A House Without Windows

by Nadia Hashimi

  “Yes, really,” she said sharply. She’d detected his surprise and was unimpressed by it. She switched into English to make her point. “We do have an educational system here, you know. You don’t have to go to the United States to learn something.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Tell me, then, why did you become a journalist?”

  “Because I like to know the truth,” she replied without hesitation. “I have always asked a lot of questions, even when I was a child. My family tolerated it so well that I decided to make it my work.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Thank you,” she said brightly. “I’m planning on going to the prison later this afternoon to do a few more interviews. I’m hoping to catch the warden as well. She’s been pretending to be busy, but I’m going to corner her today. Any chance you’ll be there?”

  “I’m at the office this morning.” And he was, but as the words left his mouth, Yusuf felt a tug to change his plans. “I’ll probably be at the prison in the afternoon though.”

  “Great, I’ll be there at two o’clock. Maybe I’ll see you then.”

  Yusuf hung up the phone and tapped his pencil against his notepad. The afternoon was looking less dreary than the morning.

  CHAPTER 46

  ZEBA STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE FENCE AND WATCHED HER mother approach, just as she had months ago. She’d last seen Gulnaz at the shrine when she’d turned to look back at Zeba before entering the mullah’s quarters. Zeba thought back to her shouts, the warning cries she’d sent out to her mother from across the shrine’s open yard. But Gulnaz had never been in any danger. Mullah Habibullah had never intended to hurt her—not when they lived together, not when he left, and not when they sat together to discuss the fate of their imprisoned daughter.

  The rain had cooled the air but made a mess of the yard. Zeba’s sandals were wet and the bottoms of her pantaloons had wicked the water from the earth. They could not sit for today’s visit or the mud would cake their clothes. That suited Zeba fine. This was a conversation she wanted to stand for anyway.

  Gulnaz met her daughter’s eyes even from a distance, but she did not speak until she reached the thin fence that separated them. She looked at the slick beneath her feet and shook her head. Their feet sank into the ground, weighted by mud and the discoveries of the recent days.

  “Salaam, Madar,” Zeba said softly.

  “Wa-alaikum, janem. Your color is better.” Gulnaz’s eyes flew over Zeba’s shoulder, scanning the yard for any of her cellmates. She felt compelled to ask about them, as if she needed polite conversation to fill the space of time she was going to spend with her own daughter. “The others aren’t outside today.”

  “They do what they can to stay out of this filth.”

  Zeba felt her throat knot. Ever since she’d been a small girl, she’d looked up to her mother. Even when she felt that her mother was vengeful with her jadu, she’d believed her to be someone larger than life and invincible. That’s what made it acceptable to push her away. Her mother was not frail or needy. She was an island of autonomy even when the world around her was at war. Zeba did not push her mother down—she had merely walked away from her.

  But this was a different Gulnaz. Before her stood a simple woman, made of flesh and scars and regrets. She was a story with an arc that fell suddenly and tragically when it should have lifted. Zeba did what she could to banish the pity from her eyes. That was not what she wished for her mother. It was cruelty to have a light shine so brightly on the one lie she had built her life upon, the one fallacy that allowed her to carry on each day and walk with her head held high. Zeba hated that she knew the truth about her father, that he had simply walked out on her because he couldn’t stand to be around her mother. That her father was not a wretched man or an insane man or a dead soldier only made matters worse. He was alive and well, a decent person who’d made a drastic decision—choosing to walk away from everything he had and every person he’d ever loved simply to get as far away from Gulnaz as possible. He’d left her with as much dignity as he could until their paths were forced together once again.

  Zeba could see the lines on her mother’s face and wondered how she’d never noticed them before. The green of her eyes didn’t sparkle. Was it because they sat beneath a sky of hammered metal or because they had lost their luster years ago and Zeba hadn’t noticed? The bend of her spine, her shrunken lips, the slight tremble in her hands—all were tiny revelations for Zeba.

