Outside, mockingbirds were singing blithely, and, once in a while, when the songsters took flight, Mariam could see their
wings catching the phosphorescent blue of moonlight beaming through the clouds. And though her throat was parched with thirst
and her feet burned with pins and needles, it was a long time before Mariam gently freed her finger from the baby’s grip and
got up.
Laila
O
f all earthly pleasures, Laila’s favorite was lying next to Aziza, her baby’s face so close that she could watch her
big pupils dilate and shrink. Laila loved running her finger over Aziza’s pleasing, soft skin, over the dimpled knuckles,
the folds of fat at her elbows. Sometimes she lay Aziza down on her chest and whispered into the soft crown of her head things
about Tariq, the father who would always be a stranger to Aziza, whose face Aziza would never know. Laila told her of his
aptitude for solving riddles, his trickery and mischief, his easy laugh.
“He had the prettiest lashes, thick like yours. A good chin, a fine nose, and a round forehead. Oh, your father was handsome,
Aziza. He was perfect. Perfect, like you are.”
But she was careful never to mention him by name.
Sometimes she caught Rasheed looking at Aziza in the most peculiar way. The other night, sitting on the bedroom floor, where
he was shaving a corn from his foot, he said quite casually, “So what was it like between you two?”
Laila had given him a puzzled look, as though she didn’t understand.
“Laili and Majnoon. You and the
yaklenga,
the cripple. What was it you had, he and you?”
“He was my friend,” she said, careful that her voice not shift too much in key. She busied herself making a bottle.
“You know that.”
“I don’t know
what
I know.” Rasheed deposited the shavings on the windowsill and dropped onto the bed. The springs protested with a loud creak.
He splayed his legs, picked at his crotch. “And as . . .
friends
, did the two of you ever do anything out of order?”
“Out of order?”
Rasheed smiled lightheartedly, but Laila could feel his gaze, cold and watchful. “Let me see, now. Well, did he ever give
you a kiss? Maybe put his hand where it didn’t belong?”
Laila winced with, she hoped, an indignant air. She could feel her heart drumming in her throat. “He was like a
brother
to me.”
“So he was a friend or a brother?”
“Both. He—”
“Which was it?”
“He was like both.”
“But brothers and sisters are creatures of curiosity. Yes.
Sometimes a brother lets his sister see his pecker, and a sister will—”
“You sicken me,” Laila said.
“So there was nothing.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Rasheed tilted his head, pursed his lips, nodded. “People gossiped, you know. I remember. They said all sorts of things about
you two. But you’re saying there was nothing.”
She willed herself to glare at him.
He held her eyes for an excruciatingly long time in an unblinking way that made her knuckles go pale around the milk bottle,
and it took all that Laila could muster to not falter.
She shuddered at what he would do if he found out that she had been stealing from him. Every week, since Aziza’s birth, she
pried his wallet open when he was asleep or in the outhouse and took a single bill. Some weeks, if the wallet was light, she
took only a five-afghani bill, or nothing at all, for fear that he would notice. When the wallet was plump, she helped herself
to a ten or a twenty, once even risking two twenties. She hid the money in a pouch she’d sewn in the lining of her checkered
winter coat.
She wondered what he would do if he knew that she was planning to run away next spring. Next summer at the latest. Laila hoped
to have a thousand afghanis or more stowed away, half of which would go to the bus fare from Kabul to Peshawar. She would
pawn her wedding ring when the time drew close, as well as the other jewelry that Rasheed had given her the year before when
she was still the
malika
of his palace.
“Anyway,” he said at last, fingers drumming his belly, “I can’t be blamed. I am a husband. These are the things a husband
wonders. But he’s lucky he died the way he did. Because if he was here now, if I got my hands on him . . .” He sucked through
his teeth and shook his head.
“What happened to not speaking ill of the dead?”
“I guess some people can’t be dead enough,” he said.
TWO DAYS LATER, Laila woke up in the morning and found a stack of baby clothes, neatly folded, outside her bedroom door. There
was a twirl dress with little pink fishes sewn around the bodice, a blue floral wool dress with matching socks and mittens,
yellow pajamas with carrot-colored polka dots, and green cotton pants with a dotted ruffle on the cuff.
“There is a rumor,” Rasheed said over dinner that night, smacking his lips, taking no notice of Aziza or the pajamas Laila
had put on her, “that Dostum is going to change sides and join Hekmatyar. Massoud will have his hands full then, fighting
those two. And we mustn’t forget the Hazaras.” He took a pinch of the pickled eggplant Mariam had made that summer. “Let’s
hope it’s just that, a rumor. Because if that happens, this war,” he waved one greasy hand, “will seem like a Friday picnic
at Paghman.”
Later, he mounted her and relieved himself with wordless haste, fully dressed save for his
tumban,
not removed but pulled down to the ankles. When the frantic rocking was over, he rolled off her and was asleep in minutes.
Laila slipped out of the bedroom and found Mariam in the kitchen squatting, cleaning a pair of trout. A pot of rice was already
soaking beside her. The kitchen smelled like cumin and smoke, browned onions and fish.
