The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

by Nadia Hashimi

There should have been a word for what she felt, the way her stomach jumped with anticipation to be somewhere she missed so much, to be around people who missed her as much as she missed them. It was a feeling that started sweet and finished bitter, when she realized that she stood in the ashes of those perfect times, as short as they’d been.

She was every emotion and blank at once.

She was losing hope for being that rose that is plucked from the garden, as she had put it.

The ratty blue housedress. I’d worn it so much I could almost see through the material, as Shahnaz had snickered and pointed out one day. I’d been embarrassed but it was hard retiring it. The navy blue reminded me of a pair of blue jeans I’d happily worn for a few months. Denim. In denim, I had been free to run down the block, to walk with my best friend’s arm around my shoulder, to kick a soccer ball between the goalkeeper’s legs. That ratty blue housedress was my freedom flag, but no one else knew it.

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, The touch of Spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild Darling! At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come And press its face against mine. Breathe into me.

I felt like I was being buried in a hole, deeper and deeper every day until I could hardly see daylight.

It wasn’t until weeks later that this conversation would bring me solace. For now, I stored her words, saving them for when my heart had healed enough to believe that my son had felt my embrace. That his father had held him lovingly in his last moments. That he did not feel as alone as I did now.

We Afghans marked both life and death with a forty-day period, as if we needed that much time to confirm either had truly happened.

Allah has said, ‘Start moving, so I may start blessing.’”

May Allah give them courage when they are told they are out of line. And may Allah protect them when they seek something better, and give them a chance to prove they deserve more.

This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother’s love, a child’s smile—a life that’s less bitter than sweet.

“Poor girl. She ran out from under a leaking roof and sat in the rain.”

I had no way of knowing if it had arrived, so I could only hope that the letter found Khala Shaima. It wasn’t until many years later, a lifetime really, that I heard it had been discovered in her hand by her older sister, my khala Zeba.