling in front in our matching violet sweaters and indigo skirts.

In the photograph, I'm kneeling right in front of my father, hiding his two perfect legs from view. I wish I could move myself in the picture so we could at least have an image of my father with two legs. That way we wouldn't always imagine him the way he looks now. I wonder if my father stares at this photograph thinking
the same thing and wishing he could just nudge me to the side.

“You were a good police officer.”

“What do you want to be, Obayd?” It's an unusual question for my father to ask, and I'm not sure how to answer. All I've been able to think of lately is what I
don't
want to be.

“Maybe I'll be an engineer. Definitely not a farmer. If it were up to me to water your pepper plants, they would have died a long time ago.”

He laughs. It's a sound I rarely hear, and I'm glad I teased it out of him. It feels like the biggest thing I've done in weeks. The room becomes silent again. I hesitate to talk, not wanting to ruin the moment.

“What have you been learning in school?”

“Lots of different things. We've been looking at maps, learning the names of mountains . . .”

“When I was your age, I spent my days wandering all over this village with my brothers. We could have used a map.”

I cannot imagine my father ever having been my age. I wonder if we would have been friends.

“Did you ever find anything?”

My father takes a deep breath in and lets it out.

“We once went to an old shrine—a place where people pray and tie little ribbons to the fence for good luck. They
say if you go there and wish for something, it will come true. My brothers and I ripped off strips of cloth from the hems of our pants since we didn't have anything else with us. Your grandmother was so angry . . .”

I burst into laughter. My father smiles.

“What did you wish for?” I ask.

“If you asked any kid in the village what he wanted, he would tell you the same thing—a bicycle. That's what I wished for too.”

“And did you get it?”

“The bicycle? Believe it or not, your grandfather came home with a bicycle one week later. Not just for me, of course. It was for all of us. But I got my turn on it too.”

I think of what Rahim and I would do with a bicycle. I picture him pedaling and me riding on the bar in front. We would zip through town, teasing the other boys as we passed them and knocking their hats off so fast they wouldn't know what had happened. We'd whiz past girls who could never dream of being allowed to ride a bike.

“Where is the shrine?”

“Doesn't exist anymore. It was destroyed in the war,” my father says. He picks up a glass of water and takes a sip.

“Where else did you go?”

“A lake once. Oh, but the best place we ever found was a waterfall.”

I can hear my sisters laughing in the kitchen.

“Where was that? I've never seen a waterfall.”

“We stumbled onto it. That's what happens when you have nothing better to do and a few older brothers to lead the way. We walked for a few hours to get there. Walked, climbed, and crawled, actually. We found a foot path on the edge of the village where the mountains run. We were boys and doing things we shouldn't have been doing, as usual. I remember hearing this sound, like a wet roar, that got louder and louder the farther we walked. We didn't know what it was, but we had to find out.”

“That loud? Was it the waterfall?”

“It was. If we could have, we would have climbed to the top to see where the water was coming from, but it was too rocky even for a bunch of headstrong boys like us.” My father stares off, as if he can see it all in front of him again. “I'll never forget that place. We stood at the bottom and stared up. The water was coming down with such force. The mist and the rainbows and the air . . .”

I don't hear a thing my father says after that.

Rainbows.

“Padar
-jan
,” I exclaim, as I stand up in a burst. The chair nearly falls over. My father looks at me quizzically. “I just remembered something I've got to do for school tomorrow . . . homework . . . and if I don't do it . . . I'll come back in a little bit . . .”

I'm walking backward and miss the doorway, knocking
the back of my head on the wall. I spin into the hallway and feel my heart pounding. I need to get to Rahim.

I run straight into the courtyard and stumble into my mother as she enters the gate. My mother's hands fly up and across her belly. She's wearing a navy blue house dress with a sash at the waist. My mouth drops open. I see a roundness I haven't seen before. My mother looks at my face and starts to explain, but she doesn't have to. I suddenly understand that my mother's loose dresses have been hiding something—she's pregnant.

“Obayd
-jan
, I suppose it's time to share the news . . .” she says hesitantly.

“Madar
-jan
, your belly is . . .”

“This is good news for our family. We're going to have a new baby soon.”

“A baby. Mother, you . . .”

Her eyes sparkle with a flash of hope.

“I didn't want to say anything yet, but it's not something I can hide much longer.”

If it's a girl, she'll be in line to wear some hand-me-downs. Maybe they'll make her a
bacha posh
since she'll be younger and easier to disguise.

Then again, maybe it's a boy. If it is a boy, I'm finished. My parents will have the son they need and my work as a
bacha posh
will be complete. I have a knot in my stomach, the same one Rahim's got.

My mother sees the disappointment on my face. She bites her lip.

“Obayd,” she calls out. But I'm already out the gate, my sandals pounding against the street and tears streaming down my face. I've got to get to Rahim. There's a clock ticking for both of us, and I might just have found our solution.

I know where to find rainbows that don't run away.