Short Story On Rashed

The other day I was laying in the front yard using my basketball as a pillow listing to my mother, Laila, and Tariq talking in the kitchen. Tariq is not my real father he is my adopted father my Baba jan, Rasheed, and his first wife Mariam left when i was a little boy and i haven't seen either of them sense. Then Tariq raised his voice, very unusual he never yelled at my mother or hit her or anything, the complete opposite of Rasheed. I remember the words he said well “Laila, Zalmai is old enough to get married, you have to tell him the truth, you owe it to him its been for to long”

I decided then that if they did not bring it up tonight I would ask them about it first thing in the morning. That night after dinner my mother sat me down and …show more content…
She told me what a terrible man my father was and the worst thing was their was nothing Mariam and my mother could do about it because according to our laws and religion the man is in charge. At first Rasheed was good to his wives he gave them nice things, treated both of them well, but at the same time was strict with them as well, if they went out into public they were to be covered so other men could not look at them, they were Rasheed’s property. Then when neither of the gave him the son he so desperately wanted he was done with them, all the love he had turned into hate. My whole life i have thought the world of my father, he had given me everything i wanted as a little boy, but i now know what scum he really was. Things only got worse when the Taliban came to power in 1994, rules for women became stricter, our family got poorer, and we starved. Soon we had to send my sister away, one less mouth to feed, mother would try to visit her often, Rasheed never wanted to take her so she would go on her own. As a result beaten by the Taliban nearly every time, and my father didn't even care. I thought that was all my mother was going to tell me but she had one last bomb to drop on me, My father never took Mariam and left. My father was dead, his like taken by him but my mothers sister wife Mariam, who then told my mother to take us and run. Mariam stayed behind to save us and payed for her crime with her life. Then Tariq took the love of his life and her two kids, one of whom wasn't even his own, and ran. He took us to a safe place so we could have a chance to live a happy life. Tariq is a better man then my father, i know that now. he was able to love a child that was not his, throw away the old rules and treat my mother the way she deserves to be treated, and now he is the reason i know the truth of my