Yusuf attempted to help clear the dinner dishes and take them into the kitchen. He’d been hoping for a chance to interact with Meena in a more casual setting, but Kaka Siar raised a hand and shook his head.
“You are our guest,” he said with a gentle smile. “You’ve come all this way after all these years, and in a few days you’ll be headed out of the city to do some good work. Let’s not be worried about a few dishes.”
It was true. Yusuf had only four more days in Kabul before he would be reporting for duty. He was eager to start working.
Energetic as he wanted to feel, jet lag was creeping in, and Yusuf’s eyelids were growing heavy. He bit his tongue to stifle the yawns and, not wanting to be impolite, waited until after the fruit and sweets had been served to excuse himself for the evening.
“How many days do you have here? You’ll have to come back.” Khala Zainab rested a hand on his forearm as he stood at the door.
He hoped he did not imagine the look of disappointment on Meena’s face to see him leave.
CHAPTER 6
THREE POLICE OFFICERS HAD ASSISTED HAKIMI IN ARRESTING Zeba. Those men had been gruff, shoving her into their vehicle for transport to the prison located in the capital of their province. They’d been sad to see her go, knowing true justice would have been served if everyone had simply let Fareed finish what he’d started. Instead, Hakimi had ordered the villagers to pry Kamal’s cousin off Zeba, leaving her crumpled on the ground gasping for air. Her children had screamed and shouted, certain they were about to lose a second parent that day.
Once they’d arrived at Chil Mahtab, the officers had turned her over to the prison guards, spitting on the ground as she was led away. Zeba moved through the hallways, her elbow held by a female prison guard, Asma, whose henna-stained red hair was pulled tightly into a low ponytail that made her look stern and decidedly unfriendly. Still, she was a fairy godmother compared to the male officers who’d just left, and Zeba felt her breathing ease.
Asma’s overgrown bangs half hid a lazy eye. Her other eye flitted from the open doors of the prison cells to the ugly ring of bruises around the new prisoner’s neck. They moved through the wide, tiled corridor. Asma, like most of the guards, treated the incarcerated women decently. There were no smiles or pleasantries exchanged, but nor were there blows or menacing looks.
The guards were all women, dressed in olive-colored jackets belted over shapeless ankle-length skirts or pants. Some wore the uniform proudly, excited by the authority they felt putting it on, the knowledge that they were in control and above someone, anyone. Other guards were uncomfortable in it, which Zeba could better understand. They were friendly and decent for the most part. The female guards seemed to appreciate that even they were one accusing finger away from being thrown in jail alongside the prisoners.
Zeba shared a cell with three women who ogled her freely as she was led into their narrow quarters by a guard. Zeba had grown accustomed, in the last two days, to having all kinds of eyes on her.
“That’s your bed. You get the bottom bunk.”
Zeba followed their collective gazes and took a seat on a mattress that was as firm as the concrete floor. The cell contained two bunk beds, a small television in the corner, and a United Nations calendar on the wall. The bunk bed opposite Zeba’s had a dust ruffle of purple and yellow stripes. On the space of wall over it, her cellmate had hung a pink teddy bear in a protective plastic bag. The top bunk had pages from a magazine plastered on the wall — pictures of women in full makeup, Bollywood actors and actresses, and even one of a cartoon kitten, its eyes wide as saucers, its paws holding a bouquet of sunflowers.
The other women in the cell looked her over, taking stock of her mottled neck and skittish eyes.
“So tell us why you’re here. What did you do?”
When the questions began, Zeba shook her head, closed her eyes, and lay down. Her roommates were left to conjure up their own theories. They had hoped a new cellmate would break the monotony of their days. But Zeba, a stone-faced tenant, offered them no reprieve.
They went back to their card game while Zeba lay motionless, listening to their chatter and learning who was who.
There was Nafisa, a sharp-tongued woman in her midthirties whose defiant manner had won her no mercy from the judge. She’d been accused by a relative for an improper relationship with a man, a widower who worked as a blacksmith. Specifically, they’d been seen eating together in a park one evening. Nafisa had never been married, which had not bothered her aging parents until the accusations reached their doorstep. Her three older brothers were furious with her for tarnishing their family’s good name. While Nafisa swore it had been nothing more than a quick bite with a platonic friend, few believed her story. That she’d been an obedient and loving daughter and sister all her life did not change a thing. Nafisa’s mother, fearing her sons would see no way to restore their honor except by spilling Nafisa’s blood, decided to report the crime to the police herself.
With tears streaming down her face and her hands trembling, Nafisa’s mother led her belligerent daughter to the police station and turned her in.
I’ve done nothing, Nafisa had cried out. I swear to God I’ve not sinned!
Take her, her mother had whispered hoarsely. She’s acted dishonorably.
Nafisa had been convicted of attempted zina, or sex outside of marriage. She’d been sentenced to three years.
Her mother visited weekly. Nafisa never blamed her mother, knowing she might not be alive had it not been for her. All her hopes now rested on the slim chance that the widower, a man in his forties, would ask for her hand in marriage. It was true that the meal they’d shared had been the culmination of phone calls and other small flirtations. But it was unclear if the budding connection between them would amount to anything now that Nafisa had been cast as a wanton woman.
But if the man truly wanted her, if he could convince his family to see past this scandal, Nafisa could be released and, more important, her honor might just be recovered.
“I’m not a child. I should be able to eat in the park when I want. And anyway, we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were just eating. My mother had made some bulanee and I wanted to share it with him,” she insisted, her voice unwavering.
“I bet that wasn’t all you shared with him,” cackled Latifa.
Latifa, who had relinquished the bottom bunk to Zeba, was a brazen twenty-five-year-old with a deep voice and wide body. She looked as if she were snarling even when she was at her most cheerful. Latifa had never really looked like a child, nor had her family ever treated her like one. She’d been beaten and cursed at until the day she’d decided she could take no more. Without much fuss or planning, Latifa slipped a few of her father’s cigarettes into her jacket pocket, took her fifteen-year-old sister by the hand, and walked calmly out the front door, never expecting they would be missed. She took the local bus to a larger city and from there she found another bus that would take her to Herat, where she hoped they could escape into Iran. Latifa ran out of money quickly. She was two days’ travel from home and needed a place to stay, so she befriended a woman in the market, explaining that she was a widow and passing her sister off as her daughter. The woman reluctantly offered to shelter them for the night.
In the morning, Latifa and her sister returned to the bus station to continue their journey. At a checkpoint, the police questioned her and, seeing the way her sister shifted under their gaze, became suspicious. When they accused her of intending to prostitute her sister, she became indignant. She reported that she’d spent the night in the home of a decent woman, but by then they’d tracked down her family and decided she could be charged with kidnapping and with running away from home. Her sister had been returned to their home and, shortly thereafter, married off to a distant relative. Latifa had then refused an attorney, choosing instead to represent herself before the judge.