The Copper-Green Woman in the Pictures

I remember the day I stood next to the copper-green woman. I forgot all about Iqbal and the colour of the henna around my hands. I was now feeling like the copper-green woman from the pictures. Static and full of secrets. The kind of secrets that Safa knew about me and together with me. So openly and so gently, every night in that narrow lane, we shared moments without our naked bodies or one on top of another. We were two halves of the same apple, becoming whole. Or better. Just like an apple, we were secretive. From the inside, filled with colours and textures, and from the outside just as plain as the water in the well. I was Safa’s secret affairs for over a year until Iqbal came to Kabul. In a month’s time, he convinced my parents and got engaged with me. He carried me alongside his suitcases, first to Islamabad, Pakistan then to Atlanta, America. We ended up in a place called Virginia. They say, the green woman in Iqbal’s photographs is called the Statue of Liberty, which is in New York City. I had wished since then to meet her. I waited to meet her one day, as it seemed she encompassed me and Safa in stillness. With her torch and the liberty that glowed around her head. That’s how I would show that Safa will be in my heart forever.

At a very young age, it was Safa who first told me our breasts should be feeling tender soon. We needed to check on them regularly. In case the pain appeared, we had to use Aunt Bashira’s hot water bottle or heated red brick to keep them warm and pain-free. ‘The heat is good for any kind of pain in any part of the woman’s body.’ She repeated herself over the phone. I listened to her till the end, without any interruptions. Safa was always right. Last time, she told me about not playing with cold water during my menstruation, “otherwise water will go inside your stomach.” My stomach felt bloated for two days after I played in cold water. I was ashamed I did not listen to her. It never happened again when I started listening to her advice. Safa was born three summers before me, and unlike my mother, her mother was a midwife. Safa’s mother shared her knowledge of the woman’s uterus and other private parts without any hesitation with her. My mother only shared with me, how to twist the edges of the bolani dough sheet to make them look like folded flowers. Sometimes I felt very lucky to be Safa’s friend. I could use her knowledge to become clever in my own way, as a young woman.

But at times when Safa asked me to go naked in front of her, I was not sure if I was a woman or not. I felt like a doll. But I still would not mind it. Only if she had done the same. That way I would become aware of what she saw in my body by looking at her. Safa was ‘the eye of the investigation,’ after all. I learned that term from my favourite Turkish TV series. Only that in those TV series, it was always a man who is the eye of the investigation. But Safa also had the stern look of a man, sometimes. I like the way she walked toward me whenever she saw me in the empty yard. The two ends of her thin headscarf flew over the back of her shoulder. Her head was a little tilted toward the right. She came to me with a smile. She held both of my hands and kissed them. “I missed you, my dearest friend. Rana Jan…”

Before I could say anything, she pulled me in her direction. “I have got some cookies for you. My mother got it from the neighbour’s wife. She had a son with big eyes like a cow. Do you want to hear that most interesting part of the story?” My mind ran on fire, “Yes please, Safa Jan.” Safa went into her most erratic state, “So the baby was born with skin enclosed around his entire body. My mother had to cut loose the baby…he could have been dead if not cut open…” Safa’s mother’s voice came from the corner of the yard calling Safa to help her with laundry. Safa cut loose from her excitement. “I will tell you about the rest after the sunset. Come meet me next to the well.” She waved at me exuberantly and vanished behind her door. I headed back toward our own little room on the other side of the yard.

There was a total of five rooms in this grim, cursed baren yard, where we lived for five years. Each room housed families of three to seven children. There was a total of eleven girls in this yard, including Safa and me. Five of those girls were old enough to be married off. Four of the girls seemed too young to be our friends. Then there left only Safa and me, we were what they called us here “nimcha” novices. We were neither too old nor too young. We knew the shape of our little breasts, and we knew what happened when a baby was born. We were not nimchas. We had become what we called ourselves “bala khiza” little calamitous. We learned everything secretive by trespassing or making noises or telling a soul. We did what they call ‘rats would not do in their tiny holes.’

It was one of those winter evenings when I saw Safa waving her scarf toward me. It was our sign for a quick visitation right next to the second well. There were three distinct adjacent rooms, with interior walls all in bright green paint. We secretly laughed about it. But tonight, Safa thought more of the rooms as she held my right hand and we both ran toward one of those rooms. It was very cold. I could see the steam passing my mouth and my nose. The only lamp next to the well had lit the path to the room, where we headed. Safa stopped running as we got closer to the room. She walked slowly toward the wooden door. I imitated her walking and how her arms floated at her sides. Through the window and its drawn heavy curtains, the room looked candlelit. But there was a slender crack on the wooden door that led the light pass by.

