“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?”