Yusuf listened carefully. The judge had called this meeting abruptly, and he half expected to hear that Zeba had starved to death at the shrine. Yusuf was already feeling guilt-ridden for not finding her a way out of there.
“I received a call from the police chief, Hakimi, if you remember his name from the arrest report. He’s been approached by several people in the village who report that Kamal had been seen burning a page of the holy Qur’an a few months back. He wasn’t sure exactly when or under what circumstances.”
“Dear God, toba, toba. .” the prosecutor groaned, shaking his head.
Yusuf bit his bottom lip and his brows lowered. Burning a page of the holy book was an unforgivable transgression. Yusuf couldn’t put blasphemy past Kamal, after everything he’d learned about him. Still, his body tightened with unease.
“I don’t want to have this weigh too heavily into the case, but I’m afraid we can’t ignore it either. It’s got to be considered.”
At that statement, the prosecutor’s ears perked.
“Murder is murder.”
Qazi Najeeb leaned over his desk and peered over the rims of his scratched lenses.
“You know as well as I do that murder is not murder.”
The prosecutor nodded in agreement. It was a truth the three men could agree upon.
“What else did Hakimi say?” Yusuf asked. He wished the police chief would have called him directly so he could ask these questions himself.
“Hakimi has been interviewing half the town, and it seems that lots of people have heard this story. He says it’s hard to imagine how it could not be true with the sheer number of people who nod their heads when he asks if they’ve heard of this.”
Yusuf could imagine it. A rumor started by one person, passed to two others, and then ten more when Hakimi began to ask his questions. Hakimi’s questions, he knew, had likely added fuel to the rumor or truth, whichever it was. He’d seen the same happen in the past. Simply asking about Kamal burning a page of the Qur’an would have made it a possibility. A bit of attention from villagers and the possibility would take root. Soon its roots would spread through the ground, the seed breaking open and through the earth into the light of day.
“It’s a surprising number of people who reported to Hakimi that they had heard the same story from others. One man said he saw Kamal smoking a cigarette in the evening a few months ago and that his hands had been blackened with ash, likely from Kamal wiping away the evidence of his sin. Another man said he heard Kamal saying he had no time or patience for prayers. And, worst of all, quite a few people said they had known Kamal to be a drinking man. He consumed alcohol regularly though no one would say where he might have gotten the drink from.”
Yusuf put a hand over his mouth. He was afraid he would break into a grin, not because he felt good about Zeba’s defense but because it was amazing how much things could change based on a rumor. He kept his eyes on his notebook so they wouldn’t betray him.
“In other news, I heard from a guard that there’s a reporter who is asking questions about this case. It seems this reporter has been to Chil Mahtab inquiring about the women in prison. . you know how these young reporters are. That reporter got wind of Zeba’s case, so I wouldn’t be surprised if either of you receive phone calls about this. I want you to be warned, especially with what we’re now hearing about Kamal and the story of that woman in Kabul who was murdered by the mob. This could get very ugly.”
“People hear this kind of blasphemy and they want blood, but it’s hard to get blood out of a dead man,” the prosecutor mused.
“Precisely. Now let’s summarize before we go too far with this new information,” Qazi Najeeb said with more solemnity than he’d ever displayed. “This case has to be taken very seriously. In Zeba’s defense, there were no witnesses, but the circumstances were so clear-cut that witnesses really weren’t necessary. Yusuf has presented the argument that she may have been insane at the time the murder was committed. She has confessed to it in the arrest report and hasn’t really refuted any of it in a convincing way. It’s hard not to take that as an admission of guilt, then.”
Yusuf shook his head.
“I disagree with that. Since she’s been deemed insane by someone the judge feels is an expert opinion, then her arrest statement should be thrown out. How can an insane person write a true confession? You’ve seen her yourself, Your Honor. Do you think she would have been able to provide an accurate statement for the arresting officer to record? She was barely aware of what was happening even when they pressed her blue thumb to the page.”
“Enough, Yusuf,” Qazi Najbeen interrupted. “Let me speak. The prosecution has a strong case. I am trying to be very fair and open-minded about this case, but even if she’s now been deemed insane, that’s not enough to save her from being guilty of murder. Now, the only thing left to consider is this news about Kamal as a drunk who may have committed a horrible sacrilegious act.”
Yusuf sat forward suddenly.
“You know, the case of the woman murdered by the mob in Kabul was an interesting one. The men who killed her were initially sentenced to death, but then the judge lessened their sentences, even dismissing some,” the qazi added.
The prosecutor nodded.
“They were crazed. They heard someone had dared to burn Allah’s words and they went wild. They were defenders of God in their minds.”
“That’s no excuse for murder,” Yusuf shot back.
“Well, it seems people come up with all kinds of excuses for murder, don’t they?” the prosecutor asked pointedly.
Yusuf resisted the urge to put in eyedrops as he sat in the judge’s office. He rubbed at his sore eyes and knew he was only making matters worse. In a flash, he understood why it was that everyone in this country looked twenty years older than their actual age. He considered the street children who had swarmed him in Kabul — school-age boys and girls who would not have been allowed to cross the street in New York without an adult’s hand clamped over theirs. Yusuf had been fooled by many of the women in the prison, their bodies and children and weariness making twenty-two-year-olds pass for forty. The men, thin and weathered by jobs that made three days pass between two sunrises. Their lives were in fast-forward but, in other respects, they didn’t seem to be moving at all. Was this what his mother worried about — that Yusuf would spend the best years of his life toiling in a land that would give him nothing to show for it? It was possible, he had to admit, that she was right. But he still wasn’t ready to give up.
“What do you want to do then? Would you feel better if Zeba were executed tomorrow? Do you feel that her children would be better off? Does that feel like justice to you?”
The prosecutor shook his head.
“We can’t give a free pass to women who kill their husbands. I’m not heartless, my friend. I’m just doing my job — same as you.”
“I’m doing my job and I’m also doing what’s right.” Yusuf’s voice was thick and tense. He cleared his throat and began again. “I know that’s what you want, too. Let’s find a solution that will work for everyone. We’ve got someone’s attention now, and I don’t know if having a reporter following Zeba’s case is such a great thing.”
Actually, Yusuf was quite certain it was not in Zeba’s interests to have the case scrutinized by a reporter. The trial of the lynched woman’s murderers was still fresh on the minds of the people. College students were paying attention. Women’s rights organizations were poised to march behind banners. What would start off as a battered woman retaliating against her blasphemous husband would quickly disintegrate into a witch hunt. Yusuf pictured, without much stretch of his imagination, a mob dragging Zeba’s body down the street and taking turns beating her with sticks and bricks and car parts.