A House Without Windows

  Look at me, Gulnaz willed. Let me see your eyes.

  Gulnaz’s mother’s shoulders were stiff. She nodded her head politely as the boy’s mother spoke, though barely a word of what she was saying registered. She was preoccupied with how she would explain her daughter’s behavior should the tailor’s wife turn her head round.

  Gulnaz pressed her fingertips to the glass.

  Come on, now. Do you really want to be my husband for all our days? Let me see who you are.

  The boy’s back straightened. His chin lifted slightly.

  Gulnaz’s eyes widened.

  Look this way. Here I am if you want to see me. Tell me you will treat me like a queen and I will nod my head and give myself to you.

  Why was she doing this? He wasn’t the most handsome man to come courting. He was not the boldest or most accomplished, either. But she was taken by his demeanor and the patience it took to thread a needle, to measure fabric by the centimeter, to stitch a perfect hem. He was the type of man who would appreciate her. He would let Gulnaz be Gulnaz.

  Gulnaz sighed. She needed to look into his eyes to know. She needed him to listen now if she were to believe he would listen any other day.

  Am I what you want with your whole heart? Do you believe it’s our kismet to be man and wife? Look at me if we’re meant to be.

  The man of thread was pulled by an invisible one that led to the window, to the unimaginably beautiful young woman beckoning him to prove his devotion. His eyes lifted from the carpet, his hands relaxed, and he looked over his mother’s shoulder.

  Gulnaz gasped and put a hand over her mouth, as if she’d been speaking her bold thoughts out loud.

  When he smiled, Gulnaz whirled away from the window and pressed her back to the wall of the house. Her breathing quickened as she inched back to the glass to peek in again. His eyes! They were as kind as Gulnaz had hoped, but they also shone with something Gulnaz couldn’t name, and Gulnaz had a weakness for mystery.

  Gulnaz’s mother was wringing her hands and doing her best to keep the boy’s mother looking straight ahead. This behavior was unforgivable.

  The boy’s eyes were again downcast, but there was a glimmer of mischief on his face.

  Yes, Gulnaz thought. You, I accept. I will be your beloved, your fiancée, your jewel.

  Within six months, the murshid’s daughter was engaged and married to a promising young tailor who would later prance out of her life irreverently, leaving her with two children and plenty of reasons to hate the world around her.

  CHAPTER 17

  ZEBA FELT THE HOLLOW ACHE IN HER STOMACH BUT COULDN’T bring herself to eat anything. Her cellmates had nudged her for breakfast and lunch, but she’d ignored them, barely grunting a reply to their concern. By this evening, they were indifferent. She was a grown woman and if she didn’t have enough sense to eat, they would gladly split her share.

  Yusuf was young and inexperienced, she knew. He had noble intentions, the noblest intentions Zeba had ever seen, but intentions accomplished little in Afghanistan. Guns, money, power, pride—these were the currencies of this country. That glint in his eye the last time they’d spoken had only made him look pathetic to his client—like a child who’d spotted a toy in a minefield.

  Zeba couldn’t save him. She could barely save herself.

  She thought of her mother. The notorious Gulnaz. It was a full year ago that Gulnaz had come knocking on her door, her piercing eyes scanning their home. She told Zeba she’d sensed something was awry. She’d been having terrible dreams, images of the children rolling off the roof and falling to the ground, of Basir’s foot being run over by a car and Kareema being kidnapped by a caravan of kuchi nomads. She was waking up in the middle of the night with a terrible feeling.

  “Madar-jan, I’m a grown woman. I won’t be scared by your nightmares anymore,” Zeba said, though mother and daughter both knew she didn’t mean it. Zeba hadn’t been raised in any ordinary family. She’d been raised in the shadow of Gulnaz, the jadugar, and Safatullah, the great murshid. Nightmares weren’t just bad dreams—they were omens. Feelings were divinings. These were gifts of knowledge, and ignoring them constituted a sin.

  Gulnaz had opened the purse strings on a pouch and let a handful of espand fall into her palm.

  “Let me espand these children . . . and you. At least let me do that much for my grandchildren.”

