Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [19]
IMPERIAL PALACE
One night I took the sisters to my favorite Asian restaurant in Lincoln. I also invited Anna, who is the pretty and sophisticated daughter of a friend of mine and someone I trusted to help the sisters with fashion and young adult activities.
While we waited at our table for Anna, I talked about the sandhill cranes. Every year between Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, the cranes come to the Platté, hundreds of thousands of them. They sleep at night on the sandbars and feed in the fields along the river by day. Their cries sound like "something you heard before you were born," to quote writer Paul Gruchow, and they fill the air at sunset and sunrise. Some mornings they all lift off the river en masse like a great white cloud rising.
Anna arrived, energetic and friendly. The sisters were a little intimidated by her sophistication and were quieter than usual. They were also overwhelmed by the hundreds of menu items. They were picky eaters and wary of new foods.
We talked of many things, including how Kurdish women remove body hair by roping it -with tiny threads and then yanking it out. The sisters asked Anna about her makeup, hair-styles, and clothes. Tanya told us she used to cut hair in Pakistan, but she doubted she could go to school and get the necessary license here.
We talked about dating. Anna was going with a policeman and that led to the story of the lost purse. One night Shireen left a purse with all the family's money in a park. She was devastated but had the presence of mind to call the police. Fortunately, a kind policeman showed up later with the purse and all her money. We teased Shireen about the cute policeman. Jokes about dating always got big laughs.
Tanya said she had been asked out by a guy who showed up to take her to The Perfect Storm. Much to his surprise, everyone in the family wanted to go along. We all laughed at his surprise, but behind the laughter was sadness. All of these women had spent their beautiful youth locked in a hut in Quetta. Now they were out of step with their own people as well as with Americans. They were too sharp for many of the people they met on the job, and they had no money for the places frequented by educated Americans. Besides, not that many doctors, lawyers, or professors married women who worked in factories.
Meanwhile our food arrived, first hot-and-sour soup, then egg rolls and crab rangoon, followed by chicken lo mein, crispy fish, and fried eggplant and tofu. The sisters dutifully tried things; Shehla choked on a hot pepper and had to drink a gallon of water to recover. Meena and Shireen left most of the food on their plates. Some dishes may have been forbidden for religious reasons; some they just didn't like.
Anna offered to take the sisters "garage-saling" sometime, and they readily agreed. They were hungry for new friends. We opened our fortune cookies and laughed at their messages. Shehla would marry a rich man. Leila would soon have good news. Nasreen had a kind heart.
I snapped photos of our group. The sisters kept photo albums and had shown me pictures from their past lives. In the pictures at Imperial Palace we were smiling, with our arms around each other, the sisters were all dressed up and hopeful about the future, a good moment to capture.
A BAD DAY
At the end of March I arrived for a lesson on driving in snow. Zeenat came to the door, dressed in slippers and a housecoat, friendly as usual. But as we talked I could tell she was discouraged. She had learned a few phrases of English. She said what would become her mantra to me: "I am bored. I want to go back to Islamabad."
I felt for her. Hard as her life had been in the past, at least she had been useful. Now she was home alone most of the time. She cooked and cleaned the house, but she had no money and no friends. She missed the intensely communal life of the past. Shireen said her mother's