The Pearl that Broke Its Shell Read Online Free PDF

cupboard. She was thinking of Padar- jan and how much he had changed. We were lucky when he brought home some money from an odd job here or there. Every once in a while, his mind focused enough that he was able to tinker with an old engine and breathe life back into it. His small earnings were spent, unevenly, on his medicine and keeping us clothed and fed. The more Madar- jan thought about it, the more she realized how desperate our situation was becoming.
    “Come with me. There’s no reason to delay anything. Your father is taking more and more… medicine these days. Your khala Shaima is right. We need to do something or we’re going to be in real trouble.”
    We girls were nervous about getting sick. We worried that if we did, we would have to take the same medicine that Padar- jan took. It made him do funny things, behave in funny ways. Mostly he just wanted to lie about the house and sleep. Sometimes he said things that didn’t make sense. And he never remembered anything we said. It was worse when he didn’t take his medicine.
    He had broken nearly everything in the house that could be broken. The dishes and glasses survived only because he lacked the energy to pull them from the cabinet. Anything within reach had already been thrown against a wall and smashed to pieces. A ceramic urn. A glass plate that Madar- jan had received as a gift. They were casualties of the war inside Padar- jan ’s head.
    Padar- jan had fought with the mujahideen for years, shooting at the Russian troops that bombarded our town with rockets. When the Soviets finally slinked back to their collapsing country, Padar- jan came home and prayed that life would return to normal, though few people could recall such a time. That was 1989.
    In that year, he returned home to his parents, who barely recognized him as the seventeen-year-old boy who had left home with a gun slung over his shoulder in the name of God and his country. His mother and father hurriedly arranged a marriage for him. At twenty-four years old, he was long overdue and they thought a wife and children would bring him back to normal, but Padar- jan, just like the rest of the country, had forgotten what normal was.
    Madar- jan was barely eighteen when they were wed. I imagine she must have been as terrified on her wedding night as I was on mine. Sometimes I wonder why she did not warn me, but I suppose those are not things women should speak of.
    As the country planned for new beginnings, so did my parents. My sister Shahla came first, followed by Parwin and me. Then came Rohila and Sitara. We were all a year apart and close enough in age that only our mother could tell us apart once we were walking. But with one daughter after another, Madar- jan did not become the wife that Padar- jan expected. Even more sorely disappointed was my grandmother, who had respectably borne five sons and only one daughter.
    Things fell apart at home, just as they did across the country when Russia left. While the Afghan warriors turned their guns and rockets on each other, Padar- jan tried to settle into life at home. He tried to work alongside his father as a carpenter but a man who had been taught only to destroy found it hard to create. Loud sounds jarred him. He grew frustrated and drifted back to the warlord, Abdul Khaliq, he had fought under.
    Warlords were Afghanistan’s new aristocracy. Allegiance to a man with local clout meant a better life. It meant an income when there otherwise would be none. It wasn’t long before Padar- jan had oiled his machine gun, slung it over his shoulder and gone off to fight again, this time in Abdul Khaliq’s name. He returned home every so often. When he returned the first time and found that Madar- jan had given birth to yet another girl, me, he walked out again and returned to the killing fields with fresh anger.
    Madar- jan was left behind with a houseful of girls and only her bitter in-laws to turn to. We lived in a small two-room house, part of the