“It’s not just a conversation, bachem. You have to get to know each other and see if you can spend your lives together. That’s a big deal, you know. I wish I’d had a chance to ask your father these questions.”
Yusuf could hear his father yell something in the background. His mother laughed and shouted back to him that it wasn’t too late to ask now. She turned her attention back to Yusuf.
“Your father thinks everything’s a joke. But seriously, Yusuf, call her.”
YUSUF HAD WAITED UNTIL THE FOLLOWING DAY, NOT SURE IF HE was being rude or polite in doing so, but it had seemed hasty to call just after hanging up with his mother. Not to mention, he was fairly certain Meena would be home with her parents and that she would be ducking into another room to take his call out of earshot.
“Eh, Meena-jan,” he’d said, hesitantly when he heard her answer. “It’s Yusuf. How are you?”
“Yusuf? I’m . . . good, good. How are you?”
“Good, thanks. I got your number from my mother . . . or your mother, I guess. Hope this isn’t a bad time for me to call. I . . .”
“My mother gave you my number?”
Yusuf bit his lip.
“Yes, is that all right?”
The split-second pause before Meena answered told Yusuf that she hadn’t known. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, shaking his head at the way mothers plotted their children’s lives. He struggled for a way to back out of this conversation gracefully—but then Meena spoke up.
“No, this is a great time, actually. I was just taking a break at work. How’s your day going?”
Yusuf immediately noticed the confidence in her voice. She did not sound like she was speaking with a hand covering her mouth and receiver. She did not sound like she was checking if anyone was eavesdropping. As a matter of fact, she sounded like she was sitting back with her feet casually stretched out before her.
Their conversation flowed naturally—Yusuf’s mother would have been pleased. He asked her about her work and she told him about the United Nations Gender Program. She was an assistant to the director, charged with organizing meetings and coordinating agendas between cooperating departments. Kaka Siar’s family had returned to Kabul in 2002, the year the Taliban were ousted and hope for a peaceful Afghanistan flourished. Even while refugees, Meena had continued her studies, including English. Her command of the language, along with the recommendation of an uncle working within the program, had helped her secure the job. She had aspirations to advance in her post and was taking computer classes as well.
“You enjoy the work?” Yusuf asked. It sounded like an impressive job, especially considering that she’d not had much opportunity for stable schooling. It would look great on a résumé, he thought, and she might even have a chance of finding a related job in the United States. He wouldn’t say that out loud, of course. It was not as if he’d made any commitment to Meena, nor had he even decided that he wanted to officially seek her hand in marriage. Still, he wanted to consider the logistics carefully.
“I do. I work with some really great people—Afghans and Americans. Even some Europeans. They’re all so smart.”
“You know, I was thinking . . . you were so young when our family left. Do you even remember me? You were just a little girl then.”
“Of course I remember!” Meena cried cheerfully. “I was old enough to realize my best friend was going away. I certainly didn’t know how long you’d be gone, though. I remember you being so patient with me. You were the older brother I never had. I think that’s why my father liked you so much even then. You were like a son when he didn’t have one.”
It had been a luxury, in a very difficult time, for the children of each household to feel as if they had two sets of parents. Kaka Siar and Khala Zainab had indeed treated Yusuf like a son, and his parents had done the same for their children. They’d all left just as the Taliban were making their way into the capital, just as both families had realized that there was much, much further for Afghanistan to sink. Yusuf’s father had been dreadfully afraid that his sons would be recruited to fight for one side or the other, or caught in the crosshairs.
“You were the only boy in the world willing to put up with a six-year-old girl. I can’t believe how patient you were with me. I remember you even braiding my hair and telling me stories, but I can’t remember a single one of them now.”
“Glad I was so memorable. I was just thankful to know someone shorter than myself,” Yusuf joked.
“I’m happy for you,” Meena said, her words warm and sincere even through the crackling line. “I’m really glad you’ve done well for yourself, that your family is healthy and growing and that you’re back here. I’m sure you are going to do some great stuff here. We need people like you.”
Yusuf ran his fingers through his hair. Was he really doing this? This was not a casual conversation between childhood friends. Every moment they spent on the phone deepened the expectation that it would result in something serious, something that would tie their families together forever. His sisters had teased him about this very prospect before he’d left, but he’d dismissed the possibility, telling them he had serious doubts about Afghan girls, having lived with both of them all his life. He’d been rewarded with a twist of his ear—by his mother.
“You and I are sort of similar in that sense. Don’t you think, Meena?”
“Yes,” Meena said thoughtfully. Yusuf imagined her tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear with one delicate finger the way she had the other night. He imagined her smiling to hear him flirt with her, words as bold as a profession of love. She was exciting and vibrant, not what he’d imagined for a young woman living in Afghanistan. “Yes, Yusuf. I suppose we are.”
