“Do you want to be a boy? Maybe that’s what you want! Is that what you want?”
My ribs.
“My mother couldn’t make a woman out of you. Then maybe you should go back to what you were! That’s what you want?”
I never saw where it came from. Maybe under his pillow. Or maybe in his jacket pocket. In a flash, Abdul Khaliq grabbed my hair and pulled my head off the ground. My head slipped forward. He snatched again and jerked my head up. My scalp screamed. When I saw locks of hair on the floor around me, I realized what he was doing. I tried to pull away, begged him to stop, but he was barely there. He was trying to take me apart, to disassemble the pieces that were hardly holding together as it was.
More hair on the ground. I tried to crawl away but his grip was tight. I shrieked as I felt my scalp lift off my skull.
“Please,” I begged. “Please stop! You don’t know!”
He had taken a knife to my hair, a blade I’d seen him tuck into his waistband before he and his guards went off for his meetings. The blade was dull and he had to chop at my hair again and again, holding it taut by the ends.
“One child! You’ve brought only one child and you couldn’t even take care of him!” My stomach lurched.
One child. One child.
I wanted to let him end my misery, to give me the punishment my heart believed I deserved, those dark, dark thoughts that haunted my days and nights. I wished he could end it for me. Maybe I would have even taunted him, if it weren’t for…
He was on the edge of his bed, his breaths slowing. My husband lacked the endurance to exact the punishment he intended.
I lay motionless, curled up on my side at the foot of the bed. I waited for the signal.
“Get out,” he hissed. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”
I crawled to the door, then pulled myself to stand by the chair. I heard footsteps scamper in the hallway as I exited. I held one hand over my throbbing belly and one hand on the wall to steady my slow step.
One child.
In my room, I waited. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have, maybe because my mind was elsewhere. Into the thin light of morning, I waited for the bleeding to come. I knew it would.
Fresh tears for a new loss.
I may have killed one of Abdul Khaliq’s children. But he had just killed another.
CHAPTER 62. RAHIMA
“Do you want to go or don’t you?”
I sighed and stared at my feet. My arches ached but it was too much effort to rub them.
“It’s up to you. I can always find someone else to be my assistant if you don’t want to do it anymore. I’m sure the director’s office can help me. Someone else can do what you were doing.”
This was actually her way of trying to be considerate.
“Look, I don’t care either way…”
This wasn’t true and we both knew it.
“I’m just telling you, you need to make a decision soon because I’m leaving to go back to Kabul in three days and if you’re going to go back then we have to let Abdul Khaliq know.”
Badriya had grown accustomed to my help. With me, the parliamentary sessions were easier to follow. I read all the briefs to her. I filled out and submitted all her documents. She listened as I went through the newspaper headlines to give her some background for the jirga discussions. She finally felt like she was participating in the process, like she was a woman our province should admire for her role in government. As if she were actually serving her constituency.
She was ignoring the fact that it was another man who decided if she should raise the red or green paddle when voting time came. She believed the lie of Badriya the female parliamentarian, and that was all that mattered to her.
As much as I wanted her to shut up and walk away, I knew I had to make a decision.
An escape. I need to find an escape.
I’d been to the cemetery where Jahangir was buried only once, two months after I’d come home from Kabul to find my son cold and gray. Abdul Khaliq finally gave me permission to go with Bibi Gulalai and his driver. The dead can see people naked, superstition said, so he didn’t think it was proper for his wife to step foot in the cemetery. I didn’t believe it to be true and even if it were, I didn’t care. I wanted to see where my son was buried. I asked Jameela to bring it up with him and she did. I knew I was playing on her sympathy when I asked her the favor but I was desperate. I don’t know what magical words she used but our husband relented.
My mother-in-law and I stood over Jahangir’s grave marker. Her wailing echoed across the emptiness, the same mournful cries that she’d made two months ago. I was quiet for a time. I didn’t think I had tears left to shed.
“You sweet innocent child! I can’t believe this was your time, your naseeb. Dear God, my poor grandson was so young to be taken from us!”
I stood there in disbelief. How could this mound of earth be my little boy? How could this be all that remained of my grinning, curious child?
But it was. And the more I thought of it, the more Bibi Gulalai’s wailing tore at my heart. I wanted to dig into the dirt, to plunge my hands into the earth and touch my son’s hand, to feel his fingers close around mine again. I wanted to curl up beside him, keep him warm and whisper to him that he wasn’t alone, that he shouldn’t be afraid.
“What is our family to do? Why did we deserve such tragedy? His smiling face, oh, it dances before my eyes and rips at my heart!”
I started to cry. Silently at first, then louder and louder until I was loud enough that Bibi Gulalai noticed over the sound of her own lamenting.
She turned around and shot me an icy glare.
“Haven’t I told you a hundred times to watch how you act? Are you trying to shame our family?”
I sucked in my sobs, feeling my chest tense as I tried to contain it all.
“It’s a sin! It’s a sin for you to try to draw so much attention. Don’t make such a scene here. It’s disrespectful to the dead and people are watching!”
No one was watching. We were all alone. Maroof stood back, leaning against the SUV and waiting for us to return to the car. I swallowed my sorrow and looked to the sky. Three gray-brown red-breasted finches flew overhead. They circled three times, swooped down toward us, then floated back to a tree about forty feet away. They cooed and clucked and cocked their heads so purposefully that I almost thought they were talking to me.
Bibi Gulalai pulled a handful of bread crumbs from her dress pocket and scattered them over Jahangir’s grave. She tossed another palmful on a grave to the left, skipped one and tossed some more on a grave to the right.
“Shehr-Agha-jan,” she said with a sigh. “May the heavens be your place for eternity.”
I recognized the name as belonging to Abdul Khaliq’s grandfather. Stories about him, the great warrior, were recounted so often that I had to remind myself I’d never seen him. He’d been gone over a decade.
The finches noticed the sprinkle of food and took flight again, swooping in gracefully and pecking here and there at the newly found bounty. Bibi Gulalai spread what was left on the graves that fell further away. Still she skipped the one to the immediate right of Jahangir.
“Eat, eat,” she said mournfully. “Eat and pray for my grandson. And for my beloved father-in-law. God rest his soul and may Allah keep him close and peaceful always.”
I watched. The finches bobbed their heads, picking at the crumbs and chirping their gratitude. It did look like they were praying, their little heads going up and down as if in supplication. It gave me some solace.