Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa

Author:Ava Homa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

MY BROTHER AND Karo would be home soon, and we’d once again go hiking. That much was obvious to me, at least in the daytime before the sunset madness crept into my heart. I sipped my black cinnamon tea, marked day ninety-three of their absence on a calendar, lit a wood-scented candle, and started dusting the phone that had not rung in weeks. Shiler had never looked back. But the curtains, the dresser, the books, everything that Chia had ever touched was faithfully waiting for him to come back and animate the space.

When I moved his mattress to wash his sheets, something fell under the bed. It was the diary he had shared with me, the one with the wrinkly edges and wavy pages, dampened by our tears, shed at different times. I’d read and reread his words when Chia first disappeared, but I later let Shiler immerse herself in them. I had assumed she’d taken the journal with her. I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the small volume to a random page.

Boys were secretly learning the history of the Kurdistan Republic, of Peshawa, who lost his life after having made a dream come true, if only for eleven months in 1945. Ali was reading aloud for everyone. The students were silently listening and nodding, their eyes half-closed against the bright sunlight. Ali knew he must immediately switch to Persian and recite from his legal textbook when the principal came around.

Students held hands, moving in a circle, singing. The news of Shirin’s death passed around like common gossip. She used to be a student in this school. Three months pregnant, she had set herself and her unborn child on fire. I walked to her empty seat and ran my fingers over the phrase carved into the desk that used to be hers: “I wish I were not born a woman.” I know she would have been collecting signatures for the Women’s Campaign had she not been born into poverty.

“Mamosta.” Ali appeared behind me, right by Shirin’s desk, staring at the bitter sentence she had engraved with a knife. “Why did she burn herself?”

I rolled around on the bed, at once pierced with pain and pride. I wanted to be more like my younger brother, detached from my personal problems and immersed in those of others. The sun shone brightly, warming the bedroom.

I confess I feel ecstatic when my students call me Mamosta, making me believe I am a real teacher, not some student doing compulsory military service. But it breaks my heart that this young man did not ask why suicide. He asked why self-immolation. Did he think it was okay, or at least understandable, that she took her own life?

“Are you finished reading?” I asked.

“Someone else is reading. Why fire? Why?”

The last time I saw Shirin’s face, she was wearing a white wedding gown––her shroud. Her eyes were full of pain and protest. Her father gave her to a rich man twenty-six years her senior in return for money he had no other way of paying back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.