  Zeba had watched complacently as her mother tossed the seeds into a small pot and held it over a fire until a curl of smoke rose from the lip of the vessel. Gulnaz moved the seeds around with a stick, giving them all a chance to smolder into incense. The smoke grew denser and the pungent smell of the seeds filled the back room of the house and drifted into the courtyard.

  “Do you see?” Gulnaz had said, clucking her tongue in exasperation. “Look at how thick the smoke is! Just think how much evil eye has been cast upon your home and your children.”

  The smoke was a precise measure to Gulnaz, who could almost assign a weight in ounces to nazar.

  “Look at that!” She’d pointed, her finger piercing a rising plume. “See the way the smoke bends and curls? It’s the letter beh, I swear. There’s a kof for Kareema. And a meem.”

  Gulnaz had found enough letters from the children’s names that she was convinced her espand was speaking volumes, proving just how much evil eye had been directed at her grandchildren.

  “Madar, this is ridiculous. It’s only espand,” Zeba had protested.

  “You’re being stubborn. I’m only trying to help you. I know something’s wrong. I can feel it in my blood. I’m trying to warn you for your own sake, for my grandchildren’s sake.”

  “There’s nothing going on here. We’re fine. The children are fine. What can I do anyway? What do you want me to do about your dreams, Madar-jan?”

  Zeba shook her head. As a young child, Zeba had seen her mother as a magical being. She could do things that no one else could do. When her brother had gotten bad marks from his math teacher, one visit to the school by Gulnaz brought his numbers right up. When she overheard a neighbor’s wife speaking ill of her family, Gulnaz sprinkled a line of dried, crushed pepper at their gate. When the neighbor’s cow was found lifeless the next morning, Zeba felt protected and safe.

  Zeba had watched her mother, squatted by the kitchen fire as she heated the herb leaves they’d gathered together. She’d stood by as her mother smeared a person’s photograph with ashes from the fire. Gulnaz had no book of recipes; none of her tricks were written down. She never formally taught Zeba any of her spells. She made Zeba curious by grumbling about the evil and whispering about the magic. She made it enticing enough that Zeba came to her, begging to be let in to this secret and powerful world.

  When they were with the rest of the family, Zeba could sense that the other women bit their tongues around Gulnaz. Politely enough, they smiled and offered her and Rafi sweets. Gulnaz would shake her head on her way home and mutter that she could see right through their pleasantries and that she was no fool. A little sugar sweetened a child, she knew, which was why she stirred a spoonful into their milk. Too much, though, had the opposite effect and would sour a character forever.

  Zeba thought her mother so insightful. People really were trying to ruin them. She would remember this as she laid a handful of wild flowers at someone’s door, smiling to think of the dog urine she and her mother had dipped them in that morning.

  After Zeba’s father disappeared, Gulnaz became even more consumed with her sorcery. Before long, it seemed more important than anything Zeba or her siblings were doing. When Gulnaz’s husband vanished, her suspicions about others casting evil eyes upon them were confirmed. And worse was the realization she’d failed to protect her home. Zeba recalled lingering in the corner of the kitchen while her mother chopped fingernail trimmings into tiny little pieces, so incredibly angry at her sister-in-law. She fumed as she mixed the trimmings into a bowl of ground beef, onions, and spices. It was Zeba who carried the meatballs to her aunt’s
house, ashamed to look her aunt in the eye but also afraid to disobey her mother’s instructions. She had a terrible feeling in the pit of her belly as she walked away, imagining her aunt eating bites of tainted meatballs between squares of folded bread.

  Zeba couldn’t begin to understand what her father’s disappearance had done to her mother. She had no way of knowing how much her mother and father had once loved each other or how she worried about him in the days, weeks, months, and years after he left. Her mother had grieved quietly, the only thing she’d ever done quietly, not knowing if her husband was alive or dead. Zeba had asked Gulnaz only once about her father.

  “It was the work of someone with an eye more evil than mine,” Gulnaz had hissed. She’d stopped slicing the crowns off the eggplants. She held her sharpest kitchen knife in her hand, its blade reflecting the afternoon sunlight.

  “But Madar-jan, was he acting strange before he left? Khala Meeri said that he’d been saying odd things . . .”

