First of all she was terrified that Yunus would find out. Of all the family, Yunus was the one who most lived up to the strictest Muslim way of life, although not even he followed it completely. He was also the one she loved most. She worried that he would think badly of her, if he got to know that she had received letters. When she was offered a part-time job on the strength of her knowledge of English, he forbade her to take it. He could not accept that she would work in an office alongside men.
Leila remembers the conversation they had had about Jamila. Sharifa had told her about the young girl’s death by suffocation.
‘What about her?’ Yunus exclaimed. ‘You mean the girl who died when an electric fan short-circuited?’
Yunus did not know that the bit about the electric fan was a lie, that Jamila was killed because a lover had visited her at night. Leila revealed the full story.
‘Awful, awful,’ he says. Leila nods.
‘How could she?’ he adds.
‘She?’ Leila exclaims. She had misunderstood the look on his face and thought it was shock, anger and sorrow over the fact that Jamila had been suffocated by her own brothers. But it was shock and anger that she could have taken a lover.
‘Her husband was rich and good-looking,’ he says, still shaking with indignation after the revelation. ‘What a disgrace,’ he says. ‘And with a Pakistani. This makes me more determined than ever to wed a young girl, young and untouched. And I’ll have to keep her on a short rein,’ he says firmly.
‘But what about the murder?’ Leila asks.
‘Her crime came first.’
Leila, too, wants to be young and untouched. She is terrified of being found out. She does not perceive the difference between being unfaithful to your husband and receiving letters from a boy. Both are forbidden, both are equally bad, both are a disgrace if found out. Now that she is beginning to see Karim as a saviour, as a way of escaping from the family, she is frightened that Yunus won’t support her if he should propose.
On her part, there was no talk of being in love. She had hardly seen him, only peeped at him from behind a curtain, and seen him from the window when he came with Mansur. What little she had seen was more or less passable.
‘He’s so young,’ she said to Sonya a bit later. ‘He’s small and thin and rather childish looking.’
But he was educated, he seemed kind and he was without a family. Therefore he was her saviour, because he might get her away from the life that was otherwise hers. The best of all was that he had no large family, so she would not risk becoming a servant girl. He would let her study, or take a job. It would be just the two of them; maybe they could go away, maybe abroad.
It was not that Leila had no suitors – she already had three. All were relatives, relatives she did not want. One was the son of an aunt, illiterate and jobless, lazy and useless.
The second suitor was Wakil’s son, a big lout of a son. He was unemployed; now and again he helped Wakil drive.
‘You are lucky, you’ll get a man with three fingers,’ Mansur used to tease her. Wakil’s son, the one who blew off two fingers when he was fiddling with an engine, was not someone Leila wanted. Big sister Shakila pushed for this marriage. She wanted to have Leila around her in the backyard. But Leila knew that she would continue to be a servant. She would always be under her big sister’s thumb and Wakil’s son would always have to fall in with what his father demanded.
That will mean twenty people’s washing, and not just thirteen like now, she thought. Shakila would be the respected lady of the house; Leila would remain the servant girl. Whatever happened she would never get away; once again she would be caught within the family, like Shakila; chickens, hens and children around her skirts all day long.
The third suitor was Khaled. Khaled was her cousin – a nice, quiet young man. A boy with whom she’d grown up and who, on the whole, she liked. He was kind and his eyes were warm and beautiful. But his family – he had an awful family. A large family of about thirty people. His father, a strict old man, had just been released from jail having been accused of co-operating with the Taliban. Their house, like most other houses in Kabul, had been plundered during the civil war, and when the Taliban arrived and imposed law and order, Khaled’s father laid a complaint about some Mujahedeen in his village. They were arrested and imprisoned for a long time. When the Taliban fled, these men regained power in the village and avenged themselves on Khaled’s father by sending him to jail. ‘That will teach him,’ said many. ‘He was stupid to complain.’
Khaled’s father was known for his unruly temperament. Moreover, he had two wives who were continually quarrelling and who could hardly be in the same room together. Now he was thinking of getting a third wife. ‘They are getting too old for me, I must have someone who can keep me young,’ the seventy-year-old had said. Leila could not bear the thought of joining this chaotic family; anyhow Khaled had no money so they would never be able to set up somewhere on their own.
But now destiny had generously bestowed Karim on her. His attentions give her the lift she needs and reason for hope. She refuses to give up and continues to look for opportunities to get to the Ministry of Education and register as a teacher. When it is clear that none of the men in the family is prepared to help, Sharifa takes pity on her. She promises to go with Leila to the Ministry. But time passes and they never go. They have no appointment. Leila loses heart, but then suddenly things look up, in an extraordinary way.
Karim’s sister had told him about the problems Leila was having registering as a teacher. After many weeks’ exertion, and because he knows the Minister of Education’s right-hand man, he arranges a meeting between Leila and the new Minister of Education, Rasul Amin. Leila’s mother allows her to go because she might now get the teaching job she has wanted for so long. Luckily Sultan is abroad, and even Yunus doesn’t put a spanner in the works. Everything is going her way. She lies all night thanking God and prays that all will go well, the meeting with Karim and the Minister.
Karim is to fetch her at nine. Leila tries on and rejects all her clothes. She tries Sonya’s clothes, Sharifa’s, her own. When the men of the family have left, the women make themselves comfortable on the floor while Leila walks in and out in new outfits.
‘Too tight!’
‘Too patterned!’
‘Too much glitter!’
‘Transparent!’
‘That one’s dirty!’
There is something wrong with everything. Leila has few clothes in the range between old, worn, fuzzy sweaters and blouses glittering with imitation gold. She possesses nothing that is normal. When very rarely she buys clothes it is usually for a wedding or engagement party and then she always chooses the glitziest she can find. She ends up with one of Sonya’s white blouses and a big, black skirt. It doesn’t actually matter that much, as she throws a long shawl over herself which covers her head and the upper part of her body to well below the hips. But she leaves her face uncovered. Leila has given up the burka. She had promised herself that when the King returned she would take off the veil; Afghanistan would then be a modern country. The April morning when ex-king Zahir Shah set foot on Afghan soil, after thirty years in exile, she hung up her burka for good and told herself she would never again use the stinking thing. Sonya and Sharifa followed suit. It was easy for Sharifa; she had lived most of her adult life with her face uncovered. It was worse for Sonya. She had lived under the burka all her life and she hung back. In the end it was Sultan who forbade her to use it. ‘I don’t want a prehistoric wife, you are the wife of a liberal man, not a fundamentalist.’