The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

  But Aasif was busy anticipating the birth of his first child. Aasif’s family was quieted, their whisperings that he should take a third wife silenced temporarily. Gulnaz and Shekiba knew that he had been debating the idea but simply could not afford a third wedding and another mouth to feed.

  Ramadan came and went. Gulnaz, excused from fasting, glowed with satisfaction as her belly grew large, her cheeks fattened and her breathing grew loud. She huffed walking from the living room to the kitchen. Shekiba had seen many women with child but none had looked as uncomfortable as Gulnaz. It was hard not to notice that she only panted and sighed when she knew Shekiba was around to hear it.

  When the pains came, Shekiba hurriedly walked the four blocks to summon the midwife. Gulnaz bit her lip and twisted in agony, her triumphant grin gone for now. Aasif came home and, hearing the midwife coaching Gulnaz through her moans, left again. Hours passed.

  The baby finally came, just before Aasif nervously returned to a silent house. The midwife smiled politely and congratulated him as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and headed out the front gate. Aasif nodded and walked into Gulnaz’s bedroom. Shekiba pretended not to hear him enter and kept her head over the stove, pouring flour into the hot oil and stirring as it thickened. Litti, the hot flour soup with sugar and walnuts, would help Shahnaz’s womb heal and make her milk come in. Shekiba waited.

  “After all that? A girl? How can this be?”

  Gulnaz mumbled something that Shekiba could not make out.

  “Is there no end to my humiliation?” he shouted. The baby began to cry.

  Even a newborn can tell she is not wanted, thought Shekiba. Aasif walked into the living room and yelled for Shekiba to fix him something to eat.

  “And it better be hot,” he shouted. “I’ve had enough disappointment for today.”

  He fell asleep in the living room, his snores echoing down the hallway. Shekiba tiptoed into Gulnaz’s room. She was lying on her side, trying awkwardly to get her daughter to nurse. Shekiba sat her up and showed her how to tuck the baby under her swollen bosom. Small pink lips slowly opened and pulled together, her mouth closing in on Gulnaz’s nipple.

  Shekiba noticed the funny look Gulnaz was giving her.

  “I guarded a house full of women and children. I’ve helped with plenty of newborns.”

  “Well, I haven’t. If only my mother were alive. It would be different then.”

  Shekiba sighed. If only my mother were alive.

  “What will you name her?”

  “Shabnam.” Morning dewdrops.

  “Beautiful. I made you litti. You are zacha now. Warm foods will heal your body.”

  Warm and cool foods had nothing to do with temperature but everything to do with a mysterious inherent property of the food. Walnuts and dates were warm. Vinegar and oranges were cold. Joint aches and childbirth made the body cold and were treated with a diet of warm foods.

  Gulnaz took the bowl readily. The hours of straining had left her pale, exhausted and ravenous. She spooned the hot soup into her mouth, pausing just once to look up at Shekiba with gratitude.

  “I am glad you are here, Shekiba.”

  Shekiba froze. It was not like Gulnaz to make such a statement and it made Shekiba fidget. She picked up the baby instead of responding.

  “I thought it was going to be a boy. We waited for so long. And in the end, God gave me a girl.”

  “Aasif is upset.”

  “He says it’s my fault. He didn’t want to hold her. He was too upset.”

  “You will have another. You had one baby. The door is open now. God will give you another.”

  “Maybe. He wanted to name her Benafsha.”

  Shekiba looked up in surprise. Gulnaz’s face was calm.

  “Think of that. To name my daughter Benafsha. He’s mad.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I’ve never put up a fight before but there was no way I could call my daughter by that name.”

  “And?”

  Gulnaz’s face twisted with pain. Shekiba instinctively put a hand on her shoulder and leaned toward her.

  “What is it?”

  “She warned me it would be painful.”

  “What would?”

  “It’s my womb. The midwife said my womb would be angry and looking for the baby that used to live in it.”

  “It is angry?”

  “It must be. Oh . . .” Gulnaz moaned.

  The spasm passed after a moment and Gulnaz remembered their conversation.

