All We Leave Behind by Carol Off

Author:Carol Off
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Ruby in Paris, in 2007. A jumble of sensations and emotions for her.

Paris had been a jumble of sensations for Robina. She stayed with other international students at Cité Universitaire and was in awe of the buildings, the avenues and parks, the people. She wanted everyone in her family to be there with her. She munched on buttery croissants for breakfast, sipped champagne and sang French songs with the other students. They toured the Champs-Élysées, the Château de Versailles, the Arc de Triomphe and the Left Bank. But Ruby also picked up on the thinly veiled racism of Parisians, the chauvinism that outsiders encounter there.

For the final party to celebrate the conclusion of their courses, Ruby wore her native Afghan clothing, a decorative shalwar kameez in a riot of colours—pink, yellow and green with gold trim—after having attended school each day in blue jeans. The outfit must have taken up half of her suitcase and she’d obviously planned the drama of this moment. It was just the sort of statement Ruby would make: “Yes, you have an amazing culture, but so do I.”

On the flight home Robina allowed herself to think about what she would face back in Kabul. She was returning from the most memorable experience of her young life, an adventure that had the full blessing of her father. But she suspected that her Aryubwal relations were outraged by her actions. Robina had done something that everyone should have been proud of. She had completed high school with top marks and was the only woman among four hundred men to speak at her graduation. She excelled in her courses in Paris and, instead of abandoning her culture, Ruby had been an ambassador for Afghans. She wanted to tell her relatives all of this, to share the sheer joy of her accomplishments, to describe the sensational moment when she walked into her graduation ceremony wearing traditional dress. But when she got home, Ruby learned that there would be no celebration with the extended family. They quickly let her know that, in their eyes, she was little better than a tramp.

I can understand, but not accept this view, when I encounter it among the very poor where even the suggestion of independence in a girl or woman can ruin an entire family. But the Aryubwals were affluent, cultured people. The men were educated. That a teenaged girl had spent a month in Paris was not about to destroy a family as deeply rooted as theirs. But to them, Asad had always been an outlier, and Robina’s trip was just more evidence of his apostasy. The full strength of the family’s censure came to bear on all of them, but Ruby describes one painful moment that summed up the level of disapproval. Sitting beside an aunt at a women’s party not long after she was home, Ruby was smiling broadly as she turned to speak to her relative only to be met with a hostile glare. Then the woman pursed her lips and spat directly into the girl’s face.

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