This commentary is by Jill Vickers of Bridport, a retired literacy teacher, returned Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan, and mentor for female Afghan students.
When I decided to teach my young Afghan friend to drive, Middlebury, Vt., is where we needed to go to practice.
Middlebury is bisected by Otter Creek, and railroad tracks run through the town center. These two facts have led to unique intersections. There’s even one in which “left on red” is allowed after stopping and yielding to oncoming traffic.
Years ago, a native enlightened me about the town’s intersections: “Each of them is an I.Q. test.” This summer, as Arminah was learning to drive, each of those intersections was a nightmare.
I have mentored Arminah — not her real name — since she was 13. At first, I mentored her remotely from Kabul, where she was living with other Afghan girls to learn English while attending public school. The plan was for the girls to win scholarships to high schools and colleges abroad, mainly in the U.S. Arminah did so two years later and began studying at a secondary school and then college.
Arminah’s mother was widowed when Arminah was a baby. She was uneducated and was prevented from allowing her older daughters to go to school. But she was determined to see her youngest daughter get an education.
While Arminah’s sisters helped with the family’s tailoring business, it was Arminah’s job to study. When Arminah had a chance, her mother was ready to let her leave home for study in Kabul. Two years later, at 15, Arminah was off to the U.S. on a scholarship to a prestigious secondary boarding school.
A driver’s license for an Afghan female growing up with only intermittent electricity and water at a pump in the landlord’s compound would have seemed unimaginable. Her brother eventually drove a rickshaw taxi when he married, supporting his mother and sisters, as well as his wife and growing family. But no one in Arminah’s family had driven a car or had a license or expected ever to get one.
To be behind the wheel, able to get to work, to shop and to travel — things a car makes possible — how could she imagine this? But driving was always in her long-term plan. As she spent her summers with my husband and me, Arminah turned to me to make it happen.
A hundred times
Teaching someone to drive should be left to the professionals or to someone still young enough to believe that accidents happen only to other people. We didn’t have that luxury.
We began before she had a permit, after her third year of high school, on a park road. The speed limit there is 15 mph, so she learned to steer at the speed my son had done years ago driving a golf cart. I felt tense only when we met another car.
The parking spaces provided useful practice, too, yet even pulling in between the lines took many trials. Backing into such spaces was another matter. Backing up cannot be explained, at least not to someone whose third language is English and who has a strong mind of her own. Arminah just had to do it a hundred times.
Then, when she had it mastered, she ever after would comment on the sloppy work of other drivers — so many cars parked outside the lines!
Arminah loved driving and couldn’t wait to get a license. But it had to wait. The following summer, she went home to Afghanistan to visit her family. She hadn’t seen them for four years. Of course, there was no driving that summer.
When she arrived the next summer, it was time to get a learner’s permit. I think the written test is a reading comprehension test as much as anything. Due to Covid, the DMV was closed. Instructions were to study and take the test online.
How would the DMV know whether test takers had cheated? I found the solution brilliant. To gain access to a test, one had to watch hours of DMV videos. These videos were divided into small segments, so one had to keep pulling up the next video, but could do so only after the one you were viewing was completed. It was a test in perseverance. No problem. Arminah has plenty of that.
Arminah took the test on her own and passed it the first time. Afterward, she did ask me for help with one of the questions on the application.
“What does ‘organ donation’ mean?”
When I explained, she said, “No! I want to keep all mine.”
“This is after you die,” I repeated.
More determined, she said, “No, thank you!”
She believes the dead live on as ghosts.
Steer things her way
The next summer, again she had a list of what she intended to accomplish. A driver’s license was at the top of it. I had a few goals of my own for us, but she was prepared for me. She had a shirt with NOT TODAY in bold letters across the front.
“This is for you, Jill.”
It is not only when she’s behind the wheel that Arminah likes to steer things her way.
