The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “Me for him,” said Ibrahim. He set two pebbles on his palm and switched their places, then mimed himself and the malang switching places. “Me for him. Yes?” The foreigners stared at him intently. “The malang might die,” said Ibrahim. He pointed to the malang and mimed collapsing. “Then what will you have?” He beat his chest. “I’m healthy, I won’t die. You saw how those men kissed my hand. Take me.”

  “Die,” one of the Engrayzees repeated. He knew that word. He and the others talked among themselves. After a moment, they beckoned Ibrahim forward and parted to let him step to the cage—which was actually a litter, he realized, designed to carry rich men’s women. The tip of a bayonet touched his spine. He pulled the door open and touched his sheikh. The master kept on singing the qualities of God. The warmth of his skin sent relief through Ibrahim’s body. He pulled the malang’s arm, and the master came to his feet with all the docility of a child. Then he moved his lips close to Ibrahim’s ears. He said something.

  “What?” said Ibrahim.

  “Shahnaz,” the Malang whispered.

  “Shahnaz? What about her?”

  “Be kind to Shahnaz.”

  Why Shahnaz? But he couldn’t ask, could not learn more. The Engrayzee were pulling the malang out of the litter now. They sent him teetering toward the tribesmen. Ibrahim yelled to Ghulam Dastagir. “He needs your help. Come and help him! Move slowly. Don’t frighten the Engrayzee. Keep your hands up. Come quickly. Slowly though. Move slowly. Hurry.”

  He retired into the litter and from there watched Ghulam Dastagir’s arms go around the malang. It was over, the malang was safe. “Stop with Shamsuddin in Kabul, shelter with him until the passes open.” Ibrahim could not stop calling out advice, requests. “When you get to Char Bagh, tell Khadija—tell Soraya—tell my wife—tell everyone—”

  “I will tell them all. Of your heroism. I will tell them,” Ghulam Dastagir promised. “Let the foreigners go in peace,” he yelled to the Pushtoons. “They have my master. Let the Engrayzee take him, he’ll be safe. Allah will keep him safe.”

  Snow was beginning to fall again. Ibrahim’s eyelids felt like cast-iron pots He had been riding across ice and fighting his way over snow-choked passes through almost two sunsets and moonrises without pause. Through black spots, he saw Ghulam Dastagir help the malang onto the horse and walk the horse into snow swirls, up toward the passes where a ribbon of road strewn with corpses ran through the gorge. Ibrahim’s work was done; he had no further reason to stay awake. People who fell asleep in weather like this did not usually wake up again, but Ibrahim didn’t care. He waited for the foreigners to lock the door.

  But instead, they pulled him out of the litter. They tied his hands behind his back and poked their bayonets to prod him forward. With Ibrahim in the lead, the group moved south, leaving the heavy litter behind. By midday, however, they had gone only a few k’rohs, because they were all so broken, all so spent, every one of them. They called a halt at that point. One of them untied Ibrahim’s hands and pushed at him. They didn’t need him any more. He was now more trouble than he was worth. Ibrahim understood what was coming. Now they would kill him.

  He lifted his shoulder against the expected blows. These men who had lost everything, who had no food, no shelter, no safety, could still have one thing. They could have revenge. But they had only his one body to punish for all the thousands they had lost on the road between this lonely spot and Kabul. This would be long and it would hurt. One of the men pushed him from behind, and he stumbled onto the rocks but picked himself up at once. He’d make them work for it. He’d not let them get their satisfaction easily. But the first blow didn’t fall. He looked back. The man who had pushed him just stood there making a pushing gesture and muttering. What were they waiting for? Did they not realize how helpless he was? Perhaps they were even weaker. The foreigner raised his voice. He kept repeating the sound, “Goh! Goh!”

  Then it dawned on Ibrahim. They didn’t need him anymore, so they were releasing him. At that, he didn’t want to go. Such an abundance of human compassion from these people overwhelmed him: to relinquish vengeance, when vengeance was the only nourishment they could have! It took greatness of soul! He wanted to wrap his arms around these men, wanted to embrace their knees. Confused by his own emotions, Ibrahim tottered forward, his cheeks burning despite the snow.

  The foreigner watched him, too spent to care, and then suddenly his face erupted. Gore and bits of bone came bursting out from the place where his nose had been. He pitched forward. A bullet had come through the back of his skull and out the front. Ibrahim heard men whooping in Pushto. Afghan horsemen were circling in on him and the foreigners. The Engrayzee immediately squared up. Six of them dropped to one knee to form a line, the other three stood behind them. All pointed their muskets at the enemy, disciplined to the end, ready to shoot—but their guns were empty, they could not shoot, they had no bullets, no powder; yet none of them flung up his hands to surrender. They waited to engage the Afghans hand to hand. But the Afghans didn’t have to come that close. They had bullets, they could fire from afar. And the bullets came in, one and two at a time. The Engrayzees dropped one and two at a time. One man crawled away on his hands and knees, but a rider chased him down and clubbed him till he stopped moving. Then a bullet hit Ibrahim in the shoulder. He yelped and grabbed his arm, staring at the blood spurting out of him. A horseman was bearing down. He flung up his good arm and shouted, “Allah-u-akbar! I was their prisoner. I’m not one of them. Don’t shoot!”

