A House Without Windows

by Nadia Hashimi

  There was a shout, a man’s voice. Zeba couldn’t quite make it out at first. She strained her eyes and spotted a flutter at the mouth of the cavelike cell, so subtle that she wondered if she had imagined it. The voice came again, a loud, slow moan.

  “God, oh God, what have I done to deserve this? Help me! Someone please help me!”

  Another voice followed—it, too, dragged to the mouth of the cave by a chain.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up! God doesn’t love you!”

  But he wouldn’t shut up, whoever the man was. He sat just at the brink of his cell, close enough that daylight fell upon a sliver of his body. Zeba could make out the curved shape of a defeated spine, one gaunt arm, and a cowed head.

  “I don’t want to be alone! Please don’t leave me alone any longer! I swear to you I’ve been cured! Please let me out . . . I’m going to die here!” It was human but reminded Zeba of the bleating of a sheep being dragged to slaughter, its front legs dragging in the dirt and an instinctive dread vibrating in its soon-to-be-sliced throat.

  Zeba’s breaths quickened. She bit her tongue.

  The mullah took a sip of his tea, drawing it through his pursed lips in an obnoxious slurp that made Zeba want to hurl his cup against the trunk of the acacia tree.

  “He is a sick man. When his family brought him to me, he spoke only to demons that no one else could see. He could not even answer his mother or father. But in the twenty-nine days he’s spent here, he’s shown remarkable improvement. This is what I do,” he said, with a regal wave of his hand. “It’s my calling. I have given up . . . so much to devote myself to this work. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices to find our true naseeb, do you understand? God has instructed me to do this work, and it is for me to obey. I make people well here.”

  Zeba felt her stomach tighten into a knot. The hairs on her arms prickled. Within those cells was the purest of solitude. From the openings, the ill could see the jagged line of mountains that separated this world from the next.

  Zeba could see in the mullah’s eyes that he’d already reached his conclusion. Anything she said at this point made no difference. Yusuf would be surprised, but Zeba was not. That was the problem with Yusuf. He devised plans and expected the rest of the world to fall into place.

  The lines came to her in a flash:

  A woman indignant must suffer from madness.

  That ignorant guess is the cause of our sadness!

  Yusuf and the prosecutor were at the doorway. They’d grown impatient, and small talk was a chore, especially while the mullah’s son sat mutely in the corner of the room.

  The prosecutor cleared his throat.

  “Mullah-sahib, I don’t mean to interrupt, but . . .”

  The mullah glanced in their direction and took another loud slurp of his tea.

  “Gentlemen,” he said with his eyes on Zeba. “You are free to return to the prison, but this woman is staying here with me.”

  CHAPTER 32

  “BUT . . . BUT . . . BUT FORTY DAYS?” YUSUF STAMMERED. “AFTER forty days, we’ll be dragging her corpse out of that place! Is this your plan for sentencing her?”

  Qazi Najeeb was nonplussed. He scratched at the back of his neck and looked, distractedly, at a land deed on his desk. He squinted his eyes to get a better look at the list of signatures on the bottom. He needed to settle this property dispute in the next few days or he could safely anticipate another murder being committed.

  “Young man, you’re out of line speaking to me that way.”

  It had been one week since they’d taken Zeba to the shrine. For seven days, Yusuf had been pacing outside the judge’s office. The guards, two lanky men in their twenties with holstered guns on their hips, watched him in amusement as he intercepted the judge on his way in. There were no other judges to beseech, and the chances of bumping this particular plea to an appellate court were next to nothing. Yusuf softened his tone.

  “Please, Your Honor. I’m asking you to consider her well-being. We cannot conduct a fair trial if she is going to be starved and chained for forty days.”

  “Forty days is the standard treatment period. Mullah Habibullah surely explained to you that Zeba is not his first patient. He’s been treating people there for years and has a very good reputation in the area.” The judge was matter-of-fact about the situation, as if he’d not been surprised at all to hear the mullah had decided to keep Zeba for treatment.

  The prosecutor scoffed.

