I was getting late for school story righting
Answers
Answered by
2
Early one morning in January, Shabana Nabizada, an 11-year-old girl from Kabul, tried, and failed, to rush her sister Frishta out of the house. It was Shabana's first day of school, and she couldn't wait to burst out the door. Frishta, on the other hand, was moving slowly, taking her time as she finished cleaning up and getting dressed. ''It was no big deal,'' recalls Frishta, a tall, softly rounded 17-year-old. ''I'd been to school before.'' Frishta had been in elementary school in 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul and promptly interrupted her education and with it, her daily routine and her young friendships. She'd waited more than five years to return -- what were five more minutes?
For her sister Shabana, on the other hand, the day was altogether novel. Darker than Frishta, with serious brown eyes, Shabana was only 6 when the Taliban came to power. Instead of going to school, Shabana spent many of her waking hours staring at the mountains she could see from the windows in one of her family's two rooms. Like most people in Kabul, her parents were ethnic Tajiks, and rarely let their daughters leave the house, afraid they'd be punished by soldiers or, worse, abducted -- they'd heard stories about girls snatched from the street and married off to Taliban fighters, Pashtuns from the south. Frishta occasionally ventured out to the bazaar with her mother, but Shabana almost never strayed beyond her small, dusty front yard, enclosed by a wall so high even her father couldn't see over it. She never ran down the street to knock on a friend's door, never made up games with the neighbor's kids. There were no playgrounds, no parties. The Taliban had forbidden music and television, but her family had no electricity in any case. With the exception of one tattered first-grade language book an aunt had passed on, she had no books to puzzle over, no pictures to admire, no maps to trace with her finger. She was bored to exhaustion, too listless even to plead with her mother to let her play outside. Unfed, her curiosity foundered.
But with classes finally starting, she recalls, it was as if she suddenly felt the cumulative pressure of five years of waiting and wanting and wondering bearing down on her. Unable to resist the momentum even one minute more, she took off without Frishta, pushing her way past the blue metal gate separating the yard from the street, then running down the narrow, snaking pathway outside her home.
Shabana made it about 15 feet before she stopped cold in her tracks. Standing alone, she felt dangerously exposed and realized that she didn't know the way. The mud-clay walls on either side were high and silent, and who knew what they hid? Maybe a Talib waiting to catch her in this act of disobedience, a bearded man in a turban who would kidnap her or beat her.
Her heart pounding, she ran back home. When she and Frishta emerged together a few minutes later, Shabana was clutching her older sister's hand. They walked together quietly, Frishta gliding, ghostlike, in her periwinkle burka, Shabana trudging along in a grandmotherly head scarf and a long dress over pants. Gradually, they made their way through the winding, constricted paths, watching their feet as they marched along pitted, refuse-strewn dirt alleys. Every time they turned a corner or passed by a door, Frishta felt Shabana squeeze her hand a little tighter. ''We should walk more quickly; that way we won't get beaten,'' Shabana urged her sister. ''No one's going to beat us -- they're gone,'' Frishta reassured her. She was trying hard not to let her younger sister know the truth: that she, too, was terrified. It was less than two months after the fall of the Taliban, and the time barrier separating one regime from the next seemed dangerously fragile, easily breached.
For her sister Shabana, on the other hand, the day was altogether novel. Darker than Frishta, with serious brown eyes, Shabana was only 6 when the Taliban came to power. Instead of going to school, Shabana spent many of her waking hours staring at the mountains she could see from the windows in one of her family's two rooms. Like most people in Kabul, her parents were ethnic Tajiks, and rarely let their daughters leave the house, afraid they'd be punished by soldiers or, worse, abducted -- they'd heard stories about girls snatched from the street and married off to Taliban fighters, Pashtuns from the south. Frishta occasionally ventured out to the bazaar with her mother, but Shabana almost never strayed beyond her small, dusty front yard, enclosed by a wall so high even her father couldn't see over it. She never ran down the street to knock on a friend's door, never made up games with the neighbor's kids. There were no playgrounds, no parties. The Taliban had forbidden music and television, but her family had no electricity in any case. With the exception of one tattered first-grade language book an aunt had passed on, she had no books to puzzle over, no pictures to admire, no maps to trace with her finger. She was bored to exhaustion, too listless even to plead with her mother to let her play outside. Unfed, her curiosity foundered.
But with classes finally starting, she recalls, it was as if she suddenly felt the cumulative pressure of five years of waiting and wanting and wondering bearing down on her. Unable to resist the momentum even one minute more, she took off without Frishta, pushing her way past the blue metal gate separating the yard from the street, then running down the narrow, snaking pathway outside her home.
Shabana made it about 15 feet before she stopped cold in her tracks. Standing alone, she felt dangerously exposed and realized that she didn't know the way. The mud-clay walls on either side were high and silent, and who knew what they hid? Maybe a Talib waiting to catch her in this act of disobedience, a bearded man in a turban who would kidnap her or beat her.
Her heart pounding, she ran back home. When she and Frishta emerged together a few minutes later, Shabana was clutching her older sister's hand. They walked together quietly, Frishta gliding, ghostlike, in her periwinkle burka, Shabana trudging along in a grandmotherly head scarf and a long dress over pants. Gradually, they made their way through the winding, constricted paths, watching their feet as they marched along pitted, refuse-strewn dirt alleys. Every time they turned a corner or passed by a door, Frishta felt Shabana squeeze her hand a little tighter. ''We should walk more quickly; that way we won't get beaten,'' Shabana urged her sister. ''No one's going to beat us -- they're gone,'' Frishta reassured her. She was trying hard not to let her younger sister know the truth: that she, too, was terrified. It was less than two months after the fall of the Taliban, and the time barrier separating one regime from the next seemed dangerously fragile, easily breached.
Similar questions