  The Pushtoons stared down at him from their cavalry heights, faces wrapped in turbans. They looked like those marauders who had descended upon Char Bagh years ago and carried off eight precious women. But at least they were not foreigners.

  One of the men dismounted and crouched next to him. “What’s your name?”

  “Ibrahim. I’m from Char Bagh. It’s a village in the north.”

  “I’ve heard about Char Bagh.” The other spat snuff and leaned down again. “That’s where that famous malang comes from. You’re from there too?”

  “The foreigners took him! I came to save him, I’m the malik of Char Bagh. My companions got him away from the infidels, but I fell prisoner to them.”

  “No longer, my friend: you’re safe among your own now.”

  He spoke more words, but Ibrahim blacked out and didn’t hear them. Ibrahim knew nothing of being slung over a horse and taken to a village deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, many hours journey from the highway. He knew nothing of lying bundled in sheepskin blankets and lamb’s wool coats, wracked with fever. He scarcely knew that the women of this Safi tribe fed him hot broth, nursed him, drew him back from the edge of death. There he lay throughout the winter months, recovering his health while the people of Char Bagh mourned his death.

  By spring, he was strong enough to walk about, but the village was still snowbound, and the tribesmen want him to stay, because they thought his presence brought them luck. After all, his village had produced the great malang. So they told him there was no point in trying to get back to Kabul now: he’d never make it.

  But at last the snows had melted and the flowers had started blooming. The roads had opened up and caravans were moving freely once more. The time had come.

  “Stay, Malik-jan. Be our permanent guest,” the head of household begged him.

  “I would like nothing better,” Ibrahim responded, “but I have family in a land my own, I have a village that looks to me for guidance. My heart longs for my own soil.”

  His hosts relinquished him then; they gave him a horse piled high with gifts of mutton jerky and tasty baked goods, not to mention embroidered cloth and a woolen prayer rug. With these gifts, they sent the malik of Char Bagh on his way.

  46

  When he recognized the mountains of Char Bagh, Ibrahim caught his breath and wiped moisture from his eyes. Then he gave his horse’s ribs a gentle dig, but the tired animal kept to its dogged pace. Why tears, Ibrahim wondered? Surely, what he felt wa
s joy. The slopes were covered with crocuses and purple burdocks and the wind against his face brought a flavor of sage-pollen to his nose and throat. When he smelled the river, he thought his heart would break. Every river smells different, and this one, the river of his childhood, gave off an aroma of wet gravel, cattails and moss, a scent of sand and willow pollen, a memory of summer afternoons spent swimming with the other boys, of standing in irrigation ditches to plaster up the dikes, of harvesting the alfalfa.

  Ibrahim rode to the river’s edge and dismounted. He tied his horse to one branch of a fallen tree and crouched by the water to perform his ablutions, splashing his face three times, washing his hands to the forearms, washing his feet. He took off his turban and skull cap and passed his wet palms over his hair until he felt the cool moisture on his scalp, then took out his little prayer rug and performed his afternoon namaz.

  At sunset, when he reached Char Bagh, a crowd of children saw him coming, whispered amongst themselves, and bolted for home, chattering like birds. Ibrahim rode through the gate formed by his own compound and tethered his horse, intending to go directly up to the malang, but his family poured outdoors to greet him. His girls grabbed at his legs. Soraya rushed into his arms, but decorously let go after three quick neck kisses and started scolding Ibrahim for being gone so long, mingling wails of gratitude with shrill complaints.

  Ibrahim had planned to comport himself with dignity; he tried to keep his back straight, and to pat children’s heads, and to smile in every direction with benign self-possession, but emotion got the best of him. He started hugging indiscriminately. As the homecoming whirl mounted to a frenzy, some fat person waddled into his grasp. Her girth was all in her belly, and he had to lean over the lump to get close to her. Only then did he realize he was embracing Khadija. He squelched the impulse to kiss her lips and kissed only her neck, choking out her name. Whereupon, with a start he realized she wasn’t fat but pregnant. She was pregnant. The blood drained from his face, and his mind began to riot. Praise God was his first thought. Of course, of course. She whom all the world had considered barren! But then: horrors, the scandal! Did the village know? Had she been disgraced like Shahnaz, had they made her suffer? Did Malang-sahib know? Why else would he have spoken of Shahnaz as he stepped out of the cage? He meant Khadija really. How could Ibrahim face his sheikh now? His gaze slid down to Khadija’s belly and back to her glistening brown eyes. “Is it—?”

  “Yes,” she declared. “It’s Malang-sahib’s child.”

  “Malang-sahib’s?”

  “Yes. It’s a miracle. All praise to Allah.”

  “All praise to Allah,” the others echoed in a ragged chorus. They spoke what should have been joyous words but with the longest faces Ibrahim had ever seen. A terrible suspicion struck him.

  “Where is Malang-sahib right now?” No one answered him. At that moment, he knew, and the tears he never would have shed in public over any private sorrow came spouting out. The household started crying with him in simple compassion. “Allah!” the women keened. His wife came into his arms, whispering, “Life be upon you, Malik-sahib, life be upon you.”