They had forgotten to draw the curtain on the door. She pinned her right eye to the crack. “See how it all begins,” she said as she walked toward me. She pinched me on the side to tell me to do the same. I drew closer to the crack. Through the slender line, I saw the naked man on top of the naked woman. He was moving fast. She was not. He kept going. She remained motionless. All I could see was the woman’s breasts inside his hands. Squashed. I was scared. I jerked out of the scene as Safa took another pinch to my shoulder. “This is it,” Safa said. I looked at her, expressionless. She was not impacted by the scene the way I had been. I could tell from the way she looked at me. “What shocked you?” she asked me as we walked toward the well. Out of shock, my only answer was “Her breasts…” before I could finish my sentence, she cupped my left breast with her right hand and squeezed. ‘It is not painful. You see,” she said. “What else?” she asked. I was afraid to say anything further, otherwise, she would have to demonstrate it to me. I remained silent.

The whole scene played in my head for the next few days. I tried to make excuses not to see Safa. I was now afraid of her. She came around a few times asking about me. My mother told her, I was busy helping her clean the room. I stayed inside the room scrapping the old paint from the walls. I started loving the normal wall paints, they could easily be scrapped into big pieces with a flat tool. I felt it inside my stomach as I drew the tool against the wall and brutally brushed it against the surface. I saw the naked man on the wall. The naked woman was like my tool. I was taking revenge this way. But as I see Safa appearing outside the door, I felt wrong. It should be the other way around. The wall was like the woman, and my tool was the man. Safa corrected me every time.

The moments in the absence of Safa were filled with pleasure. I felt it in my stomach, as it had strange sensations. I liked to stay in those moments. When I finished scraping the entire four walls of the room, my mother was very happy with my well-done job. She praised me for the first time. “It is always good to stay away from that devil. You are more mindful of your doings in her absence,” my mother said. She was right. She was always right about Safa being a devil. My mother just knew something about her that I did not. “Why devil, Madar jan?” I asked softly. “You know better, dokhtaram.” She pointed toward the lunch she prepared for me. I sat down and galloped my lunch despite how it tasted like mud and dust. But I did not mind. I was still thinking of the naked woman scraping the naked man.

I did not see Safa for the longest time. For a whole week. She kept busy too. As soon as the room was re-painted, I felt my job was done. I walked toward Safa’s room. She was washing something next to the first well. I said my greetings, but she did not reply. She was wearing her red skirt and a black blouse. Her headscarf wrapped around her waist. The little scarf on her head looked worn out. “Safa, I said hello,” I demanded a response. “And I pretended not to see you yet,” she said in a more serious tone. I figured she did not want to talk to me in that state of her being. I walked back to my newly painted room. The winter was halfway through. The pieces of drying lamb chops were hanging from the ceiling of the owner’s portion of the yard. He owned two rooms to himself and a small garden that he had fenced around, hidden from our eyes and far from our feet. But of course, Safa and I had our share of that garden. Our favourite vegetable was chilli peppers. In the middle of summer middays, Safa would jump inside the garden fences, and pick a few tall peppers. We cooked our lunches with them. We also fed Kaka Firoz’s parrots with the remaining chillies. I was missing Safa. So, I had a new plan to make Safa my friend again. Stealing a lamb chop. But what could we possibly do with it? Cook it? But the smell and flavour of the drying lamb while boiling cannot be contained. Perhaps we could cook it in Safa’s kitchen on one of those days when her mother goes to her undertakings. We cook it when the owner cooks it too. I said to myself. The little breeze waved through the lamb chops. I left the scene as it was.

My mother also knew something about me. That I did not notice about myself. I was growing faster that year. She spoke loudly about me to my relatives. When a mother and the father talk about their young daughter at a gathering; whether it is to praise them or just mention their names, the main indication is that she is of marriage age. All I remember is that she kept asking me to dress more feminine. Wear my scarf in a certain way. How half the scarf should float about my chest. The other half folded behind my neck as well as my head. When I sat down, my knees should touch. When I stood, my arms should rest on my sides. When I drank water, I put my left palm on the crown of my head. The most difficult one was when she said, “Your eyes should not travel beyond your eye-sockets.” I know what it meant. It was a metaphor. But what she meant by it. I cannot tell this day.