  “This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?” he accused from the comfort of the floral armchair. He uncrossed and recrossed his thin legs, his knees jutting out like beaks as he leaned forward to toss his manila file on the coffee table. “You wanted someone to say that she was crazy and you got it. Now she’s getting treatment for it, just as you said she would if she were a defendant in America. If anyone should be upset with what’s happened here, it’s me.”

  Yusuf couldn’t believe the turn this case had taken. As if the justice system wasn’t bad enough, now he had to contend with the opinion of the town shaman. He huffed, hands on his hips and his necktie loosened.

  Gulnaz had accompanied Yusuf in this visit to the judge. While Yusuf had dreaded telling her what the mullah and the judge had decided to do with Zeba, Gulnaz had taken the news better than he’d expected. They’d been in the interview room of the prison and she’d put both hands on her temples and lowered her head. When she finally looked up, Yusuf saw no tears—merely grim determination.

  “God help her,” Gulnaz had hissed before leaving the room, implying surely that no one else had.

  She was more talkative today.

  “Qazi-sahib, what exactly did this . . . this . . . mullah say about my daughter’s condition?”

  The judge turned his attention to Gulnaz. He wondered if she might have taken extra care to dress for this meeting. Had she thought of him as she slipped on her brassiere? Her brows drew close ever so slightly, so the judge cleared his throat and mind, worried she might have just read his thoughts.

  “Since interviewing her that first day, he’s spent time observing her. What he explained to me, he’s also written in this report that was sent over here by a messenger.” By “report,” the judge meant a paragraph scrawled on a sheet of a schoolboy’s notebook and by “messenger,” he meant the mullah’s own son, the same boy who had served the lawyers tea. “In his professional opinion, she is suffering from a very deep mental illness and he thinks it’s unlikely she was in her right mind at the time her husband was killed. The good news is that he believes he can help her heal.”

  Yusuf sat back down in his chair and breathed deeply. How could he get Zeba out of that dungeon without tossing the entire case into the prosecutor’s hands?

  “With all due respect, Your Honor, he is not a physician and can’t really make that assessment. I wanted to get a person with a medical degree to evaluate her. The hospital is not that far away. If we can have her sent over there, they have two physicians on staff who are qualified and have been treating people suffering from all kinds of mental problems. They even have an inpatient unit where they keep people and provide recognized treatment—”

  Gulnaz interrupted her daughter’s lawyer.

  “Unlike this young lawyer, I don’t doubt Mullah-sahib’s qualifications.” Her voice was firm and unwavering. She looked directly at the judge. “In fact, I am so confident in his skills that I believe he will be able to manage her condition in less than forty days. You will please pass along my thoughts to him. I’ve heard she’s the only woman being held at the shrine right now and, as you can imagine, I’m concerned about her welfare there. Those are uneasy conditions for a female.”

  “The conditions are designed to be what is necessary for the treatment of the patient,” the qazi explained gently. “It’s been a safe treatment for many, and he will keep a close eye on her.”

  “So what does this mean for her case, then? We’ve already reviewed the penal code. If she’s been declared insane by a sour
ce you trust, then she cannot be convicted of this crime,” Yusuf insisted.

  “For now,” corrected the prosecutor. “This is just as you said. Get her treatment and then she can be tried and convicted. And she will be despite this delay.”

  “My friends, we are making history,” Qazi Najeeb said proudly. He looked around the room with the glow of a chemist who’d just synthesized a novel compound. “We are carrying out true justice as it has been delineated in the procedural code. This is a new age for the judicial system, young men. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime. We are leaders, we three!”

  Gulnaz listened intently and thought back to the biscuits she’d brought in for their last meeting. The judge was a thin man, and she hadn’t expected him to eat so many. She’d come empty-handed today and wondered if that had been a wise decision.

  “There’s something else we need to discuss,” the judge said, leaning forward in his chair. His elbows rested on his desk and he stroked his beard twice before continuing. “I’ve received a report from the chief of police in Khanum Zeba’s village. Several people have provided statements to the police chief, Hakimi, about Zeba.”