Laila sat in a corner and draped her knees with the hem of her dress.
“Thank you,” she said.
Mariam took no notice of her. She finished cutting up the first trout and picked up the second. With a serrated knife, she
clipped the fins, then turned the fish over, its underbelly facing her, and sliced it expertly from the tail to the gills.
Laila watched her put her thumb into its mouth, just over the lower jaw, push it in, and, in one downward stroke, remove the
gills and the entrails.
“The clothes are lovely.”
“I had no use for them,” Mariam muttered. She dropped the fish on a newspaper smudged with slimy, gray juice and sliced off
its head. “It was either your daughter or the moths.”
“Where did you learn to clean fish like that?”
“When I was a little girl, I lived by a stream. I used to catch my own fish.”
“I’ve never fished.”
“Not much to it. It’s mostly waiting.”
Laila watched her cut the gutted trout into thirds. “Did you sew the clothes yourself?”
Mariam nodded.
“When?”
Mariam rinsed sections of fish in a bowl of water. “When I was pregnant the first time. Or maybe the second time. Eighteen,
nineteen years ago. Long time, anyhow. Like I said, I never had any use for them.”
“You’re a really good
khayat.
Maybe you can teach me.”
Mariam placed the rinsed chunks of trout into a clean bowl. Drops of water dripping from her fingertips, she raised her head
and looked at Laila, looked at her as if for the first time.
“The other night, when he . . . Nobody’s ever stood up for me before,” she said.
Laila examined Mariam’s drooping cheeks, the eyelids that sagged in tired folds, the deep lines that framed her mouth—she
saw these things as though she too were looking at someone for the first time. And, for the first time, it was not an adversary’s
face Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and endured. If she stayed,
would this be her own face, Laila wondered, twenty years from now?
“I couldn’t let him,” Laila said. “I wasn’t raised in a household where people did things like that.”
“
This
is your household now. You ought to get used to it.”
“Not to
that.
I won’t.”
“He’ll turn on you too, you know,” Mariam said, wiping her hands dry with a rag. “Soon enough. And you gave him a daughter.
So, you see, your sin is even less forgivable than mine.”
Laila rose to her feet. “I know it’s chilly outside, but what do you say we sinners have us a cup of
chai
in the yard?”
Mariam looked surprised. “I can’t. I still have to cut and wash the beans.”
“I’ll help you do it in the morning.”
“And I have to clean up here.”
“We’ll do it together. If I’m not mistaken, there’s some
halwa
left over. Awfully good with
chai.
”
Mariam put the rag on the counter. Laila sensed anxiety in the way she tugged at her sleeves, adjusted her
hijab,
pushed back a curl of hair.
“The Chinese say it’s better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.”
Mariam gave a half smile. “It’s a good saying.”
“It is.”
“But I can’t stay long.”
“One cup.”
They sat on folding chairs outside and ate
halwa
with their fingers from a common bowl. They had a second cup, and when Laila asked her if she wanted a third Mariam said she
did. As gunfire cracked in the hills, they watched the clouds slide over the moon and the last of the season’s fireflies charting
bright yellow arcs in the dark. And when Aziza woke up crying and Rasheed yelled for Laila to come up and shut her up, a look
passed between Laila and Mariam. An unguarded, knowing look. And in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew
that they were not enemies any longer.
Mariam
F
rom that night on, Mariam and Laila did their chores together. They sat in the kitchen and rolled dough, chopped green
onions, minced garlic, offered bits of cucumber to Aziza, who banged spoons nearby and played with carrots. In the yard, Aziza
lay in a wicker bassinet, dressed in layers of clothing, a winter muffler wrapped snugly around her neck. Mariam and Laila
kept a watchful eye on her as they did the wash, Mariam’s knuckles bumping Laila’s as they scrubbed shirts and trousers and
diapers.
Mariam slowly grew accustomed to this tentative but pleasant companionship. She was eager for the three cups of
chai
she and Laila would share in the yard, a nightly ritual now. In the mornings, Mariam found herself looking forward to the
sound of Laila’s cracked slippers slapping the steps as she came down for breakfast and to the tinkle of Aziza’s shrill laugh,
to the sight of her eight little teeth, the milky scent of her skin. If Laila and Aziza slept in, Mariam became anxious waiting.
She washed dishes that didn’t need washing. She rearranged cushions in the living room. She dusted clean windowsills. She
kept herself occupied until Laila entered the kitchen, Aziza hoisted on her hip.
When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother’s
grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a
look of both adoration and quivering anxiety.
“What a scene you’re making,” Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. “What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam
isn’t going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now.”
As soon as she was in Mariam’s arms, Aziza’s thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam’s neck.
Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this.
Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.
Aziza made Mariam want to weep.
“Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?” Mariam would murmur into Aziza’s hair. “Huh? I am nobody,
don’t you see? A
dehati.
What have I got to give you?”
But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her
heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature
the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.
