My back was turned to him. I closed my eyes. Two drops of water fell from my father’s damp shirt and landed on my toes.
“These things are family matters. Nothing was ever really in my hands.”
I listened.
“And now I just want you to be happy. For the sake of the families, let’s put it behind us.”
His tone was dismissive. My shame boiled into indignation.
“Put what behind us?” I snapped.
“Do you really want to be this way? You know I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“I don’t know anything about you. Najiba knows even less.”
He huffed in frustration. I turned around and met his narrowed eyes.
“You know if you say anything, it would look very bad for you,” he seethed.
“If I say anything? Is that what worries you? I have no interest in spoiling my sister’s life,” I said, though it was a half-truth. “I pity her for winding up with a boy who pretends to hang his heart from a tree.”
“You’ve no idea what you’re saying.”
“Don’t I?”
He cast a quick glance over his shoulder and took two steps toward me.
“I told my mother to ask for the hand of the eldest daughter next door. Don’t think I wasn’t surprised when she came back having engaged me to Najiba. Anything I said after that would have brought shame on both our families.”
I stared at him blankly. There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken. I did not know his face well enough to decide if he meant those words. I could not read the movements of his lips or the shadows behind his eyes. Did he want me to understand or did he want me to believe? And if I believed, would that be enough to change the rest of our story?
Najiba emerged with one of Sultana’s scarves knotted at her neck. Her face broke out in a smile. She was no longer the bashful girl with eyes glued to the floor. She’d grown comfortable around Hameed and could walk at his side without feeling indecent. I could see the thrill on her face.
Hameed and I never spoke of our brief past again. I would never know if he truly felt anything more than a playful interest in me or if he’d been baited into a marriage he never wanted. The impropriety of our days in the orchard lingered and we rarely let our eyes meet. Najiba never sensed the shadow between us. If she did, she said nothing about it. I might have done the same if I were in her place.
IN THE DAYS AFTER MY SISTER’S WEDDING, KOKOGUL WAS AGAIN visited by Bibi Shireen and her sister. This time it was Bibi Shireen’s sister, Khanum Zeba, who came in search of a bride.
Khanum Zeba came for me.
KokoGul had laughed. I knew my stepmother well enough that it did not bother me. I was not ready for marriage, not because I was too young or immature but because my heart was hardened. I’d seen the illusion of love but never the real thing. I had no reason to believe in love’s existence.
But Khanum Zeba was the kindest woman I’d ever met. I imagined my mother would have loved her. As I stared at the intricate pattern of our living room rug, I heard her say things about me that had never before been said.
She is everything I want for my son.
The first time I saw her, I knew she was meant for our family.
I had to look at her. Her words emboldened me to raise my eyes and meet hers. The skin around her clear, brown eyes crinkled as she serenely explained to a very curious KokoGul why she chose me.
I dreamed once. . years ago. . of my son’s wedding day. When I woke, I remembered every detail of it as if I’d attended the celebration the night before, including the face of the bride when we lifted the green veil for the nikkah. When I came to your home and met Fereiba, I recognized her.
Good for your son, KokoGul quipped, that you didn’t dream of the baker’s daughter — her skin’s as dark as the bread he burns.
While others hid their smirks with a hand over their mouths, KokoGul’s comments fell flat on my future mother-in-law.
Your daughter is a special girl. She deserves a life full of roshanee, light as warm as she is.
Khanum Zeba’s words were a bright, glowing moon hanging low in the night sky. KokoGul was aghast and ordered me out of the room, but Khanum Zeba walked over and placed her hand over mine, steadying my nerves.
I wanted to believe.
CHAPTER 12. Fereiba
IN MY YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN, I SURVIVED MANY REGIME changes, starting with my mother’s death and my father’s remarriage. Some changes had been harder to swallow than others.
Khanum Zeba became Khala Zeba to me, once KokoGul placed my shirnee before her and agreed to give my hand in marriage. I’d never before seen her son, Mahmood. In a way, it was Khanum Zeba I had fallen for. Her son was merely her outstretched hand. But going through the motions of life together, Mahmood and I slowly became husband and wife.
When I told Khanum Zeba that I wanted to be a teacher, she insisted I pursue it. She’d been a teacher as well. I enrolled in a teaching program and worked my way through the courses with the support of a family I was barely a part of. My father and KokoGul were content to see me attend the classes.
“School, school, school. Your husband is going to buy you chalk and notebooks for gifts if you don’t make it clear you like things besides a classroom,” KokoGul teased.
MAHMOOD AND I WERE MARRIED IN 1979, A YEAR AFTER OUR ENGAGEMENT and just as the Soviet Union’s first baby-faced soldiers landed their heavy boots on Afghan soil. Having proudly earned a teaching degree in two years, I woke with fresh energy every day and took my place at the head of an elementary school classroom. The students were as eager as flightless, freshly hatched birds in a nest. It was for me to nurture their open minds, to teach them the words and numbers and ideas that would spread their wings.
Just two months after our wedding, Mahmood received word that his uncle’s family, including four children, had been killed by Soviet rockets in the Panjshir Valley. We spent the next few months as newlyweds in mourning. I could hear Mahmood’s aunts and cousins cluck their tongues at the incongruous sight of a new bride in a somber fateha, where the visitors came to pay their respects to the family of the deceased.
It’s just as they warned, came the whispers. She carries the curse of bad fortune with her. . and now she’s among us. Her own family cautioned. .
Word of the rumors got back to us. My mother-in-law, Khala Zeba, scoffed at them. She said nothing when Mahmood made the painful decision to distance himself from the gossips in the family. He sheltered me from relatives with suspicious eyes and those who kept their children away out of fear.
Idle women are dangerous. Better you stick with your colleagues, women who busy themselves with home and work, like yourself. Don’t mind the noise from the henhouse, Mahmood would caution.
I was relieved and surprised to have my husband reject such slander. My shoulders straightened to hear him defend me, especially to his own family. Mahmood and Khala Zeba reminded me of my grandfather, whose moral strength and unrelenting love often deflected KokoGul’s hurtful words. Mahmood made the ground beneath me stop quaking. He gave me room and reason to love him.
I busied myself as he suggested. I spent an occasional afternoon with another teacher I’d befriended and immersed myself in teaching. I expected a lot from my students and they worked hard. I knew I wasn’t as stern as the other teachers, but I vied for their affection as much as they did for mine.