Free The Sound of Language by Amulya Malladi Page A

that if she did Kabir would ask her to stop her praktik. Kabir had spoken with Christina and explained to her that he was not happy about Raihana being alone with a man all day in his house.
    Christina assured him there was no cause for concern, which didn't do anything to quell Kabir's fear. He carried the prejudice most people from Afghanistan and the East did that white men were immoral and without honor. He had read somewhere that two out of three marriages in Denmark ended in divorce and usually adultery was involved. He had shaken his head at that statistic. White men and women had no sense of family, no sense of honor, and they dared look at him like he was scum?
    Raihana had tried to convince Kabir that the Danish man was harmless, which he was. It was even harder to convince the other Afghans, who were not as open as Kabir and Layla.
    “Good Afghan women do not go cavorting about with white men,” Wahida said when she sat with her in class.
    “I am not cavorting with him. I work for him and take care of his bees,” Raihana had said.
    “Take care of his bees,” Wahida repeated sarcastically. “You know, you should wear a hi jab , an abaya , and be a good Muslim woman. My husband organizes prayer every evening, you should come and join us.”
    Raihana looked away from Wahida. Kabir had told her about Wahida's husband, Hamud, who worked with other imams and radical Muslims in Denmark to convert other Muslims into conservatism.
    “I went for evening prayer at Hamud's house once, thought it was a social thing … and then Hamud starts to tell me I should stop smoking and talks about jihad. I didn't go back,” Kabir said.
    Kabir thought Hamud gave refugees a bad name. He had gone to language school as all refugees had to by law, but he had not learned Danish. He had not bothered to find a job and lived off welfare. Hamud only did what he had to in Denmark to not get deported.
    “His brother is the same,” Kabir said to Raihana. “This is a family that dishonors Afghans. They live off charity and never intend to work.”
    Wahida was the same. The slowest to learn Danish in the class, she seemed to not care whether she learned the language or not, despite Christina's best efforts. There were other refugees like Wahida. Kabir told her about a man he knew in Viborg who had brought his entire family to Denmark from Iran and none of them worked. They all lived off welfare. Kabir was baffled that it didn't hurt their pride to not earn a living.
    But for people like Wahida, pride was connected to how religious they believed they were.
    “Raihana, this will end badly,” Wahida warned her.
    “Then that is my problem,” Raihana said, not looking at Wahida, staring at her notebook.
    “How you behave reflects on the entire Afghan community,” Wahida said. “All of us are affected by this. Would you behave like this in Kabul?”
    “Wahida, why did you leave Afghanistan? Why did you leave the perfect world that the Taliban was building there for people like you?” Raihana asked pointedly, turning to face Wahida.
    “My husband's brother was here and he brought us here,” she said defensively. “We were happy in Afghanistan … we just wanted to live someplace else.”
    “Wahida, we are Afghans, the only reason we leave our home is to survive. And — ”
    Christina clapped her hands and interrupted. “Raihana, Wahida, vi taler Dansk. Hvad snakker om i?”
    Christina always interrupted conversations in languages other than Danish by saying “We speak Danish in class” and then asking the errant students to tell the class what they had been talking about.
    “Nothing,” Raihana said, picking up her books, and moved away from Wahida. She didn't sit with Wahida again.

SIX
ENTRY FROM ANNA'S DIARY
A Year of Keeping Bees
    17 MAY 1980
    Last year Gunnar got stung all over the face by bees and since then we have a bee suit rule. But now Gunnar is ignoring the rule. He feels more confident than I without the suit.