Sultan recounts the latest news from Kabul, Sharifa the news from Hayatabad. They have not seen each other for many months. They talk about the children, about relatives and plan the next few days. Every time Sultan visits Pakistan he has to endure courtesy visits to those relatives who have not yet returned to Afghanistan. First priority is those in whose families there has been a death. Next come the closest relatives, and so on, as much as he can manage, depending on how many days he has at his disposal.
Sultan dreads having to visit Sharifa’s sisters, brothers, in-laws, sisters’ in-laws and cousins. It is not possible to keep his visit a secret; everyone knows everything in this town. Besides, these courtesy visits are all that remain of Sharifa’s married life. All she can demand of him now is that he is friendly towards her relatives and treats her as his wife during the visits.
When the duty calls have been planned, all that remains is Sharifa’s rendering of the latest news from the bottom floor – Saliqa’s escapades.
‘What a tart,’ says Sultan, reclining on a pillow like a Roman emperor. ‘That’s what she is, a tart.’
Sharifa protests. Saliqa wasn’t even alone with the boy.
‘Her attitude, her attitude,’ says Sultan. ‘If she’s not a prostitute now, she could easily become one. Having chosen this useless boy, who’ll never get a job, how will she ever have enough money for the things she wants, like jewellery and pretty clothes? When a kettle boils without a lid, anything can fall into it. Rubbish, soil, dust, insects, old leaves,’ he continues. ‘That’s how Saliqa’s family have lived. Without a lid. All sorts of muck has fallen on them. The father is absent, and even when he lived there he was never at home. Now he’s been living as a refugee in Belgium for three years and still hasn’t been able to organise the papers to get them over.’ Sultan snorts. ‘He’s a loser, he is. Ever since Saliqa could walk she’s been looking for someone to marry. By chance it was poverty-stricken, useless Nadim. First she tried Mansur, d’you remember?’ Sultan asks. The bookseller has succumbed to the power of gossip.
‘Her mother had a hand in it all,’ Sharifa recollects. ‘She kept on asking whether it wasn’t time to find him a wife. I always answered that it was too soon; the boy was going to study. Least of all I wanted a conceited and pathetic wife like Saliqa for Mansur. When your brother Yunus came to Peshawar, he was bombarded with the same questions, but he would never have entertained the idea of taking such a cheap girl as Saliqa.’
Saliqa’s crime is turned over and over until not a grain of dust remains. But the married couple have plenty more relatives they can pick holes in.
‘How is your cousin?’ laughs Sultan.
One of Sharifa’s cousins had spent her life looking after her parents. When they died her brothers married her off to an old man who needed a mother for his children. Sultan is never tired of hearing the story.
‘She completely changed after the wedding. At last she was a woman,’ he laughs. ‘But she never had any children so obviously she must have had her change of life before the wedding. No rest for the wicked, he’d be at it every night,’ he laughs again.
‘Maybe,’ ventures Sharifa. ‘Do you remember how thin and wizened she looked before the wedding? She’s completely changed now. I suppose she’s feeling randy all the time,’ she cackles. Sharifa holds her mouth and chuckles as she blurts out the reckless accusations. It is as if the intimacy between the couple has returned, as they lie about on the cushions round the leftovers on the floor.
One story follows another. Sultan and Sharifa lie on the floor, like two little children, roaring with laughter.
To all appearances there is no sex-life in Afghanistan. Women hide behind the burka, and under the burka they wear large, loose clothes. Under the skirts they wear long trousers and even within the four walls of the house low-necked garments are a rarity. Men and women who do not belong to the same family must not sit together in the same room. They must not talk to each other or eat together. In the countryside even the weddings are segregated; the women dance and make merry and so do the men, in different rooms. But under the surface all is seething. In spite of running the risk of the death penalty, in Afghanistan too people have lovers and mistresses. There are prostitutes in the towns to whom young boys and men can resort while they wait for a bride.
Sexuality has its place in Afghan myths and fables. Sultan loves the stories in the masterpiece Masnavi, written by the poet Rumi eight hundred years ago. He uses sexuality as a warning against blindly following in the footsteps of others.
A widow had a donkey which she loved dearly. It carried her where she wanted and always obeyed orders. The donkey was well fed and well looked after. But then the animal sickened and lost all its energy. It lost its appetite too. The widow wondered what was wrong and one night she went to the barn to see if it was sleeping. In the barn she found her maid lying in the hay with the donkey on top of her. This repeated itself every night and the widow got nosy and thought to herself she would like to have a go too. She dismissed her maid and lay down in the hay with the donkey on top of her. When the maid returned she found the widow dead. To her horror she saw that the widow had not done as she did – thread a pumpkin over the donkey’s organ to shorten it before she indulged herself. For her, the maid, the end bit had sufficed.
After having chortled away, Sultan rises from the cushions, smooths his tunic and goes to read his emails. American universities want periodicals from the seventies, researchers ask for old manuscripts and the printers in Lahore send an estimate of what the cost will be to print his postcards at the new paper prices. Sultan’s best source of income is the postcards. It costs him one dollar to print sixty cards and he sells three for a dollar. Everything is going his way, now that the Taliban have gone and he can do as he likes.
The next day he reads his post, visits bookshops, goes to the post office, sends and receives parcels and starts on the endless courtesy visits. First a condolence visit to a cousin whose husband has died of cancer, then a more enjoyable visit to another cousin who is back from pizza-delivering in Germany. Sultan’s cousin Said was at one time flight engineer for Ariana Air, Afghanistan ’s once-proud airline. Said is now thinking of returning to Kabul with the family and applying for his old job. But he needs to save a bit more money. Delivering pizzas in Germany is far more lucrative than working as a flight engineer. And he has not yet found a solution to the problem that awaits him at home. In Peshawar are wife and children. In Germany he is living with wife number two. If he returns to Kabul they will all have to live under one roof. He dreads the thought. The first wife doesn’t want to know about number two. They never meet and he sends money home like a dutiful husband. But if they all move in together? It doesn’t bear thinking of.
The days in Peshawar are taxing. One relative has been thrown out of his rented accommodation, another wants help to start up a business, a third asks for a loan. Sultan rarely gives money to relatives. Because he himself has done so well he is always asked to help when he goes courtesy visiting. On the whole he declines. He thinks they are mostly lazy and should help themselves. In any case they need to prove themselves before he dishes out the dough and in his eyes few of them come up to scratch.
When the couple are out visiting, Sharifa is the one who keeps the conversation flowing. She tells stories, spreads laughter and smiles. Sultan prefers to sit and listen. Now and again he chips in with comments about work ethics or about his business. But when Sultan with a single word says it’s time to leave, the couple go home, daughter Shabnam in tow. They walk peacefully through the dark of Hayatabad’s dirty-black streets and step over rubbish as lungs fill with the rank smell from back alleyways.