The turquoise tiles of the mosque glimmered in the sunlight. Gulnaz shielded her eyes from the glare. She pretended not to notice the way Jawad looked at her.
“I have come to ask for something.”
“Of course. Tell this simple man how he can be of help to you.”
Gulnaz tried to sound formal, as if this were their first conversation.
“I am in need of a taweez,” she said carefully. She didn’t want to stray from the script she’d rehearsed on her way up the hill.
“And what kind of taweez do you need exactly?” Jawad was the town’s most notable talisman maker. He had crafted a talisman for nearly every villager at some point or another, not to mention the visitors who came to pray at the ziyarat. The hope that a taweez offered was hard to resist, and his were known well beyond the town’s borders for their potency. That was why, after so many years, Gulnaz was again standing before him, in a place so holy people said every seventh pigeon carried a spirit and that gray pigeons would turn white within forty days of joining the flock.
“Protection.”
Jawad paused.
“Protection,” he repeated. Jawad was intrigued. He squinted up at Gulnaz, his wrinkled face tanned from years of hilltop sun. He was somewhere between sixty and sixty-five years old but had not a single gray hair. He’d been writing taweez for as long as he could remember and had clashed with Safatullah on more than one occasion.
Safatullah Kazimi was the most renowned murshid of their province. Safatullah had, from a young age, garnered attention for his mystic devotion to Allah, for his ability to lift the prayers of those around him to Allah’s ears. By the age of twenty-five, his hair had turned completely white, which everyone took as a testament to his divinity and wisdom.
Safatullah’s family lived a kilometer away from the edge of the ziyarat, the tomb of a beloved mystic. Maybe it was the hallowed ground or maybe it was the flocks of devout travelers—but something made Safatullah into a figure larger than life. His reputation grew as he saved children from fatal illnesses, restored sight to the blind, and gave barren families precious babies. He took no money for his work though people brought him whatever gifts they could. Even when wishes weren’t granted, people left with solace and understanding. He steadied their spirits and affirmed their beliefs.
The work Jawad did was similar. For a fee, he offered people recourse when prayers weren’t enough. His skills weren’t mentioned in the Qur’an, and though nearly everyone sought him out, no one talked about their taweez. It was something private, between the seeker and Jawad, who would carefully etch the letters and numbers on the tiny squares of paper.
On more than one occasion, Safatullah had advised his followers against using Jawad’s services. There was nothing that a talisman could say better than a devoted heart. He didn’t like that Jawad charged a fee for his service and felt Jawad wasn’t pious enough to be writing amulets. Jawad had said, loudly enough for his words to reach Safatullah’s ears, that charging a small fee was more honest than expecting a lamb from the poorest family.
Jawad had also accused Safatullah of following in his father’s footsteps and serving as a spy for the British. The previous murshid, Safatullah’s father, was rumored to have helped overthrow King Amanullah, the monarch who sought to free Afghanistan from Britain’s reins. Though Safatullah was still in diapers when King Amanullah had been forced to abdicate, it was a suspicion that stuck with him like the smell of garlic on fingers.
Then again, Safatullah, as the son of a grand murshid, was part of the light, part of the righteous, and Jawad was outside of Islam, a purveyor of the secrets and tricks people used when their faith became sullied with desperation.
“Protection, Jawad-jan. No family is above misfortune. As you said, our family is very much respected. There are eyes of every color upon us, and I have to look after the ones I love. I need to protect them.”
“I understand. And what does Safatullah-sahib say on the matter?” Jawad took out three pens, green, black, and red. He held them up and examined their tips and then looked past them, refocusing on Gulnaz’s stoic face. She was not going to feed the feud between these two men.
“I have come for a taweez, Jawad-jan. Nothing else.”
Jawad chuckled. Jawad-jan, she’d called him. Was that out of respect or affection?
“Good,” he said, flattening the first paper square with his fingertip. “Who exactly is it that is being threatened?”
“Make me a good taweez so you and the rest of the village can never know.”
