The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

by Nadia Hashimi

People who are beset by tragedy once and twice are sure to grieve again. Fate finds it easier to retrace its treads.

The person who doesn’t appreciate the apple doesn’t appreciate the orchard.

That is the problem with gifts, Madar-jan. They are always given away.

Shelia’s name meant ‘Gift’

I dreamed of girls in green veils, hundreds of them, climbing up the mountain to the north of our town. A stream of emerald on the trail to the summit, where, one by one, they fell off the other side, their arms outstretched like wings that should have known how to fly. In

I was pretty sure everyone was praying for different things. I wondered how Allah would sort it all out.

“Of course they ask about you! They are your sisters. That hasn’t changed just because you’re living somewhere else now! Don’t listen to the garbage that some people say about girls belonging to other people. Bah! Girls belong to their families and always do. You have a mother and sisters and nothing changes that—I don’t care who you’ve married.”

“The human spirit, you know what they say about the human spirit? It is harder than a rock and more delicate than a flower petal.”

In an ant colony, dew is a flood.”

Maybe your naseeb is there but waiting for you to make it happen.”

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.

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

But sometimes you have to act out of line, I suppose. Sometimes you have to take a chance if you want something badly enough.

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.

It was only because I was literate that I was able to join Badriya in Kabul. It was only because I could hold a pen with purpose that I was able to be her assistant and feel comfortable joining Hamida and Sufia in the resource center. It was my few years of school that allowed me to read the beauty shop flyer in the store window, to locate the street where Ms. Franklin waited nervously to help me make my escape.