EARLY THE FOLLOWING YEAR, in January 1994, Dostum
did
switch sides. He joined Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and took up position near Bala Hissar, the old citadel walls that loomed over
the city from the Koh-e-Shirdawaza mountains. Together, they fired on Massoud and Rabbani forces at the Ministry of Defense
and the Presidential Palace. From either side of the Kabul River, they released rounds of artillery at each other. The streets
became littered with bodies, glass, and crumpled chunks of metal. There was looting, murder, and, increasingly, rape, which
was used to intimidate civilians and reward militiamen. Mariam heard of women who were killing themselves out of fear of being
raped, and of men who, in the name of honor, would kill their wives or daughters if they’d been raped by the militia.
Aziza shrieked at the thumping of mortars. To distract her, Mariam arranged grains of rice on the floor, in the shape of a
house or a rooster or a star, and let Aziza scatter them. She drew elephants for Aziza the way Jalil had shown her, in one
stroke, without ever lifting the tip of the pen.
Rasheed said civilians were getting killed daily, by the dozens. Hospitals and stores holding medical supplies were getting
shelled. Vehicles carrying emergency food supplies were being barred from entering the city, he said, raided, shot at. Mariam
wondered if there was fighting like this in Herat too, and, if so, how Mullah Faizullah was coping, if he was still alive,
and Bibi jo too, with all her sons, brides, and grandchildren. And, of course, Jalil. Was he hiding out, Mariam wondered,
as she was? Or had he taken his wives and children and fled the country? She hoped Jalil was somewhere safe, that he’d managed
to get away from all of this killing.
For a week, the fighting forced even Rasheed to stay home. He locked the door to the yard, set booby traps, locked the front
door too and barricaded it with the couch. He paced the house, smoking, peering out the window, cleaning his gun, loading
and loading it again. Twice, he fired his weapon into the street claiming he’d seen someone trying to climb the wall.
“They’re forcing young boys to join,” he said. “The Mujahideen are. In plain daylight, at gunpoint. They drag boys right off
the streets. And when soldiers from a rival militia capture these boys, they torture them. I heard they electrocute them—it’s
what I heard—that they crush their balls with pliers. They make the boys lead them to their homes. Then they break in, kill
their fathers, rape their sisters and mothers.”
He waved his gun over his head. “Let’s see them try to break into my house. I’ll crush
their
balls! I’ll blow their heads off! Do you know how lucky you two are to have a man who’s not afraid of Shaitan himself?”
He looked down at the ground, noticed Aziza at his feet. “Get off my heels!” he snapped, making a shooing motion with his
gun. “Stop following me! And you can stop twirling your wrists like that. I’m not picking you up. Go on! Go on before you
get stepped on.”
Aziza flinched. She crawled back to Mariam, looking bruised and confused. In Mariam’s lap, she sucked her thumb cheerlessly
and watched Rasheed in a sullen, pensive way. Occasionally, she looked up, Mariam imagined, with a look of wanting to be reassured.
But when it came to fathers, Mariam had no assurances to give.
MARIAM WAS RELIEVED when the fighting subsided again, mostly because they no longer had to be cooped up with Rasheed, with
his sour temper infecting the household. And he’d frightened her badly waving that loaded gun near Aziza.
One day that winter, Laila asked to braid Mariam’s hair. Mariam sat still and watched Laila’s slim fingers in the mirror tighten
her plaits, Laila’s face scrunched in concentration. Aziza was curled up asleep on the floor. Tucked under her arm was a doll
Mariam had hand-stitched for her. Mariam had stuffed it with beans, made it a dress with tea-dyed fabric and a necklace with
tiny empty thread spools through which she’d threaded a string.
Then Aziza passed gas in her sleep. Laila began to laugh, and Mariam joined in. They laughed like this, at each other’s reflection
in the mirror, their eyes tearing, and the moment was so natural, so effortless, that suddenly Mariam started telling her
about Jalil, and Nana, and the
jinn.
Laila stood with her hands idle on Mariam’s shoulders, eyes locked on Mariam’s face in the mirror. Out the words came, like
blood gushing from an artery. Mariam told her about Bibi jo, Mullah Faizullah, the humiliating trek to Jalil’s house, Nana’s
suicide. She told about Jalil’s wives, and the hurried
nikka
with Rasheed, the trip to Kabul, her pregnancies, the endless cycles of hope and disappointment, Rasheed’s turning on her.
After, Laila sat at the foot of Mariam’s chair. Absently, she removed a scrap of lint entangled in Aziza’s hair. A silence
ensued.
“I have something to tell you too,” Laila said.
MARIAM DID NOT SLEEP that night. She sat in bed, watched the snow falling soundlessly.
Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had
ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner
of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not
matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted
them and ditched them before they took hold.
But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza—a
harami
like herself, as it turned out—had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long
suddenly seemed intolerable.
We’re
leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us,
Mariam
.
The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life
in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said a
harami
like her would never see. Two new flowers had unexpectedly sprouted in her life, and, as Mariam watched the snow coming down,
she pictured Mullah Faizullah twirling his
tasbeh
beads, leaning in and whispering to her in his soft, tremulous voice,
But it is God Who has
planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will that you tend to
them. It is His will, my girl.