A story of contrasts, of women in varied cultures. That's
what we find in A SISTER TO HONOR. Farishta lives in a
farm
cottage in Pakistan, where she raises her family, respects
her husband and feels nervous about her tall son Khalid's
liking for extremist talk. Lissy Hayes coaches squash in
an
American varsity team as diverse as she can make it. She
urges the young people to honour one another as team-mates
and dump disrespect.
One of Lissy's students is Shahid, a son of Farishta. He
won a coaching scholarship after achieving in Pakistan.
While the international competition is tougher than he
expected, he likes the life away from cotton, dirt and
goats. He wants to stay. His sister Afia is with him,
studying hard at medicine, careful to wear her hijab and
not associate with boys. She's looking forward to going
home for a family wedding. Her mother wouldn't take the
chance to marry her off, would she? The other Muslim
students are from the wealthy Middle East, and don't have
anything in common with Pakistanis. Afia has a secret
however; her brother mustn't find out.
I enjoyed the lovely descriptions of colourful clothing at
a wedding, the spicy foods and strong families. On the
other hand, we hear of young women dying in childbirth,
unable to have a male doctor attend them - this is why
Afia
wants to become a doctor for the women in her home town.
That town is changing too, women becoming fearful; the
girls are being made to leave school early and stay home.
Tensions mount. The tale well explains differing
viewpoints
and leads us to an understanding of a more rigid culture.
Lissy meanwhile has to fight for funding, since squash is
a
minor sport and football gets all the billing. She
doesn't
realise that Shahid can't tell his parents he is
shamefully
coached by a woman.
The system of 'honour' for families falls hard on the
women, who may not even hold a man's hand until they are
wed. Afia's family consider that their honour would be
stained until an offending girl was killed. So the latter
part of the book brings tragedy and the American justice
system into what should be a private and personal issue. A
SISTER TO HONOR by Lucy Ferriss is a timely read for all
women, showing that in parts of the world men believe they
dictate women's lives and women can only fear reprisals.
A SISTER TO HONOR is an absorbing and gripping read, full
of
personality.
Afia Satar is studious, modest, and devout. The young
daughter of a landholding family in northern Pakistan,
Afia
has enrolled in an American college with the dream of
returning to her country as a doctor. But when a photo
surfaces online of Afia holding hands with an American
boy,
she is suddenly no longer safe—even from the family that
cherishes her.
Rising sports star Shahid Satar has been entrusted by his
family to watch over Afia in this strange New England
landscape. He has sworn to protect his beloved sister
from
the dangerous customs of America, from its loose morals
and
easy virtue. Shahid was the one who convinced their
parents
to allow her to come to the United States. He never
imagined
he’d be ordered to cleanse the stain of her shame...
READERS GUIDE INCLUDED
Excerpt
Chapter 4
Waiting outside Coach Hayes’s office the first week of
December, Shahid drummed his foot on the tight carpet. He
had the itinerary in his back pocket. The last three
Januaries, he had played the Tournament of Champions in
New York, with Coach Hayes at his side, the week before
spring classes began. It was a so-called amateur tourney,
but the best in the world came to America for it, and he
had the chance to see guys he’d played in the juniors,
now struggling like him to figure out their next path to
glory. This year, as luck had it, Afia could not leave
Smith before December 22. Baba would not hear of a visit
shorter than two weeks, and the championships were four
days after New Year’s.
He loved squash. It was difficult to say why, to put the
feeling into words. Only to say that if he couldn’t play
squash, he wasn’t sure how he could live. He would miss
this tournament, not that he had any chance of winning,
but just for that pulse of life beating within its glass
cages.
He hadn’t felt this way at first. It had been Uncle
Omar’s idea, one weekend when he’d come to Nasirabad.
Squash, Omar had said to Baba. That’s the sport for
Shahid. We have a great training center, right in
Peshawar. Makes champions. Were not the two greatest
squash players of all time Pashtun?
That first week at Omar’s home had been an experiment, a
strange bed and a new routine, lessons with Coach Khan
every morning at the Peshawar Sports Academy. But when he
returned home to Nasirabad, Shahid hadn’t been able to
sleep at night, for missing the din of the city. Cars had
honked and people shouted inside his ears, their strange
accents like distant music. The town of his birth had
seemed arid and lifeless. Then he had taken the new
squash racquet Omar had given him and shanked the hard
rubber ball around the high-walled courtyard by the
grammar school. He lost himself in the movement of the
ball, the way it came off all the walls, the angles and
spins. It was like getting to know a person—if you sent
him that way, he bounced up, over, and low on the back
wall; if you sent him this way, he hit the corner and
shot back to your forehand. The ball answered you back.