  Yusuf felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand. Gulnaz’s left eye twitched once, which she took to be a good omen.

  “What statements?” asked the prosecutor.

  “There are quite a few, actually, but they are from various people who bear no relation to the defendant. They are comments about her behavior in the weeks before her husband was killed, and I must say, they are quite interesting.”

  “What do they say?” Yusuf asked cautiously.

  “I will read parts to you,” offered the judge, nudging his eyeglasses to the bridge of his nose as he pulled a handful of papers from a folder. “Here’s the first. It’s from a woman who lives not far from the defendant. She states, ‘I noticed this woman following me home several times. I paid attention since I am alone with my children in the home and my husband died a few years ago. She tried to see through a crack in my gate and I witnessed her doing the same to my neighbors’ homes. She looked to be speaking to herself, and when I asked her to leave, she did not seem to hear me.’”

  Yusuf was baffled for a moment.

  “Another reads, ‘I did not know this woman very well as she lived a few blocks from my home, but I had seen her from time to time in the market. More than once, I saw her whispering to cans of cooking oil and bags of flour in shops. She didn’t know I was watching and I didn’t mean to snoop but she has a daughter the same age as mine. I could not help but notice.’”

  “This cannot seriously be considered part of the case,” the prosecutor lamented.

  “But why not? If we are going to be part of a legitimate process, these must be included as evidence. This is part of the investigation. This is witness testimony. This is how things will be done in the Afghanistan of tomorrow and we will start it here, today!”

  The judge felt years younger, as if he were at the beginning of a career instead of winding down the end of one. Gulnaz raised an eyebrow. Qazi Najeeb’s chest puffed a bit, interpreting her reaction optimistically.

  “This one is most interesting. ‘I saw Khanum Zeba twice on my route selling things throughout the town. Both times it was just before her husband was killed. She was walking down our street, and after every few feet, she would stop and pick up a small rock or a handful of dirt and put it into her mouth. I asked her why she was doing that, but she only growled at me like a stray dog and hurried off before I could ask anything else. I could see the crazy in her eyes that day. You would have to be a blind man not to see it.’”

  “So they’re all saying that she was insane?” Yusuf asked. What had happened in that village? He thought back to his conversations and wondered why so many people could be volunteering accounts of Zeba’s bizarre behavior.

  Gulnaz took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her forehead. The air in the judge’s office was stifling. It was no wonder her daughter had shrieked her head off in here.

  “That’s what a lot of people are saying. And the police chief, Hakimi, told me that each of these witnesses came to him on his own. Some were nervous, he said. Others said they felt badly that this woman should be in prison at all since it didn’t seem like she was in her right mind at all. And, what’s more, people didn’t have anything good to say about her husband, which is odd given that he was murdered. No one likes to speak ill of the dead, but some even called him a cheater, a liar, or a godless man.”

  “That doesn’t mean she should have killed him,” the prosecutor insisted, more out of obligation than anything else.

  Gulnaz shot Yusuf a look. The young lawyer had gone to the village and knocked on doors. He’d walked through her daughter’s home and met with Hakimi himself. What had he done there? All these people saying Zeba was madder than a sandstorm . . . could this be his doing? Or could these accounts actually be true?

  Gulnaz lowered her gaze to the floor. Her shoes blurred through her teary eyes.

  The pain of watching her husband walk away had never left her. She’d wanted so much for Zeba to have a life free of dark curses. Secretly, she’d been glad Zeba had turned away from the jadu she practiced at home. When Zeba had grown resentful of her mother, Gulnaz had not faulted her. Zeba had believed her mother to be angry with her for the distance she’d put between them, but it was not true. Gulnaz had only ever been angry with herself.

  It was heavy, the weight of all the troubles she’d caused and the revenge she’d sought. Gulnaz never fell asleep until well into the night and then only after she’d taken a mental inventory of her children’s heartaches and all the things she could not change. When it was most quiet, she found herself at the window of the room she kept in her son’s small home, her ear to the night listening for the sound of something intended only for her—a laugh, a howl, a heartfelt apology.

