Zeba was still in the shrine. Gulnaz wondered what the mullah had told her after she’d left. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to face Zeba after she’d left his quarters. At least, though, he’d vowed to take good care of Zeba.
Gulnaz, consumed in her thoughts, did not hear the soft footsteps that crept behind her. When the hand touched her arm, she jerked backward and shrieked.
“Bibi-jan.”
A small gasp escaped Gulnaz’s lips. She stared at the boy’s face before reaching out to touch him. He stared back at her and waited for her to speak.
“Basir. .”
She could say nothing more than his name before her throat swelled so thickly that her breaths slowed. Hesitantly, she touched his shoulder. He blinked, slowly, but did not pull away. She drew him close to her with this small permission and held his face between her hands. He closed his eyes, and two rogue tears slipped through the mesh of his lashes.
“My sweet grandson.” Gulnaz pushed his hair back from his face. She brought her lips to the top of his head and kissed him, feeling his hairs bristle against her lips, the way Rafi’s once had.
In her life, she’d never been apart from her children. They’d been at her side always, especially once their father had disappeared. Sometimes she’d even told herself that his absence was a blessing because it gave her an undiluted relationship with Rafi and Zeba. There was no one to second-guess her decisions. There was no indulgent partner to make her appear severe in comparison. How relatively easy it seemed, in hindsight, to pull the curtains and shut the world out of their small world.
“Bibi-jan, I didn’t think you would come.”
Gulnaz shook her head.
“Of course I would come. I am your grandmother,” she said softly. “No matter what happens or where you are, I would not turn my back on you and your sisters. Your mother’s been so worried, too.”
“I know,” he said. “I. . I went to see her.”
“She told me.”
Basir looked up abruptly.
“You’ve gone to see her?”
“I have. And she was so happy to have at least seen you. It was a long way from here and a dangerous trip for a boy.”
He winced at being called a boy.
“I had to go.”
“I suppose you did,” she agreed. “You had questions for her, didn’t you? Were your questions answered?”
“I wish I hadn’t asked any questions,” Basir admitted reluctantly. He scratched at his head, not wanting to share what his mother had revealed to him. It felt like a personal shame, like his grandmother would slap him for his father’s sins. It was that shame that made Basir realize he believed every word his mother had told him even if he’d stormed away in anger that night.
“You’re right to ask questions and you’re right to be scared to death of the answers. But God gave you the parents you have, and nothing they’ve done is your fault,” Gulnaz said pointedly. She would not shame this boy by naming the sins of his father.
Basir nodded, not daring to look his grandmother in the eye.
“Your Ama Tamina is very angry with me for coming unannounced. She has a right to be angry after what’s happened to her family.”
“She cries a lot.”
Gulnaz let out a sigh.
“She’s lost her brother,” she said simply.
Basir looked up. His brow furrowed in disagreement.
“I don’t know if that’s why she cries. She says things when she’s upset. . she says. . she says my father never brought anything but problems to the family.”
“She’s a distraught woman. Hopefully, she has the heart not to take out her anger on you and the girls.”
“She’s mostly fine with us. I told my mother that, too.”
“Mostly?” Gulnaz was caught on that small word, and it tore her apart like chiffon on a nail.
“Yeah, she’s fine.”
“You said mostly.”
Basir shrugged his shoulders, and Gulnaz waited patiently. Something was coming to the surface, and she needed to hear it. The buzz of the main road filled the silence as Basir chose his words carefully.
“I. . I feel like she’s angry with me. She doesn’t let me near her daughters and sometimes she. . she doesn’t even let me near Kareema or Shabnam. She keeps them all in one room with her at night. They’re scared, Bibi-jan. I know I’m supposed to look after them and Rima, too, but she acts like. . she screams at me sometimes to get away from them. It’s easier for me to be out of the house. That’s why she didn’t even realize I’d gone to the shrine to visit my mother. I sleep in the courtyard most nights, but I don’t mind it. I don’t mean to complain.”
He was carefully reeling in his words, as if nervous that he might be making his situation worse by saying them.
Gulnaz bit her lip. She thought back to what Tamina had said in those few angry moments.
“Oh dear Allah,” she breathed with a hand over her mouth. She turned her back to Basir as the truth hit her. Tamina’s anger hadn’t come from a sense of mourning. She’d not said a single word about losing Kamal or about Kamal being killed senselessly. Tamina, who had lived with her brother every day of her life until she was married, was only angry at what had been done to her family, not to her brother.
She did not trust Basir because Tamina could never trust the son of Kamal. Tamina had no love for her brother. Every cell of her body had seethed with resentment that Gulnaz should have recognized, but she’d not wanted to believe that evil could run so deep. How could she have been so blind?
Basir watched her mutely. It was not his fault that he looked dark with guilt, Gulnaz wanted to tell him. It was the color of the sky reflecting on him. It was completely out of his hands.
“Bibi-jan.”
Gulnaz nodded. This was the truth. This had always been the truth. What had Zeba’s life been? What had her granddaughters suffered? Gulnaz felt ill, as if the contents of her stomach might empty into the street if she let herself think of it a moment longer.
She cleared her throat and choked back tears. She looked at Basir who was pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes with all the stoicism he could gather. How much did he really know? How much of what he felt was just that — feeling?
“We’ve got to get you back,” Gulnaz said, curling a loving arm around her grandson’s hunched shoulders. His head leaned into her as he would have leaned into his mother if she could have been here at this moment. At least Tamina’s house was a safe place for her grandchildren. Tamina would let nothing happen to the children. She wouldn’t let Kamal reach from the grave and violate her peace. Not again.
CHAPTER 41
ZEBA WAS AWAKENED BY THE FEELING THAT SOMEONE WAS standing over her.
“Zeba-jan, what can I do but pray over you?” a shadow whispered. “Gulnaz is right, even if it pains me to admit it. This is no place for you.”
Zeba’s tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth.
“You. . what do you want with my mother?”
“Drink this,” the mullah said as he handed her a bowl of broth. Zeba heard the clink of bones against ceramic, greasy steam rising into her face. He nudged the dish toward her lips and barely flinched when she batted it away violently. Though her eyes had not yet adjusted, Zeba could tell that his clothes were wet with hot soup, the smell of salt and onions mixing with his sweat.
Zeba waited for the mullah to strike her, to yank her up by the hair the way a toddler lifts a doll — he did not.
“What did you do to my mother?” she asked; her question had gone unanswered the last time she’d seen him.