  “May God blind your Khala Meeri for speaking of him that way! She had her own reasons for hating to see us happy. She couldn’t take it! She just wants me to suffer the way she has. That woman—oh, the things I could do to her if I wanted to. I’ve shown her mercy but sometimes I wonder why. Ten years I’ve lived without a husband. And she . . . she lives with your overbearing uncle in that house with those children that run around like street urchins and don’t even bother to say hello.”

  By the time Zeba was an adolescent, she had had enough of her mother’s trickeries. She knew Gulnaz’s reputation and resented that she was made part of her evil spells. She was angry that people were starting to look at her as an extension of her mother, as her mother’s accomplice. Zeba didn’t want to be feared or shunned, as her mother was. Zeba wanted to be ordinary. She wanted to be part of the rest of the family. If only her mother would stop looking at the world through such suspicious eyes, Zeba had thought, they might stand a chance.

  I am nothing like my mother, she would tell her adolescent self.

  She turned away when her mother busied herself with new trickery. The first time she stood up to her mother, Zeba’s voice shook. She had never been a disobedient child, and defiance did not come easy to her.

  “I won’t . . . I won’t, Madar-jan! If you want to send those cookies to Khala Ferooz, then you’ll have to take them yourself . . .” she said, her voice trailing off so it wouldn’t break completely.

  “Zeba! Take these cookies over to their house right now. Stop with this nonsense!”

  “I will not do it, Madar-jan. I don’t want to be part of this. I can’t stand it, all this evil!”

  Zeba wished her father would walk through the door. If he would only come home, her mother might stop spinning sandstorms. It was sad to think, but her behavior might very well have been the reason he’d chosen to leave and join the fighting.

  “Evil? You think I’m evil? Have you no idea what evil goes on out there, really? Have you not seen enough to understand?”

  Their relationship never recovered. Zeba knew her mother no longer trusted her. Gulnaz would watch her daughter from the corner of her eye, chewing her lip. Zeba could feel the angry heat between them, and while she had no doubt her mother loved her, she couldn’t help but wonder if her mother would ever turn the magic against her. When Safatullah, her maternal grandfather, and her father’s family joined together to announce Zeba’s engagement, she was not as infuriated as Gulnaz. As much as she loved Rafi, it was difficult to live in the shadowy world her mother created. Marriage would be an escape.

  NOW ZEBA MISSED HER MOTHER. SHE COULD FEEL THE COILS OF the prison cot pressing against her ribs, nudging her to admit what lurked in her mind.

  Have you no idea what evil goes on out there, really? I’m trying to warn you for your own sake, for my grandchildren’s sake.

  She’d pushed Gulnaz away. Zeba felt her chest tighten with regret.

  When her mother had seen the darkness, Zeba had been haughty, determined not to drive her husband away the way Gulnaz had. She would not wind up a woman alone, without the respectability of a widow or a wife. She remembered very clearly those days when whispers kept her mother shuttered in their stifling home. Zeba refused to become that woman.

  But in the wake of her mother’s visit, the darkness slipped its long, opportunistic fingers around her neck. If only Zeba hadn’t closed the door on her mother.

  Zeba couldn’t bring herself to shift on the cot. She wanted to feel uncomfortable, to feel something pierce her skin. She pressed her temple against the mattress, tightening the muscles of her back and neck to dig her head as far in as she could.

  She’d only wanted to be part of an ordinary family. Her only wish had been to be loved, not feared or despised. She’d learned all she’d needed from her mother, from the treacherous Gulnaz with the dazzling green eyes.

  She should have acted. Maybe she still could.

  Zeba sat up suddenly, her pulse throbbing a new, upbeat tempo.

  CHAPTER 18

  “MY MOTHER IS COMING TODAY,” ZEBA ANNOUNCED OVER A breakfast of bread and sweet tea.

  Nafisa looked up with interest. She was fascinated by the transformation she’d seen Zeba undergo in the last two days. Zeba was a different woman. She joined her cellmates for meals and smiled warmly. There was no explanation for the shift. It had been sudden and gave the cellmates plenty to speculate about.

  “Your mother? You’ve never mentioned your mother before. Where is she coming from?” Nafisa shot a quick glance at Mezhgan, who tried not to look too intrigued.