He paused for a moment, his eyes closed and his head bowed. As bewitching as she was, not every man could stomach a woman like Gulnaz. She was a bit too bold and much too clever for most. Maybe that was why her husband had disappeared. The village had a hundred stories to explain his vanishing. Jawad’s position outside the masjid put him in earshot of both the town’s synchronized prayers as well as their unsynchronized rumors. Folks couldn’t even settle on whether he was alive or dead. Jawad was relieved when he heard the first person refer to Gulnaz as a widow. It was easier on his soul to lust after the wife of a dead man.
That Gulnaz was too clever for most only excited Jawad. His life’s work, after all, had been overcoming obstacles. With his fingertip still on the square, he dragged the bit of paper to the center of the table. “I must concentrate.”
Gulnaz watched him choose the green pen. The colors of the ink were critical as were the other details that only Jawad knew. This was part of what people came for—the focus, the deliberately placed letters, the undecipherable method by which Jawad filled the tiny squares with a verse, a symbol, or a set of numbers. There was method to his magic.
Fifteen minutes later, Gulnaz, daughter to a man who despised amulets, handed a folded stack of bills to Jawad and accepted the taweez he’d written for her daughter. She tucked it into the pocket of her dress and nodded in appreciation. She felt Jawad’s smug eyes following her hips as she made her way down the hill and smiled to think she could still, after all these years, make a man look at her in that way. The hour of prayer was nearing. Gulnaz quickened her step. She hoped Safatullah wouldn’t hear about this, though she realized there was a possibility he might.
A mother can take no chances, she told herself.
CHAPTER 15
BASIR WANDERED DOWN BY THE STREAM, A BUBBLING RUNOFF OF the town’s waste. He watched the small fish dart about in the water and wondered how they managed to survive in such filth. The waters here were much worse than the smaller streams by his family’s home. He imagined the minnows choking on pieces of trash, getting trapped in plastic bottles, and succumbing to the diseases that festered in those murky waters. From his perch on a rock, he could make out their faint shapes, just a few inches below the surface of the water. There were more than he expected.
Basir picked up a pebble and hurled it at the fish.
In the weeks since he and his sisters had been taken to Ama Tamina’s home, his father’s sister hadn’t said much about the murder or the arrest. She seemed too distraught to say much of anything. Her husband, Kaka Mateen, seemed more outraged at the crime than she did.
While Ama Tamina dabbed at her eyes, Kaka Mateen had talked up a fury on behalf of his brother-in-law. Basir listened with his head hung low. His uncle’s fervor was surprising to Basir, who could remember more angry exchanges between Kaka Mateen and his father than pleasant ones. They’d fought over money, politics, and even card games.
Basir felt a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t as outraged as Kaka Mateen, a man who was only related to his father by marriage. Basir had been the one to stumble upon the gruesome scene first. It had been his home and his family that had been torn apart. Basir hadn’t seen or spoken with his mother since she’d been dragged away. She’d looked at him, pleading with him to understand but not daring to say a word. If the neighbors hadn’t been there, Kaka Fareed would have killed her. Basir didn’t know if he would have been able to stop him.
His
sisters were melancholy. Shabnam and Kareema stayed close together and said nothing when relatives cursed their mother. Rima, the baby, whimpered for her mother’s breast in the night. Sleeping at Ama Tamina’s side, though, she got nothing more than a pat on the back to return to sleep. Ama Tamina had four children of her own, none of them infants.
Judgment is for God alone, she told Basir when no one else was listening.
Ama Tamina was patient and didn’t seem to resent the children. This surprised Basir. He knew Zeba had always thought Tamina did not care for her. Visits to Tamina’s home were short and infrequent and Tamina’s visits to their home were even shorter, formalities really, so that the world could not say the families had become estranged from each other.
Basir’s older aunt, Ama Mariam, stopped by often. She was much more vocal about her brother’s murder and lamented his death enough to make up for Ama Tamina’s restraint.