So, we took frequent drives. The country roads of hills, curves and low-traffic intersections allowed her brake and accelerator work to improve. As she progressed, so did the commentary on how others drove. When a friend dropped her off, Arminah remarked, “She drives too fast, but at least today she was wearing her glasses.” I took extra time and care driving to avoid her comments.
Country roads offered gravel, dirt and asphalt, narrow lanes, bridges and slow-moving farm machinery, a good place to start. Only once did we have a close call with a farm dump truck at an intersection where it had moved into our lane to go around a car randomly parked at the side of the road.
“Watch out!” I yelled to her, and she drove around it.
Then it was time to move on to Middlebury. Lots of signs, large print and small, with warnings like ONCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP, FLAGMAN AHEAD, SHIFTING LANES. Not only had she not seen these before, but Arminah can’t read words written in all-capital letters. In learning English, she had rarely encountered them.
So, I would read the signs and do a fast explanation of what was coming up, as she concentrated on steering, checking mirrors and braking.
I took time describing the differences between flashing yellow and yield, flashing red and stop. These nuances were completely foreign to her. Also, she had never seen a roundabout. It seemed like jumping on a moving merry-go-round. At four-way stops, I was all sympathy. I am sometimes unsure who has the right-of-way.
As in much of the driving world, Afghan drivers do not utilize the concept of lanes. Vehicles, pedestrians and beasts of burden move more like a school of fish. Here, lanes are a big part of driving.
As a special challenge for Arminah, the major route through Middlebury was under construction. Consequently, there were no lane lines but, instead, hazards of raised structures and broken pavement. “Stay in your lane!” “Don’t hit that jagged asphalt!” Then there were multiple lanes in one direction to facilitate turns at an intersection.
Arminah depended on me to tell her how to drive from one place to another. I pointed and shouted our way through town.
Parallel parking remains the most anxiety-producing task on the test. I suggested she back up and down our driveway until she automatically turned the wheel in the right direction. Arminah thought that unnecessary, or maybe uninteresting.
A week before her test date, I found an apartment building on a dead-end street with marked parking spaces. Each time she parked, she would turn off the car and get out to inspect her work. She was not satisfied until the car was precisely in the middle between the front and back lines and was close to the curb without touching it.
This was easy on me: No imminent danger and no need to open my mouth. Let trial and error do its work.
I gritted my teeth
Out on the state highways, the speed limit is 50. In her first days on them, I pointed out that 50 is not the speed one has to drive; rather, it is the limit. “Jill, I need the practice.” I silently agreed and gritted my teeth.
We were working up to driving the interstate. I dreaded it, but couldn’t argue when she said we should go to Montpelier, where she’d be taking the road test, for a dry run. It was time to use ramps and to drive faster.
We set out after most morning commuters were off the roads. Still, that first time, speeding up, signaling, getting over a lane with oncoming traffic — I felt like throwing up. She appeared unrattled.
The day for the test arrived. Arminah had all her papers in order, checked in quickly and, with a prickly DMV employee, took the test. When the two got back, he told her she had failed. However, he was sure she could pass if she tried again and she should come back in a week. The DMV would keep her $19. Arminah set up an appointment for a week later.
So it was back to Montpelier and more experience driving 60-plus and using the ramps. A different DMV employee greeted us, thankfully. Arminah made conversation with him, and at some point during the test she asked him if he had any children.
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you teach them to drive?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s nice,” Arminah said.
“No, it wasn’t!” And he laughed.
Sometime later she asked if he’d ever had an experience giving the road test that he just couldn’t forget. He laughed again.
“No one has ever asked me that,” he said. “And I sure have.”
Back at the DMV parking space, he told her she’d passed. Soon the permanent official state government document arrived. Someday she imagines she’ll have an apartment, a job, and a car. She will be able to support herself and her family. Her mother’s vision of a better future will come true.
This bit of plastic with her picture, signature, license number, date of birth, gender, color of eyes, height and weight holds so many of her dreams.
