In My Father's Country by Saima Wahab Page A

up in my loose T-shirt and pants, with my scar between my eyebrows, and told the class about the similarities between Romeo and Juliet and Laila Majnu , about Afghan women and the tales they memorize, about Babo and her gift for recitation. About how there were no libraries where I grew up, except the human ones, and how stories were passed to the next generation through memorization. The bell rang, but no one moved. They satand listened, and when it was over a boy whose name I can no longer recall, the smartest boy in the class and the one whom I always thought of as my competition, came up to me as I was putting my papers back into my notebook. He was tall, with glasses and long brown hair. “Saima,” he said, “that was one of the most interesting and arresting presentations I’ve ever seen. You did an amazing job.” I didn’t understand his use of “arresting presentation” at the time, but I understood his tone and was very happy to hear it. Later I would realize that that was probably the first time most of my classmates had heard about a culture and people where it was still the norm to pass on cultural history and wisdom verbally and through folklore songs.
    IN THOSE FIRST years, I constantly forgave my uncles. It must have been easier for them when we first arrived, when we must have seemed like children. I had been fifteen—old enough to be married with a couple of kids in Afghanistan—but I was small, quiet, and had an amazing ability to fold into myself physically, to become almost unnoticeable. After a few years of eating healthy American food, we had grown a lot. We were all true teenagers now, with pimples and bad moods. What were they to do? I imagine they were afraid that we’d become too hard to control, and that by being even stricter they would be preventing us from becoming too Americanized and forgetting our life mission.
    I might have continued making excuses for them, but then, at another Sunday meeting, the Professor announced that the worst thing imaginable had happened, and that he was shamed beyond repair. He glared at me. His fists were on the table. The others bent their heads reflexively.
    “A boy called for you,” he said.
    For a split second I thought they had conspired against me by making up something so insane. I thought they wanted to teach the others a lesson and to use me as an example. I honestly didn’t believe anyone had rung—we weren’t even allowed to answer the phone.
    “A boy called this house and asked for Saima. Who is he?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied.
    “I knew you could not be trusted with all the freedoms we gave you bybringing you here. You have become exactly what I was afraid you would become.”
    “I swear I don’t know any boys,” I pleaded.
    “You can no longer be trusted. I don’t see any reasons at all why I shouldn’t send you back to the village. Let them handle you the way you are meant to be handled.” The Professor had a way of saying exactly what would cut the deepest.
    Shame and dread rose in me like a poisonous cloud, a familiar feeling. He had to know that I lived in constant terror of being sent back to what I perceived to be the cursed life of an Afghan woman. I had believed that once I came to America, that fear would leave me and I could relax enough to find my destiny in my new home—but it had not been that easy, especially with my uncles constantly threatening to take away my newfound liberties. I thought, I will never regain their trust. I should ask them just to send me back to Afghanistan immediately. I should just get it over with and leave here right now. But then another feeling rose in me, an alien one. I didn’t know any boys who would have called me. But even if I had, why did my uncles insist on making such a harmless thing seem so dishonorable and dirty? Knowing how important virtue is for a Pashtun woman, why did they always attack mine for no reason? Having done nothing wrong, I let myself be furious at my