“My mother’s here!”
Yahya runs to the door. Once the door opens the house is filled with the smell of Mahnaz — and my mother too! I hurtle down the passageway. An old woman walks into the courtyard behind Mahnaz. But she is not my mother. Mahnaz doesn’t close the street door. She stands completely still, as if she wants the old woman to finish what she has to say and leave as quickly as possible.
“Grandma!”
Yahya tries to run out to the courtyard, but I hold him back.
“Yahya, your granny mustn’t see me!”
He stares at me with complete bewilderment. We fall silent. He drops his question, and his little head.
“One day grandmother said that you had died in Pul-e-Charkhi … but she can’t say that anymore, can she, if she sees you’re alive?”
“But, Yahya, I’m not really your …”
No, I can’t bring myself to say it.
“When I told her that you came to see me in my dreams and one day I would catch you, she laughed in my face and got cross with me … But if she sees you now …”
“I’ll go and tell her I’m back myself. Now, go and see how your uncle is doing …”
With a heavy heart, the child returns to Moheb’s room. The old woman has come nearly as far as the terrace. Stealthily, on tiptoe, I creep back to the room. Through the open window I can hear Mahnaz’s mother-in-law say, “You can do what you want, but I’m taking Yahya with me. I’m not leaving my grandson in the care of a madwoman!”
I lift a corner of the curtain and peer cautiously outside. Mahnaz is still standing by the open street door. Her face is rigid. She’s seething inside. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I can guess. She pronounces the words very slowly, as if she were doling them out. Her mother-in-law sits on the steps up to the terrace. Her shaking voice echoes again:
“… Anwar will show you we have not yet completely lost our honor!”
As she makes her reply, Mahnaz points toward the door. Silenced and exhausted, her mother-in-law drags herself up from the steps, adjusts her veil, and heads for the street. Her voice echoes through the front yard of her dead son:
“So now you’re so important, you have the audacity to throw me out of my own son’s house! Mark my words, you’ll regret …”
Her voice follows her bent old body and disappears into the street. Mahnaz closes the door firmly behind her, and turns toward the house. I wait in the corridor. Yahya too.
The child opens the door to his mother. Like Yahya, I want to throw myself in Mahnaz’s arms. She smells of my mother. My heart pounds. My hands shake. My tongue manages, “Hello … how are you?”
Mahnaz takes off her shoes that have kicked up the living room carpet. This time she doesn’t tuck away the hair that has fallen in front of her eyes. With lowered gaze she draws her little son’s head into her arms.
Why won’t she look at me?
“I found your house. They’re all fine. I saw your mother. I told her everything. Thank God you didn’t go there. At prayer time this morning, they searched the house. They were looking for pamphlets. They said you were out distributing leaflets last night …”
“That’s not true! Believe me …”
“It’s OK, I know …”
“How’s my mother?”
“Everyone is fine. But anxious.”
“Why didn’t my mother come back with you?”
“She wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let her.”
Why not, I wonder. Mahnaz tells Yahya to go to his room. She answers my unspoken question:
“Your house may well be under surveillance. Your mother’s coming here would be incredibly dangerous. Meanwhile, she’s trying to come up with a plan to get you out of this mess. She wants you to leave Kabul as soon as you can. She’ll come over later this afternoon. I’ve told her where we live.”
Her eyes, hidden by her hair, still avoid mine.
What else is she hiding?
She leaves. In the privacy of her room, she lifts the weight of my questioning gaze from her worn-out body, and sits down.
All at once, the scent of my mother evaporates from the corridor.
If I didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here.
If I wasn’t here, Mahnaz would cry her eyes out; she would go wild with grief. Instead, she pens in her tears and her fury. Instead, she immolates her anguish in a pit at the bottom of her heart, until she’s alone again.
Just like my mother. Only once did I ever see her cry — on the day my father took another wife. My mother appealed to my uncle — her brother — who was close to my father. My uncle laughed in her face. He sided with my father. My mother sobbed and wailed. And then my grandfather gave her a little talisman, something Da Mullah Saed Mustafa had given him a long time ago. From that day on, whenever my mother felt her fury rise, she put the talisman between her teeth and bit down on it as hard as she could. Clamped down on her gag, my mother’s twisted mouth would not let out a cry. Her eyes lit up with fear, she’d make herself busy with menial tasks in the kitchen. Sometimes, she’d even rewash the dishes. After a while, she’d perform her ablutions and say a prayer of atonement.
I never understood what it was exactly that she needed to purge: anger or hate? Pride or humiliation?
My mother would say that all the water in the world had sprung from her tears.
“Have some grapes, Father!”
Yahya, bearing a bunch of grapes, has slipped in quietly; he crosses his legs and sits down next to me. I pull myself up on the cushion.
“Where’s your mother?”
“In the kitchen.”
I take a grape from the bunch and drop it into my mouth. Yahya holds the grapes up in front of me like an offering.
I wonder whether Mahnaz told her mother-in-law anything about me that could have made her angry and fear for her honor.
I stand up.
“Honor”: what an honorless word it is!
I must talk to Mahnaz. Why has she gone to so much trouble, and fought with her mother-in-law, for my sake? Why does she want to protect me, no matter what the cost?
Maybe she won’t protect me. Maybe this is all a trap. She wants something from me. But what? Am I stuck here? Why would she want to keep a strange man hidden in her house? So we can have an affair on the sly? After all, she’s certainly very intimate with her brother. She puts her breast in his mouth …
No. I can’t stay here a minute longer! I move toward the corridor. Clasping the bunch of grapes, Yahya stares at my clumsiness.
How could I think of Mahnaz like that! Why can’t I believe that a woman could rescue a strange man without any ulterior motive? Maybe rescuing me is an attempt to redress the balance since she couldn’t save her husband. Maybe by helping me, she’ll reclaim her dignity.
I sit down on the cushion again.
For the sake of Mahnaz and her secret, I’ve abandoned my mother — left her walled up alone with her fears all night long; I’ve condemned Parwaneh to stare from her window, hopelessly, for hours on end; I’ve left Farid, dejected, waiting outside my bedroom door …
I take the bunch of grapes from Yahya.
The mystery of Mahnaz is hidden in the lock of hair that she keeps having to tuck behind her ear.
I give myself up to the lifeless flowers on the cushion.
I’ve never felt this close to a woman before apart from my mother and Parwaneh. I’ve never been part of another woman’s life. No other woman has ever entered my consciousness like this. In the space of just one night, I have gone through a thousand different emotions with this woman, as though something momentous has happened between us. She has given me shelter. My life is in her hands. It is hers.