Burns! You bring down the fingers of your right hand together. You reach it in the palm of your hand. You move them, and you feel them. Rough, coarse, messy, and black? Hope is red and certainty is black. You do this twice and to be more sure, you pull your hand out of the blanket, and yes. Rough, coarse, irregular, and black! Your hair in your fist.You wanted to pull his hair, he wanted to touch you, but you pulled away your own’s, he laughed. You can see and recognize your hair.
It is more real than the reality in front of your eyes. His long, colored hair took your breath away. You couldn’t scream and ask for help, even If you had breath, you couldn’t. You didn’t need to be able to. Tamim the one you have pictured as a friend you can count on had seen it and slammed the door in front of him.He must have been scared, or Behrad, his friend was waiting for him in Targhi Park, he did the same one more, he had chosen Behrad rather than you. or did he want to go to the mountains? restaurant? Didn’t go to school? After all, he was not like you, he is a Xy. He can go wherever he needs and doesn’t need to, and he just needs to move.
He just needs to turn around, take a look, set a goal and take a step. Exactly what motivational books wrote for everyone. But this is Afghanistan, this is the Taliban, an extremely misogynistic religious group. Therefore,these are only for boys, who are successful and understandable.
But you, like all the XXs here, even if you move,go and reach, you can’t go. The Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Evil had published 30 life-suffocating orders only for XXs to crawl into your booklets and devour your goals one by one. That’s why, for you, it is only a dream. You could walk past the metal fences of the park with your body covered in black pieces of cloth, and secretly under your Chador, you get closer to the fence. You wanted to smell the smell of flowers, the smell of life, your heart craved to go and lie down under the Majnoon willow tree and read Dostoyevsky, lie down And listen to Ahmadzahir, the golden voice of Afghanistan, lie down next to Atefa, Tamim, Narges, Marjan, Maiwand, Haniya and all your friends close friends and read poetry, loudly. So loud that even the deaf of invisible planets can hear and their hearts want to hear.And holy, like the beating of the mother’s ever-caring heart and the sound of the father’s pockmarked hands when he shakes the dried cement.
And how about him? The one who found his butterflies in another girl’s heart after one and half years, Yes, you know that he is having a cappuccino in the cafe with Neda, in another place, and Professor Saeed Haqiqi? The only man who could understand you, the bookworm with his great beautiful library in third floor, where you were going and taking books from, and you could find him reading book, listening to music and playing with his children and his only child children.He must have been watching cartoons with his granddaughter, and Atefeh, your classmate of all time,had gone to hang out with Haniyeh and Yalda, her new friends, and everyone knew. “You tired me, Freshta, you also tire yourself, all of us. They are right, everyone gets bored after all. Ever since schools and centers were closed for women, you cried, cursed and made excuses, and annoyed others. The only thing you know is how disgusting! How disgusting you are!l
The father’s voice says: “It’s time for prayer, doctor.” You feel the weight of his eyesstaring at you. He wants to reconcile with you. You pull your left sleeve up to your shoulder and the sound of your father’s shoes on the stairs and the sound of Allahu Akbar from Khairabad Jame Mosque meet your ears. He must have thought that you rolled up your sleeves to perform ablution for prayer. You listen carefully to the sound of his shoes again. So you were not asleep to wake up now. You were awake and you fell asleep. Were you awake and asleep? Are these two hypotheses not the same? Why is there? Both say it happened in a dream. But if this is true, then what is this bunch of hair doing in your fist? Why is your body still tight? Your arm still burns. You touch the place of burning and pain. You press slowly and the pain comes. You pull up the sleeve and the map of the teeth catches your eye. How much does it hurt? You push harder and Sharife’s voice says quietly: “Be silent, Saadia will wake up. Go upstairs and study.”
You have studied for years, did not your teachers learned you not to tease others when they are sleeping?
She must have thought that you are reading a book like always and then suddenly you get excited and scream a sentence or a verse.
You move your mouth, the blood flows down your throat and your doubts increase. You look for your glasses. Surely the father took your eyes off you, kissed your eyes, pulled up the quilt so that you don’t get cold, prayed for you under his breath, kissed your forehead again, and went to read Quran and sleep.
Father loved you when he didn’t hate you. Maybe everyone is like that. They love you only when they don’t hate you. And now no one likes you. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting you!
3 July, 2023
