“Yes, they’re probably fine,” she mumbled.
“Khanum Zeba, it’s really important for us to focus on you now,” he said gently. “I think there’s a way to defend you.”
It occurred to Zeba that just a few moments ago she had been watching a stupid card game. How could she have gone from that moment to this one without much warning?
“I know about the girl.”
Zeba stared at the table until the grain of the wood blurred. She leaped ahead, skipping his questions and arriving at the inevitable conclusion.
“Even if I am released from here, I won’t get my children back. If I cannot have my children, there is no reason for me to leave this place.”
Yusuf leaned back in his chair. She was right. The odds of Kamal’s family returning the children to their mother if she were released were slim. Yusuf spoke again.
“Khanum, I said I know about the girl.”
The girl. All this because of a little girl who had been stupid enough to get within reach of Kamal. Zeba didn’t know how he’d lured her into their yard but he had. The poor thing had been so frightened. Zeba could still see her eyes, wild and round with shame. She had looked so much like her own daughters. It could have been Shabnam or Kareema. Feeling took so much less time and energy than thinking. Zeba hadn’t paused to ask questions. She’d seen everything she needed to on the girl’s face, the desperate way she clutched her pants in her hand.
And Kamal. Kamal had stood before her, his back to the afternoon sun. He’d been nothing but a silhouette, the dark shape of a man she hardly recognized. He’d dusted his shirt off. He’d been flustered, nothing more. He’d started mumbling something, but Zeba couldn’t hear him over the roaring in her ears, loud enough to drown out any reasons he might have offered for her to ignore the gruesome scene she’d just stumbled upon.
Kamal wanted her to be something she wasn’t. He wanted her to be the woman who would look away forever.
But she’d seen everything. And Rima was only a few meters away. How could she explain this to the girls? She would never explain it to them. It would be buried with her.
So much had been decided in the space of seconds, in a span of time too short to accommodate thoughts but with only enough room for reflexes.
When had she picked up the hatchet? Zeba closed her eyes. She couldn’t say for certain. She didn’t even remember seeing it leaning against the side of the house. Kamal must have left it there, though Zeba couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him hold it. How often had she asked him to put it away so that the children wouldn’t hurt themselves with it?
Yusuf watched his client withdraw. He let her be, hoping that her thoughts would lead her to a place of use to him.
“The girl, Khanum. She was the reason for all this.”
Was he asking her or seeking confirmation?
She was too young to be so damaged. Had she been the first one? It was too late to ask Kamal. Was that the first time he’d hurt that girl? By the look on her face, Zeba would guess so.
“There was no girl,” Zeba said flatly.
“There was no girl?”
“There was no girl,” Zeba said, each word steeped in resolve.
Yusuf sat directly across from her. Their eyes met, each daring the other to back down.
“But there was, and that girl changes everything.”
“Did you talk with anyone else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you talk with anyone else in my village?”
Yusuf tapped a finger on the table, the ticking of a metronome.
“I didn’t talk to the girl’s family, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
Zeba hoped, for the sake of the girl, that it was humanly possible to forget something so horrible and pretend it had never happened. She needed that to be true.
“Why don’t you want to let the judge know what happened? This girl could be the way for you to—”
Zeba’s face hardened. She stared directly at Yusuf and spoke with absolute clarity.
“She is just a girl and I won’t do that to her. Listen to what I’m saying, Yusuf. There was no girl.”
Yusuf lowered his voice. He understood, somewhat, that Zeba was trying to protect the girl, but he couldn’t let her sacrifice herself unnecessarily.
“I’m sure we can do this in a way that won’t bring attention to her or cause her any problems. We may not even need to talk to her. But we’ve got to share some of this information if we’re going to make any kind of reasonable defense for you. There’s no other way to get you out of here. A man was killed.”
Zeba scowled.
“Anything I say will ruin her. I don’t know if her family knows. What if they don’t know? What if she’s okay now? That possibility is everything to me. I know what they might do to her if they find out. You may not, but I do. Every woman in Chil Mahtab knows. Every woman and girl in Afghanistan knows!”
Yusuf bit his lip. Zeba was right about that. It was a truth he understood the moment his foot hit this soil. It was all about honor. Honor was a boulder that men placed on the shoulders of their daughters, their sisters, and their wives. The many stories in Chil Mahtab were evidence of that fact. This girl had lost her father’s honor in Zeba’s courtyard. If he knew that something had happened to her — the details hardly mattered — she might not be forgiven, even though she was an innocent child.
Whatever Kamal had done to that girl might have been just the beginning of her woes.
Zeba’s eyes drifted off. A guard was slowly walking past the interview room, with a step so heavy that it had to be deliberate. Zeba watched her, her eyes going glassy again. The path was simple to her. She looked utterly unconflicted in that moment.
“Do you think Kamal was the only person killed that day?” she asked in a hollow and monotonous voice. “He wasn’t. I was dead the moment his blood spilled. That girl was dead the moment she was alone with him. There were three dead bodies in my home, though only one had a decent burial and mourners to pray for his soul. They prayed for him. They are still praying for him. They have marked the fortieth day of his passing as if he were some decent soul to be missed. They will shake their heads and talk about what a shame it was to lose their brother, their cousin, their uncle. They don’t know what shame is, nor do they know that there are lots of ways to take a life.”
Yusuf was silent. The guard outside had disappeared around the corner for a few moments only to return. She glanced into the room and continued to stroll past them, stopping briefly to adjust the belt on her uniform.
Yusuf could not argue that defiled girls were worth very little. If something were to happen to that young girl, Yusuf did not want to be responsible either. But there was the possibility this girl’s family would be different.
“Did you hear about the nine-year-old girl who was raped by their local mullah about a year ago? Her parents were paying him to instruct her on how to read Qur’an. Her parents tied him to a chair and cut off his nose and ears. Then there was the case in Kunduz. That ten-year-old girl testified before a judge, and her rapist was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Not every family considers this a shame they can’t recover from. There can be justice.”
“You’re talking to me about two cases in a land of millions. How can I burden that girl with such a risk?”
Yusuf stood, frustrated. He walked the short length of the room and returned helplessly to his seat.
“I don’t know how else to defend you,” he admitted. He ran his fingers through his hair brusquely, feeling his professionalism slip away from him. Maybe Aneesa had been right to warn him against taking this case. He’d pushed it further than anyone else probably would have, and all that had gotten him was information he couldn’t use.