“Your grandfather?”
“Whether he believes in my innocence or not doesn’t matter. He can do nothing for me.”
“Is that hatred in your voice?”
“For my grandfather?” Zeba was taken aback at the mullah’s comment.
“No, not your grandfather. Your husband,” he said pensively. “The wrong spouse can make a person crazy. Or can at least make a person do crazy things.”
“I told you,” Zeba said through gritted teeth. “I’m not crazy.”
Crazy was a river. It swept some away, drowning them even as they clawed for a rocky hold. If she let herself think too long on what had happened to Kamal or what Kamal had done or what had become of her children or what might have already happened to her children, Zeba felt the unmistakable rush of water between her toes, then lapping at her calves, cold and threatening.
Zeba fought it off.
“Like an emerald ring,” she muttered.
“What did you say?” Mullah Habibullah asked.
“Do you know that if you feed an emerald to a chicken, it will pass through its belly and come out the other side without a mark — once you wipe the shit away, of course. All you have to do is be patient and trust the entrails of the chicken to return the truth to you. Then you know it’s really emerald.”
The mullah frowned to hear her curse.
“Are you suggesting I pass you through the bowels of a chicken? Would you come out unblemished?”
The thought of being squeezed through the guts of a hen made Zeba’s lips curl with amusement. She drew her head scarf across her face to hide her mouth. This was how she kept the floodwaters at bay. She found reasons to smile, even as she sat a few meters away from what looked like a row of crypts.
The mullah noticed the crinkling at the corners of her eyes. He peered at her with curiosity.
“You can’t tell by looking at me? You really don’t know?” Zeba jeered as she thrust her chair back. “Mullah-sahib, I’ve already slithered through the bowels of a beast. There’s no reason to test me anymore.”
The mullah picked up the thermos his son had left on the table and refilled his cup. A swirl of black leaves slipped out, a thousand unfurled flags. The leaves had yet to settle when the sound of a rattling chain made Zeba turn her head away from the hills and toward the desiccated honeycomb. The mullah followed her gaze, then traced his path back to her face and the shadows below her eyes. Her face was the shape of an owl’s, with round, inky eyes and a prominent widow’s peak. Her olive skin was smooth, but the last few weeks had sapped any natural flush from her cheeks.
There was a shout, a man’s voice. Zeba couldn’t quite make it out at first. She strained her eyes and spotted a flutter at the mouth of the cavelike cell, so subtle that she wondered if she had imagined it. The voice came again, a loud, slow moan.
“God, oh God, what have I done to deserve this? Help me! Someone please help me!”
Another voice followed — it, too, dragged to the mouth of the cave by a chain.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up! God doesn’t love you!”
But he wouldn’t shut up, whoever the man was. He sat just at the brink of his cell, close enough that daylight fell upon a sliver of his body. Zeba could make out the curved shape of a defeated spine, one gaunt arm, and a cowed head.
“I don’t want to be alone! Please don’t leave me alone any longer! I swear to you I’ve been cured! Please let me out. . I’m going to die here!” It was human but reminded Zeba of the bleating of a sheep being dragged to slaughter, its front legs dragging in the dirt and an instinctive dread vibrating in its soon-to-be-sliced throat.
Zeba’s breaths quickened. She bit her tongue.
The mullah took a sip of his tea, drawing it through his pursed lips in an obnoxious slurp that made Zeba want to hurl his cup against the trunk of the acacia tree.
“He is a sick man. When his family brought him to me, he spoke only to demons that no one else could see. He could not even answer his mother or father. But in the twenty-nine days he’s spent here, he’s shown remarkable improvement. This is what I do,” he said, with a regal wave of his hand. “It’s my calling. I have given up. . so much to devote myself to this work. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to find our true naseeb, do you understand? God has instructed me to do this work, and it is for me to obey. I make people well here.”
Zeba felt her stomach tighten into a knot. The hairs on her arms prickled. Within those cells was the purest of solitude. From the openings, the ill could see the jagged line of mountains that separated this world from the next.
Zeba could see in the mullah’s eyes that he’d already reached his conclusion. Anything she said at this point made no difference. Yusuf would be surprised, but Zeba was not. That was the problem with Yusuf. He devised plans and expected the rest of the world to fall into place.
The lines came to her in a flash:
A woman indignant must suffer from madness.
That ignorant guess is the cause of our sadness!
Yusuf and the prosecutor were at the doorway. They’d grown impatient, and small talk was a chore, especially while the mullah’s son sat mutely in the corner of the room.
The prosecutor cleared his throat.
“Mullah-sahib, I don’t mean to interrupt, but. .”
The mullah glanced in their direction and took another loud slurp of his tea.
“Gentlemen,” he said with his eyes on Zeba. “You are free to return to the prison, but this woman is staying here with me.”
CHAPTER 32
“BUT. . BUT. . BUT FORTY DAYS?” YUSUF STAMMERED. “AFTER forty days, we’ll be dragging her corpse out of that place! Is this your plan for sentencing her?”
Qazi Najeeb was nonplussed. He scratched at the back of his neck and looked, distractedly, at a land deed on his desk. He squinted his eyes to get a better look at the list of signatures on the bottom. He needed to settle this property dispute in the next few days or he could safely anticipate another murder being committed.
“Young man, you’re out of line speaking to me that way.”
It had been one week since they’d taken Zeba to the shrine. For seven days, Yusuf had been pacing outside the judge’s office. The guards, two lanky men in their twenties with holstered guns on their hips, watched him in amusement as he intercepted the judge on his way in. There were no other judges to beseech, and the chances of bumping this particular plea to an appellate court were next to nothing. Yusuf softened his tone.
“Please, Your Honor. I’m asking you to consider her well-being. We cannot conduct a fair trial if she is going to be starved and chained for forty days.”
“Forty days is the standard treatment period. Mullah Habibullah surely explained to you that Zeba is not his first patient. He’s been treating people there for years and has a very good reputation in the area.” The judge was matter-of-fact about the situation, as if he’d not been surprised at all to hear the mullah had decided to keep Zeba for treatment.
The prosecutor scoffed.
“This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?” he accused from the comfort of the floral armchair. He uncrossed and recrossed his thin legs, his knees jutting out like beaks as he leaned forward to toss his manila file on the coffee table. “You wanted someone to say that she was crazy and you got it. Now she’s getting treatment for it, just as you said she would if she were a defendant in America. If anyone should be upset with what’s happened here, it’s me.”
Yusuf couldn’t believe the turn this case had taken. As if the justice system wasn’t bad enough, now he had to contend with the opinion of the town shaman. He huffed, hands on his hips and his necktie loosened.