  “She lives with my brother, about a half day’s travel from here. She’s . . . different . . . my mother. Not like most other women,” Zeba admitted hesitantly. She wondered what it would be like to see her mother now, in this place.

  “What do you mean? What is she like?” Latifa’s hair was pulled back in a tight bun, which exaggerated her heavy facial features. She had been least impressed by Zeba’s abrupt recovery from hysteria. She had declared Zeba a charlatan who wanted to make fools of them all.

  “She’s . . . she’s a strong woman. Very strong-willed.”

  “Is that all?” Latifa huffed, shaking her head. Every time she gave Zeba a chance to redeem herself, Zeba disappointed.

  “No, it’s not that simple,” Zeba said softly. “She has her own special ways of doing things. Things she’s learned along the years.”

  “What does she do?”

  Zeba wasn’t quite sure how her cellmates would react to her mother’s talents. She tread carefully.

  “Since I was a young girl my mother was always mixing up herbs and things. She knows all about concoctions to . . . to help people get what they’re looking for.”

  “A jadugar!” Latifa exclaimed, slapping her hand against her thigh. Her eyebrows lifted and her face broke into a smile. “She’s one of those women who can curse an enemy to choke on her food or set a husband and wife into a bitter fight!”

  Mezhgan’s and Nafisa’s eyes widened.

  “No, no. It’s not like that. The things she used to do . . . she never made anyone choke. What she did was different.” Zeba struggled to find the right words because they didn’t exist.

  “Does she use dead pigeons? Oh, I’ve heard of things like this!”

  “Is that what your mother does?” Nafisa asked in awe.

  Their suspicions were raised, and Zeba became all that much more interesting to them—because of her mother.

  WHEN ZEBA’S CELLMATES SAW GULNAZ, THEIR THEORIES WERE confirmed. She was an impressive silhouette, sitting on the other side of the prison yard’s metal fence. The ends of her eggplant-colored head scarf draped elegantly across her chest, and her back was straight as a schoolchild’s. Her skin was smooth, with barely a crinkle at the corner of her eyes and no evidence of years she’d spent mourning her husband or glowering over the things said about her. Even across the yard, the green of her eyes caught the sunlight and shimmered like gemstones.

  Zeba spotte
d her as soon as the women entered the courtyard. Her cellmates did their best and tried not to stare too directly. Latifa watched from the corner of her eye and raised her eyebrows instead of saying what she thought. It was her way of demonstrating restraint.

  Zeba left her roommates behind, walking toward her mother instead of running only because there was a world around her that still expected her to behave a certain way. Her cellmates would sit at a wooden table with benches, Zeba knew without turning around, casting glances over their shoulders.

  Gulnaz watched her daughter approach, her heart sore from longing.

  It was thirty-five years ago and Gulnaz was nervously touching the soft spot on the top of Zeba’s newborn head. She blinked and it was a year later, Zeba toddling on pudgy legs, holding on to low tables, and bouncing as her father clapped his hands. A flash. A pigtailed Zeba was on her lap, singing songs and mixing up the lyrics. She was five and holding her tooth in a warm palm, showing off her gap-toothed grin with pride. A single heartbeat. Zeba was eight and her wide, brown eyes looked up at her mother, begging for a story. A candle flickered. Zeba was twelve and whispering to her mother that the old woman beside her in the fateha had just passed gas. Gulnaz had stifled her laughter as best she could and hid her face behind a handkerchief as if she were overwhelmed by the sadness of the funeral.

  Zeba sat facing her mother, the two women separated by a mesh fence and the river of good intentions that flowed between them.

  “Salaam, Madar.”

  “Salaam, bachem.”

  “You came a long way.”

  “I would have come farther.”

  Zeba lowered her head. Gulnaz watched her daughter’s face. She looked tired, much older than the last time she’d seen her. The past few weeks in this prison, away from her beloved children, had cast dark circles under her daughter’s eyes. Zeba looked as if she’d been the one traveling all day, not Gulnaz.

  “Have you heard anything about my grandchildren?”

  Zeba shook her head. She felt glass shards in her throat. If she spoke, her voice would break.