His wife cried at times, heartbroken for a girl she’d never met. The girl was not their child. Why should they bother themselves with this? Had they not enough to worry about under their small, patchwork roof?
“Raisins, golden ones the color of a pari’s hair and just as enticing! Green ones so perfect your husband will forget his troubles! Black ones to give you the figure of a movie star!”
His voice was raspy. He’d thought of bringing one of his children with him. If he could teach his son to sound the call into the streets, he could save his breath for pushing the cart around. But the boy was young yet, and Walid wanted him to go to school. If they could read and write, they might stand a chance, and he would need them to care for him in his old age, which seemed to be fast approaching. Judgment Day.
Walid would have much to answer for on Judgment Day. What would the most righteous person do with this? Could he do better than standing outside the poor girl’s door and reminding her of the raisins that had ruined her?
He would stay away from this block. He would never hawk his raisins or nuts on this street again. He would lower his voice even one block away so she wouldn’t be tortured by his ridiculous chants. He would leave the poor girl in peace. It wouldn’t be great, but it would be better.
Walid heard the creak of metal behind him.
He should have rejoiced. He’d spent years walking up and down these streets, hoping to hear that creak, the sign that he would sell a sack of walnuts or a half kilo of raisins. He would laugh and smile and watch walnuts tumble into a brown paper bag. He would take a few bills and know that there would be rice, tomatoes, and onions for tomorrow or the day after. He would have a reason to wake up in the morning and bring his goods through the streets again. The sound of a door opening was, usually, a blessing.
He knew, without looking, that someone stood in that doorway. Someone was staring at his back and waiting for him to turn around.
The door scraped again, slowly and deliberately. Walid breathed a sigh of relief to hear it close. He’d been released. There would not be a conversation today, and he had promised himself a thousand times, in the few weighted seconds that had just passed, that he would never dare to roll his cart down this block again.
Walid picked up the handles of his cart, his shoulder blades pulling together with resolve. Leave the family to their private matters, he told himself. It was the only respectable thing to do. His wife would understand. She would stop looking from their daughters to him with those dark, castigating eyes.
The wheels had not yet made one full rotation before Walid was stopped short.
“Agha-sahib, don’t go.”
He took a deep breath and turned around. The metal door wasn’t closed at all. It was open, so narrowly that Walid could not see the speaker’s face but wide enough that a mother’s heart could spill its caged sorrows into the unpaved street.
CHAPTER 31
YUSUF FELT THE CAR’S SUSPENSION STRUGGLE WITH THE ROUGH road. With every jostle, he was further convinced that coming to the shrine was an even worse idea than he’d originally thought.
The car had puttered down the long dirt road leading to a small one-story clay-and-mud building with blue window frames and an arched doorway. A man emerged just as they parked the car.
Zeba stared out the window and moaned softly. “Yusuf, why did you let them bring me here?”
“I didn’t have much choice,” he mumbled. If they’d been assigned to any other judge, they wouldn’t be here, Yusuf noted. Then again, with any other judge, Zeba might have been convicted long ago.
“Welcome,” the man said as Yusuf, Zeba, the prosecutor, and one male prison guard stepped out of the car. “I am Mullah Habibullah. Welcome to the shrine.”
Zeba’s ankles had been chained together. Yusuf, distracted by the surroundings, did not notice her shuffle her feet to position herself closer to him than the male prison guard.
The prosecutor shook Habibullah’s hands and put a hand on his elbow.
“Thank you, Mullah-sahib. I’m sure your esteemed friend, Qazi Najeeb, explained the situation to you. We’re here to have this woman evaluated,” he said, nodding his head in Zeba’s direction. “She’s killed her husband and has been acting erratically. We need your opinion on whether or not she’s insane.”
Yusuf stepped toward Habibullah with an outstretched hand that Habibullah shook firmly.
“I’m this woman’s defense lawyer,” Yusuf explained.
“I thought you might be,” Habibullah said with a hint of a smile. He turned his attention to Zeba, studying her while she kept her eyes to the ground. He was a slight man, dressed in a beige tunic and pantaloons. Over his tunic, he wore a military green vest with zippered pockets. The end of a small turban dangled past his left ear and hung as low as his salt-and-pepper beard.
“Forgive me, Mullah-sahib, but how long do you think you’ll need to evaluate this woman? I want to be back in the office in the afternoon.”
For once, Yusuf and the prosecutor were on the same page. Yusuf had promised to report back to Aneesa, who had seemed entertained by the prospect of his client being evaluated at the local shrine.
He’ll find her insane only if he thinks he can save her, she’d predicted. But I still don’t think the judge is going to stand by any insanity defense. It’s a reach, even for someone as optimistic as you.
“Gentleman, I can sense your uncertainty. Let me show you around, and I’m sure you’ll feel more reassured.”
Habibullah walked, his fingers casually intertwined behind his back, toward a small stand-alone structure that stood in the shade of a looming acacia tree.
The lawyers shot each other a look before following.
“Bring her,” the mullah called out without turning his head. The prison guard let out a heavy sigh. He crouched down and undid the shackles from Zeba’s ankles, replacing them on her wrists. When he was done, he motioned for her to follow the others.
They bowed their heads as they stepped through the low door frame. Inside the mausoleum, the ceilings were elevated, and one side of the room had a small bench built into the clay wall. In the center of the room was a concrete tomb, over which neatly lay a green cloth with gold-embroidered Qur’anic scripture. The room was barely large enough for all of them to fit inside. A narrow shaft of daylight entered through a rectangular window and shone onto the green flag, on a patch it had faded over time.
Zeba turned away from the tomb. There was too much death in this small room for her liking. Her eyes fell on a few handwritten messages scrawled on the walls.
There is no God but Allah.
Allah, the All-Knowing and the Beneficent.
“This tomb, my friends, is the tomb of Hazrat Rahman. He was a wise and learned man, a true disciple of the Qur’an. He traveled to Mecca twenty times in his life, and it’s widely known that he was the founder of this village.”
Yusuf looked at Zeba, who had moved from the corner toward the small window. She was staring out at the chain-link fence with ribbons of every color tied to the latticework, loose ends flapping hopefully in the soft breeze. Just beyond the fence was an open yard with an L-shaped structure on one end. Yusuf saw Zeba’s eyes narrow in on the long flat-roofed structure, barely tall enough for a man to stand in. He could see her breathing quicken.
“What’s that building over there, Mullah-sahib? The one past the fence. .”
The mullah pointed to the door.