  “Madar,” she started. Why did it have to be like this? Why were she and her mother like two survivors floating on rafts, reaching out for each other only to be bounced apart by wave after tumultuous wave? Would they ever reach still waters?

  “Now you know,” Gulnaz said, her moist eyes half hidden by heavy eyelids. “Now you know everything. And I’m glad you do. It surprises me to say it but it’s true. I hid it from you because you were a girl. You couldn’t have known what a husband was.” Gulnaz stared off into the distance. She spoke softly, a thin attempt at lightening the heaviness in the air. “But I don’t have to tell you now, do I? You know better than most, jan-e-madar, that some husbands are quite burdensome creatures.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” Zeba laughed, bringing a trace of a smile to her mother’s face. Zeba went on, “I always dreamed of trekking across the country, climbing the mountains and finding some green flag somewhere or a pile of stones and being struck with this knowledge that somehow I’d stumbled upon my father’s grave. I imagined him a martyr, a hero who had spilled his blood for freedom.”

  “It was a different kind of freedom he was after. He was no martyr, neither was I.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I knew he would speak to you,” Gulnaz said. “I begged him that day not to say anything, but I could tell from the look on his face that he wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue for more than a few moments once I left.”

  “How could he? I would have hated him for it.”

  Gulnaz looked up sharply.

  “You wouldn’t have known to hate him for it. He could have simply left things alone.”

  Zeba shook her head.

  “That’s not the way it should be. I needed to know.”

  “Did you? Has it made anything better? Has it restored anything in you? I bet it hasn’t.”

  Zeba wouldn’t answer that question. Her mother looked pained enough.

  “Have you told Rafi?”

  Gulnaz nodded.

  “I had to. No sense in waiting for him to hear it from you or, worse, from your father.”

  “Father” fell from her tongue like a drop of poison. Zeba saw just how much her mother despised her husband and knew resentment was at its root. Gulnaz had wanted him to be something better and he’d disappointed her.

  “What did Rafi say?”

  “Not much. I don’t know if he’ll try to see him or if he’ll just pretend he never heard about this. He was almost a young man when your father left to—” Gulnaz caught herself before she completed the phrase with the lie she’d been telling for so long that it had grown roots in her mind. “When your father left. He’s angry about that.”

  “He has a right to be. We all have a right to be angry at him for leaving.”

  Gulnaz looked up, grateful for the bit of anger that survived in her daughter after learning the truth.

  “Those were difficult years.”

  “I’m sure they were, Madar. I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  “Shame is a terrible thing.”

  Zeba knew it well. It was terrible. Shame was more binding than the shackle around her ankle at the shrine. Shame, in its many shapes and colors, was what had broken Zeba, Gulnaz, and the girl Kamal had raped. It threatened to cast them out of their communities. It threatened the promise of a new day. It was an indelible stain on their spirits.

  “I’m sorry you felt ashamed,” Zeba said. It was the best she could offer. She could not tell her mother that she should not have felt shame or that she should not
feel shame even now. She would not compound one fallacy with another, not when her mother could see right through it.

  “It’s done,” Gulnaz said flatly. “I should have expected this to happen. Nothing stays buried, especially in a place like this where people are always sticking their hands into the dirt and trying to dig things up. But he doesn’t want to come back. Nothing will change with the family. Your father turned his back on them, and for him to return now would bring shame to him, too. He’ll stay hidden behind that beard and shrine until the day he dies and his wife can bury him there as the great mullah who spent his years helping the troubled.”

  “He is not a bad person. He told me he meant you no harm.”

  “I didn’t disagree with his choice,” Gulnaz admitted. “We were once happy, but that was before I knew him. When he was only my fiancé and we were at arm’s length, we were very happy with each other. But by the time my wedding henna had faded from my hands, I hated being his wife. I would have hated being anyone’s wife, to tell you the truth, and I told him that at the shrine.”

  “What did he say?” It was a bold question for Zeba to ask, such a private matter between her parents. She asked anyway because boundaries had already been crossed.

