“Do you have a specific question?” Yusuf asked. He was sitting at his desk in their main office. Aneesa was at her desk on the opposite side of the room, a phone cradled between her tilted head and shoulder. She adjusted her glasses with her free hand and then rubbed at her forehead and temples. She was busy working on a brief for a new client, a young woman who had been sold into servitude after she’d lost both her parents. She’d been taken from a village to Kabul, and after the family she worked for discovered both of their adolescent boys had been sexually assaulting her, she was passed on as a bride to a man in his seventies. The old man had turned her out two weeks after their marriage because she’d not been a virgin. Now the client had been arrested for zina and was to arrive in Chil Mahtab in the morning. Aneesa might need his help on that case, and he didn’t want to waste time on a reporter.
“I realize you don’t want to give me specific details on this Zeba case,” she explained. “So maybe we can talk about the imprisoned women more generally. I’ve been to Chil Mahtab a few times and the stories in that place range from tragic to absurd, but no one seems to be paying any attention to how easy it is to cry ‘immorality’ at the sight of a woman doing anything.”
“How did you get interested in this topic?”
Sultana’s voice relaxed noticeably when Yusuf asked the question, as if she were afraid he might have hung up on her.
“There was a report that circulated in the NGO world. It talked about the crimes women were accused of and the sentences they received. I read the report and, at first, I was so bothered that a foreign organization would come in to our country and judge us by their standards, but then I took a step back. I realized it wasn’t useful to be annoyed if I didn’t do anything about it, so I decided to investigate for myself. Afghans aren’t going to read the NGO’s report, but they will listen to our news service.”
“I suppose there isn’t much faith in the foreign NGOs.”
“There’s either too much faith in them or too little faith. Some people want them to do everything for our country, and others see them as spies or missionaries. Either way, we’ve got to pull our own weight too.”
“Not many people see it that way.”
“You’re here with a legal aid organization. You might be hearing only one side of the story. Speaking of your organization, what do you think of the representation women are getting once they are arrested? Do you think it’s fair or adequate?”
Yusuf’s head dropped. He struggled for an answer. He knew Sultana was asking him about the general defense women received and the counselors appointed to them. But the words changed as they met his ear, turning into the same question that breathed uncomfortably down his neck each night as he tossed and turned his way to sleep each night.
Are you doing a good job defending Zeba?
“Are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Yusuf muttered. He sat up and noticed Aneesa was off the phone. She shot him a look of concern, her arched eyebrows raised. He nodded back at her in reassurance then returned to Sultana’s question. “Look, some of the women are getting a reasonable defense, but others aren’t. A lot of the lawyers are putting together cases that make me wonder what kind of training they’ve received. Their defense arguments are actually pleas for mercy and almost sound like confession statements of their own. It’s an injustice, especially for women who are arrested on trumped-up charges in the first place. That being said, I don’t know if anyone in Afghanistan is getting a fair trial. Those murderers in Kabul who were tried and sentenced in a week. . that wasn’t really a fair trial either. That was an abomination in the opposite direction.”
Was Sultana taking notes? There was a faint crackle on the line. He listened for the sound of her breathing.
“Did you do all your schooling in the United States?”
“I did,” Yusuf answered.
“What made you want to be a lawyer?”
“I have an unquenchable need to be right at all times,” Yusuf joked. He heard Sultana laugh lightly.
“And you? Did you study journalism abroad?”
“No, I graduated from Kabul University.”
“Really?” Yusuf was surprised. He’d half expected Sultana to be like him, an expat who had returned to the homeland with a foreign education. He wondered why he’d made that assumption. Maybe it was her forwardness or the way she asked questions that didn’t skirt the topic.
“Yes, really,” she said sharply. She’d detected his surprise and was unimpressed by it. She switched into English to make her point. “We do have an educational system here, you know. You don’t have to go to the United States to learn something.”
“I didn’t mean that. Tell me, then, why did you become a journalist?”
“Because I like to know the truth,” she replied without hesitation. “I have always asked a lot of questions, even when I was a child. My family tolerated it so well that I decided to make it my work.”
“Good thinking.”
“Thank you,” she said brightly. “I’m planning on going to the prison later this afternoon to do a few more interviews. I’m hoping to catch the warden as well. She’s been pretending to be busy, but I’m going to corner her today. Any chance you’ll be there?”
“I’m at the office this morning.” And he was, but as the words left his mouth, Yusuf felt a tug to change his plans. “I’ll probably be at the prison in the afternoon though.”
“Great, I’ll be there at two o’clock. Maybe I’ll see you then.”
Yusuf hung up the phone and tapped his pencil against his notepad. The afternoon was looking less dreary than the morning.
CHAPTER 46
ZEBA STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE FENCE AND WATCHED HER mother approach, just as she had months ago. She’d last seen Gulnaz at the shrine when she’d turned to look back at Zeba before entering the mullah’s quarters. Zeba thought back to her shouts, the warning cries she’d sent out to her mother from across the shrine’s open yard. But Gulnaz had never been in any danger. Mullah Habibullah had never intended to hurt her — not when they lived together, not when he left, and not when they sat together to discuss the fate of their imprisoned daughter.
The rain had cooled the air but made a mess of the yard. Zeba’s sandals were wet and the bottoms of her pantaloons had wicked the water from the earth. They could not sit for today’s visit or the mud would cake their clothes. That suited Zeba fine. This was a conversation she wanted to stand for anyway.
Gulnaz met her daughter’s eyes even from a distance, but she did not speak until she reached the thin fence that separated them. She looked at the slick beneath her feet and shook her head. Their feet sank into the ground, weighted by mud and the discoveries of the recent days.
“Salaam, Madar,” Zeba said softly.
“Wa-alaikum, janem. Your color is better.” Gulnaz’s eyes flew over Zeba’s shoulder, scanning the yard for any of her cellmates. She felt compelled to ask about them, as if she needed polite conversation to fill the space of time she was going to spend with her own daughter. “The others aren’t outside today.”