CHAPTER 9
EVERY DAY WAS A STEP FURTHER FROM THAT FATEFUL AFTERNOON. Every day, Zeba was that much more of a widow, that much more removed from Kamal. There were moments when Zeba felt light and liberated. She missed her children dearly, but it was hard not to appreciate the freedom she had. If she did not want to rise with her cellmates, she could ignore their chatter, roll onto her side, and sleep through the morning. She had no responsibilities in the kitchen. Her meals came with impressive regularity. Zeba bathed herself and no one else. She missed Rima’s soft cheek against her own, but there was also a delicious peace in walking without a baby on her hip, without the tiny fists pounding out the hot rhythm of a tantrum, without the mouth seeking her bosom with total disregard for Zeba’s needs. How many full bladders had she held so that the Rima would not go hungry for a moment longer? And Rima was just the last of them—or at least the last one to survive, but Zeba would not think about that now. She was enjoying a moment of lightness.
SHE DID NOT REGRET THE CHILDREN, BUT AT TIMES SHE DID resent them. All mothers did, didn’t they? How could they not bear a little resentment toward people who took took took all the time? How could she be expected to feed them all? Where was Kamal when they were sick or tired or unreasonable?
He wasn’t the type of father to do much for them. If the children were anything less than perfectly behaved and fed, it was her fault and hers alone.
That she’d wanted the children—that her womb had ached for them—was easy to forget. That her heart had bled for and mourned the two babies she’d lost was a fading memory in recent years when Zeba had grown increasingly tired and angry and worn.
When she was young, there had always been more than one mother in the house. She’d lived in a compound shared with a brood of aunts and older cousins. Zeba had expected something of the same after she married, but when Kamal decided they should move away from the rest of his family, she’d not protested. It was a delicious break to get away from a clan she’d never felt comfortable with. His eldest sister, Mariam, had always been too pushy and intrusive. His youngest sister, Tamina, barely acknowledged Zeba and always found reasons to avoid them. If Kamal’s father hadn’t died of a heart attack before even a single hair had grayed, there would surely have been more siblings for
her to dislike.
Zeba wondered if her mother-in-law didn’t sometimes rejoice in her husband’s early departure, but it was unlikely. She was loyal to her family and to her husband’s memory. Kamal’s only brother had been killed by a land mine. He’d lost a sister to a disease that the local physician couldn’t even name. Kamal’s mother shrank into her skin, fumbling through prayer beads and shaking her head in perpetual mourning.
With his father and brother dead, Kamal became the patriarch of his family, though he still didn’t garner the respect he felt he deserved. Day by day, his moods soured. He was bitter toward the children, brushing them away if they dared approach. More often than before, he would send Zeba tumbling to the floor with the back of his hand. She learned to bite her tongue around him and quiet the children with a stern look.
Just keep him happy, she told herself. It could always be worse.
Kamal began leaving home and wandering off, returning late and not bothering to explain his whereabouts. Sometimes he disappeared for days. Once, there’d been no word from him for over a week. Zeba was embarrassed to tell anyone. She doubted she would see her husband again but wasn’t sure if it was because he was dead or disinterested.
On the ninth day, Zeba worked up the nerve to pay Kamal’s eldest sister a visit. Just as she was getting the children ready, Kamal stumbled into the house—his clothes wrinkled, his beard scruffy, and his breath hot and rank.
Zeba steeled herself and asked no questions in front of the children. Instead, she prepared dinner and set it before him even as he scowled.
As things go in villages, people began to talk. Zeba kept away from neighbors and even family. She would pull her head scarf tighter across her face and rush the children inside to keep away the stares.
“Kamal-jan,” Zeba said cautiously on a winter day when she had stretched the vegetables and yogurt into more meals than she’d thought possible. “The children haven’t had a decent dinner in days.”
“Don’t you think I would bring something home if I could?”
“I just thought . . .”
But he was not interested in her thoughts. He threw his sandal at her, missing her head by a hair.
He jabbed at her, both physically and verbally. He made small, snide remarks under cover of a joke as if daring her to react. Their intimate moments were now abrupt, rough physical interactions. Zeba had changed too. She wasn’t the bright-eyed bride she’d once been, but she’d believed their love had a trajectory. There was only supposed to be one direction to their relationship. This was all wrong.
“The war, the years of hardship, they’ve destroyed him. It’s not his fault,” Kamal’s mother would desperately say in the months before her death—as if she’d known she would not be around to defend him much longer. “Thank God at least he is here with us, alive and healthy.”
Zeba would bite her tongue. The Taliban were gone. The West had rediscovered Afghanistan and pale-faced men and even women in thick military gear and helmets roamed the village. There was nothing special about Kamal’s suffering. He’d neither been a soldier nor an amputee. They hadn’t had much but enough to get by with the work Kamal did as a blacksmith.
No, Zeba decided, Kamal would have been the same despicable man even if he’d lived through the glory days of kings and progress.
She cautioned herself to go easy on him. Everything would be worse if Kamal walked out the door and never returned.
But she felt no pity for him. He shamed her in ways she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud. Gulnaz would not have tolerated the behavior, but Zeba was not her mother. She was nothing close to it.
She could see the way Kamal’s eyes wandered through the market, feasting on the women who had thrown aside their burqas. She could see him tracing their silhouettes, undressing them with a greediness that made her face burn. She knew, when he came to her in the night, that he was thinking of a hundred other women—any other woman. He would travel to a nearby city sometimes, disappearing for a day along with money that should have been spent on food for the family. There were some women, everyone knew, who would lie with a man for the price of a meal.