  “He wasn’t happy. He stormed out. He said Benafsha would be a fine name for a girl, but I think he knows it’s wrong.”

  And if word got back to the palace, it could cast suspicion on him, Shekiba thought. She smiled to think of Aasif not getting his way.

  “I’m going to wash her up some more. She still has blood in her hair.”

  Gulnaz gave a weak smile and closed her eyes, thankful for a moment’s rest.

  Shabnam’s first year passed with two mothers. Gulnaz and Shekiba took turns bathing her, feeding her and rocking her to sleep. Shekiba held her head while Gulnaz lined her eyes with kohl and again a month later when she shaved her head to make her hair grow in thicker. Shekiba served tea and nuts when Aasif’s family came to visit, days that reminded both wives how fortunate they were not to be living at the Baraan family compound. Aasif’s mother made no attempt to hide her repugnance for Shekiba. She had been first to suggest her son take on a second wife, since his first appeared to have been defective, but this deformed creature with another barren womb was not at all what she had in mind.

  She held her granddaughter but kept her eyes roaming around the living room, looking for evidence that her son’s home was not being kept well by his two wives. She had a talent for masking criticisms with compliments.

  “The colors of your carpet finally show! Looks like someone took the time to beat the dust from it, eh? How long had it been? I had to wash my dress last time I went home from here.”

  Neither Shekiba nor Gulnaz replied to her comment. It would only feed the flames.

  “Gulnaz-jan, those cookies that you sent over, they were delicious! How lovely that you’ve finally started baking sweets!”

  “I cannot take the credit for Shekiba-jan’s hard work. She made the rosewater cookies and sent them over for you,” Gulnaz said, pretending to ignore the snide comment.

  “Oh, well, I wondered how it was possible that after this much time you would have started to treat your husband’s palate to something tasty. Shekiba-jan, they were better than the cookies Khanum Ferdowz makes every year for her family and neighbors.”

  “Noosh-e-jan, Khala-jan,” Shekiba said quietly as she refilled her mother-in-law’s teacup. “Please help yourself to another.”

  “Maybe I will. It’s not often that my aroos makes such goodies.” She shook her skirt, a shower of crumbs raining down on the newly cleaned carpet.

  “Who knows, Madar-jan, maybe it’s just not often that we get to taste them,” Parisa said, laughing. Parisa was Aasif’s eldest sister. She often accompanied her mother on visits, leaving her four children at home as she joined her mother’s social circuit.

  Aasif’s mother smiled at Parisa’s comment. Her lips curled up at the corners and the dark hairs on her upper lip cast a shadow. Shekiba opened the teapot and, although it was still full, headed back into the kitchen to refill it.

  Gulnaz and Shekiba breathed a sigh of relief when Aasif’s mother and sister finally left. Shekiba beat the cookie crumbs from the carpet and tossed the larger pieces into the cage for the canaries. They chirped and tweeted with excitement, watching Shekiba as they flitted from one side of the cage to the other.

  Two had bald spots where the aggressive one had pecked their feathers away. Still, they looked content. They watched Shekiba cautiously, occasionally hopping a few inches closer to her for a better look. She reached her finger through the wires and wiggled it. All three birds retreated to the opposite si
de of the cage immediately, horrified that she would dare trespass into their home.

  Shekiba withdrew her finger and watched their wings relax, their syncopated chirping less alarmed.

  CHAPTER 59

  SHEKIBA

  SHEKIBA DID NOT HAVE TO GUESS. Though she recognized the signs, pregnancy was no less of a shock to her. She chewed on a piece of raw ginger and tried to ignore the nauseous rumblings in her stomach.

  I will be a mother. I will have my own baby. Is this possible?

  It meant a permanent break from her previous life. She could no longer float between genders like a kite carried by the wind. No more binding her bosom to disguise her figure. She would fool no one.

  She watched Shabnam pull on her mother’s sleeve and try to pull herself up. She had learned to crawl only one month ago and had already tired of it. Shabnam was a beautiful girl. She had dark curly locks and lashes on her pleasantly plump face. Her loveliness softened her father’s disappointment. But Aasif only smiled at her when he thought no one was looking. He let her crawl onto his lap and paw at his face until he heard footsteps.