It surprised you. It caught you from behind, unawares.
When Omar’s BMW pulled into Nasirabad a month later,
Shahid’s bag had already been packed. His mother’s eyes
shone with tears. His father hosted the neighborhood for
tikka. To the world championships, they toasted. To the
Olympics one day!
Finally the door to Coach Hayes’s office opened. Margot,
number one on the women’s squad, was heading out. Coach
patted her back, murmuring something. “Hey, Shahid,”
Margot said. “How was your Thanksgiving?”
He rose. “I got caught up on work. Coach fed us turkey.”
“I hear that’s quite a feast,” Margot said to Coach
Hayes. “Can I count as an international student next
year?”
“You and everyone else from New York,” Coach said.
Shahid exchanged grins with Margot as they passed. He
would have liked to have her at Coach’s Thanksgiving
because she would have made Afia feel less alone. The
other guys—Afran, Chander, Carlos—were all from countries
where people knew how to keep a respectful distance,
which was good. Still, Afia had spent most of her time in
the kitchen helping Coach’s husband or on the floor
playing with Coach’s three-year-old daughter, Chloe. She
said she enjoyed it, but Shahid thought she would rather
have been with her Smith friends.
That had been a stroke of genius, he admitted to himself
with a nice dollop of pride, finding Smith College for
her. After she took her O levels in Nasirabad, her
teachers had recommended the university in Peshawar. But
she could never have stayed with Uncle Omar, who had no
wife. In America, Shahid had declared, he could keep a
close eye on her. She could get her medical degree at a
women’s university and come home to attend to the women
in Nasirabad who needed doctors, women who could not be
seen by men. Baba had doubted there were such places in
America. But Shahid was persuasive, and Afia’s eyes
shone. She had sent in the application for a scholarship,
and the letter had come back by express, an acceptance.
Their mother had clapped her hands even as she wept.
There were men on her campus, he knew. But the place was
designed for women, sensitive to women. Afia would have
been horrified by what went on at Enright during the
weekends. She would have felt tainted—no: She would have
been tainted. As it was, she had returned home last
summer the same innocent she had been when she went away.
Moray and Baba had been pleased beyond measure. They’d
told Khalid so when he came down from the mountains and
tried to persuade them to keep Afia home before Amreeka
stained her namus, her purity. This fall, when school had
started up again, Shahid had felt easier in his heart,
able to let his sister live her college life without
checking up on her every other day.
“I hear you got a B plus on that Shakespeare paper,”
Coach was saying as she led the way into her office.
“Good job.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Thanks to my sister.”
“Afia?” Coach’s blond eyebrows went up. “Thought she was
all about science.”
“She’s better at everything that is not a matter of hand-
eye coordination.”
“Don’t put yourself down, Shahid. When you apply for that
Harvard job, you’ll be giving them a GPA that speaks for
itself.”
“Does Coach Bradley really think I am qualified?”
“I know he wants you. It’s a question of the business
school. You don’t want to be a squash coach all your
life.”
“I could be an A.D. Like you.”
She ignored this. She knew him too well—better, in some
ways, than either of his parents. She knew he couldn’t
care, as she did, about twenty or thirty young people at
once. He cared deeply about a few. And he was too proud
to be a great coach. When he listened to Coach’s honor
talk every year, the parts that stuck with him were
loyalty and courage because they echoed pashtunwali, the
code of the Pashtuns, of his tribe, which he would never
shake off, Harvard or no Harvard.
“So,” Coach was saying, glancing over his itinerary. “You
miss the Tournament of Champions. Well, they’ll survive.”
Her mouth, though, was tight.
“I’m sorry, Coach, but my parents—”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s look at the schedule for
when you’re back.”
She turned to the wide screen on her desk. It was open to
the website for Smith College. “Why are you looking at my
sister’s school?” Shahid asked, surprised.
“Oh, that’s Margot. She’s lesbian, you know. And
Enright’s such a straight place. She’s thinking of
transferring, so we were looking it over together.”
“Margot is—” he started to say, shocked at the word
lesbian, which he’d heard before but never about an
actual girl he knew. But then his eye followed the photos
that drifted across the screen below the Smith College
logo. “Wait, Coach,” he said, as her hand went to her
mouse.
“Shahid, it’s not what you think, they’re not all gay. I
wouldn’t have suggested you send Afia there if—”
“Wait.” He put his hand on her wrist. “Look,” he said.
He pointed to the screen. A photo bloomed into being: a
rally of some kind, and his sister, his sister, her mouth
open, shouting something, and her hand holding another
hand, definitely, yes, he sat clutching Coach’s wrist
while the photos looped through and he could see it
again, a big hand attached to a muscular arm. A man’s
hand.
