Yusuf casually tossed the two almonds into his mouth. Toasted by the sun, they were indeed delectable.
“I am,” he admitted.
“I heard she confessed to killing him.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“That there are lots of things that don’t make sense and there is something about her that makes me very concerned. She’s not been well since she’s been in the prison.”
“Not well?”
“My friend, sometimes people under a great deal of stress become fragile. Sometimes they start to come undone.”
“What does that matter? If she killed him, she killed him. Who cares if she’s upset?”
Walid was becoming tense. His breathing was laborious, nostrils flaring a bit.
“Well, I don’t think she’s in her right state of mind, right now. And I’m also wondering if she wasn’t in her right state of mind at the time that her husband was killed.”
“So you do think she killed him.”
Yusuf smiled and shook his head.
“No, I didn’t say that. Even if she did, it’s not right and it’s not legal to convict someone of murder if she’s crazy.”
Walid looked at him skeptically.
“The things you’re saying. You’re not making any sense.”
“It’s the law,” Yusuf explained. “The law of this country states that she can’t be guilty of a crime if she was insane at the time it happened.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It’s true. It’s written into the judicial codes that govern this country. We have to respect that. But tell me, Agha Walid, tell me about the man who was killed. Did he prefer walnuts or almonds?”
Walid snickered, both at the notion that a single set of codes could govern this whole country and at the young lawyer’s odd question. His snickers turned into a rattling cough. Yusuf waited for him to catch his breath and continue.
“He was a man with peculiar tastes — nothing I could offer him.”
“What do you mean by peculiar?”
Walid shrugged his shoulders.
“Since he didn’t care much for what I had to sell, I don’t know.”
Walid looked down the road. A mother carried a little girl in her arms. The child was probably old enough to walk but not quickly enough to keep up with her mother’s pace. For now, she would be carried safely.
TALKING ABOUT WHAT HE’D SEEN WOULDN’T DO ANY GOOD, Walid knew. The best thing for that poor little girl would be for no one to know what had happened, not even her parents. Walid had five children of his own, two of them girls. They were much younger than the girl he’d seen that day, but it still gave him chills.
If only he’d chosen a different route that day — he’d be a much happier man right now. As it was, he hadn’t been sleeping very well lately. His wife, after hearing him recount that day’s events, shook her head and looked at him with disappointment. She’d pulled their two- and four-year-old daughters closer to her, a gesture that had angered him. Was she pulling them away from him? He wasn’t the dangerous one.
What was I supposed to do? He was just talking to her!
Walid. She was just a girl. And now that poor woman. .
Walid was smart enough to know what he was and what he wasn’t. He was a simple man who sold nuts and fruits. He worked with his back and his hands to make barely enough to feed his family. He was no oracle. He was no authority figure. He resented his wife for implying he could have done something more even when that very thought had nagged at him since that awful day. If he hadn’t known what was to happen, why had the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention to hear that man speak to the girl?
If Walid hadn’t known, why had he turned away so quickly? Why had he pushed his cart back down the street in such a hurry, his eyes glued to the nuts and raisins as if they were the ones that needed saving? God shouldn’t have put him on that street that day. There was no reason for him to be there. He’d barely sold more than a few handfuls of anything there in months. It had been a mistake.
YUSUF WAS WATCHING HIM, PATIENTLY WAITING FOR WALID TO break the silence, a silence that had gone on so long it was obvious he had something to say. The streets were unexpectedly empty, and the sun hung high in the sky, undimmed by the wispy clouds. There wasn’t even the faintest stir of dust.
“I can tell you this. .”
But what could he say? He didn’t need to say which girl it was. He didn’t need to lead Yusuf back to her house to dig up things that shouldn’t see the light of day. The woman. How could he help that woman?
“Kamal, God rest his soul,” Walid said awkwardly, “was not a right man. I knew that. Other people knew that. I’m sure his wife knew it, too.”
Yusuf felt something pull at his stomach. He tried not to appear too excited. He nodded, a small gesture but one that Walid seemed to need in order to continue. Like an exhalation, a breeze drifted through, causing the dust to rise and settle around their ankles. It was there, under the gaze of the round and brilliant sun, that Walid began to unravel the story of Zeba and Kamal.
CHAPTER 28
MEZHGAN, IN A FLURRY OF HUGS AND KISSES AND PROMISES TO reunite beyond the prison’s bars, had been returned to her family. They would have a real wedding in a month, but for now, the judge had been appeased by the formal union between her and her beloved. Before she’d gone, she’d pressed her cheek against Zeba’s and tried to kiss her hands though Zeba had pulled away.
“I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am,” she’d said. “And just to show you how much you mean to me, I want to show you what I’ve done.”
She rolled up the sleeve of her dress and Zeba gasped. On the pale flesh was a fresh tattoo, black writing raised from the skin and haloed in red. It was as clumsy as a child’s scrawl but clear enough to read—Zeba. Zeba couldn’t believe the girl’s foolishness, to sit while another prisoner had pierced her flesh with a pin, dripping melted rubber thinned with shampoo into each divot, to embed the letters of her name into her young body.
“Mezhgan, why?” Zeba had been baffled. “Why would you put that on your arm?”
Plenty of women had tattoos in Chil Mahtab — names of lovers, hearts, and other symbols. But Zeba had never expected to see her own name carved into another person’s flesh.
“I’ve never met a woman as strong as you,” Mezhgan had professed. “There’s something special about you. I knew that from the day they brought you into the cell. You have magic. You’re powerful. Just look what you’ve done for me! And I know that whatever you did to your husband, you did with God on your side. Every woman in here agrees with me. Every single one.”
ZEBA WATCHED HER TWO REMAINING ROOMMATES SITTING cross-legged on the floor of their cell. It was morning and an odd time for a game of cards, but Mezhgan’s absence left a void none of them had anticipated and there were few ways to fill emptiness in prison. Latifa had borrowed a deck of cards from a woman whose cell was on the second floor. She’d been jailed for leaving the husband who had stabbed her in the belly. Her neighbor, a girl she’d known for a few years, had been jailed as well for helping her to escape.
“There’s absolutely no way I’m letting you deal the cards again,” Nafisa declared with exasperation.
Latifa’s eyebrows shot up jovially. The cell was stifling and hot.
“Accusing me of cheating? Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t need to cheat to beat you at this game. You’re even worse than Mezhgan was.”
Nafisa held her fan of cards over her heart and looked wistfully at Mezhgan’s vacant bed.