“What does the reporter want to cover exactly?” Yusuf asked. “Has he heard what people are saying about the husband?”
“I’m not sure,” Qazi Najeeb admitted. “But if he’s one of those pushy reporters from the city, he’ll be asking lots of questions and it’s possible that’ll come up. Hakimi was pretty surprised by the number of people who came forward in this mess.”
Yusuf’s fingertips rubbed circles at his temples, his elbows on his knees. It was hot today, and the buzzing electric fan in the judge’s office was fighting an uphill battle, swirling the same hot air in the small space between the three men. Yusuf could feel the dampness of his collar and underarms.
Something had happened in that village after his visit. It was as if people had been biting their tongues and waiting for a sign that it was okay to shout out Kamal’s sins.
“I’ll tell you how I feel,” Qazi Najeeb said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “I’m tired of the way things have been. People think just because I’m a judge that anything I have has come to me by way of bribes. I don’t blame them for thinking so. Everyone knows the economics of having a case dismissed or a person let out of prison. I’m not immune. I can say that much.”
The two lawyers shot each other uncomfortable glances. Qazi Najeeb seemed not to be speaking directly to them anyway. It sounded as if he’d rehearsed these lines in his mind and was using the lawyers as a live audience.
“You boys are young. Do you know what happens when you get old like me? You sleep more, you eat less, you choose your fights carefully, and you think about what people will say at your funeral. I want my time to leave a mark. Remember the shrine? Hazrat Rahman — that man left his mark and people are still thinking of his wisdom and praying over his tomb. I’m not asking for a shrine,” he said with a fleeting smile. “But I want to leave something people will remember.”
“Qazi-sahib, what exactly are you proposing?” asked Yusuf cautiously.
“We can make sure this case is handled better than the one in Kabul was — even if they are the capital. You know what they did in that case? When they vacated the convictions for some and lessened the sentences on others, they did not consult with the prosecution, nor did they notify the victim’s family. People noticed. People talked. I am not going to be that judge. If people notice or talk about me, I want it to be for good reason.”
“Okay, but if that’s the case,” Yusuf reasoned slowly, “then it would be best to remove Khanum Zeba from the shrine. If we want this case to set a good precedent, we can’t have our defendant starving in a thousand-year-old shrine. I’ve talked to the head of the local hospital, Qazi-sahib, and that’s not the way mental illness is handled here.”
The prosecutor nodded in rare agreement. Qazi Najeeb uncrossed his legs and leaned back in his chair. He thumbed through his prayer beads, getting halfway through the loop before addressing Yusuf’s argument.
“I know. Gentlemen, neither of you have seen the things I’ve seen — especially in the last twenty years. My job is not an easy one. I’m supposed to balance tradition against progress in a place where people are suspicious of everything. We hate things staying the same as much as we hate things changing. You know what the real problem with corruption is? It’s not the money that it costs to have your way. You can treat that as a living expense. The problem is that we’re all puppets. We all have strings on our heads and arms and someone else pulls them: the Russians, the Americans, the warlords, the mullahs, the Taliban. Who isn’t working for someone? You, Yusuf, you’ll be called the American spy, sent here to corrupt us with the laws of the West. They’ve stayed too long. They pulled out too early. They killed innocent people. They got rid of the Taliban. The entire mission was in vain. We people are not of one heart.”
“Your Honor, I respectfully disagree,” said Yusuf. “I’m not anyone’s puppet and I don’t think my colleague here is either. I think there are plenty of people working for the good of the country and our countrymen. I think we do all want the same things.”
“At the end of the day, Yusuf, no one will trust you. They barely trust me. If you don’t see that now, you’ll see it soon.”
Yusuf sighed deeply. The judge was right and he knew it. He’d seen it in the way the prison guards had looked at him, the way the villagers had refused to open their doors more than a sliver, and the way the taxi driver kept looking up into his rearview mirror.
“Yusuf, go to the shrine, get Zeba, and bring her back to Chil Mahtab. Get an idea of how she’s doing now.” The fan had stopped oscillating. Trapped in one position, it clicked and buzzed in vain, barely ruffling the pages of Yusuf’s notepad. The judge didn’t seem to notice. “I’m going to spend some time thinking about this, and then I’ll talk once more with Hakimi to see if anything new has come up in the village.”
Yusuf left the judge’s office and headed directly to the bathroom. He wet a paper towel and wiped down his face and neck. He dug into his bag and found the bottle of eyedrops, shook it, and leaned his head back to catch the drops in between his lids. He blinked rapidly, feeling the coolness move from his lashes to his cheeks like tears.
CHAPTER 40
GULNAZ WATCHED FROM A DISTANCE, WISHING SHE COULD SEE through the outer walls of the house. There was no way of knowing who was home. The apprehension she felt had sharpened considerably during the taxi ride coming over.
She closed her eyes and pictured her grandson, her granddaughters. Basir bore an uncanny resemblance to his uncle, Rafi. When he’d been a baby, Gulnaz had often slipped and called him by her son’s name. It was, she knew, her heart’s urge to return to the days when she could wrap her arms around a child and breathe in the scent of his sun-warmed hair or feel him fitting himself perfectly into the curves of her body. Rafi’s children were blessings, but they pulled away from her quickly. Gulnaz knew it was their mother’s doing. Shokria tolerated her presence and acted as the dutiful daughter-in-law but they’d never had the closeness Gulnaz had craved. Shokria knew she could never replace Zeba, and Gulnaz kept her daughter-in-law at arm’s length, as if it would be a betrayal to her own daughter to do anything else.
There was no alchemy that could change the past. There were only the days ahead, be they few or many. There was only the chance that an ember could be recovered from the ashes and breathed back to life. That was why Gulnaz stood in front of Tamina’s house and tried to will the door to open. She would have waited longer, but the sun was beating down on her and it was unbecoming for a woman her age to loiter in an unknown neighborhood.
Gulnaz moved toward the house, planning her words with each step. She knocked on the gate and moved back, adjusting her head scarf and straightening her back. She wiped the moisture from her upper lip with a handkerchief and put it back in the black handbag hooked on her elbow.
She heard a flurry of footsteps and shouts. Never, in all the times she’d knocked on her daughter’s door, had she heard the excitement of childhood — a certain sign that Zeba, Basir, and the girls had been too ashamed to invite anyone in. When Zeba had opened the door, it had always been just a crack, wide enough only to see who had come calling. The children would peer out from windows or inner doorways. There was a reluctance in the way Zeba would step back and pull the groaning metal door wide. The door, too, had been complicit in the resistance.
Gulnaz had known something was wrong, but she’d only seen part of the picture. She shuddered to think of how much she’d missed.