Chapter Fifteen
Baktash cheered when he found me waiting in the bright morning under the acacia tree. I thanked Khudai for giving me such a loyal friend, and wished Wazir was also there.
***
STUDENTS PEEKED AT ME, whispered, or shook their heads in the assembly. I must learn to face my new, embarrassing reality. I didn’t tell Baktash about yesterday, and awaited Frishta’s reaction. She was revengeful, so I had better be prepared for a badal, a beating-up, by Frishta and her halek, the new school gangster, or rather bully, the ugly Shafih.
***
IN CLASS EVERYONE acted like things were normal. But you couldn’t miss the ‘I’m sorry’ feeling behind their masks. I had to be careful with being playful with my classmates, or they’d jeer at me. Anticipated that any moment someone would call me a piss pants. I wasn’t wrong.
***
MY HEART FELL as Baktash, Shirullah and I returned from the break and read ‘piss pants’ on the blackboard. Shafih and Jawad had their arms around each other’s shoulders, giggling.
Baktash erased it.
‘Why did you touch it?’ Shafih pushed Baktash.
‘Please don’t.’
‘Please don’t,’ Shafih mimicked and kicked me, causing a dull pain in my buttock. Shafih scraped the words again with a piece of chalk. ‘You dare to remove it.’
A slap stung me at the back of my head. I turned around. Jawad put his hands on his private part and screamed, ‘Oh no, I’ve pissed in my trousers.’
‘Mama, my nappies.’ Shafih pretended to do a baby cry.
Both laughed loud.
My heart sank; my body shivered and eyes welled up.
Jelais scolded them. They paid no attention.
‘Where’s your friend, the murderer?’ Shafih pushed me. ‘Bring the murderer.’
‘He’s hidden in his sisters’ room,’ Jawad said.
‘Keep my sisters out of this.’
‘Fuck your sisters,’ Jawad said.
‘And your mother,’ Shafih said.
I stayed frozen, thanks to my heart. Kill an Afghan but never swear at his women. I despised even more my cowardly self.
‘Frishta’s recognised you. You’re a fucking coward,’ Shafih said.
‘A crying one,’ Jawad said.
‘Leave him alone,’ Shirullah said.
Everyone stood up as the art ustad entered the class. Laila told the ustad to get a student to clear the blackboard. She peeped at the word and thankfully asked Laila to clean it. She sat on the chair behind the desk and asked for five minutes’ quiet to fill in a form, cursing bureaucracy.
Baktash reiterated that he was 100 per cent sure it was Shafih and Frishta who had engineered the plan for my downfall.
‘How many times have we seen Frishta and Shafih together at breaks?’ Baktash said in a low voice as he turned back to Shirullah.
‘Every day since your absence,’ Shirullah whispered.
‘I told you so,’ Baktash said to me and took his seat.
‘They’re always alone, usually by the corners of the school,’ Shirullah said.
Baktash raised his eyebrows and nodded.
‘What do they do?’ I wiped my eyes.
‘Talk,’ Shirullah said.
‘And flirt,’ Baktash said.
‘I haven’t seen them flirting,’ Shirullah said over the muffled chatter in the class.
‘I have,’ Baktash said. ‘And you heard what Shafih just told you about what she thinks of you.’
Frishta even shared her thoughts about me with him.
‘And his reply to Mahbuba jan this morning?’ Baktash added.
Earlier that day, in response to Mahbuba jan’s inquiry about the uncharacteristic absence of Frishta, which I said I didn’t know anything about, Shafih said Frishta told him yesterday she’d be missing the school today. Where did they meet, if not in Bimaro, in that muddy house?
I remembered the night Frishta hinted at needing a soul friend. I gazed back at Shafih’s spotty face right at the end of the row, his ears as big as the doors of a rickshaw, and wondered how on earth Frishta and other jelais fancied such an ugly block. Which parts of his features looked like a ‘model’? He possessed no personality, no beauty, no moral values, yet Frishta had chosen him as a soul friend. Delicious meat indeed ended up being eaten by the ugliest bird.
Frishta was right, though. I lacked courage. Brooded over consequences. Worried about what others thought of me. Had got Wazir and Frishta too many times to fight my corner. Too many times I’d been a liability to them. I prayed to Khudai to help me fulfil a vital Pashtunwali principle, the one I’d neglected: meraana, courage. Frishta said yesterday everyone was afraid but they transcended their fears. I must do the same with the help of Khudai; I was an Afghan and must live like one. Shafih had done me wrong, and nothing in Pashtunwali was ever forgotten. Ill treat an Afghan, and he’d make sure you received the same care. If he couldn’t take revenge, his sons or even grandsons would have to seek justice. Otherwise, the family would be taunted with acting cowardly.
I wouldn’t leave it to my sons or grandsons. I’d take my own revenge. This evening.