The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  — The Widow’s Husband —

  Advance Praise for

  The Widow’s Husband

  Novelist Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, says, “Tamim Ansary’s book is a lavishly detailed and unfailingly engrossing story of loyalty, custom, honor, and love… There isn’t a false note in this account of the doomed British campaign in Afghanistan and the intertwined lives that unravel, in unexpected ways, as civilizations collide. This is historical fiction at its page-turning best…”

  Playwright Charlie Varon, author of The People’s Violin and Rush Limbaugh in Night School, says this book, “…kept me up later than I'd planned, I had to finish it! A fascinating immersion into 19th century Afghanistan, its village life and its invaders. It will change the way you think about this part of the world...”

  Novelist Erika Mailman, author of The Witch’s Trinity and A Woman of Ill Fame says, "This book is an incandescent lamp I will return to again and again, to bask in the marvelous language and the unforgettable characters… a beautiful and moving work of fiction. Ansary proves himself an extraordinary novelist…”

  The Widow’s

  Husband

  by

  TAMIM ANSARY

  The Widow's Husband

  Copyright © 2009 by Tamim Ansary

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the Publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This novel is entirely a product of the author’s imagination. All characters, events, and places in it are fictitious or are fictionally re-imagined historical events and persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ansary, Mir Tamim.

  The widow's husband / Tamim Ansary. — 1st print ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9753615-0-4

  ISBN-10: 0-9753615-5-4

  1. British—Afghanistan—Fiction. 2. Afghan Wars—Fiction. 3. Villages—Afghanistan—Fiction. 4. Kabul (Afghanistan)—Fiction. 5. Afghanistan—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.N5553W53 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009032695

  A Vox Novus Book

  Published by NUMINA PRESS

  www.numinapress.com

  Cover art and design © 2009 by Elina Ansary.

  An e-book edition of The Widow's Husband is available on www.scribd.com

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Every writer should have a writers’ group like mine, the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop, in all its protean diversity, unending flux, and unfailing support. I also wish to thank the San Francisco Arts Commission for a grant that gave me the time to set other cares aside for a year and write this novel.

  Historical Note

  In 1839, Great Britain sent an army into Afghanistan to replace the country’s ruler with a more compliant king. The “Army of the Indus” completed its assignment easily. Soon wives and retainers followed husbands and lovers and a vigorous British community began to thrive in Kabul. Three years later, that entire community tried to flee the country over the Hindu Kush mountains; but out of 17,000 men, women, and children who left the city on a stormy January day, only one man made it out of the country alive.

  The Widow’s

  Husband

  TAMIM ANSARY

  Copyright © by Tamim Ansary.

  This novel is entirely a product of the author’s imagination. All characters, events, and places in it are fictitious or are fictionally re-imagined historical events and persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this novel or any portions of it in any form whatsoever except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. For information address Tamim Ansary, 178 Gates Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.

  Cover art by Elina Ansary.

  Every writer should have a writers’ group like mine, the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop, in all its protean diversity, unending flux, and unfailing support. I also wish to thank the San Francisco Arts Commission for a grant that gave me the time to set other cares aside for a year and write this novel.

  Historical Note

  In 1839, Great Britain sent an army into Afghanistan to replace the country’s ruler with a more compliant king. The “Army of the Indus” completed its assignment easily. Soon wives and retainers followed husbands and lovers and a vigorous British community began to thrive in Kabul. Three years later, that entire community tried to flee the country over the Hindu Kush mountains; but out of 17,000 men, women, and children who left the city on a stormy January day, only one man made it out of the country alive.

  1

  Let me take you across the miles and down through the years to a tiny village in Afghanistan, some hundred miles north of Kabul, in the year 1841. The village was called Char Bagh, which means Four Gardens, and it’s still there, although it has changed a little since those days. A paved road runs within ten miles of it now, flanked by poles carrying electric wires. The malik of Char Bagh owns a television set, as is only proper for a headman, and one day, when power reaches the village, he means to turn it on. In 1841, of course, there was no electricity anywhere, not even in England.

  The village nestles at the bottom of a valley shaped like an elongated gravy bowl. The sides are steep and boulder-studded. From the valley floor, one can see the flat, blue silhouettes of gigantic mountains ringing the high hills on every side. A river enters at one end, tumbling down from the upper reaches in a series of cataracts. It makes a lazy loop through the flat part of the valley, then picks up speed flowing south, acquiring choppy rapids just before it squeezes into a crack between two walls of granite. There is no getting into the valley along the river bank at this lower end, nor at the upper end either. The only entrance is from the side. Today, a gravel road just wide enough for a single car winds down from Red Pass, and until recently government officials from Kabul came here occasionally for rustic vacations: the headman kept a tidy little inn before Soviet carpet bombing took it out. But in 1841, the only way to reach Char Bagh was on foot, coming down the western slope on a goat track worn into the hard soil by generations of hooves and human feet.