He slapped at the screen with the back of his hand. “What
the hell is this?” he shouted. He stood up. His head felt
full and tight. “What is she doing?” He looked at Coach,
who had a strange, pale look.
She peered once more at the image as it loomed up, then
closed down her browser. She stood to face him. “She’s at
a rally,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong. You’ve had
your picture on the Enright site. She’s not being
inflammatory or anything. If you want me to talk to her .
. .”
“It’s not what she’s doing, Coach. It’s what she is
holding.”
She frowned. She looked confused. Three years now, she’d
been his coach. So long he’d almost forgotten how
horrified he’d been when he first laid eyes on her. When
he wrote home about life at Enright, he never mentioned
having a female coach, much less a female A.D. They would
have thought him disrespected, or thought squash was not
just unpopular in the States but reviled. Even Uncle
Omar, who had spoken with Coach Hayes on the phone,
thought she was an underling, and Shahid had never set
him straight.
But whenever Coach fixed him with her knowing eyes,
Shahid couldn’t imagine an authority greater than hers.
She never barked, like other coaches; she didn’t need to.
She went to the heart of the matter, whether it was the
joint you’d smoked the night before or your showing off
for the girl in the third row. Even when you were at your
worst, she would know at least one thing you were doing
right. She never dissed your opponent. You’ve got his
attention, she’d sometimes say. Now earn his respect. The
year before Shahid came, Enright had landed Jean-Louis
Nèves, a top recruit from Belgium. When Nèves got caught
DUI, she suspended him without a blink; when three others
threatened to quit, she opened the door to usher them
out. They came back the next day, Nèves the next year. He
told Shahid that Coach had kept him in therapy every
week; he’d hated the bitch, he said, and yet he owed her
his life.
Now, though, she was recoiling. “Shahid,” she said. “You
had a girlfriend, last year.”
“This is nothing to do with that. Did you not see?” He
waved at the blank computer screen as if the picture were
still on it, his sister’s hand in that paw.
“Shahid, you and Afia are in the States now. If she wants
to have a boyfriend—”
“Does she? Does she have one?” He was shouting at her
now, at his coach. Coach Khan had caned boys who shouted
back.
But only a flicker of something—disapproval? doubt?—
disturbed her gaze. Then she said, “I don’t know, Shahid.
It’s none of my business. I’m not sure it’s yours.”
“It is. I have to go, Coach.”
“Stay. Talk to me.”
But he couldn’t. He let his itinerary float from Coach
Hayes’s desk to the floor, exited, and hurried through
the reception room. His breath whistled through clenched
teeth. Outside, in the bright December air, he pulled out
his phone and fired off a text to Afia. WTF is up with
that website pic? He couldn’t think what else to write. A
dull panic slowed his steps as he started across the quad
to his history class. Afia was the flower in his heart.
He might be the son who would find a place in the world
of Western commerce, whose name might be in the
newspapers. But she was the daughter who would bring good
to the world. When they helped each other, Afia spent
hours reading his assignments and helping him shape his
words; he bought her boots with Uncle Omar’s money. Who
was this guy creeping his fingers around her small hand?
He’d kill this guy. Whoever infected Afia, infected him.
And now here came a high voice, behind him on the frozen
quad, calling his name. “Shahid! Shahid, you dope! Wait
up!”
He turned. No, no, this he did not need. “Hi, Valerie,”
he said. Just speaking her name made his penis move, in
his jeans.
Her books under her arms, dressed in a V-neck cashmere
sweater and an open down jacket, she caught up to him.
She was breathing heavily; her breasts bobbed over the
books. “Haven’t seen you all semester,” she said. She
tipped her head at him, her green eyes glinting in the
bright cold sun.
“Yeah, well.” He’d practiced for this encounter for
months. He was going to say, You know why that is, and
she would confess her weakness, her fickleness, and then
how she had realized she needed him, at which point he
would say he had no time for untrustworthy women and
would leave her on her knees, begging. Now, that speech
dissolved into sawdust. “Been busy,” he said. “I’m late
for class.”
“We’re having a party next weekend. You know, like pre-
finals. Afran’s coming. I thought maybe you—”
“Maybe I what? Maybe you’re between boyfriends and
Shahid’ll do for a quick one?” This came out harsh and
ugly. He wanted to snatch the words back, but they hung
like frost in the air.
“Shahid, come on. We can be friends, can’t we? It’s not
like we were going steady, it’s not like we made some
commitment—”
“Friends,” he snorted. He shook his head, to clear it.
Who was this girl? Were they all like this? Was his
sister like this? That hand, the way she held that man’s
hand, at her own volition. “I’ll catch you later, Val,”
he managed to say, and he stumbled into the econ
building.
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