Driving Lessons

I’m seated in the passenger seat of my old gray Prius teaching Zahra how to drive. She is in the driver’s seat intently watching the traffic light, waiting for the moment it turns green. I sit quietly so I don’t disturb her concentration. She’s wearing a black blouse with long sleeves and black pants on this hot summer day; her headscarf is absent. I’ve known her long enough to know that she wears a headscarf only when she wants to. “It’s not for religion,” she’s told me before, stopping short of telling me why she sometimes wears it. I’m wearing a short skirt and a tank top in light colors. Despite our different appearances, I feel a strong emotional kinship with her.

Zahra is a twenty-two year-old refugee from Afghanistan; she arrived in the United States after the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021. We met shortly after her arrival through a volunteer organization that supports immigrant families. I started volunteering as I struggled to move forward with life after my daughter’s death in June that year. Since I’ve known her, Zahra has been striving to start a new life in the United States. She’s learning English as fast as she’s able, knowing only a dozen English words when she arrived. As a quiet young woman, it’s been hard for her to speak up in an unfamiliar language. 

In the past two years, I’ve helped Zahra write a resume and apply for jobs. I attended her interview with a recruiter when she considered joining the military and I paid for her last English class. When she decided to learn how to drive, I offered to teach her because I knew she didn’t have anyone else to help her.

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Zahra’s driving lessons are causing me considerable self-doubts. My daughter was the driver in her deadly car accident, and I was the one who taught her to drive. I wait for someone to tell me, “You shouldn’t teach anyone else to drive.”

As a parent, I was full of cautionary words. In the car, I repeated common refrains: “Slow down” and “Don’t drive too close to the car in front of you.” I also shared my own experience. I was a passenger in a car accident as a young woman and told both my girls somberly and emphatically, “You can feel the speed of a car so much more when it’s going in the wrong direction. You feel the speed.” But I also encouraged my daughters to be confident because a fearful driver who doesn’t properly merge into traffic isn’t safe either. 

Zahra’s mother doesn’t want her daughter to learn to drive. I can see Zahra’s mother’s influence on the way she handles a car. “Drive just a little faster,” I encourage Zahra, “It’s not safe to drive too far below the speed limit.”

Early on, Zahra and I practiced near our local YMCA, where I taught my daughters to drive. It’s the same place Camille and I took spin classes in the weeks before her death. I taught my girls to park at the empty end of the parking lot. I gave Zahra all my best tips on parking, but her resulting maneuver made me laugh pretty hard. ‘I’m laughing with you, not at you,” I tried to convince her. She laughed as well. She told me amongst women from Afghanistan, there is a widely held belief that parking is the hardest part of driving. She tried the maneuver over and over again, slowly improving. I too felt better when she told me, “You’re a good teacher.”

Back at Zahra’s home, her aunt was unhappy to hear Zahra wasn’t driving independently yet. Their family needed a driver for trips to the grocery store, doctor’s appointments, and errands. “You just need to get out there and drive,” she said, gesturing impatiently to the road outside their apartment. Colesville Road is a four-lane stretch of pavement through the city of Silver Spring where a driver can suddenly lose the right-most lane to parked cars. Impatient drivers often dart quickly between lanes. “She doesn’t think driving is dangerous,” I thought. “She forgot Camille died in a car accident.” I’ve realized in the two years since Camille’s passing that while Camille’s loss is always with me, it’s not always with other people. They can’t see my shattered heart. 

I reminded Zahra that driving can be deadly in our next driving lesson. I shared that Camille gained too much speed on a long downgrade in West Virginia. I’ll always wonder if Camille didn’t notice how fast she was driving or if her buoyant mood over her recent high school graduation influenced how she handled the car. But somehow Camille lost control of her vehicle. The car went through the guardrail, and she immediately lost her life.

I told Zahra I believed Camille to be a good and safe driver. Out of my two girls, it was my older daughter’s driving that made me nervous, not Camille’s. I don’t know if I ever told the girls outright that Camille’s driving was better, but I’m sure they knew I believed this. Camille saw everything on the road, while I felt Sarah sometimes missed seeing pedestrians about to cross the road. Camille had good timing and slowed evenly before a red light. Sarah alternated too quickly between gas and brake.

“Maybe Camille was over-confident that day,” Zahra suggested.

“Yes, I wonder that, too,” I replied sadly.

Zahra went on to say that she had been a very good student in medical school. She didn’t have to study hard to get good grades. For one test, she didn’t study, and her poor grade reflected that. All I could think was that Zahra’s over-confidence wasn’t deadly; she learned from it and moved on. 

I want Zahra to move assuredly forward in life—not only to be a good driver but to be happy and secure. She needs to summon her mettle to make a left-hand turn without a green arrow telling her when to go. She needs that same mettle to say no to her aunt, who may expect her to be the family chauffeur. She should seek friends in a culture so different from her own. Zahra worked this past summer as a camp counselor. When I asked her if she would keep in touch with any of the other counselors, she said, “No,” in a slightly embarrassed way. In their free time, these American women wanted to go to local bars and visit coffee shops and tattoo parlors. Zahra spends her free time learning to write better in English, talking to her mother who lives in Iran, and updating her resume so she can get a job in the fall. These women may not be the right friends for Zahra, but I hope American friends will be in her future.

I’m happy that Zahra knows her destination. Her route may not be direct, but she’ll get there. I though, am lost. I was unceremoniously tossed off my path the night Camille died. With increasing desperation, I’m trying to find my way back. I have found the courage to volunteer with families from another country, make it through Christmas Day, and sit in the passenger seat of my car to let an inexperienced driver take the wheel. But I can’t seem to manage conversations with old friends that start with the same question repeated dozens of times over the years: “How are your kids?” I no longer take family photos or sing out, “It’s Thursday night! It’s Thursday night!” in my old early anticipation of the weekend. I struggle to find what is right for me and what I will never do again. But on this day, I pull myself together and tell Zahra to turn right at the next stop sign. She looks left, then right, then left again and confidently starts her turn.

-Anne Gagne

Anne Gagne spent the last 25 years raising her girls with her husband, working, and enjoying living near Washington, DC. In those years, she wrote nothing more than grocery lists and excuse notes where her daughters missed school. In 2021, one day before Anne's 53rd birthday, her younger daughter was killed in a car accident. Anne started writing as a way to remember her daughter and heal from tragedy. If published, this will be Anne’s first published piece.