  Late one morning in that spring of 1841, the malik of Char Bagh was sitting in one of the second-story rooms of his clan compound, inspecting his beard and moustache in the lid of his snuff tin, hoping to find a white hair or two. Unfortunately, all he saw in the little mirror was his usual black beard, his usual smooth skin, virtually the skin of a boy. With a sigh, he took a pinch of snuff. A headman without a single streak of white in his beard—how was such a man to exert authority? All of Ibrahim’s cares these past six months, all the weight upon his shoulders since his brother’s death elevated him to the leadership of the village had not gained him so much as a single wrinkle. His was a hard lot.

  A clatter sounded. The young headman cocked his head. Did it come from downstairs…? No: it was only Asad’s donkey braying away in the compound down the street. Ibrahim opened the shutters. A chill breeze blew in, but he didn’t care. He wanted the air and the light, but most of all, he wanted to see if she was coming. With the window open, the donkey sounded even louder. Beyond its irritating noise, Ibrahim detected the chitter of children, a sound he adored, and beyond them the rumble of the Sorkhab River running into Needle’s Eye, another sound he savored. But no one was coming down from Red Pass.

  The malik packed another small pi
nch of snuff under his tongue and settled back into his book. Rumi’s mystical masterpiece was a precious legacy handed down from his father’s grandfather’s great, great grandfather. The Qur’an in Farsi, some people called it. Ibrahim read a couplet out loud, running his finger below the line to keep his place: The moment my intoxication wanes … Intoxication—how was a man to interpret that word? I erupt a hundred heads of lamentation… What did the poet mean, ‘erupt ?’ And what were these ‘hundred heads of lamentation’? If only he could discuss such mysterious words with somebody, anybody, but alas: no other man in his village could read.

  Then Ibrahim heard another sound. This one definitely came from somewhere inside the house. It had to be his sister-in-law. Khadija must be back from Sorkhab. Ibrahim straightened up, not wanting her (or anyone) to see him slumping. By the time the door swung open he looked suitably sunk in his studies.

  The widow entered noiselessly. Ibrahim didn’t look up but he didn’t have to: her strong features rose up in his mind’s eye, vivid as a dream: those dark green eyes, those high cheekbones. Although she was nearly Ibrahim’s age, she looked almost as girlish as his wife. When he did glance up at last, she was coming toward him barefoot, the end of her gray scarf drooping over her breast. She was still wearing her floral visiting dress.

  “Oh, what a journey,” she exclaimed. “Oh, what a journey, brother-jan, I’m dying of exhaustion, simply dying.” She paused to refill his cup, but when she touched his teapot she frowned: “Cold? Hajji-sahib, why do you allow yourself to suffer this way? When you have so many people to serve you!” She tipped her head back and let out a melodic keen: “Naheed!”

  A girl clattered up the steps. “Auntie?”

  “Get some hot tea for your father, my dear. Hot, I said! Bring a cup for your auntie too. All that way in the blazing sunlight! It’s not good for a woman of my age.”

  The girl went helter-skelter back downstairs.

  “Your age,” Ibrahim scoffed. “Of your hundred petals, not one has blown.” He issued the ritual compliment lightly but felt the danger of saying such a thing to his sister-in-law when they were alone, and so he buried it quickly with the patterned chatter of a well-mannered man: “You’re back, safe and whole, Allah be praised. May you not be tired. Tell me about Sorkhab, your people: all in splendid health inshallah?”

  “Oh! Let me catch my breath! Please!” She released several sighs to dramatize her fatigue, but she was just building suspense. The village of Sorkhab was only three hours away, she was strong, and she was riding a donkey. But she knew how anxious he was for the news she bore, so she was holding it back, just to tease him. Khadija the tease.

  “Your people,” he persisted. “Were they well?”

  “Yes, Hajji-sahib. Bless you. They all asked about your health.” Khadija then launched into a list of relatives who were well and had asked about his health, reporting their inquiries in a ritual sing-song.

  “Good,” he interrupted, before she could list every man, woman, and child in Sorkhab. “Excellent. But tell me.” He tilted toward her. “Have they started plowing?”

  Just then, Naheed bustled back with the tea service. She set her tray down, brushed her bangs back, unloaded two pot-bellied teapots, two cups, a bowl of brown-sugar nuggets, and two wooden spoons with painted handles. She poured a cup for each adult, piled the used dishes onto her tray, and scurried out again.

  “The plowing?” Ibrahim prodded.

  “No,” said the widow. “The soil is still too muddy …”

  A fly banged into the wooden shutter. Ibrahim gazed at his sister-in-law through the steam from his tea cup, waiting.

  “Hajji-sahib, it’s not good,” she said. “Mustapha Khan’s daughter-in-law dropped twins last week, boys this time. Allah smiles on the man, but he has twenty people living with him now. His daughter-in-laws are fighting, his eldest son is whining for a house of his own—you know where this ends.”