  She sat now, with knees stiff and shoulders hunched, listening to people speak of her daughter’s demons. Was this all she was meant to see on this earth? And, more important, was this her own doing? Had she been trying to make her daughter stronger or had she been looking for a way to prove herself?

  She’d meant only to do right, with every step she’d taken in her life. She’d meant only to thwart someone’s evil eye or prevent a marriage that wasn’t intended or to punish someone who’d wronged her family. Even now, she meant only to save her daughter. She was nothing without her jadu, Gulnaz knew. Like a pulse, its persistence gave her life.

  Qazi Najeeb was determined to make history with her daughter’s case. Men were always so frightened by their mortality that they obsessed over ways to live forever: sons to carry on their work, grandsons to carry on their name, their legacies in books, on streets, or in newspapers. Some became more desperate as their black hairs turned silver.

  Yusuf seemed hesitant to say what he was thinking. This was a game of chess to him as he, too, hungered for a moment of glory. Was Gulnaz doing the same? Was she using her daughter’s plight to test her sorcery once more?

  Sometimes you just don’t know when to stop, Gulnaz told herself. Gulnaz drew in a deep breath. She had much to worry about and barely enough strength.

  There was no air in the office.

  Gulnaz stood and picked her handbag up off the floor. The men turned and waited for her to speak, but she did not. Without a word of explanation, Gulnaz walked out of Qazi Najeeb’s office.

  “Khanum? Khanum, where are you going? Are you all right?” the judge called out after her.

  Yusuf wasn’t surprised that she did not turn or answer. Zeba and her mother, he’d surmised long ago, were cut from the same unruly cloth.

  CHAPTER 33

  DURING THE DAY, ZEBA WOULD WATCH THE THICK CLOUDS DRIFT across the sky, like a flock being coaxed home by a shepherd with a tula, a wooden flute. For the first two nights, Zeba did not sleep. She would watch for the scorpion that walked past her cave, pausing to eye her with his tail curved in the air, as graceful as calligra
phy. It distracted her from the meals of bread (which was often stale), black pepper, and water. The black pepper made her sneeze, five or six gunfire convulsions of her body in the span of seconds. They were like small exorcisms, each of them. The water was pumped from a well that, Zeba assumed, must have plunged deep into the ground because it was sweet with minerals, percolated through layers of rich earth. The water brought to mind her cousin.

  He was her father’s nephew, a good spread of years between them. Zeba remembered carrying him on her hip as a girl. As a young man, he traveled to the city and worked for a month digging wells. He died, just a foot from water, when the earth’s gases overcame him. Zeba had cried for the boy, wondering how it must have felt to reach the core of the earth and tap into its life-giving fluid, only to realize he would never live to taste it.

  At his funeral, women consoled his wailing mother with lofty promises.

  “He died bringing water to people. There is sawaab in the work he was doing, and he will be rewarded in janaat.”

  It was the kind thing to say, much better than saying he died for no good reason.

  In the afternoons, Zeba listened to the mullah pray over each person. He sat at their cells and recited verses in a soft and gentle voice. He asked each man to speak of his troubles, to describe the visions or voices, to seek peace in the scripture. He brought cool water his son had drawn from the well to wash down their meals of dry bread and gritty black pepper.

  I suppose the mullah, too, seeks sawaab for his work in this world, Zeba thought.

  The first night had not been as difficult as it should have been. The cell was the length of two people but the roof was low, and the mullah had to crouch to pass through it. Zeba spent her time curled on a small rug Habibullah had brought her.

  One man called out with a howl that reminded Zeba of a mullah’s azaan ringing out from a minaret. As if it truly were a call to prayer, the others followed. Moans, sobs, and laughter mingled anonymously in the moonlit courtyard. Zeba couldn’t guess at their numbers and presumed no other women were present. Hers was the last cell in the row, and the nearest patient was more than three empty cells away, an arrangement she preferred.