“WHY ARE YOU UNHAPPY?”
Lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed the sound of leaves crunching under my neighbor’s approaching feet. So long as my splotchy face remained hidden, I didn’t mind the anonymous company. I touched the wall. As my fingers traced its roughness, a slip of clay lifted. I rubbed a bit harder and more crumbled to the ground. I turned and leaned against it. The khaki dust lingered on my fingertips.
“There is a family. . with a boy.” I tried different combinations of words but choked on a real explanation.
“Your suitor?”
Though he could not see me, I nodded.
“You know?” I asked.
“My mother and sisters were talking about it. They’ve seen the family come and go, and KokoGul mentioned something when she stopped by this week.”
“She stopped by your home?” I’d paid no attention to KokoGul’s whereabouts in the last two weeks.
“Yes.” The voice spoke quietly. “I can’t say I think much of that boy.”
“You know him?” He confirmed my judgment.
“Not very well. Here and there and from a distance. But we attended the same high school.”
“And even from a distance you have this opinion of him.”
“Some things are clearer from a distance. I don’t know if I should say more.”
“Whatever it is, you should say it. No one else is saying anything worth hearing.”
He told me about the boy’s mischief. Teasing girls, fighting with classmates, poor marks in school. Rumors circulated about him, things that my orchard confidante refused to disclose. Since the Firooz boy had graduated from high school, his parents were hoping marriage would mature him in a way age hadn’t.
I sank to the ground, pulled my knees close to me, and let out a defeated moan.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you, but I thought you should know. Your family should know.”
How could I tell my family? It wasn’t as though I could repeat things I’d heard from a strange boy I’d been meeting in the orchard.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “My mother thinks their family is a good match for us. And my father. . even when he’s in the room, he’s not around. He’s happy to leave things to my mother. I tried to tell her I didn’t want to be married now, but she’s not interested in what I want. She won’t believe anything I tell her about this boy. She’ll just tell me not to listen to rumors.”
“I see.”
My behavior was unforgivable. I’d revealed my private thoughts and our family affairs to our neighbor’s son, a faceless voice behind a wall. Where was my honor? And how could I trust him to keep our conversations to himself? I was suddenly flustered.
“Please excuse me. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t know why I troubled you with this. Please forget everything,” I said, straightening my shoulders and trying to shake the emotion from my voice.
“You are upset. You haven’t done anything wrong. .”
“But I have. Please do not repeat any of this. I wasn’t expecting to. . to be so. .”
“You have my word. I will not say anything to anyone. But I will tell you something as well. I’m as troubled as you are with the news of this suitor.”
The orchard held its breath. His words hung in the air above the wall between us, lingered there far enough out of reach that he could not pull them back and I could not claim them. I didn’t want his words to float away.
“Why are you troubled by this suitor?”
He did not reply. I repeated my question and still heard nothing.
“Are you there?”
“I am here.”
“You did not answer.”
“No, I did not.”
The air grew thick with his reticence. I held myself back, not daring to fill the silence with my own inventions. I wanted only his words. In a flash of honesty, I knew why I’d come back to this spot day after day. I touched the wall, my hands trembling.
“I am going back to the house.”
“Fereiba-jan.”
He knew my name? I froze in my tracks. My skin tingled with anticipation.
“For today, just know that the news of your suitor distresses me. Come tomorrow so we can think of how we may be able to change matters. God is merciful.” I heard his footsteps as he walked away, pictured the grass bending under his leather sandals. My eyes stayed fixed on the wall between us, the barrier that kept us apart but not as much as it kept us together, for without it, I would have fled in shame long ago. The wall was my purdah, my cover.
My father came home that evening and saw me in the kitchen, peeling purple carrots he’d harvested from his garden. I stood up and said hello to him, kissed his cheek. He nodded quietly. He looked conflicted, as if there were much he wanted to say but couldn’t.
“Where is KokoGul? Has she gone to rest?”
“She went into the market with Najiba and Sultana. I think they’ll be back soon.”
He took two steps out of the kitchen, hesitated, and turned back.
“And you, how are you?” He sounded concerned.
“Me, Padar-jan? I am well.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” I said meekly. From the tone of his voice, I knew there was more he was asking me. I knew he loved me as much as he loved my siblings. Had I not taken my mother from him, he may have loved me more.
“You know, you are a great help to everyone in this home. You have always worked very hard.”
I listened, my head bowed respectfully.
“Allah keep you alive and well, my daughter.”
“And you too, Padar-jan.”
“Every day, you have more of her in you. Every day.” Like the words I’d left suspended in the orchard, these words hung in the air. They’d been unsaid in each conversation with my father, implied every time he looked at my face as if it hurt him to do so. These were the kind of tender words KokoGul would scream to hear.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it would be hard to grieve a stranger. I would never have thought it was something I could do my entire life.
How I wished I could pull up a chair and beg my father to go on, to tell me every detail of my mother so I could at least know the woman I mourned. I wanted him to tell me about the first time he saw her, the sound of her voice, her favorite foods, and the shape of her fingers. I wanted to close my eyes and have her appear before me, to hear her call my name just once. But trying to conjure my mother was like trying to hum a song I’d never heard.
Padar-jan walked away quickly, as if he knew what I would ask if he lingered. I heard his hurried footsteps go into the next room as I stared blankly at my hands, stained a despondent violet by the carrots that my father had nurtured from seedlings.
Certainly, KokoGul had talked to my father about Agha Firooz’s son but, from his actions, I could not decipher how he felt. I didn’t expect my father to speak to me directly about the courtship — such matters were not discussed between fathers and daughters. Mothers were liaisons in these purposes, shuttling information back and forth and coloring it to fit their needs. In my case, KokoGul had been singing the praises of Agha Firooz’s son as if she were his mother.
Did Padar-jan want me to be married off? Was there a chance he might reject their proposal?