Gulnaz inhaled sharply. She’d recognized the darkness in Kamal long ago, but she’d not guessed it was this. She looked at her daughter and felt pride rush through her veins.
“You were strong. The judge doesn’t know?”
Zeba looked at her mother.
“Why would he believe me? I’m only half a witness as a woman. And if it comes out what happened. . she will be destroyed again. I have to think of my own children, too. People would say such horrible things to them.”
Zeba’s reasoning was sound. Girls without honor were better off dead, many thought. And then there was vengeance. If the girl’s family was disgraced in town, they could seek retribution. Maybe they would demand Shabnam or Kareema be given to them as a wife or servant.
“One day, you’ll talk to the children about all this,” Gulnaz predicted, her heart torn between her own mistakes and those her daughter could still make. “When you do, don’t spare them too much. It’s much better to believe your children can be your friends. Look at Basir. He knows what you’ve done and why, and when I spoke with him, his eyes glow to hear your name. There is no shame you need to hide from him.”
Zeba nodded. Her throat swelled at the mention of her son’s name. To believe he could still love her was everything. She’d told him so much more than a boy should hear about his parents. She’d yearned to tell him everything, every cold detail, but he was only a child himself, and she could not trust him to keep the fact of her innocence to himself.
She’d told him what she’d seen and that the hatchet had been lying there. She’d told him even that she had been most afraid it was one of her daughters hidden beneath Kamal’s figure. She’d told him she’d acted without thinking. He’d looked at her in fear, as if the most frightening thing in that night had not been the long way he’d traveled alone or the cries of the insane in the shadow of the shrine.
She resisted, though, telling him that she’d picked up the hatchet and swung it, sideways, at the back of his father’s head, only managing to knock him over. She’d stepped on Kareema’s plastic doll, lost her footing, and crumpled on the ground, the hatchet a few feet away. Kamal had howled at her in anger while on his hands and knees.
You whore! I’ll kill you!
He’d leaped onto her, straddling her as she kicked. She’d covered her face with her hands. His heavy hand had clamped over her mouth so that she’d tasted the salt of his skin. She felt a tightness in her chest. Breathing was difficult. She’d not seen the girl crawl away. Like Kamal, she’d not seen what was coming next.
“I think Tamina is going to bring them here soon,” Gulnaz added. “She hasn’t said for sure, but I think she will.”
“Tamina? Why. . what makes you think she would do such a thing?” Zeba’s voice was a whisper.
“She does not have the fondest memories of her brother. It seems he was a menace in her childhood as well, which is why she wanted to take in the children when he died. She doesn’t trust Basir completely, but she’s decent to him and I think she’ll come around once the dust settles. I didn’t understand completely, but now I do. The past months have been hard on her, especially with the rumors about the Qur’an. She’ll come once it doesn’t look like she’s spitting on her brother’s grave to do so. It’s actually better for her that the village hates him so, even if he’s dead. It gives Tamina more freedom not to hate you.”
Tamina. Zeba could only imagine what Kamal had done to his younger sister in the privacy of their childhood home. No wonder she’d kept her distance from their family entirely. She, too, shuffled through life with shackles.
“Poor Tamina. I had never even thought. .” Zeba groaned.
“But she’s survived. Most do, in some way.”
Zeba nodded and prayed that her mother was right.
Little girl, she thought, recalling the way pale-faced Laylee had dropped the hatchet after striking the fatal blow to the back of Kamal’s head. Her hair clinging to her wet face, her hands shaking, and a bottled scream in her throat, she’d looked at Zeba wild-eyed.
Go, Zeba had screamed at her, half expecting Kamal to rise from the dead and strike them both down. She’d faltered, staring at her bloodied hands, before frantically wiping them on her dress.
No, no, no, no, no, the girl had cried in a voice so small Zeba could barely hear it over her own thunderous heartbeat.
Little girl, she thought as she stood inches away from her mother and thought of how many women kept secrets in the vault of their hearts. Just a little girl and already so much to hide.
CHAPTER 47
YUSUF TRUDGED ALONG THE ROAD, HIS SHOES MUDDIED AND his socks damp. He’d rolled up the hems of his trousers, hoping to spare at least part of his clothing from the mud. The taxi driver had dropped him off as close to the entrance of Chil Mahtab as he could.
He should not have come today. There was no true urgency to this visit, nothing he was going to do that could not have been done tomorrow when the sun had been given the opportunity to dry the streets. Yusuf told himself that engaging with this reporter was strategy, not an act of desperation. He stood in the interview room while two guards rambled past, greeting him with a nod. He’d gotten to know their faces, if not their names, and put a hand to his forehead in a friendly salute before unfurling his trouser legs.
He checked his phone and saw that it was just a few moments after two o’clock. He opened his messenger bag and removed his notepad. He spotted his bottle of eyedrops and appreciated the rain for what it did to the air quality. He’d woken that morning without feeling like the insides of his eyelids were made of sandpaper.
He’d missed a call. He looked at the long string of numbers and realized his mother must have called with a calling card. She purchased them from the Afghan market she went to for bread, lamb, and thermoses, items she refused to purchase from any other retailer. She took two buses and walked a quarter of a mile to get to the Afghan store but never complained about the inconvenience.
Everywhere else you go, she would say, they give you beef and call it lamb. They think people won’t know any better. And these thermoses know how to keep tea hot for hours!
You think your fellow countrymen are above cheating you? his father would retort with eyes still trained on the television set. They just speak your language while they’re doing it. We haven’t had real lamb in years.
The longer Yusuf stayed away, the more he found himself imagining what his parents might be doing at any given moment. On his phone, he switched between local time and New York time. It wasn’t that he wanted to be back in their apartment with the wafting smells of the neighbors’ cooking and rattle of air-conditioning units perched precariously on windowsills. It was more that he thought of his parents with a certain fondness. Nostalgia, he thought, was far more elegant than homesickness.
He would call his mother tonight, when it would be noon in New York and she would be home, cooking lunch for his father. She was, doubtless, delivering daily packages of food to his sister as well to keep her well nourished as she thickened with her growing baby.
“Have you been waiting long?”
Her voice startled him. Yusuf looked up and found himself staring into the kohl-rimmed eyes of a woman who had to be Sultana. She wore a knee-length army green jacket, with sleeves rolled at the cuffs. She had on slim-fitting jeans tucked into brown boots, smart wear for the day’s conditions. She stuck out her hand and tilted her head to the side.