and I had to leave time for them to concentrate on forming the letters. I also knew that I could not press them too hard. Four years ago a woman had complained to her husband that I was trying to turn the women against the men. That was when my mother was still alive. She was too shy to teach, but she had whipped me over the woman’s complaint.
“Our lives are on the razor’s edge!” she had scolded me after the beating. “Because you are clever, because you are the pearl of his eye, your father trusted you, but you go too far! You cannot bully people into change, Teky! We are like our land, with the very stones to serve us for veils. Rain change on us too much, too fast, and we do not drink it up. We flood, destroying everything in our way. Your lectures will bring death on us, on your father and me, and on you. Now. Will you teach them to read, just read, or will I tell your father you cannot be trusted with our lives?”
But don’t you
see
? I had wanted to ask her then, and I still asked her ghost. Don’t you see that the women need to know what is there? That The Book of the Sword already holds rights that the temple priests have to respect? I could show the women how to stand up for their rights.
But I bowed to my mother and told myself I would just take more time to make the women see how to do it, that was all. Not push them. Not lecture them. Only read to them what was in the Book and trust them to think about it, as my father trusted me to teach them to read. As even my mother trusted me to teach them again, after a while. As she trusted me to look after my father.
I crouched to help a girl perfect her writing of the word “law.” My problem was that I wanted to help them
all
, my father, the women, the girls. They would have laughed at me, had they known. One sixteen-year-old girl, not even married, they would say. You can’t even look after yourself!
Fadal would say that. Fadal, who thought my veils were chains. Poor Fadal, whose only way to deal with being a woman was to try to be something she was not.
As the shock of the temple’s destruction grew in the town, the attendance at my father’s lessons grew every day, and so did the attendance at mine. A week passed, then two. We had never stayed so long in one place. It worried and pleased me. A longer stay meant the chances were greater that those who ruled the temple priests in distant Kenibupur might hear of our activities. At the same time, the healer was able to banish most of that cough from my father’s chest, which was all to the good. For the first time I saw the girls who started their first letters under my eye master their first short sentences. We could celebrate my oldest cousin’s betrothal. I even dreamed of attending her wedding, but that was not to be. As the winds began to scour the mountain passes, word came that new temple priests were comingto serve the town again. My father took it as a sign to be on our way.
We left better provided for than we had been in years, three weeks after the day I talked to Fadal. Our donkey’s packs were heavy. I carried my share of the weight, too. One of the men who had studied with us sent us to his family’s village, where we would be welcome. He told us as well of caves along the road where we could shelter at night. It was like settling into a shabby, familiar pair of sandals.
I built the fire at the mouth of the cave that first night. Once it was going, my father helped me to cook supper, and he cleaned our dishes in the nearby stream. Afterward we sat in silence, watching the flames. Finally I asked him what I had so often asked as a child, “Do you see the God in the Flame?”
He sounded amused when he said, “I see the god in your bright eyes, Teky.” After a while he sighed and remarked, “It is strange, to be traveling again, is it not?”
I nodded. “My aunt’s home is a good place to live.”
“I have been thinking. If something happens to me …”
I started to
“Our lives are on the razor’s edge!” she had scolded me after the beating. “Because you are clever, because you are the pearl of his eye, your father trusted you, but you go too far! You cannot bully people into change, Teky! We are like our land, with the very stones to serve us for veils. Rain change on us too much, too fast, and we do not drink it up. We flood, destroying everything in our way. Your lectures will bring death on us, on your father and me, and on you. Now. Will you teach them to read, just read, or will I tell your father you cannot be trusted with our lives?”
But don’t you
see
? I had wanted to ask her then, and I still asked her ghost. Don’t you see that the women need to know what is there? That The Book of the Sword already holds rights that the temple priests have to respect? I could show the women how to stand up for their rights.
But I bowed to my mother and told myself I would just take more time to make the women see how to do it, that was all. Not push them. Not lecture them. Only read to them what was in the Book and trust them to think about it, as my father trusted me to teach them to read. As even my mother trusted me to teach them again, after a while. As she trusted me to look after my father.
I crouched to help a girl perfect her writing of the word “law.” My problem was that I wanted to help them
all
, my father, the women, the girls. They would have laughed at me, had they known. One sixteen-year-old girl, not even married, they would say. You can’t even look after yourself!
Fadal would say that. Fadal, who thought my veils were chains. Poor Fadal, whose only way to deal with being a woman was to try to be something she was not.
As the shock of the temple’s destruction grew in the town, the attendance at my father’s lessons grew every day, and so did the attendance at mine. A week passed, then two. We had never stayed so long in one place. It worried and pleased me. A longer stay meant the chances were greater that those who ruled the temple priests in distant Kenibupur might hear of our activities. At the same time, the healer was able to banish most of that cough from my father’s chest, which was all to the good. For the first time I saw the girls who started their first letters under my eye master their first short sentences. We could celebrate my oldest cousin’s betrothal. I even dreamed of attending her wedding, but that was not to be. As the winds began to scour the mountain passes, word came that new temple priests were comingto serve the town again. My father took it as a sign to be on our way.
We left better provided for than we had been in years, three weeks after the day I talked to Fadal. Our donkey’s packs were heavy. I carried my share of the weight, too. One of the men who had studied with us sent us to his family’s village, where we would be welcome. He told us as well of caves along the road where we could shelter at night. It was like settling into a shabby, familiar pair of sandals.
I built the fire at the mouth of the cave that first night. Once it was going, my father helped me to cook supper, and he cleaned our dishes in the nearby stream. Afterward we sat in silence, watching the flames. Finally I asked him what I had so often asked as a child, “Do you see the God in the Flame?”
He sounded amused when he said, “I see the god in your bright eyes, Teky.” After a while he sighed and remarked, “It is strange, to be traveling again, is it not?”
I nodded. “My aunt’s home is a good place to live.”
“I have been thinking. If something happens to me …”
I started to
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