“I did nothing for too long,” Zeba whispered. “I lived with my eyes and ears closed when I should have been paying attention. I should have known sooner. But I was not vigilant. If I did nothing then, I can do nothing now. I will do nothing and I will say nothing. I refuse to bring any more shame to my children.”
Yusuf’s elbows sat on the table, the cuffs of his sleeves rolled back. She wouldn’t budge, he knew, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up on her altogether. Knowing about the girl only made him want to defend her more. He could only imagine what the little girl had been through. Too bad the world wouldn’t stand and applaud Zeba for what she’d done.
“Are you saying to me that you killed your husband?”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it? Why would you doubt it if everyone says it’s so? I’ve even confessed to it according to my arrest record. You should drop this case.”
“I won’t do that,” Yusuf said defiantly. “I’ve got to find a defense that will stand up to the prosecution’s case.”
“God is great and you are young, Yusuf-jan,” Zeba said as she pushed her chair back and stood to leave. “There are plenty of innocent people to defend. Stop wasting your time on the guilty.”
CHAPTER 29
“A DEFENDANT’S MOTHER HAS NEVER BEEN PRESENT FOR THESE proceedings,” the qazi said. He rubbed his palms on the end of his tunic and wondered why they were so sweaty. The prosecutor shot him a curious look.
Gulnaz sat with her back as straight as the chair itself. Her eyes were lightly lined in kohl, which made Qazi Najeeb want to touch her cheek as he stared into their green depths. He cleared his throat and reached for the tasbeh, the string of amber prayer beads on his desk.
“I am sure I am not the first mother to be concerned about her daughter’s case,” Gulnaz said as she set her purse on the floor next to her.
“No, you are not,” the prosecutor agreed, reaching for a biscuit from the table in the middle of the room. He bit in and felt the buttery cookie crumble in his mouth. By the nod of his head, Gulnaz could tell the taste of it agreed with him.
“These are delicious, Khanum,” the prosecutor declared.
“Yusuf-jan, you haven’t tried one yet, have you?” Gulnaz asked gently.
Yusuf shook his head.
“No, Khanum, I’ve just eaten, but thank you,” he said tightly. A plate full of biscuits was a far cry from bribery if that’s what Gulnaz was trying to accomplish.
“Maybe later then,” Gulnaz suggested.
“You don’t have to ask me,” Qazi Najeeb said before Gulnaz even offered the cookies. The prosecutor held the plate out and watched as the judge took two and placed them on a napkin before him. “When I was a boy, there was nothing I enjoyed more during Ramadan. Before the sun came up, my mother would make me a mug of sweet tea and cream and let me eat as many of her homemade biscuits as I could stuff into my stomach. Part of me looked forward to Ramadan for that very reason.”
“I made these for my family during Ramadan as well. They would tell me it would have been difficult to survive the hours without these.”
Gulnaz had asked for nothing more than to be present for the discussion, especially since it had become clear that Zeba could not be. Hearing of her recent collapse in the prison hallway, the judge had decided to leave her out of the proceedings.
“I hope that Zeba will be back to herself soon. We’ll have to continue in her absence, and I don’t think anyone wants to delay this case any longer.”
“She wanted to be here,” Yusuf offered. “But she hasn’t spoken in two days. I checked on her again this morning, and she is not improved at all. She’s actually gotten worse, in my opinion. The director of the prison told me that she’s been moaning and rocking in her cell. Her roommates complain that they wake to find her whispering to herself and they are frightened.”
“What are they frightened of?” asked the judge as he brushed crumbs off his desk.
Yusuf had watched Zeba leave the interview room the day he’d confronted her about the girl. She’d walked as if each step had been a great effort. She’d drifted to the wall and leaned against it, her fingers looking for something to grip on to. Again and again, Yusuf had asked her to talk to him, but her eyes had gone wild. Her words were incomprehensible, and those that he could make out didn’t make sense anyway. Her roommates had been quite shaken up at the sight of her.
“They’re frightened because she’s unstable. I was there, sir, and I can tell you that she is not in her right mind. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of what happened when she was last here in your office. If you think that was bad, you would be horrified to see her now.”
Yusuf stole a quick glance at Gulnaz, who had drawn her lips together tightly as she listened. Her eyes were lowered, staring at the floral motif of the small rug beneath their feet. She seemed neither shocked nor saddened to hear of her daughter’s condition.
“It makes no difference. We can continue with the case, as the qazi has said,” the prosecutor agreed with a wave of his hand. “It shouldn’t take long anyway. We have a signed statement from the day of her arrest and we’ve got a dead husband. Let’s wrap this up, and we can move on to the sentencing.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Yusuf said. He braced himself for the reaction he was about to get. “I don’t think Khanum Zeba is in her right state of mind and, thus, is incapable of standing trial.”
“What are you talking about? What do her senses have to do with anything?” The prosecutor was incredulous. The qazi leaned forward as if he may have misheard Yusuf’s words.
“Are you suggesting we delay this again?”
“Qazi-sahib, I am simply stating that she’s not competent to stand trial, which means we cannot try this case now. It’s not really a postponement as much as it is allowing for a proper procedure to be followed.”
“Proper procedure? What you’re suggesting is anything but proper procedure,” the prosecutor roared.
“She’s upset,” the qazi agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore what happened.”
“She’s more than upset,” Yusuf explained. “From what I have seen, she is suffering from mental disease, and I do believe this mental incapacitation began before she was brought to Chil Mahtab. I believe it existed in her well before the day her husband was killed. I think she was not in her right state of mind, and we can all see that she is not in her right state of mind now, either. I think she should undergo a formal evaluation and obtain treatment for her condition. That’s what the law prescribes for situations like this one.”
The truth was Yusuf wasn’t fully convinced of Zeba’s insanity. He’d made a case for it, but given what she’d been through, he imagined the way she’d been acting to be almost rational. She’d been living with a man who drank and beat her. She’d raised four children with him lording over them. She’d walked into her own backyard to find her husband violating a child in the worst way imaginable. Maybe this wasn’t the first time. And their three daughters — had he violated them as well? Two of them were close in age to the girl the raisin vendor described. If the thought crossed Yusuf’s mind, it must have boiled with horror in Zeba’s.
In all honesty, she probably had killed him. Yusuf had to admit that given her motive and the scene of the crime, little else made sense. She would have been out of her mind to do nothing. Yusuf, had he been in her shoes, would have gladly slammed the hatchet into the man’s skull.