But, to Zeba, the anonymous women were preferable to the vices he took part in in their own village. When Kamal was seen leaving the home of a friend, whispers floated back to Zeba that he was so drunk he could barely set one foot in front of another.
“I just want you to know I’m shocked at what I’ve heard about Kamal,” Fatima, Fareed’s wife, had said slyly. “You can trust that I won’t be saying a word about it to anyone. Some men are like that. I can’t understand it . . . and to think, the rest of the family is so pious and decent. You did know, didn’t you? I would hate to be the one to break this news to you!”
Zeba had no plan. She’d never thought of an appropriate response to such a comment, believing that her husband’s behavior would never be the subject of open conversation within the family. She felt small and dirty, as if it had been her sin instead of his.
The drink made his temper worse. The children knew to avoid him when he came home with glazed eyes. Kareema and Shabnam would pick up Rima and busy themselves pulling the dried laundry off the clothesline. They walked with heads lowered and shoulders hunched, as if they were ducking a blow even before Kamal’s temper flared.
People talked about him. Zeba knew it from the way the shopkeepers looked at her. Their eyebrows lifted when she walked in, and their tone was less than respectful. Zeba never smiled. She made her purchases quickly and with her eyes trained on either the flour she was purchasing or the road straight ahead of her. With each time Kamal was spotted drunk in town, he further condemned Zeba to a life of ignominy. She begged him to consider their family, their reputation.
For that, Kamal had broken her nose, her rib, and half their dishes.
His sober interludes were hardly a return to the man he’d once been—they were moments in which an angry Kamal stumbled about the house, shouted at the children to keep out of his way, and grumbled about needing his “medicine.” Zeba’s couplets soothed her, distilling her fury and despondency into the shortest of verses.
Medicine is what this man calls his liquor
Strange is the remedy that only makes him sicker.
Zeba found it impossible to remember the man who’d whispered tenderly to her in their first days together, whose eyes had welled with tears when she’d given birth to their son. That man had never really existed, Zeba came to believe. He was a creature of her imagination, a way to believe her children had been born of something honorable.
FATIMA STOPPED BY ONE MORNING AND ZEBA HAD RELUCTANTLY invited her in. As she poured a cup of green tea, Fatima explained the reason for her visit.
“Fareed sent me to see if Kamal has the money he owes him. We’re not wealthy, you know, and he promised to pay us back months ago. Oh, look at Basir-jan. He takes after his father so much now . . .” Fatima’s voice droned as she watched Basir pass through their courtyard.
Zeba’s stomach tightened. She hated to admit the obvious likeness between Kamal and Basir, because it made her feel things toward her son that she did not want to feel.
Zeba had even tried to find ways to change him so that she wouldn’t see Kamal when she looked at him. She buzzed his hair to the scalp. She never let Basir wear his father’s clothes. When she kissed him, she would press his face on both sides, his cheeks doubling on themselves and leaving no semblance of Kamal’s likeness.
Basir will be different, she promised herself. He will be better than his father.
He was her eldest son, the child she should have cherished above all the others. He had done nothing worse than other boys his age, nothing out of the ordinary. But from time to time Zeba saw, or believed she saw, a flash of anger cross his adolescent face, and inside her a dark feeling would bubble up, fear that she had re-created Kamal. Most days, Basir would come home from school and sling his arm around her shoulders and kiss her face. In those moments, Zeba was wholly ashamed o
f her ghastly betrayal. What kind of mother was she?
Perhaps she could learn to love Kamal again. Perhaps she could find a way to make him sing love songs again.
It took time to despise or love a husband—this much Zeba knew from her conversations with other women. Neither emotion presented itself on the wedding night or on any of the hundred nights that followed. The way a woman ultimately felt about her husband, whether she would spit his name out or whisper it in rapture, this would be decided over the course of years. It would be decided only after thousands of meals had been prepared, after the birth of a few children, after the death of a loved one, after a few nights spent apart and the temperaments had shifted between hot and cold like the seasons.
Marriage was a sport. One point for love, one point for hate. The heart kept score.
His arm around her shoulders in the moonlight. The way he kissed his daughters’ foreheads. The smell of sweat and iron on his clothes after a hard day’s work. The way he kissed her mother’s hands on the holidays. Points for love.
But the passing of each day saw changes in Kamal’s many moods, a dial turned to a different frequency.
Yes, she’d been too dependent on him, but what else was a husband for? She would not turn to him as much, she promised herself. She had less and less desire to, anyway. The way he turned away when she undressed, the way he snored through her labor pains, the rage-fueled times he’d called her a fatherless whore—those were all points in the wrong direction. The marriage game was not as close as it should have been.
The poor children, Zeba thought. They were not players, but losing all the same.
She loved them with all her heart, even the ones she’d lost—or perhaps especially the ones she’d lost. They were good children. They were her legacy, her creation, even if Kamal had claim over them as well.
So many days, Zeba had woken with a hope their lives could be restored. So many nights, she fell asleep chiding her own naïveté. She thought, If only Kamal had been the one to die instead of his brother.