  “Come and get your daughter! She’s driving me mad!” he would call out.

  “Shabnam, come and leave your father alone,” Gulnaz would say as she swooped the smiling baby off her father’s lap.

  Shekiba had seen him caress her cheek, the corners of his mouth turning up in a quiet smile as he watched her slap her palms together clumsily. He laughed at the way she rolled around on her back, her feet in her hands.

  “But he’ll always resent her,” Gulnaz said with a sigh.

  “That’s how it is for girls. A daughter doesn’t really belong to her parents. A daughter belongs to others,” Shekiba explained. Gulnaz should have been wiser in such matters, Shekiba thought.

  She tried to hide her condition from Gulnaz, thinking her husband’s wife might be envious. Shekiba dallied in the washroom until the waves of nausea had passed and her stomach had emptied itself. She knocked basins over to mask the sound of her retching. Gulnaz was so preoccupied with Shabnam, Shekiba needn’t have worried so much.

  Aasif did not notice either. After Shabnam’s birth, disappointment temporarily cooled his fire. He opened Shekiba’s door less often and she was thankful for the reprieve. There was nothing about his sweaty grunting that appealed to her and she hated the way he pressed her face to the side, as if her disfigurement might spoil his momentum even in the darkness. But after three months, he had a renewed determination. Shekiba could hope only for her monthly bleeding to save her from her wifely duties.

  With her queasy stomach, Aasif’s visits were even more repulsing. He suddenly had an odor that made her stomach reel. She would hold her breath for as long as she could, taking deep gasps in between, which her husband mistook for pleasure. He paused and looked at her, surprised.

  “So, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Such a performance you put on!” he said with a crooked smirk.

  He did not notice her belly growing until she had missed six cycles of her bleeding. He looked at her curiously as she leaned against the wall to rest after dinner. Gulnaz was knitting while Shabnam slept beside her. Shekiba instinctively tried to bunch her dress over her growing abdomen. Aasif’s eyes zeroed in on her belly.

  “Maybe there is hope for this house after all!”

  Shekiba’s face reddened. Gulnaz’s lips tightened, just enough that Shekiba could see the tension in her face. Gulnaz had confronted Shekiba two months ago, having noticed the way she kept Shabnam’s kicking legs away from her belly.

  When Shekiba had nodded, Gulnaz smiled, but with hesitation. She knew what it would mean if Shekiba delivered the son Aasif so desired.

  Aasif let out a guffaw, an awkward sound in a room with air so thick.

  “We’ll see what Shekiba can do.”

  Gulnaz had whispered to Shekiba as she scrubbed the pots clean.

  “He’s so different from a couple of years ago. Can you imagine that he used to like to take walks in the evenings with me? This same man! The last two years have soured him. I don’t know what he’ll become if he’s handed another daughter. There’s nothing you can do now, is there?”

  Shekiba lay awake at night pondering that very question. She thought back to all the mechanisms Mahbuba had described but it was too late for any of them. Someone had told her about the powers of chicken livers, she remembered, and headed to the market the very next day to buy as many as she could find. She did not miss a single prayer and whispered to the ceiling, her palms open, with a fresh desperation.

  Please, merciful Allah, I am begging you to give Aasif the son he so desires. Satisfy his wish so that we may live in peace with this bitter man.

  Whether it was the chicken livers or the prayers or just God’s will, Shekiba gave birth to a son.

  Aasif walked with his head high, a smug smile on his face as his family came to visit. Shekiba hardly noticed him. She was fascinated with the ten fingers, the perfectly formed pink lips and the tiny chin that nuzzled against her bosom. She had checked him over head to toe but there was nothing wrong—nothing about him was marred or mangled.

  “His name will be Shah. My son, a king among men! And a real one! Not like the coward we bow to now!” Aasif had chosen a name. Shekiba could see the spite in his choice. When he mentioned Habibullah his jaw clenched in a way that made Shekiba shudder. She fretted as she stirred the litti. Gulnaz had tried to make some but had filled the house with thick smoke instead. Gray soot clung to the once-white ceiling.

