‘But we’ll have less room,’ Leila sighs; no longer eleven, but thirteen in the small rooms. She peels onions and cries bitter onion tears. She rarely cries real tears; she suppresses yearnings, longings and disappointments. The clean smell of soap from the hammam has long gone. Oil from the pan sprays her hair and gives it a smell of acrid fat. Her rough hands ache from the chilli sauce, which penetrates her thin, worn skin.
She cooks a simple supper, nothing special in spite of Sharifa’s return. The Khan family is not in the habit of celebrating women. Anyhow, she has to cook what Sultan likes. Meat, rice, spinach and beans, all in mutton fat.
Every evening Sultan returns home with wads of money from his shops. Every evening he locks it into the cupboard. Often he brings home large bags with juicy pomegranates, sweet bananas, mandarins and apples. But the fruit is also locked in the cupboard. Only Sultan and Sonya may eat it. Only they have the key. Sultan thinks it is a heavy burden to feed his large family, and fruit is expensive, especially out of season.
Leila looks at some small, hard oranges lying on the windowsill. They had started to dry out and Sonya put them out in the kitchen – for general use. Leila would not dream of tasting them. If she is condemned to eat beans, eat beans she will. The oranges can lie there until they rot or dry out. Leila tosses her head and places the heavy rice pot over the primus. She pours the chopped onion into the oily pan, adds tomatoes, spices and potatoes. Leila is a good cook. She is good at most things. That is why she is put to do everything. During meals she usually sits in the corner by the door, and leaps up if anyone needs anything, or fills up the plates. When she has seen to everyone else, she fills her plate with the remains, some fatty rice and cooked beans.
She has been brought up to serve, and she has become a servant, ordered around by everyone. In step with every new order, respect for her diminishes. If anyone is in a bad mood, Leila suffers. A spot that has not come off a sweater, meat that has been badly cooked; there are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one’s wrath on.
When relatives invite the family to a party, Leila turns up early in the morning, having made breakfast for her own family, to peel potatoes, make stock, chop vegetables. And when the guests arrive, she has barely time to change clothes, before continuing to serve and then spend the remainder of the party in the kitchen with the washing up. She is like Cinderella, except there is no prince in Leila’s world.
Sultan returns home with Mansur, Eqbal and Aimal. He kisses Sonya in the hall, and greets Sharifa briefly in the sitting room. They spent a whole day in the car from Peshawar to Kabul and have no need for any more conversation. Sultan and the sons sit down. Leila brings in a pewter washbasin and a can. She places the basin in front of each one in turn, they wash their hands, and she hands them a towel. The plastic cloth has been laid on the floor and the meal can be served.
Yunus, Sultan’s younger brother, has come home and greets Sharifa warmly. He asks for latest news from relatives, and then, as usual, says nothing. He rarely talks during meals. He is quiet and sober and seldom joins in the family conversations. It is as though he does not care and keeps his unhappiness to himself. The 28-year-old is deeply discontented with his life.
‘A dog’s life,’ he says. Work from dawn to dusk, and crumbs from his brother’s table.
Yunus is the only one Leila dances attendance on. She loves this brother. Sometimes he comes home with little presents, a plastic buckle, a comb.
This evening something is bothering Yunus. But he waits to ask. Sharifa takes the wind out of his sails and blurts out: ‘It’s a bit of a mess with Belqisa. Her father is keen, but the mother says no. Initially the mother said yes, but then she talked to a relative who had a son, a younger son, who wanted to marry Belqisa. They have offered money and the mother has started to doubt. This relative has spread rumours about our family. That’s all I can tell you.’
Yunus blushes and scowls silently. The whole situation is embarrassing. Mansur sneers. ‘The granddaughter won’t marry grandfather,’ he mumbles under his breath, so Yunus hears it but not Sultan. Yunus’s last hope is reversed and rejected. He feels tired, tired of waiting, tired of seeking, tired of living in a box.
‘Tea!’ he commands, in order to interrupt Sharifa’s flow of words on why Belqisa’s family do not want their daughter to marry him. Leila gets up. She is disappointed that Yunus’s marriage seems to be dragging on. She had hoped that when Yunus married he would take her and her mother with him. They could all live together; Leila would be so good, so good. She would instruct Belqisa, she would do all the heavy chores. Belqisa could even continue her education if she wanted to. All would be well. Anything to get out of Sultan’s household where no one appreciates her. Sultan complains that her cooking is not according to his likes, that she eats too much and that she does not obey Sonya in everything. Mansur is always over her, pecking at her. Often he tells her to go to hell. ‘I care about no one who has no significance for my future,’ he says. ‘And you, you mean nothing to me. You are a parasite, off with you,’ he laughs contemptuously, knowing full well that she has nowhere to go.
Leila brings the tea. Weak green tea. She asks Yunus whether he would like her to press his trousers for the next day. She has just washed them and Yunus has only two pairs, so she needs to know whether he wants to wear the clean ones. Yunus nods silently.
‘My aunt is so stupid,’ Mansur keeps on saying. ‘Whenever she wants to say something, I know what she’s going to say. She is the most boring person I know,’ he laughs scornfully and mimics her. He has grown up with his three-years-older aunt, not like a brother, but like a master.
It is true that Leila often repeats herself, because she thinks she is not being heard. On the whole she talks about everyday things, because that is her world. But she can laugh and shine, with her cousins, sisters or nieces. She can surprise everyone with funny stories. Her whole face can transform itself with laughter. But not during family suppers – then she is mostly silent. Sometimes she laughs at her nephews’ crude jokes, but as she told her cousins in the hammam: ‘I laugh with my mouth, not my heart.’
No one says much during Sharifa’s first evening meal, following the disappointing news about Belqisa. Aimal plays with Latifa, Shabnam plays with her dolls, Eqbal talks noisily with Mansur and Sultan flirts with Sonya. The others eat in silence, then the family goes to bed. Sharifa and Shabnam are allocated places in the room where Bibi Gul, Leila, Bulbula, Eqbal, Aimal and Fazil already sleep. Sultan and Sonya keep their room. At midnight everyone is on the mats, all except one.
Leila cooks by the light of a candle. Sultan likes homemade food during the day at work. She cooks a chicken in oil, rice, makes a vegetable sauce. While it is cooking she washes up. The flame from the candle lights up her face. There are big, dark rings round her eyes. When the food is done she takes the pan from the hotplate, winds pieces of cloth round it and knots it tightly to keep the lid from falling off when Sultan and his sons take it with them next morning. She washes the oil off her fingers and goes to bed, in the same clothes she has been using all day. She rolls out her mattress, pulls a blanket over her and falls asleep, until the mullah wakes her a few hours later. A new day begins, to the sound of ‘Allahu akhbar’ – ‘God is great’.
A new day which smells and tastes like every other day: of dust.
An Attempt
One afternoon Leila pulls the burka over her head, puts on her high-heeled outdoor shoes and sneaks out of the flat; past the broken entrance-door, the washing hanging out, out to the yard. She picks up a little neighbourhood boy as escort and chaperone. They cross the bridge over the dried-up Kabul River and disappear under the trees on one of Kabul ’s few avenues. They pass shoe-blacks, melon-vendors and bakers, and men who just stand around and hang about. Those are the ones Leila hates, the ones with time on their hands, the ones who take time to gape.