Tali Girls

by Siamak Herawi

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

An intimate look at the lives, loves, horrors, and dreams of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule

A heartbreaking tragedy in the vein of The Kite Runner from a major English-speaking Afghan figure famous for his books and long career in politics

Siamak Herawi brings Afghan women centerstage and takes us deep into the heart of his motherland to witness the reality of their lives under the Taliban’s most extreme interpretation of Islam. Based on true stories, the result is a sobering and harrowing tale that relates the current ethos of a country under occupation by one power or another for more than half a century.

Told in a direct, conversational prose, this chorus of voices offers us a vivid picture of the endless cycle of the suffering of girls and women in the grip of the Taliban authorities, of the imbalance of power and opportunity.

The central figures illuminate the power of love, friendship, and generosity in the face of poverty and oppression. Their experiences and dilemmas have a visceral power and we become deeply attached to Kowsar, Geesu, and Simin. These are testaments of resilience, hope, courage, and visceral fear, of doors of opportunity opening just a crack that offer a way out.

In Sara Khalili’s vibrant and nuanced translation from the Persian, Tali Girls tears down the curtain and exposes the treacherous realities of what women are up against in modern-day, war-torn Afghanistan.

Release date: December 12, 2023

Publisher: Archipelago

Print pages: 391

Sample

Kowsar
 
I will start with my childhood. From the time I was three years old. I will speak of my earliest memories, of ants that crawl up the wall in columns and now and then stop to lock horns. They frighten me, I scream, I break into a fever, and everything fades into grey. It is difficult to describe how the world around me turns hazy and grey. Visualize a girl struck with such fright that she breaks into a burning fever, convulses, and loses consciousness. At times, she hallucinates. Perhaps of horrors beyond her young imagination. As a small child, dogs, cats, even people sometimes frighten me.
One day, the old man of the neighborhood stops when he sees me with Mother and smiles. He walks across the way and kneels in front of me. “Kowsar,” he says, “you are so sweet. I could eat you!” I scream and hide under Mother’s chador. I start to shake and my grey world sets in. I again see the old man. He is wearing a grimy lungee and his coarse beard is sticking out in every direction. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot. He kneels in front of me and grins. “Kowsar, I could eat you,” he whispers. Then he opens his foul-smelling mouth, licks my face and digs his sharp yellow teeth into my cheek. With no resistance, I surrender to him. When all that remains are my bones, the old man licks his moustache and walks away laughing.
Mother picks me up and cradles me in her arms. “Oh, my girl!” she says, feeling my forehead. “It’s the fainting spell again.” And she hurries home.
“Mobin Khan, Kowsar fainted again. One of these days she’ll stop breathing. When are you going to take her to a mullah or a doctor?”
Father, busy mixing hay and weeds near the sheep hold, stops, glances at her, and goes back to mixing his hay and weeds.
“Wife, it’s nothing new. She’s had it since she was little. They say it’s epilepsy. Leave her be. We were seven brothers, disease killed until only two of us remained. Lucky the ones who died. We’re only fooling ourselves that we are grateful being alive.”
“Husband! She’s helpless. It doesn’t please God to let her suffer. Back then children died because there were no doctors, no medicine. These days people don’t die that easily.”
 “Wife! Doctors and medicine cost money. Where’s the money? If I start selling the sheep, how would I make a living?”
“Then take her to a mullah. They say there’s a new one in Jawand who has healing powers. Take her to him. He can cure her with prayers and incantations.”
“Mullahs don’t heal for free! But, fine, I’ll take her. I’ll have the man chant and do whatever he does to cure your daughter. Happy now? … It’s almost time to harvest and thresh the wheat. When that’s done, I’ll take a sack of grain and sell it, so I can buy some tea and candied sugar. Now stop pestering me. Go brew a pot of tea, I’m vexed and exhausted.”
Mother sighs and turns back. She feels my forehead again. The fever is gone. There’s cold sweat on my brow.
 