“Has she forgotten what I did when you were born? I brought her food for the forty days when she was zacha and not supposed to lift a finger. I was there to take care of her and her home. I showed her how to swaddle you. I made tiny mittens so you wouldn’t scratch your face. She didn’t know how to do any of these things! And this is how she shows her gratitude after all our family did for her?”
Basir couldn’t find the words to defend his mother, nor was he sure he wanted to.
“Leave the kids out of it, Mariam,” Tamina implored. “They’ve been through enough.”
“They should know what she’s done!” Mariam would say, the words firing from her mouth like artillery. “She’s destroyed their lives! They’re going to have to live with that. I hope they hang her!”
Basir was thankful his father had decided to move his family into a different part of town after he’d quarreled with a few relatives, including Kaka Mateen.
The village was large enough that families could grow apart but small enough that everyone in town would talk about it if they did. People came to know Kamal as the troublesome brother, the one who could be spotted around town intoxicated from time to time. He was the stain on their family name, though Ama Mariam would defend him if anyone should dare speak of his trespasses.
Still, even she kept her distance.
Basir had heard his mother mumble about something she called the darkness, but he didn’t believe in it. He knew only that his family was different. He heard foul whispers about the kind of man his father was and wondered if the stink of it stuck to his skin. He watched his mother out of the corner of his eye, saw the way she examined their vegetables with distrust. He knew she hovered over him in the night, brushing at his chest and pretending to smooth his blanket when he stirred. He saw the way she fussed over his sisters, washing their skin until they were red and raw, then apologetically slathering them in soothing oils. He saw the way she watched his father, her eyes skirting over his clothes, checking for something she never talked about. Though her behavior was peculiar, Basir loved his mother deeply. When his father raged, she made herself wide as a tapestry so that his hands would strike only her.
When Basir was eleven years old, he’d gone with his father to a nearby farm to get a freshly slaughtered lamb. It was Eid, the holiday that marked Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God and the ransoming of a lamb in his son’s place. He watched the farmer drag a lamb by its two hind legs toward the slaughterhouse, a shed with metal hooks hanging from a horizontal beam, a butcher’s knife thick with dried blood and an earth floor that had been a killing field. As if the lamb knew precisely what lay ahead, its eyes bulged from its cottony head like soap bubbles. The lamb bleated loudly, its two front legs raking at the ground in futile protest.
Nearly every day was a sacrifice in their home.
Basir’s throat had felt thick and his hands clammy. He’d scurried off to an outhouse and emptied his stomach behind it. His father barely noticed he’d left.
Basir knew what his mother did for them. She was the reason he could laugh and eat and look after his sisters. She hid her bruises and scars.
On those days when Zeba’s resolve wore thin, she startled easily. She stared off into the fire of their clay oven in a way that made Basir nervous to leave her alone. When his father left the house, they all relaxed. When he was gone a bit too long, the house grew taut with nervous expectation.
Basir’s dilemma was that, as much as he wanted to despise his father, he still found himself drawn to him. He saw Kamal as strong and capable. He listened to his father’s stories of his own boyhood mischief, wishing time could bend and make him his father’s childhood friend. Basir compared himself to his father, wondering if his own feet would ever be so big and grounding, if his beard would be as full or if his comings and goings would be so free.
If his mother seemed to forgive his father’s outbursts, why shouldn’t he? If she’d been so upset about the kind of man he was, why hadn’t she said something? Why didn’t she ever scream out or strike back? She’d done nothing to say things should be any different. She’d always carried on as if his father had been exactly the type of husband she’d expected.
Basir hurled another rock at the stream. The fish darted back and forth in no particular direction, which angered Basir inexplicably.
He hated staying with Ama Tamina and Kaka Mateen. He hated hearing all the things people said about his mother. Each time someone proclaimed she was damned or that she should be executed, he would grind his teeth and stifle a scream.
One morning, after Kaka Mateen had left the house, Basir pulled his sisters aside.