The more distance I got from Safa, the more my mother’s teachings filled my day. Do that, do not do that. Eat that, do not eat that. Watch that, do not watch that. None of her teachings made my stomach fill with excitement as Safa’s instructions did. By now, it had been a month since I saw Safa. Winter had now ended. The owner consumed all his dried lamb chops. I was feeling so much older by spring. But every day I wished to see Safa. I kept thinking. What was she up to? What has she learnt more? What can she teach me? Is she, my friend? Are we still friends?

The day finally came which my parents had wished for. I was wearing a deep green dress. I felt like a mossed swamp. Trapped and choking in my skin. They made me sit on an uncomfortable platform made with a box, to play the happy bride part. The room was filled with women and children with sweat smells and noises. All eyes were looking at me. But I was looking for Safa. She did not come. Perhaps my mother never invited her, despite my persistent request. The room got even more crowded when henna was brought inside the room with ten young girls dancing in a circle. Each smudged the henna on the palms of my hands. None of them was as an expert in sketching a full moon on the centre of my palm as Safa. She used to kiss my palms first and then dip her index into the liquid henna bowl. Starting with a soft touch, in the circular motion of her finger, the moon would keep appearing in full. Then with a matchstick, she would add little lines around the moon as its rays. I so much wished for her to be there. To draw full moons on the palm of my hands. In the middle of that beautiful thought, one woman came to me and whispered in my ears. “You seem very sad because your soon-to-be-husband is not sitting next to you,” she giggled like a little kid and then disappeared from the room.

Iqbal was in America. I had seen his pictures in the piles of food and drinks they brought. I found the pictures tagged inside new dresses and pieces of jewellery for me on the eve of the Nowroz. He looked older than me. A lot older. If I tried hard, I could imagine myself as the naked woman and him as the naked man. But in the pictures, I never saw him that way. Instead, I found the green woman with a torch standing behind him more attractive. She held the torch in her hand toward her head and rays sparkle around her face. She looked more handsome than Iqbal. I had torn the picture in half and kept the green woman with me. I wanted to show Safa the picture of the green woman and tell her that she looked like the green woman.

As soon as the room became quieter toward midnight. I left the room in search of Safa. The little rooms around the yard were all dark from the inside. I headed straight to Safa’s room. I removed my white headscarf from my head and waved it toward her window. But no one saw it. Safa did not see it either. We were not friends anymore. I was so sure now. As I was walking back, passing through the dug well in the middle of the yard, I stood there. The water was deep. I could sense it. I let go of the rubber bucket inside it. It took a few minutes before I could hear the thud. I rolled my white headscarf into a ball and drop it in the well. It did not make a sound. Before I was curious to throw more things to hear more sounds, I heard footsteps walking toward me. I looked around. Safa was there, standing without her headscarf. She had cut her hair very short. She asked me to follow her. We both walked in the moonlight in the narrowest part of the yard, where once we played hide and seek. Safa held my hands, and before we say anything, we kissed. Our intimacy expressed itself larger than the narrow lane and deeper than the well.

“Where is your headscarf?” Safa asked.

“In the well,” I replied.

“How are you going to go home without a headscarf?” she asked.

I did not have an answer.

“But where is yours?” I asked.

“I do not intend to wear one tonight. But you should!” she laughed. “You are the bride tonight,” she said in a sad voice.

She took me to her room and picked up one of her scarves.

“Take this as your lover’s first souvenir,” she kissed it as she handed me. I could not tell what colour it was, so it kept me intrigued until I could see myself in the light.

The stillness and peace inside and outside of her room were mystifying. I put on the scarf and walked back to my room. Without making any noise, I laid my head on the pillow and tried to re-imagine Safa. I should call her Safora. My love. I told myself.

The next day, when I woke up, I saw the colour of the headscarf. It was green, the colour of a mint bush. I smiled and wrapped it around my head. The next day, I wanted to give Safa a gift of my own. The only valuable item in my hands was the photograph of the green woman. I cut the edges of the green woman with care and glued it to a piece of plain paper. I handed it to Safa at night in the dark. Safa kissed it with so much passion and said she would treasure it forever. I have been her copper-green woman in Kabul. She is my copper-green woman in New York City. As for Iqbal and all the women whispering in my ears, they are non-existent.