****
 
After the wheat is harvested and threshed, Father ties a burlap sack of grain on our donkey and takes me by the hand to bring me to the mullah. We live in Tali, a village in a deep valley surrounded by mountains with tall peaks and massive boulders that in the morning and afternoon act as barriers against the sun. Our valley is green and lush, drunk with springs, waterfalls, and streams that intricately weave their way to where they meet and create a roaring mountain river. You can see schools of red- and cream-colored fish playfully swimming between the azure rocks, relishing their togetherness. The birds of our region are colorful and sweet singing. At dawn, they wake each other by chirping and with sunrise they fly off, going in flocks from one orchard to another, from one field to another.
The girls of Tali are beautiful. They have long wavy hair, large almond shaped eyes, and skin the color of wheat. They grow up learning to cook and sew. At seven, some are taught to embroider, as well. They stitch and seam and sing together. And when they reach puberty, they fall in love with the sunburned boys who wear their skullcaps cocked to the side and play their reed flute as they scale the mountains shepherding goats and sheep and stealing young girls’ hearts.
Father takes me to the bazaar in Jawand. It’s a two-hour walk from Tali. Rows of shops and stalls flank the dirt road crowded by shoppers and traders. Father sells his wheat, shakes the burlap sack, and throws it over the donkey, and we go to leave it at the stables behind the bazaar. Then Father asks around about the mullah. A man shows him the way.
Two rooms with a small, crooked door connecting them. In the first room, a dozen or so men and women are sitting along the walls on a threadbare rug. Some are moaning, grunting, others look so sulky and surly that it seems misery and pain have robbed them of the air to breathe. We sit in a corner, and I keep my head down to avoid looking anyone in the eye. There are strange sounds coming from the other room. A man is talking in a nasal voice that constantly fluctuates in pitch and volume. Now and then he shouts and loudly puffs, “Choof!”  I shrink closer to Father and sneak under his jacket to not hear him, but I do.
We wait a long time for our turn. The adjacent room is dimly lit. At first, I see nothing. Father says hello and the nasal voice returns his greeting and tells us to sit. As my eyes grow accustomed to the light, I see the mullah. He’s wearing a white lungee and his bushy beard is salt and pepper. He is sitting cross-legged behind a small low table with a few old books, white and yellow sheets of paper, and a pen arranged on it.
“Tell me,” he says.
“Mullah Sahib,” Father replies, “I’ve brought my daughter for you to heal her.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She has these spells. She breaks into a fever, shakes, and faints.”
“Five hundred afghanis.”
Father swallows hard and stammers, “Five hundred? That’s a lot! Mullah Sahib, we’re villagers, not from around here. Have some consideration.”
“Very well,” the mullah grouses. “Four hundred will do. Put it on the table.”
Father fidgets and mumbles, “A hundred afghanis, praise God the merciful.”
The mullah, impatient and in a hurry, glares at him and puts an end to the haggling.
“Put it on the table.”
Father takes his money from of his pocket and in between the old bills finds a new one hundred afghani and lays it on the table.
“Name?”
“Whose name?”
“The girl’s!”
“Kowsar.”
“Bring her closer.”
Father picks me up and sits me down next to the mullah. There’s a dagger with a curved blade sitting on the floor between us. He takes it and holds it up in front of him.
“I seek refuge with God from the accursed Satan,” he shouts, slashing through the air with the dagger. “In the name of God the Almighty. … Choof!”
His voice sinks deep inside me, his words seep into my veins. I stare at the blade gleaming in the air and feel the drops of spit flying onto my face. I start to tremble and I fall on my side. All is quiet in my grey world. I float from my body and watch as the mullah severs my limbs and arranges them on the table. Drops of blood splash on his beard and stain his white shirt.
“Her arms and legs are yours,” he says to Father. “Take them and leave. I’ll keep the rest of her.”
Father holds up the front of his long tunic shirt like a cradle, piles my limbs in it, and hurries out.
Outside, I find myself in his arms. I squint against the sun beating down over the town and feel cold sweat trickling down behind my ears.
“Father’s dearest,” he says. “Can you hear me?”
I nod.
“The mullah chanted an incantation and wrote a prayer on a piece of paper. He said your mother should soak it in a glass of water and you need to drink it morning and night for seven days. And you’ll be cured, sound and strong.”
I don’t understand what he said about the mullah, but I do understand seven days and seven nights and being cured. Father walks along the row of shops, stopping now and then to look at their wares. The clamor and commotion are unnerving to me. The crush of people looks like a jumble of lines moving every which way. I long for the comfort of Mother’s hand stroking my hair as I laze on her lap.
Father walks into a shop and puts me down, and after a lengthy and at times heated bargaining, he buys a pair of shoes and a coat for Farrokh and some tea and candied sugar. Before packing them in the saddlebag slung over his shoulder, he opens the bag of candied sugar and gives one to me.
Overjoyed, I ask, “May I eat it now?”
“Yes, my girl,” he says, smiling at me. “And I have a little money left, let’s go and buy a new dress for you.”
As the candy melts in my mouth, its sweetness intensifies. I remember the last time I had one. It was three months ago. A few women from the village up north had come to visit Mother. She had put on her nice purple dress with embroidery around the collar and sleeves and on the cuff of the matching loose pants that gather at her ankles. She was happy, fluttering around to please her guests. She quickly brewed tea and rinsed and dried the china tea bowls she keeps on the top shelf in the alcove. Then she went to her trunk and took out a bag of white and yellow candied sugar she had hidden under her clothes. She put some on a plate and brought it in on the tea tray.
“You have honored us and brought us joy with your visit,” she said as she put the tray on the floor in front of her guests.
I could not tear my eyes away from the candied sugar. I desperately wanted one of each color. When Mother noticed me staring, she took a white one and put it in my hand. “Now go and play,” she said, walking me to our second room. “I’ll call you when they have left.”
I paid no attention to her. All I could think of was the taste of the stale candy crumbling into powder between my teeth.
Father picks out a red dress with flowers on it.
“Do you like it?”
I don’t want to think about anything other than the candy, but Father is persistent.
“My girl, do you like this one?”
I don’t like red, it’s the color of blood. I shake my head and he returns it to the shopkeeper.
“Show me another color.”
The shopkeeper gives him a green dress and Father holds it up against me for size.
“How about this one?”
I nod.
He pays the shopkeeper and opens his arms wide for me.
“You’re still a bit pale,” he says as I leap into his arms. “But I can’t carry you all the way home. With the wheat sold, we can ride the donkey.” I cling to his neck, and he tenderly kisses me on the cheek. “You’re going to get well, my girl. The mullah was imposing and practiced.”
I don’t want to think about that man and his dagger, though, when I’m with Father, which isn’t often, I am brave and rarely suffer attacks. At home, I’m mostly alone. Father spends his days tending to the sheep and his small farmland, and Mother is busy baking at the kiln, cooking at the stove, or sweeping the rooms. Farrokh, who is two years older than me, is out every day playing with his friends. Their feet are always callused and chapped, and their pockets are always full of glass and stone marbles or sheep ankle bones they use to play a game.
Father takes the donkey out of the stable, tosses the saddlebag over it, and holding me tight, he steps up on a rock and carefully mounts. The chaos slowly fades into silence as we ride away. I desperately want another candied sugar, but Father is sitting on the saddlebag.
“My girl,” he says. “When we’re down in the valley, I will sit you in front of me and you can hold on to the saddlebag. All right?”
“No!”
“Don’t be scared!” he chuckles. “I’ll hold you.”
I smile. He beams with joy. It has been a long time since he has seen me smile...