The arrangements moved quickly. Abdul Sharif was a rugged-looking man in his thirties and his brother Abdul Haidar was probably a few years older. Abdul Sharif had one other wife at home but was content to take on a second, especially since the bride price had been covered by his cousin. Abdul Haidar already had two wives at home. Parwin would be his third.
Come back in two weeks for the nikkah, Padar-jan had said, his eyes darting back and forth from the guests to the black bag on the floor.
Shahla was so angry that she did not speak to me for four days.
I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t look at me.
“Why did you have to make Padar so angry? I don’t want to go with that man! Parwin doesn’t want this either! We were fine! Leave me alone. Go and be with Abdullah now!”
I was stunned. My sister was right, though. I had pushed the situation without thinking about anyone else. I wanted to be allowed to wrestle with Abdullah, to walk to school with him and feel his arm around my shoulder. This was my doing.
“I’m sorry, Shahla. I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean for any of this to happen! Please believe me!”
Shahla wiped her cheeks and blew her nose.
Parwin watched us, her mouth in a tight pout.
“One by one, the birds flew off…,” she said quietly. I looked at her, her left leg tucked under her and her right stretched before her. I wondered how her husband would treat a wife with a lame leg. I could see in Shahla’s eyes, she was thinking the same thing.
Shahla blamed me. If I hadn’t pushed Padar-jan that day, then he and Madar-jan would not have had that argument. And we would not have been betrothed to Abdul Khaliq’s family.
I wondered if it would have made a difference. I wondered if one small difference in the sequence of events would have altered the paths we ended up on. If I hadn’t let Abdullah, sweet, strong Abdullah, pin me down in the street for my mother to see, we wouldn’t have argued. I would have eaten dinner with the family. My father would have gone on smoking his own paltry opium supply and he would not have thought to complain to Abdul Khaliq that he needed to marry his daughters off.
Maybe I could have stayed a boy, running alongside Abdullah, making faces behind Moallim-sahib’s back and having my father ruffle my hair when I walked by. As if he wanted me around.
But that wasn’t my naseeb.
“It’s all in Allah’s hands, my girls. God has a plan for you. Whatever is in your naseeb will happen,” my mother had sobbed.
I wondered if Allah hadn’t meant for us to choose our naseeb.
With my father standing over her shoulder, my mother reluctantly made three baskets of shirnee. She covered a cone-shaped block of sugar and loose candies from Agha Barakzai’s shop with a layer of tulle she’d purchased with some of the bride price. She cut swatches from her nicest dress and edged the sides with some lace she’d been given as a gift. Three large squares, one for each basket. These were our dismols, as important as the sweets. My father nodded in approval. My mother avoided his eyes. I looked at them and wondered if that was how it would be for each of us with our husbands. Or if they would be more like Kaka Jameel, who never seemed to raise his voice and whose wife smiled more than any woman in our family.
I wondered why they were different.
Padar hardly noticed what was happening at home. He didn’t even notice that Madar-jan slept in our room with us, instead of at his side. He was busy counting bills and smoking opium at least twice a day. Abdul Khaliq had made good on his promise and my father was enjoying his end of the bargain.
“I’ve brought home a chicken, Raisa! Make sure you send some to my mother, and not just the bones, mind you! And if the meat is dry and tough like last time, you’ll have no more tomorrows.”
My mother hadn’t eaten more than a couple of bites since the suitors had left and her eyes looked heavy. She was civil with my father, afraid to rile his anger and risk losing her youngest daughters too.
In the meantime, Madar-jan had to undo what she had done to me. She gave me one of Parwin’s dresses and a chador to hide my boyish hair. She gave my pants and tunics to my uncle’s wife for her boys.
“You are Rahima. You are a girl and you need to remember to carry yourself like one. Watch how you walk and how you sit. Don’t look people, men, in the eye and keep your voice low.” She looked like she wanted to say more but stopped short, her voice breaking.
My father looked at me as if he saw a new person. No longer his son, I was someone he preferred to ignore. After all, I wouldn’t be his for much longer.
I lingered around Shahla, brought her food and helped with her share of the chores. I regretted the way things had happened and wanted her to know how sorry I was that I’d pushed her into Abdul Sharif’s home. These things I told her while she stared off. But Shahla was too kind to stay angry long. And we didn’t have long.
“Maybe we’ll be able to see each other. I mean, they’re all part of the same family. Maybe it will be like here and we can see each other every day — you, me and Parwin.”
“I hope so, Shahla.”
My sister’s round eyes looked pensive. I suddenly realized how much she resembled our mother and felt the urge to sidle up next to her. I felt better with her shoulder touching mine.
“Shahla?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think… do you think it will be terrible?” I asked, my voice hushed so Madar-jan and Parwin wouldn’t hear.
Shahla looked at me, then at the ground. She didn’t answer.
Khala Shaima came over. She’d heard rumblings through the town that Abdul Khaliq and his clan had paid our family two visits. She figured my father was up to something. Her knuckles whitened when Madar-jan told her, sobbing, that her three eldest daughters were to be wed next week.
“He’s really done it. The ass made himself quite a deal, I’m sure.”
“What was I to do, Shaima, with a room full of gray-haired men? And he is their father. How could I have stopped anything?”
“Every man is king of his own beard,” she said, shaking her head. “Did you try to talk to him?”
Madar-jan just looked at her sister. Khala Shaima nodded in understanding.
“A council of asses. That’s what you had gathered here. Just look at these girls!”
“Shaima! What am I supposed to do? Clearly, this is what Allah has chosen as their naseeb—”
“Oh, the hell with naseeb! Naseeb is what people blame for everything they can’t fix.”
I wondered if Khala Shaima was right.
“Since you know so much, tell me what you would have done!” Madar-jan cried in exasperation.
“I would have insisted that I be present. And I would have told Abdul Khaliq’s family that the girls were not yet of age for marriage!”
“A lot of good that would have done. You know who we’re dealing with. It’s not some peasant from the streets. It’s Abdul Khaliq Khan, the warlord. His bodyguards sat in our living room with machine guns. And Arif agrees with the plan. Do you honestly think they would have listened to anything I had to say?”
“You are their mother.”
“And that’s all I am,” Madar-jan said sadly. Her voice grew quiet. I’m sure she didn’t think any of us could hear them. “There is only one thing I could think of doing.”