“Don’t listen to anything you hear them saying about our mother, okay?” he whispered to Shabnam and Kareema. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Madar-jan is going to be just fine and until she comes back, I’m looking after you all. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He said it not because he believed it, but because he believed they needed to hear it.
His sisters were young and frightened and stayed on their best behavior. Shabnam tried to look after Rima as much as she could. She was used to helping Madar-jan at home and hummed the same soothing tunes, watching lovingly as Rima’s eyelids grew heavy. Kareema kept the few clothes they’d brought neatly folded in a corner of the room they shared with their five cousins. They stayed close by Ama Tamina’s side and offered to help with whatever she was doing.
Basir sat on a flat rock and pulled his knees to his chest. The sun was sinking into a sky of purple and orange ribbons. He should be getting back before dinner or Kaka Mateen would be angry. Basir hated feeling controlled. He hated that he wasn’t allowed to visit his mother. He heard that she had a lawyer now. When he’d asked if she had gone before a judge yet, his aunt and uncle stopped talking about his mother’s case altogether. It was no use asking anything else. He would only be told what they wanted to say anyway.
As he looked at the earth under him, Basir dug his fingers into the dirt, feeling the grains embed under his fingernails and liking the way it stung. He scraped his fingers against the ground, lifting it and letting it drift through his fingers. How many handfuls of dirt covered his father?
Basir tried to picture him, his corpse sheathed in white. His uncles had insisted that he help wash his father’s body for the burial.
Kaka Fareed held nothing back.
“Look! Look what your mother’s done! This man should be alive. Your father should be standing next to me. But here I am washing his dead body because your damned mother took a hatchet to his head.”
Kamal’s eyes were shut and his jaw was closed with a strip of white cotton wrapped around his face, below his chin and knotted at the top of his head. There was contempt in the downward turn of his lips. Basir couldn’t bear to see that scorn, wondering if it was directed at his mother or at someone else. Basir had picked up his father’s hand and, feeling the stiff fingers against his own, had dropped it as one would a hot coal. He’d taken two abrupt steps backward, his father’s cousins staring at him with a mixture of
disappointment and understanding. They’d said nothing when he sat slouched forward with his head in his hands.
Did my mother really do this?
He could not imagine it. Nor could he imagine another plausible explanation for the scene he’d found at home that day. The blood, the look on his father’s face, the way his mother quavered when she told him to take the girls inside.
Basir had dug a small hole, the size of an apple. He clenched his hand into a fist and pressed his knuckles into the dirt, moving his hand back and forth and letting the friction burn his skin. His chest heaved with one deep breath.
Maybe he didn’t know his mother as well as he thought he did. Maybe his father had strayed from home for a reason.
Basir’s head ached at the thought of having to choose between two parents, especially since one of them was dead. He didn’t know who to blame. All he could wish for was for his mother to stay alive.
Any parent, his mother had told him once, is better than no parent at all.
CHAPTER 16
GULNAZ STRETCHED HER LEGS ON THE FLOOR CUSHION AND leaned her head against the wall. She’d spent all day avoiding everyone. She wanted to speak with Rafi, but he wasn’t yet back from town. His wife, Shokria, watched her nervously. Gulnaz scowled and kept her green eyes averted. On more than one occasion, Shokria had whispered to her sister that her mother-in-law’s emerald eyes bored into her so intensely she could feel her muscles knot.
Gulnaz knew what people thought of her. As daughter of the powerful murshid, people had always treated her with cautious respect. And when they caught a glimpse of her green eyes, she could see them hesitate to take their next breath, as if she might have cursed the very air around them. Even as a young girl, her aunts and cousins had thrown accusing looks her way when things went wrong, as if it were her fault they’d oversalted the stew or tripped on a stone in the courtyard. No one else in the family had green eyes, which made them all the more striking. By the time she was two, the family had concluded she’d been born with a twisted form of the murshid’s powers, not the kind that drew people in hopes of blessings and good fortune, but the kind that could bring on a toothache or destroy a field of crops.
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