  “It can’t!” he cried out. “They must not!”

  “They intend to,” she said. “They will. They’ve already laid out new fields. They’re going to plow new land east of the river.”

  “Where will the water come from?” the headman of Char Bagh lamented.

  Khadija said nothing. He did not expect her to. They both knew the situation. Char Bagh was situated in a cul-de-sac, cut off from the country downstream by cliffs. Its water came entirely from the Sorkhab River, and the river flowed through Sorkhab before it reached Char Bagh. If the bigger village wanted to divert all the water and let none reach Char Bagh, it could do that..

  “Has it gone beyond mere talk?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The Sorkhab elders were out there last week, marking where to put in new irrigation ditches. They plan to water a thousand more jireebs, I heard.”

  “A thousand!” Ibrahim paled. “Do they think they’re a city now?”

  “It’s not just Mustafa Khan. Mullah Yaqub has big plans too. His son is building a house. And then there’s Saifuddin …and Jamal…That whole village is growing, Hajji-sahib. Something must be done about that village.”

  “That village is your village,” he reminded her gently.

  She cast him a reproachful look. The fly banged against the shutters again, buzzed for a few seconds, and then settled somewhere. “How can you say such a thing?” she said in a husky thrum. “This is my village, Ibrahim-jan. My place is here. I am yours now.”

  Ibrahim struggled to keep his face still. She was his. Well, he did have the right. Any honorable man does the decent thing and marries his brother’s widow, especially if he’s a headman with responsibilities: a beautiful widow can turn a village upside down. One morsel of meat and all the men turn into cats, as they say. Better such a widow were somebody’s wife, and Ibrahim after all had only one wife at the moment. He could certainly afford two. If Khadija were his wife right now he could lock the door…He allowed his eyes to graze over those breasts, that rounded waist… lock the door and undo that first button…

  He blinked back to the present moment. His mother-in-law would never allow it. Any second wife but this one. What was he thinking? How could he dream of overturning the harmony of his household with such a move, reckless of the discord it would sow? Out loud, he said, “You’re ours, it’s true…” nodding solemnly. “You’ve been ours for … what? Eleven years now?”

  “Twelve,” she murmured.

  He knew that, of course. Knew exactly how many years had passed since the night his brother married her, the night Ibrahim first set eyes on her. He was a boy then, she was a girl, they were of an age. But Khadija belonged to his brother who was twenty years older. Ibrahim remembered that moment better than anything in his life except his trip to Mecca with his father and brother as a little boy.

  “But you have kin over there, Khadija-jan. Your dear mother …I will never allow enmity to grow between us and them. We are one village.”

  “Please, Hajji-sahib. We’re not one village, never say such a thing on my account. If they take more water, we’ll have less. You’re our malik, you must put our needs first.”

  “How?” He looked into her eyes. “In your opinion, how should I proceed?”

  “In my opinion?”

  “Yes. You know all the men of Sorkhab, you know how they think. Advise me.”

  “Oh. Dear Hajji-sahib!” she said breathlessly. “I am only a woman. But if I were you? I would take their malik aside and warn him. I would make him tremble! He thinks he can toy with you because you’re young? Teach him, Ibrahim. You’re twice the man he is!”

  Ibrahim raised haunted eyes to his sister-in-law. “Oh for God’s sake, Khadija, what am I to say? Eat less, drink less, stop your women from having babies? What am I to offer?”

  “Why should you offer anything? It’s too late for striking bargains, Malik-sahib. It’s time to make that jackal know the taste and smell of fear.”

  Ibrahim shook his head. “I can’t start a fight. You can’t really want me to. They’re still
your kin. They’re still our neighbors. If God forbid someone gets killed, we’ll never see the end of fighting. Our children’s grandchildren will still be killing each other. And besides there are so many more of them.”

  “But you’re strong,” she pleaded. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Afraid!” Color leapt into his cheeks. “Who said anything about ‘afraid?’ I only want to be prudent. If a battle breaks out, seven hundred of them against three hundred of us—what kind of malik leads his men into such a battle? This whole village depends on my decisions. I can’t be reckless.”

  She receded then into womanly modesty. “Your decisions will be wise, I’m sure.” She set her cup in its saucer upside down. “We all look up to you, Hajji-sahib. I only wish you trusted yourself as much as we trust you. They’re the bigger village, but you’re the bigger man. If I’ve worried you, I’m not sorry. You need to know what Sorkhab is up to. And how would you know if you didn’t have your little spy, eh?” She poked at him playfully. “Eh?”

  The contact made him shiver. He frowned to hide his arousal. “You’ve done well,” he gruffed. “If you want to go again in a few weeks, let me know: I’ll send some boys along. Take Soraya next time.”

  Did her features tighten for a second at the sound of his wife’s name? He couldn’t tell. “I will,” she assured him. “Malik-sahib, I think of her as my own sister, you know. I’m grateful for your protection.”