“Zeba, are you all right? What have they done to you? Dear Allah, look at this place!” Gulnaz had crawled into the cell without a second’s thought. She threw her arms around her daughter then drew back, patting down the frazzled puffs of hair that hid her face.
“Madar . . . Madar . . .” Zeba sobbed. She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. When she came up for air, she pulled her mother’s hands to her face and kissed her palms, closed her eyes, and held them against her cheeks. Gulnaz brushed her daughter’s tears away with the pads of her thumbs.
“I’m not crazy, Madar-jan,” she whispered. “He says I’m crazy but I’m not!”
“You will be if they keep you in here,” Gulnaz said in an icy tone.
Zeba sniffled and nodded. She fidgeted with her hair, suddenly aware that in these days without a proper place to wash, she likely looked quite insane.
“You’re right. I don’t know why he kept me. I didn’t say or do anything out of the ordinary. I . . . I . . .”
“Of course not. I know how these people work. It’s God’s work they claim to do but for a good price.” The words came out of her mouth like gunfire. “Someone must be paying him to keep you. Did the lawyers say anything about money when they brought you here?”
Zeba shook her head.
“Uff! I can’t believe that Yusuf let this happen. What is wrong with that boy?” Gulnaz pressed the heels of her palms to her forehead as if to push her teeming thoughts back into her head. When she looked up, she’d regained her composure, looking more like the mother from Zeba’s childhood. “I’m going to talk to the mullah myself.”
“Do you think he’ll listen to you?”
Gulnaz reached into her handbag and pulled out a piece of soft flatbread folded in half and stuffed with halwa.
“Eat this, janem,” she whispered. “You’ve got to keep up your strength.”
Zeba’s head fell to the side, and she exhaled deeply. She took the pocket from her mother’s hands and brought it to her lips. The flour and sugar glistened with grease. Her mother had scooped parts from the bottom of the pot, a toasted deeper brown. Those had always been Zeba’s favorite pieces. It shouldn’t have surprised her that her mother remembered but it did.
She swallowed hard, her throat dry.
Gulnaz pulled a small bottle of orange soda from her bag as well and placed it on the ground next to Zeba.
“I didn’t know what else to bring. Should I open it for you?” she asked.
Zeba nodded quickly.
Gulnaz gave the cap a quick twist and the bottle fizzed, a soft, carbonated whistle rising from the lip. Zeba took a long sip, the bubbles sending a tingle to her nostrils as they passed through her mouth.
“Thank you, Madar,” she said breathlessly. Her stomach was more grateful than she could express. She’d refused the mullah’s offer, but it hadn’t been easy. “Basir was here two days ago. I thought I’d imagined him. Sometimes I still think I imagined him, actually.”
“He was?” Gulnaz felt her throat tighten at the thought of her grandson braving the journey to this distant place to see his mother. She wished she could have brought him here herself.
“What did he say?”
“He said they were well enough. I can only pray he wasn’t hiding anything from me. He . . . he brought me food,” Zeba said, her voice cracking.
You are not your father, Zeba had told him, immediately regretting her words. Basir’s whole body had jerked in response as if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until his mother had said it. It had been her fear, not his.
How could you be sure? he’d demanded. You could have been wrong! Who are you to judge?
She’d floundered, searching for the right words and wondering if they even existed.
Gulnaz clucked her tongue and sighed.
“God save him.”
“Have you heard anything about the children, Madar? Has anyone sent word from Tamina’s house?”
Gulnaz let her gaze fall to the ground.
“I’ve called my friend Fahima who lives not far from them, but she said she hasn’t seen or spoken to Tamina since the fateha, when she went to pay her respects. She says Tamina’s been holed up in mourning. I told her that we were . . . that we were very worried about the children. I asked her if she could walk past their home and listen for anything. She promised she would and I haven’t heard from her. I think that means she hasn’t seen anything to worry about. I’m sure they’re all right.”
