“Yusuf, I didn’t say much. I only told him that I was thinking of interviewing the folks from Zeba’s village and investigating the rumors circulating around her husband. He asked me why I would want to do that and I said because I thought the dead man deserved to have his name cleared if all the horrible things being said about him were lies. I asked Qazi Najeeb for his opinion on the matter, but he refused to say anything else. He was in a hurry to get off the phone.”
“Something clicked, Sultana. I don’t know what it was, but something worked.”
The taxi had just rounded the corner of his road. His apartment was half a block ahead, and it was that time of day that men were milling about the streets. The electronic rhythm of a pop song spilled out of a kebab shop along with the aroma of charred meat. A young boy offered to shine the shoes of pedestrians.
“She’s really going to go free? Completely?”
Sultana’s disbelief echoed the thoughts in his own head. Had Qazi Najeeb been turned by the mullah’s entreaties? By Gulnaz’s pleas? Or had he feared the attention that Sultana might bring to the case, revealing what kind of man Kamal was and inviting criticism of the judge who dared punish the defender of the Qur’an? There was also the possibility that the judge had reached this conclusion based on the truth, having finally received all the facts, even if it had not come in the form of the defense’s case.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did. That phone call you made, it just might have been the thing that got to him.”
“I doubt it.” Sultana sighed. “He didn’t seem too affected by what I said. He sounded annoyed that I was interrupting his evening, honestly.”
“It’s not the way I imagined the case going, but it is the result I wanted. I’m happy about that part.”
“That’s the frustration of trying to do something good here. Even when there’s a real judicial process, the result can make you think we’ve gone back to Taliban times. There was a woman lashed in Ghor Province just this week for zina. Her case went through a real court and in the end, an audience of men watched as they carried out one hundred strikes against her.”
But Yusuf wasn’t discouraged by that bit of news or by the way his attempts to bring the procedural code to life had failed in Qazi Najeeb’s office. He understood that courtrooms could look like anything, briefs could be handwritten and scribbled on sheets torn from a composition notebook. He knew arrest registries could be works of fantasy and that zina could be deemed more criminal than murder. It only meant there was more work yet to be done.
“And what’s next for you?” Sultana asked as if she’d read his mind. “Back to the United States?”
“No, not yet,” Yusuf replied, smiling to hear Sultana ask about his plans. His mother would have the same question for him, though she would frame it more as a demand. He would go back to New York. . eventually. He would be back on his parents’ sofa soon enough — maybe even in time to hold his new niece or nephew — but it wouldn’t be this minute. “I think I’m going to stick around for a while.”
“You are, really?” Sultana asked, a hint of playfulness to her voice.
“Absolutely. So if you have any other questions you want to ask me, I’m still available.”
The taxi stopped at the door of Yusuf’s apartment building. He could see the awning of the gym down the block and made a mental note to get back there later today, feeling a boost of energy. He slipped the cabdriver a few bills and stepped into the street. The smell of diesel and freshly baked bread hung in the air.
“Good to know, Yusuf-jan,” Sultana said. That she’d addressed him by his name and in such a familiar way was not lost upon him. It was the way things were done here — the land where rumors, hints, and insinuations were as solid as the mountains that contained them.
CHAPTER 54
THE CHILDREN HAD BEEN DELIVERED TO HER A WEEK AFTER HER release, brought to her by Tamina, who did not dare step foot in her brother’s home. She’d come in the evening, once the sun had set, arriving in a taxi that parked at the end of the block. She’d paid the taxi driver to wait for her, knowing it was costing more than she and Mateen could afford, but she did not want to be seen by the neighbors whose ears prickled for news from the home of the freed murderess.
The girls had fallen into Zeba’s arms. Basir had stood next to his mother, nestling his head against her side at first, then pressing his face into the sleeve of her dress to blot his tears.
Zeba had turned to thank Tamina, who stood straight as steel.
“I think it’s best you stay away from me,” she’d said, staring at the backs of the girls’ heads. “We are nothing to each other anymore.”
“Tamina-jan, I am so grateful that you—”
“Don’t say anything, please. There’s nothing to say. I did what needed to be done. That’s what a mother does, I think. We do whatever it is God asks us to do.”
Zeba had only nodded, knowing she would not see her husband’s sister again. Kamal was buried beneath two meters of earth and with him was buried everything Tamina wanted to forget. This was her chance to do so, and she would not squander it.
Tamina had turned to slip back into the street when she paused and, without turning, said: “I’m glad for the children, Zeba. You didn’t deserve to die.”
Zeba, her arms still tightly wrapped around her daughters, her cheek pressed against the top of her son’s head, had sobbed loudly and fallen to her knees.
ZEBA HAD SPENT THE FALL AND WINTER AT HOME WITH HER children. Her grandfather, Safatullah, had given her ownership of a plot of land the family had leased to farmers. The rent payments she received were not much, but they were enough to sustain a small family. They’d seldom left the house during the three-month school winter break. Zeba used the time to recover. She’d opened the windows of her home to air out the stench of rotted food and vacancy. She’d raked over the dirt in the courtyard, though Kamal’s blood has been washed away by the heavy rains that had fallen while she was in Chil Mahtab. She cut away the dead branches of the rosebush and let her fingers linger in the softened earth beneath it.
Inside, Zeba swept the floors and washed every pot, pan, and glass in boiled well water. She did so in peace, noticing as she wiped down the walls of their living room that she did not sense the blackness. It had disappeared just as furtively as it had entered. In the room she had shared with Kamal for seventeen years, Zeba separated her husband’s clothing from her own, holding his shirts and pants at arm’s length. She folded each piece and stacked them in the center of an old bedsheet, tying the ends of the sheet into a tight knot. On the coldest days of winter, she’d opened the bundle and used his tunics and hats as fuel for the cooking fires, stoking the flames with a twinge of satisfaction.
The children did not speak of their father. They did not need an explanation, having known what their father was in life. That he was no longer part of their world did not trouble them. They would not miss his violent outbursts, the way he would leap at their mother’s cowering form. Their ears still burned under his twisting fingers, their cheeks still stung from his slaps. They did not miss the sound of breaking glass or the anxiety that sent a stream of urine running down their legs in the middle of the night. It was better and fair that he was gone and their mother was returned.
Let justice find its rightful owner, the judge had said. It was a truth her children had understood without hearing the fable. The jurisprudence of a child astounded Zeba.