  “He knew it. He’s always known it. That was why he did me the favor of not divorcing me. He could have, just to free himself, but it would have been a bigger shame than his walking out. He could have stayed and taken a second wife, but even that didn’t appeal to him. He wanted to wander, and hating me gave him a good excuse to do it.”

  Zeba hooked her fingers on the metal fence and pressed her face against the mesh, the rings making impressions on her skin. Her mother touched her cheeks and nose with a fingertip, a caress as light and warm as sunlight.

  “I don’t think any less of you, Madar-jan. I would have done the same. I probably will do the same, actually, when it comes time to tell Shabnam, Kareema, and Rima about their father. I’ll come up with the prettiest version of the truth I can and pray that they believe it until we’re all dead and buried.”

  “What did happen, Zeba?”

  Zeba bit her lower lip and grimaced. She shifted her weight and felt the softened earth give way beneath her, molding itself to the shape of her feet.

  “I found him attacking a girl I’d never seen before—a girl barely older than Shabnam. I’d never expected to see something so evil in my own home. It was the blackest thing a mother could see. He . . . he ruined her.”

  Gulnaz inhaled sharply. She’d recognized the darkness in Kamal long ago, but she’d not guessed it was this. She looked at her daughter and felt pride rush through her veins.

  “You were strong. The judge doesn’t know?”

  Zeba looked at her mother.

  “Why would he believe me? I’m only half a witness as a woman. And if it comes out what happened . . . she will be destroyed again. I have to think of my own children, too. People would say such horrible things to them.”

  Zeba’s reasoning was sound. Girls without honor were better off dead, many thought. And then there was vengeance. If the girl’s family was disgraced in town, they could seek retribution. Maybe they would demand Shabnam or Kareema be given to them as a wife or servant.

  “One day, you’ll talk to the children about all this,” Gulnaz predicted, her heart torn between her own mistakes and those her daughter could still make. “When you do, don’t spare them too much. It’s much better to believe your children can be your friends. Look at Basir. He knows what you’ve done and why, and when I spoke with him, his eyes glow to hear your name. There is no shame you need to hide from him.”

  Zeba nodded. Her throat swelled at the mention of her son’s name. To believe he could still love her was everything. She’d told him so much more than a boy should hear about his parents. She’d yearned to tell him everything, every cold detail, but he was only a child himself, and she could not trust him to keep the fact of her innocence to himself.

  She’d told him what she’d seen and that the hatchet had been lying there. She’d told him even that she had been most afraid it was one of her daughters hidden beneath Kamal’s figure. She’d told him she’d acted without thinking. He’d looked at her in fear, as if the most frightening thing in that night had not been the long way he’d traveled alone or the cries of the insane in the shadow of the shrine.

  She resisted, though, telling him that she’d picked up the hatchet and swung it, sideways, at the back of his father’s head, only managing to knock him over. She’d stepped on Kareema’s plastic doll, lost her footing, and crumpled on the ground, the hatchet a few feet away. Kamal had howled at her in anger while on his hands and knees.

  You whore! I’ll kill you!

  He’d leaped onto her, straddling her as she kicked. She’d covered her face with her hands. His heavy hand had clamped over her mouth so that she’d tasted the salt of his skin. She felt a tightness in her chest. Breathing was difficult. She’d not seen the girl crawl away. Like Kamal, she’d not seen what was coming next.

  “I think Tamina is going to bring them here soon,” Gulnaz added. “She hasn’t said for sure, but I think she will.”

  “Tamina? Why . . . what makes you think she would do such a thing?” Zeba’s voice was a whisper.

  “She does not have the fondest memories of her brother. It seems he was a menace in her childhood as well, which is why she wanted to take in the children when he died. She doesn’t trust Basir completely, but she’s decent to him and I think she’ll come around once the dust settles. I didn’t understand completely, but now I do. The past months have been hard on her, especially with the rumors about the Qur’an. She’ll come once it doesn’t look like she’s spitting on her brother’s grave to do so. It’s actually better for her that the village hates him so, even if he’s dead. It gives Tamina more freedom not to hate you.”

