Despite the beauty of their surroundings, Zabi was the only girl who liked playing outside. Laila and Sahar were sometimes outside but they were only three years old and never ventured much beyond the perimeter of their houses, mostly feeding the goats. The other girls, the older girls, spent their time inside. When they did leave the house they were dressed formally and always on a specific errand, never to play. Zabi could sit with them inside, with her mother, enjoying their stories. And she admitted that sometimes it was fun to be inside, if it was cold or raining, and sometimes it was fun to bake, to cook, stitch and make dyes for carpets, but not all the time, not every day.

She stopped running, far enough away from the village not to be called back. She was still carrying the steel urn and she placed it down, at the foot of the largest apricot tree in the centre of the field third away from her village. She didn’t have any shoes on. It didn’t matter. She didn’t feel cold. Walking through the trees she thought upon something her mother had recently said:

You are almost a woman now.

Being called a woman sounded like a compliment. Even so, the remark had troubled her. The women in the village never played outside, never ran through the orchards and never climbed the trees. If being a woman meant doing none of those things, she’d prefer to remain girl.

Nearing the outskirts of the orchards, she stood by the main irrigation channel that carried water down from the mountains. The channel was wide and deep: the flow was rapid. She picked up a leaf and dropped it on the surface, watching it speed away. No excuse about fetching water was going to spare her a telling-off. She’d be smacked. That didn’t bother her. The punishment she feared more than anything else was to be told that she would never be allowed to go outside. She looked up, mournfully staring at the mountains and wishing that one day she could climb them right to the very top and look down on the valley.

Zabi was startled by a voice.

—You there!

She turned around, fearful that she was about to be scolded. An older boy was walking among the apricot trees. In the bright sunshine Zabi couldn’t make out his features. He asked:

—Why do you look so sad?

Zabi raised a hand, blocking the sun and focusing on the boy’s face. It was Sayed Mohammad. Sayed was a teenager, fourteen years old and not at all like his older brothers, who were rarely in the village. Shyly, Zabi stumbled a reply:

—I’m not sad.

—Liar! I can see you are.