My mother was a teacher too
IT WENT ON LIKE THAT for a few weeks. I’d wait until the general went for a stroll, then I’d walk past the Taheris?stand. If Khanum Taheri was there, she’d offer me tea and a kolcha and we’d chat about Kabul in the old days, the people we knew, her arthritis. Undoubtedly, she had noticed that my appearances always coincided with her husband’s absences, but she never let on. “Oh you just missed your Kaka,?she’d say. I actually liked it when Khanum Taheri was there, and not just because of her amiable ways; Soraya was more relaxed, more talkative with her mother around. As if her presence legitimized whatever was happening between us–though certainly not to the same degree that the general’s would have. Khanum Taheri’s chaperoning made our meetings, if not gossip-proof, then less gossip-worthy, even if her borderline fawning on me clearly embarrassed Soraya.
One day, Soraya and I were alone at their booth, talking. She was telling me about school, how she too was working on her general education classes, at Ohlone Junior college in Fremont.
“What will you major in??
“I want to be a teacher,?she said.
“Really? Why??
“I’ve always wanted to. When we lived in Virginia, I became ESL certified and now I teach at the public library one night a week. My mother was a teacher too, she taught Farsi and history at Zarghoona High School for girls in Kabul.?
A potbellied man in a deerstalker hat offered three dollars for a five-dollar set of candlesticks and Soraya let him have it. She dropped the money in a little candy box by her feet. She looked at me shyly. “I want to tell you a story,?she said, “but I’m a little embarrassed about it.?
“Tell me.?
“It’s kind of silly.?
“Please tell me.?
She laughed. “Well, when I was in fourth grade in Kabul, my father hired a woman named Ziba to help around the house.
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