Zeba wasn’t certain of anything and resented her mother’s thin reassurances. The absence of screams was not evidence that all was well, but she lacked the energy to point that out. She’d finished the halwa and bread and decided against wiping the grease from her chapped lips.
“Janem, let me speak with the mullah. I’ll see if I can reason with him to send you back. This is no place for a mother of four children. This is no place for anyone, actually.” Gulnaz put her hands and knees on the unforgiving earth. She pushed herself to stand, wincing.
Zeba wanted to pull her back and make her stay but she didn’t. She merely watched as her mother set off to pull Zeba from the quicksand she’d fallen into. Gulnaz marched defiantly toward the figure standing on the hill. She clutched her handbag close at her side and snuck sidelong glances at the other cells. Seeing her coming, the mullah swiveled his head in either direction. He put one foot behind the other and retreated, halfheartedly, toward the house. Was he trying to avoid a conversation with Gulnaz? Zeba strained her eyes to see, staying mostly hidden behind the edge of the cell. She arched her back, her muscles stiff from sitting most of the day. She never imagined longing for Chil Mahtab this badly.
She could hear her mother’s voice. She had started her appeal to the mullah before she’d even reached him. She waved one arm back in Zeba’s direction. They were too far for Zeba to make out the conversation, but she could see her mother’s gesticulations. The mullah’s eyes were cast on the ground. Gulnaz was pointing to the heavens, summoning God into her plea.
This much was to be expected. It was the following moment that made Zeba’s stomach lurch. The mullah looked up slowly. He was trying to speak, but Gulnaz would not allow it. She was not finished. He took a step toward her and put his hand on her arm. Gulnaz pulled back sharply then stood staring at him. Her hand rose to her mouth and her left foot slid behind her, then her right. The mullah moved in closer, his head tilted to the side. He put both hands on her arms as if to keep her from running. Gulnaz’s head drooped like an untended puppet.
Why was he touching her? Zeba dragged herself outside the cell. The shackle scraped at the paper-thin skin of her ankle and she winced. The mullah was motioning to the quarters he kept next to the shrine. Impossibly, the mullah reached up and touched Gulnaz’s cheek. Gulnaz pulled away, but her feet were rooted.
Zeba wanted to shout. She wanted to run across the dry yard, climb that shallow hill, and claw at the mullah. She wanted to pull him off her mother who looked so uncomfortable under his touch. She pulled at the chain, but it yielded no more slack.
“Ayee!” she roared in frustration. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. “Madar! Madar!”
Gulnaz turned at the sound of her voice, her fingertips over her lips. She slowly raised a hand to Zeba as if to say all was well. But all was obviously not well. What was he doing? The mullah led Gulnaz to the two-room structure with floor cushions and curtained windows Zeba could recall from her first day at the shrine. Her mother was walking with slumped shoulders. The mullah put a hand on the small of her back to lead her, and Gulnaz twitched, pulling away again but only enough that the mullah’s fingers slipped to her elbow. She stopped walking again and stared at him. She was shaking her head. He was pointing at the door.
“Come back, Madar!”
Zeba’s heart was pounding with the distinct feeling that her mother was in grave danger. What was this man demanding of her? They were in the middle of nowhere, essentially. No devotees had come to the shrine
today, the heat driving them away. The only people who could hear Zeba’s cries were chained to their cells just as she was.
“Madar . . . Madar! Don’t go, Madar!” she shouted. Her cries exploded across the yard with enough force to ruffle the leaves of the acacia tree. Gulnaz turned once more to her daughter and nodded before disappearing behind the mullah’s wooden door.
CHAPTER 37
“MY SON! YOUR LIFE WILL BE LONG, MY DEAR. I WAS JUST THINKING of you when the phone rang.”
Yusuf smiled. He doubted that old superstition had much truth to it, especially not in Afghanistan.
“If I know you,” he teased, “you were probably just thinking about what a terrible son I am not to have called you in so long.”
