Gulnaz shot Yusuf a look. The young lawyer had gone to the village and knocked on doors. He’d walked through her daughter’s home and met with Hakimi himself. What had he done there? All these people saying Zeba was madder than a sandstorm. . could this be his doing? Or could these accounts actually be true?
Gulnaz lowered her gaze to the floor. Her shoes blurred through her teary eyes.
The pain of watching her husband walk away had never left her. She’d wanted so much for Zeba to have a life free of dark curses. Secretly, she’d been glad Zeba had turned away from the jadu she practiced at home. When Zeba had grown resentful of her mother, Gulnaz had not faulted her. Zeba had believed her mother to be angry with her for the distance she’d put between them, but it was not true. Gulnaz had only ever been angry with herself.
It was heavy, the weight of all the troubles she’d caused and the revenge she’d sought. Gulnaz never fell asleep until well into the night and then only after she’d taken a mental inventory of her children’s heartaches and all the things she could not change. When it was most quiet, she found herself at the window of the room she kept in her son’s small home, her ear to the night listening for the sound of something intended only for her — a laugh, a howl, a heartfelt apology.
She sat now, with knees stiff and shoulders hunched, listening to people speak of her daughter’s demons. Was this all she was meant to see on this earth? And, more important, was this her own doing? Had she been trying to make her daughter stronger or had she been looking for a way to prove herself?
She’d meant only to do right, with every step she’d taken in her life. She’d meant only to thwart someone’s evil eye or prevent a marriage that wasn’t intended or to punish someone who’d wronged her family. Even now, she meant only to save her daughter. She was nothing without her jadu, Gulnaz knew. Like a pulse, its persistence gave her life.
Qazi Najeeb was determined to make history with her daughter’s case. Men were always so frightened by their mortality that they obsessed over ways to live forever: sons to carry on their work, grandsons to carry on their name, their legacies in books, on streets, or in newspapers. Some became more desperate as their black hairs turned silver.
Yusuf seemed hesitant to say what he was thinking. This was a game of chess to him as he, too, hungered for a moment of glory. Was Gulnaz doing the same? Was she using her daughter’s plight to test her sorcery once more?
Sometimes you just don’t know when to stop, Gulnaz told herself. Gulnaz drew in a deep breath. She had much to worry about and barely enough strength.
There was no air in the office.
Gulnaz stood and picked her handbag up off the floor. The men turned and waited for her to speak, but she did not. Without a word of explanation, Gulnaz walked out of Qazi Najeeb’s office.
“Khanum? Khanum, where are you going? Are you all right?” the judge called out after her.
Yusuf wasn’t surprised that she did not turn or answer. Zeba and her mother, he’d surmised long ago, were cut from the same unruly cloth.
CHAPTER 33
DURING THE DAY, ZEBA WOULD WATCH THE THICK CLOUDS DRIFT across the sky, like a flock being coaxed home by a shepherd with a tula, a wooden flute. For the first two nights, Zeba did not sleep. She would watch for the scorpion that walked past her cave, pausing to eye her with his tail curved in the air, as graceful as calligraphy. It distracted her from the meals of bread (which was often stale), black pepper, and water. The black pepper made her sneeze, five or six gunfire convulsions of her body in the span of seconds. They were like small exorcisms, each of them. The water was pumped from a well that, Zeba assumed, must have plunged deep into the ground because it was sweet with minerals, percolated through layers of rich earth. The water brought to mind her cousin.
He was her father’s nephew, a good spread of years between them. Zeba remembered carrying him on her hip as a girl. As a young man, he traveled to the city and worked for a month digging wells. He died, just a foot from water, when the earth’s gases overcame him. Zeba had cried for the boy, wondering how it must have felt to reach the core of the earth and tap into its life-giving fluid, only to realize he would never live to taste it.
At his funeral, women consoled his wailing mother with lofty promises.
“He died bringing water to people. There is sawaab in the work he was doing, and he will be rewarded in janaat.”
It was the kind thing to say, much better than saying he died for no good reason.
In the afternoons, Zeba listened to the mullah pray over each person. He sat at their cells and recited verses in a soft and gentle voice. He asked each man to speak of his troubles, to describe the visions or voices, to seek peace in the scripture. He brought cool water his son had drawn from the well to wash down their meals of dry bread and gritty black pepper.
I suppose the mullah, too, seeks sawaab for his work in this world, Zeba thought.
The first night had not been as difficult as it should have been. The cell was the length of two people but the roof was low, and the mullah had to crouch to pass through it. Zeba spent her time curled on a small rug Habibullah had brought her.
One man called out with a howl that reminded Zeba of a mullah’s azaan ringing out from a minaret. As if it truly were a call to prayer, the others followed. Moans, sobs, and laughter mingled anonymously in the moonlit courtyard. Zeba couldn’t guess at their numbers and presumed no other women were present. Hers was the last cell in the row, and the nearest patient was more than three empty cells away, an arrangement she preferred.
She was almost relieved to be out of Chil Mahtab, having grown wary that her jadu was a watered-down version of her mother’s. Those women needed so much more than Zeba could give.
Her gnawing hunger pains reminded Zeba of Ramadan, the holy month she’d always welcomed with open arms. It was a chance for her to demonstrate her strength, to fast from sunrise to sunset without letting so much as a single drop of water cross her lips. She took pride in knowing she’d never once faltered, even as a teenager. The moments she spent in this cell were a different kind of Ramadan, but brought the same burning hollow in her stomach. She craved the feeling of real thirst and hunger, for it kept her mind from wandering into the dangerous realm of self-pity. Fasting felt holy and necessary and just. She pressed her forehead to the cold earth and prayed her time at the shrine would sanctify her — if that were even possible.
Every day she’d tolerated his drink and heavy hand had been an admission that she’d been powerless.
That girl could have been her daughter. The truth was, when Zeba had walked into the courtyard, she’d seen her Little Girl. Her jade head scarf, her flailing legs, her balled-up fists — Zeba had believed them all to be parts of her own daughter. She was horrified, thinking she was seeing her Little Girl’s honor ravaged by a man she’d fed, excused, and obeyed. She’d seen a scarlet trickle of shame run down the small, pale leg.
By the time Zeba had seen her face, it was too late. There was no going back. She and Kamal were finished the moment her fingers had wrapped around the wooden handle. Kamal had seen his wife anew in that moment, staring at the curl of her lips under the weight of the raised hatchet and realizing, for the first time, that Zeba had teeth, too.
The sound of urgent whispers shook Zeba from her thoughts.
“He’s here! I saw him! Get away from me!”
She shook her head to think of her haunted neighbors.