  Tamina. Zeba could only imagine what Kamal had done to his younger sister in the privacy of their childhood home. No wonder she’d kept her distance from their family entirely. She, too, shuffled through life with shackles.

  “Poor Tamina. I had never even thought . . .” Zeba groaned.

  “But she’s survived. Most do, in some way.”

  Zeba nodded and prayed that her mother was right.

  Little girl, she thought, recalling the way pale-faced Laylee had dropped the hatchet after striking the fatal blow to the back of Kamal’s head. Her hair clinging to her wet face, her hands shaking, and a bottled scream in her throat, she’d looked at Zeba wild-eyed.

  Go, Zeba had screamed at her, half expecting Kamal to rise from the dead and strike them both down. She’d faltered, staring at her bloodied hands, before frantically wiping them on her dress.

  No, no, no, no, no, the girl had cried in a voice so small Zeba could barely hear it over her own thunderous heartbeat.

  Little girl, she thought as she stood inches away from her mother and thought of how many women kept secrets in the vault of their hearts. Just a little girl and already so much to hide.

  CHAPTER 47

  YUSUF TRUDGED ALONG THE ROAD, HIS SHOES MUDDIED AND his socks damp. He’d rolled up the hems of his trousers, hoping to spare at least part of his clothing from the mud. The taxi driver had dropped him off as close to the entrance of Chil Mahtab as he could.

  He should not have come today. There was no true urgency to this visit, nothing he was going to do that could not have been done tomorrow when the sun had been given the opportunity to dry the streets. Yusuf told himself that engaging with this reporter was strategy, not an act of desperation. He stood in the interview room while two guards rambled past, greeting him with a nod. He’d gotten to know their faces, if not their names, and put a hand to his forehead in a friendly salute before unfurling his trouser legs.

  He checked his phone and saw that it was just a few moments after two o’clock. He opened his messenger bag and removed his notepad. He spotted his bottle of eyedrops and appreciated the rain for what it did to the air quali
ty. He’d woken that morning without feeling like the insides of his eyelids were made of sandpaper.

  He’d missed a call. He looked at the long string of numbers and realized his mother must have called with a calling card. She purchased them from the Afghan market she went to for bread, lamb, and thermoses, items she refused to purchase from any other retailer. She took two buses and walked a quarter of a mile to get to the Afghan store but never complained about the inconvenience.

  Everywhere else you go, she would say, they give you beef and call it lamb. They think people won’t know any better. And these thermoses know how to keep tea hot for hours!

  You think your fellow countrymen are above cheating you? his father would retort with eyes still trained on the television set. They just speak your language while they’re doing it. We haven’t had real lamb in years.

  The longer Yusuf stayed away, the more he found himself imagining what his parents might be doing at any given moment. On his phone, he switched between local time and New York time. It wasn’t that he wanted to be back in their apartment with the wafting smells of the neighbors’ cooking and rattle of air-conditioning units perched precariously on windowsills. It was more that he thought of his parents with a certain fondness. Nostalgia, he thought, was far more elegant than homesickness.

  He would call his mother tonight, when it would be noon in New York and she would be home, cooking lunch for his father. She was, doubtless, delivering daily packages of food to his sister as well to keep her well nourished as she thickened with her growing baby.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  Her voice startled him. Yusuf looked up and found himself staring into the kohl-rimmed eyes of a woman who had to be Sultana. She wore a knee-length army green jacket, with sleeves rolled at the cuffs. She had on slim-fitting jeans tucked into brown boots, smart wear for the day’s conditions. She stuck out her hand and tilted her head to the side.

  “You are Yusuf, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” he said and pushed his chair back to stand. He shook her hand, surprised both that she’d offered it and that her grip was as firm as it was.