“Eh, you know your mother well.” She sighed. “Can I help it? If I hear your voice every day, it’s still not enough for me.”
“Do you not care about your other children at all?” Yusuf fell back on his bed. It felt good to joke with his mother. Her sense of humor surprised most people.
“Sadaf is having a love affair with her cell phone, and your brother doesn’t appreciate my cooking enough to come home even once a week. As for Sitara, she’s as self-absorbed as ever. Have you spoken to her, by the way? Have you heard that you’re going to be an uncle?”
“Am I?” Yusuf exclaimed. He couldn’t imagine his sister as a mother. She and her husband still lived liked teenagers though they were both two years older than Yusuf. “Wow, that’s exciting news!”
“It is a blessing. It’ll be a bigger blessing if the child doesn’t inherit his father’s laziness. That man thinks a full day of work is moving from the bedroom to the living room.”
“Oh, Madar. He’s not that bad. He’s got a good job at the bank.”
“Yes, a bank. For a man who’s surrounded by money all day long, it’s amazing how little of it he has. He wants to buy a used crib for the baby. If your sister would have listened to us and waited, she could have been married to a doctor. Imagine how useful it would be to have a doctor in the family. My cousin in California couldn’t be happier. Her daughter just married a heart doctor. Or was it a lung doctor?”
“Maybe a plastic surgeon?” Yusuf asked sarcastically.
“Don’t even start with me. Whatever he is, he won’t have to have a child on a credit card. Anyway, enough about them. Tell me how you’re doing? Have you found a way to help that woman yet?”
Yusuf pulled himself to sitting, positioning the pillow behind him and crossing his outstretched legs at the ankle. Two other lawyers had invited him to a local restaurant for dinner, but he’d turned them down, hoping a quiet evening at home would help him come up with a brilliant way to get Zeba out of that shrine.
“I’m working on it. I can’t believe the way this case has turned out. As if the prison wasn’t bad enough, they’ve sent that woman to a shrine to treat her insanity. They’ve got her chained up and barely surviving on bread and water.”
Yusuf’s mother clucked her tongue in dismay.
“Oh, don’t tell me that! That sounds like a myth. We used to go to the shrine in Kabul but only to pray. I’d never heard of one used for the insane. Is it real?”
“It’s very real, Madar. I think it’s the only one in the country, but it just happens to be here. And that’s where she is. Afghanistan of today would surprise most Afghans who left years ago. It’s a totally different place.”
“Your father and I have been watching the satellite television more and more just because you’re there, but when we listen, sometimes I feel like they’re talking about a country I don’t know. But you’re safe? Are you eating more than water and bread?”
“I’m eating very well—maybe too well.” And he had been. He’d been hazed in his first week in Kabul, his digestive tract less accustomed to the microbiology of the country than he’d anticipated. Since then he’d had no troubles. He was still cautious with raw fruits and vegetables, but everything else moved through him normally.
“Where are you now?”
“Home,” he said, surprising himself with how reflexively the word had come out. “I mean, my apartment.”
This did feel like home, though. Yusuf had fallen into a routine. Drivers knew where to drop him off, and he could walk into a handful of shops and expect to be greeted by name. He knew which streets reeked of waste and which streets were clean. He knew the best street cart for bulanee and the places where his cell phone would get no reception.
He smiled to think of the day he’d come off the airplane, that intoxicating blend of excitement and apprehension. It was good to be here. It would be even better if he could get this case to move in the direction he wanted it to.
“So what’s going on with that poor woman? Did she tell you why she killed her husband?”
Yusuf, trained in the Western concept of attorney-client privilege, debated how much he should share with his mother. But he counted the miles between them and looked out his window at a street full of greased palms and decided there was no harm in sharing a few details with her.
