A Broken Heart
For several days now Leila has been receiving letters. Letters that have caused her to freeze with fear, her heart to beat faster than normal and her mind to forget everything else. After having read them she tears them into little bits and throws them in the stove.
The letters cause her to dream. About another life. The scribbles give her thoughts a lift and her life some quivering excitement. Both are new to Leila. Suddenly there is a world inside her head she never knew existed.
‘I want to fly! I want to escape!’ she shouts one day while sweeping the floor. ‘Out!’ she cries and swings the broom around the room.
‘What did you say?’ Sonya asks and looks up from the floor where she is sitting gazing into space and moving her fingers over the pattern in the carpet.
‘Nothing,’ answers Leila. She cannot stand it any longer. The house is a prison. ‘Why is everything so difficult?’ she moans. She normally hates going out, but she feels she cannot stay inside. She goes to the market. Fifteen minutes later she returns with a bag of onions, and is received with suspicion.
‘Do you go out just to buy onions? Are you so keen to show yourself off that you go to the bazaar when we really don’t need anything?’ Sharifa is in a cutting mood. ‘Next time you should send one of the small boys.’
Shopping is really the work of men and old women. It is unseemly for young women to stop and bargain with shop-owners or men in the market. All shops and stalls belong to men and during the Taliban period the authorities banned women from going to market alone; now Sharifa, in her dark dissatisfaction, bans her too.
Leila doesn’t answer. As if she were interested in talking to an onion-vendor! She uses the lot, just to show Sharifa that the onions really were needed.
She’s in the kitchen when the boys return. She hears Aimal cluck behind her and shrinks. Her heart beats faster. She has asked him not to bring any more letters. But Aimal pushes a letter on her, and a hard package. She hides both under her dress and rushes to her casket and locks it all up. While the others eat she sneaks out and into the room where all her treasures are kept. With trembling hands she unlocks the casket and unfolds the piece of paper.
Dear L. You must answer me now. My heart burns for you. You are so beautiful, do you want to remove my sorrow or must I live in darkness for ever? My life is in your hands. Please, send me a token. I want to meet you; answer me. I want to share my life with you. With love from K.
The package contains a watch, a watch with blue glass and a silver-coloured strap. She puts it on but quickly takes it off again. She can never wear it. What could she say if the others asked her who gave it to her? She blushes. What if the brothers get to know about it, or her mother? Fear and loathing, what shame. Sultan and Yunus would both condemn her. By accepting the letters she commits an immoral act.
‘Do you feel the same as me?’ he had asked. She doesn’t really feel anything. She is desperate; a new reality has been forced on her. For the first time in her life someone is demanding an answer from her. He wants to know what she feels, what she thinks. But she feels nothing; she is not used to feeling anything. And she tells herself that she feels nothing because she knows she must feel nothing. Feelings are a disgrace, Leila has been taught.
Karim feels. Karim has seen her once. That was the time she and Sonya delivered lunch to the boys in the hotel. Karim had caught only a quick glimpse of her, but there was something about her which made him realise that she was the right one for him: the round, pale face, the beautiful skin, her eyes.
Karim lives alone in one room and works for a Japanese TV company. He is lonely. His mother was killed by shrapnel, which landed in their backyard during the civil war. His father quickly took a new wife, whom Karim could not get on with, and who did not like Karim. She didn’t care for the children from the first marriage and beat them when the father was not around. Karim never complained. His father had chosen her, not them. After he’d finished school he worked with his father in his pharmacy in Jalalabad but in the end he couldn’t bear living with his new family. His younger sister was married off to a man in Kabul, and Karim followed them, and lived with them. He studied odds and ends at the university and when the Taliban fled and hordes of journalists filled Kabul ’s hotels and guesthouses, Karim turned up and offered his English skills to the highest bidder. He was lucky and procured a job with a company who established an office in Kabul and gave Karim a long contract with a good salary. They paid for his room in the hotel. There Karim got to know Mansur and the rest of the Khan family. He liked the family, their bookshop, their knowledge, their level-headedness. A good family, he thought.
When Karim caught sight of Leila he was smitten. But Leila never returned to the hotel, in fact she had loathed being there that one time. Not a good place for a young woman, she thought.
Karim could not divulge his obsession to anyone. Mansur would only laugh and at worst ruin it all. Nothing was sacred to Mansur and he wasn’t particularly fond of his aunt.
Only Aimal knew and Aimal kept his mouth shut. Aimal was Karim’s go-between.
If he could get closer to Aimal, Karim thought, he might get to know the family through him. He was lucky; one day Mansur invited him home to dinner. It is normal to introduce friends to the family and Karim was one of Mansur’s most respected friends. Karim did his utmost to be well received: he was charming, a good listener, and showered the food with compliments. It was especially important that the grandmother liked him because she had the last say where Leila was concerned. But the one he came to see – Leila – never showed up. She was in the kitchen cooking. Sharifa or Bulbula carried the food in. A young man outside the family very rarely gets to see the unmarried women. When the food was eaten, the tea drunk and they were about to go to bed, he caught another glimpse of her. Owing to the curfew, dinner guests often stayed overnight, and Leila was making the dining room into a bedroom. She laid out the mattresses, took out rugs and cushions and made up an extra mattress for Karim. Her only thought was that the letter-writer was in the apartment.
He thought she was done and went in to pray before the others went to bed. She was there still, bent over the mattress, her long hair braided and covered by a simple shawl. He turned in the doorway, surprised and excited. Leila didn’t even notice him. All night Karim cherished the memory of her bent over the mattress. The next morning he didn’t see her, although she had prepared water for him to wash in, fried his egg and made his tea. She had even polished his shoes while he was sleeping.
The next day he dispatched his sister to the women of the Khan family. When someone finds new friends, it is not only he who is presented to the family, but his relatives also, and the sister is Karim’s closest relative. She knew about Karim’s fascination with Leila and now she wanted to get to know the family a bit better. When she returned home she told Karim what he already knew. ‘She is clever and a good worker. She is pretty and healthy. The family is quiet and decent. She is a good match.’
‘But what did she say? How was she? What did she look like?’ Karim listened to the answers time and again, even the rather tame answer describing Leila. ‘She is a decent girl, I’ve already told you,’ she said in the end.
As Karim no longer had a mother, the younger sister was obliged to take on the role of suitor for him. But it was still too early; first she would need to get to know the family better, as there was no kinship between them. Without kinship, they were bound to say no the first time.
After the sister had visited, everyone in the family started pulling Leila’s leg about Karim. Leila pretended not to notice when they teased her. She pretended not to care, although she burnt inside. They must not get to know about the letters. She was angry because Karim had put her in danger. She crushed the watch with a stone and threw it away.