  Shekiba was not pleased with her son’s name. She had secretly hoped to name him Ismail, after her father, but she knew she would not be as successful as Gulnaz in this battle. So his name was Shah and on the sixth day, they celebrated his birth with a prayer and halwa.

  As the days passed, Shekiba became terrified. There were too many pats on the back, heartfelt embraces of congratulations, baskets of sweets sent to their house. She worried about nazar, that their good fortune would be cursed by someone with a jealous eye. Her king sleeping peacefully, she fired the espand seeds and wafted their protective powers over him.

  Nazar was not the only danger. Shekiba remembered what she had seen Dr. Behrowen doing in the palace and boiled everything that came near the baby. She boiled his clothes, even the evil eye that she had pinned to his tiny blanket. She scrubbed her breasts raw before she let him nurse. Her fears multiplied when Aasif came home shaking his head.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Has something happened?”

  Aasif was cordial with her these days, engaging in conversations as his first wife listened bitterly from her room down the hall.

  “It’s that damn illness again, sweeping across the villages. Even in Kabul.”

  “What illness?” Shekiba asked, suddenly alarmed. Shah was only three weeks old. Instinctively, she pulled her swaddled baby closer to her.

  “Cholera. Maybe you’ve never heard of it. It’s a powerful disease. God help whoever it strikes. I’ve heard that at least twenty families in Kabul are sick with it. The doctors can’t do anything about it.”

  Shekiba knew better than anyone else just how powerful cholera could be. Her back stiffened.

  “We mustn’t let the baby get ill,” she said, her voice quivering. Panic was setting in.

  “Don’t you think I know that? Just take good care of him and keep him inside. You’re his mother so it’s up to you to keep him from getting sick!”

  Shekiba’s mind flew back to her village, watching her siblings waste away in a corner of their rank home. Thinking of her mother, broken at the sight of her dead children, Shekiba boiled, washed and prayed fiercely.

  Please, God, don’t let anything happen to my little boy. He’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever had. Please do not take him away!

  And when the cholera wave passed, there was time for Shekiba to think of new dangers. She would not let the baby near the kitchen and kept him away from anything made of glass. She surrounded him with pillows and
did not take her eyes off him. It was clear she did not trust Gulnaz to watch him. What if he broke his leg and walked with a limp? What if he was hit and lost an eye? Shekiba could hear the names, the teasing, a crestfallen little boy. She wanted better for her son.

  “You know, I have managed to care for Shabnam reasonably well this past year. I think I am capable of holding a baby! What is it with you? What do you think I’m going to do? Drop him from a window?”

  “I’m just . . . I’m just nervous. Don’t be offended, please. It’s just that I don’t want anything to happen to him.” Shekiba turned away so she wouldn’t see the angry look on Gulnaz’s face.

  Shah changed every dynamic in the house, even for his half sister. When Shabnam waddled toward Shekiba, Gulnaz was quick to pull her back, and if she caught Shabnam eating something Shekiba had prepared, she would hold a hand in front of the baby’s confused mouth and make her spit it out. But only when Shekiba was watching.

  It hurt Shekiba to see Shabnam yanked away from her. She loved the little girl as much as she could love any child that was not her own. And Shabnam, who had grown up with two mothers, did not understand why one was now off-limits. She looked at Shah with suspicion, as if she knew he had disrupted her happy home.

  Aasif made the situation worse. Gulnaz no longer joined them for dinner, always making some excuse about Shabnam needing to eat or sleep. Aasif, having just proudly celebrated his son’s fortieth day, hardly noticed that his first wife had retreated into her room for over a week. What he did say to Gulnaz only made her more resentful of Shekiba.

  “Long overdue, but worth the wait. Look at my son! Look at the healthy color in his cheeks! He’s a lion, my son!”

  Gulnaz, listening from her room, bit her tongue, thankful that her daughter was not yet aware of her father’s partiality.

  “Nam-e-khoda. May evil eyes stay away,” Shekiba murmured nervously as she looked at her fingernails, another superstition she had picked up from one of her uncles’ wives, though she couldn’t remember which one.