“I haven’t told you what I learned yet, have I? It turns out she walked in on her husband assaulting a young girl—in the worst possible way.” Yusuf was careful with his language. There wasn’t a Dari word for rape, Yusuf had realized when he’d begun his work here, as if not naming the act would deny its existence. Even in the judicial world, it was often called zina, or sex outside of marriage, equating the crime to a lusty and impatient couple having sex the day before their wedding. Zina was a blanket term that covered anything other than a husband claiming his wife.
“Oh no! God damn that bastard!”
“Yes. She won’t tell me much, but from what I’ve put together, she killed him to defend the girl, one of her daughter’s classmates. She doesn’t want to say anything to the judge about what really happened.”
“Good for her.” Yusuf’s mother sighed. “She’s killed one person. No sense in her killing another.”
“I know, but it’s terrible that the truth can’t help her.”
“Truth is a hard sell. You know how we are. We prefer to be polite or to protect our honor. Did we ever tell anyone that we didn’t want your sister to marry that louse? No, because having a disobedient daughter is worse than having a lazy son-in-law. We couldn’t live without our lies.”
Yusuf paused to reflect on this. Lies kept the whole earth spinning on its axis. This wasn’t unique to Afghanistan.
“She’s not a bad person, Madar. She is a bit of a jadugar, though. Did I tell you about that?”
“Really? Your murderess is also a witch? A woman of many talents!”
“She’s inherited her talents from her mother, actually.”
“Where else could children get their talents from?” Yusuf’s mother said pointedly.
“Wait till I tell my father.”
“He knows it’s true. But you did get your hair from your father. You should thank him for that since he’s the only man his age who can stand outside the masjid without his head reflecting sunlight. Now, I haven’t asked in a long time because I didn’t want to be one of those mothers with her nose in her children’s business, but how are things with Meena?”
Yusuf winced. He debated telling his mother that Meena was in love with another man. He didn’t fully trust his mother not to say something about it to Khala Zainab.
“We aren’t a good match, so I would get that idea out of your head. You know, Khala Zainab hadn’t even told Meena that she was giving her number to you.”
“Is that what Meena said? She was probably just embarrassed about it and made that up. How could you not be a good match? You were so cute together as children, and you’re both lovely adults. What more do you need?”
Yusuf shook his head.
“And, Yusuf, you can’t make a decision on one conversation.”
“It wasn’t one conversation, Madar. We just reached a conclusion that it wasn’t meant to be.”
“What would I know anyw
ay? I’m just a woman who’s been married for thirty-something years.” Yusuf’s mother exhaled sharply. “Ay-ay, bachem. When are you going to have enough of that place? The stories you tell me and the chaos we hear about on the news are disturbing. How can you stand to be around these kinds of things?”
Were it not for the static on the line and the specifics of the case, Yusuf could almost have felt like he were only a train ride away from his mother, the way he had been when he lived in Washington. He could picture her, sitting on the living room couch, a basket of his father’s white undershirts in front of her, still warm from the basement’s coin-operated laundry machines. He knew when she hung up, there would be lines on her face from where she’d pressed the receiver against her ear. He pictured the furrows in her forehead and knew she was probably cupping her right hand over the speaker, a habit she’d developed from when conversations across continents traveled across tenuous fibers instead of satellites.
He could almost see out their apartment window, thick metal bars gridding the scene from the fourth floor. Though the view hadn’t been much, Yusuf had spent hours at the window’s edge staring at the building across from theirs and the others that flanked it. When he was twelve, Yusuf’s father had given him a pair of binoculars, hoping he would use them to develop an interest in the airplanes that flew low over their heads. But Yusuf wouldn’t become an engineer, despite his father’s encouragements. Instead, he’d used the binoculars to spy into other windows.
He watched the woman who would undo her pink bathrobe to breast-feed her baby in the mornings. He saw the gray-haired man who flipped through channels with one absentminded hand down the crotch of his pants and another on the remote. He saw the thin, teenage girl who stuck as much of her arm and face as she could through the window grate to keep the cigarette smoke out of her apartment. Yusuf did not feel like a voyeur in watching these private lives. He felt more like a guardian of secrets.