  They wept in the courtyard and then went indoors and wept some more. The village had mourned the sheikh when they buried him, but the headman’s homecoming gave them all a second opportunity. Visitors poured through the compound and lamented and departed. By the time Ghulam Dastagir came over, night had fallen and the tears had run dry. Ibrahim felt lifeless inside but was glad to see the companion of his great journey. Ghulam Dastagir told him the simple, tragic story.

  The sheikh had taken a beating in Bala Hissar prison and had fasted relentlessly during his imprisonment. By the time the Engrayzees took him along on their doomed retreat, he was already famished and feverish. On the way home, Ghulam Dastagir had wanted to stop in Kabul, but the malang would not hear of it. “I can’t be late,” he said. “I have to meet my friend.”

  Ghulam Dastagir thought he was talking about Ibrahim and assured the great man that his “friend” was not in Char Bagh but would follow later when he could, and so in fact they were in no great hurry.

  “You’re in no hurry. I have an appointment to keep,” the malang insisted.

  “But the passes are blocked with snow,” Ghulam Dastagir protested. “We can’t get through.”

  “The passes were blocked yesterday,” the malang said. “Today they’re open.”

  This was impossible, of course, but Ghulam Dastagir decided to push on from Baghlan and let the malang see for himself. Once they reached an impossible barrier he wouldn’t protest against turning back and finding shelter in the city. Such was Ghulam Dastagir’s plan.

  So they set off from Baghlan on mules in bitingly bright weather. The snow was deep and soft in the gorges and hollows, but it held up well on the path where earlier traffic had stamped it down. This earlier traffic kept nibbling at Ghulam Dastagir’s peace of mind. Who could have come this way in dead of winter? It must have been quite a host to stamp the snow down so thoroughly: dozens of men, scores of bullocks, camels, horses, donkeys. Ghulam Dastagir watched for this crowd around every bend, worrying that it would be, not a caravan but an army. He also kept expecting the snow to deepen over each rise and block the path, but the route remained open and they kept moving.

  When they reached Char Bagh, the malang went straight to the mosque and performed a silent namaz. Then he went to Ghulam Haidar’s house and asked for Shahnaz, of all people. Instead of raining the expected curses down upon the girl who had started all the trouble, he stroked her humbled head and said, “You will tend the rosebushes around my grave.”

  After that he asked Ghulam Dastagir to take him home, but he collapsed on the way. Ghulam Dastagir carried him up the final slope and laid him down in the house Char Bagh had built for him. His wife Khadija knelt by his side to warm his hands with her own, but the malang never opened his eyes. He just lay there breathing softly, and then more softly, until he was not breathing at all.

  Even though the ground was cold and hard, the village dug a grave for him the next day, not among all the common graves but on a hilltop above the cemetery, where they would have room to erect a shrine. Just this week, the village had transplanted seven rosebushes to the soil around the great man’s grave, and Shahnaz had begun to tend them as charged.

  No one noticed how these words startled Ibrahim. The next morning, after bread-and-tea, he made his way to the sheikh’s grave, accompanied by Ghulam Dastagir and Ghulam Haidar, and counted the rose bushes.

  Seven!

  Ghulam Dastagir was busy discussing the mausoleum they ought to construct as soon as the weather warmed up a bit more. What kind of monument did the headman favor? Should they enlarge the guest house? Surely, the malang’s final resting place would attract a stream of pilgrims during the summer months. What did Ibrahim think?

  The distracted headman muttered some answer, but his mind was back in that dungeon with Malang-sahib. Before the seven rosebushes drop their petals you must…what was it he must do? See his friend Shamsuddin. That’s what it was. He’d forgotten, he’d hurried through Kabul without stopping, driven by his hunger for home. Now he regretted his haste.

  Khadija gave birth to a son at the end of Saratan. It was a hard delivery that left the mother wounded, but Soraya helped bring the boy out safely. Mullah Yaqub came from the bigger village to whisper the obligatory prayer in his ear. After an all-night conference, the household decided to call the baby Azizullah—“Dear-to-Allah.”

  Dandled by two mothers, the little boy grew long and fat and cheerful. Khadija began to recover her shape. Ibrahim’s gaze was drawn to her increasingly, began to cling to her. Now that Malang-sahib had broken the spell, might she not bear another child? Many more perhaps? Sons, even? Indeed he looked at her now and saw a fountain of fertility. She caught him looking once and returned his gaze for a blistering instant, her lips dimpling in a guarded smile. She must be nearly thirty years of age now. How could a woman so old still stir des
ire in a man? This yearning went beyond lust. It was a longing touched by grace. He wanted her to bear his heir.

  The malang had known about this all along. Your yearning will end… In that dank and lightless cell, he had practically asked Ibrahim to marry Khadija after his death and raise the son he had planted in her womb—what else could he have meant? But only if he fulfilled one condition, a penance lighter than a feather. “Go back to Kabul and express your gratitude to Hakim Shamsuddin.” That was all he had asked, all it would take to gain his forgiveness and his permission to possess Khadija for life.

  The day after the last of the wheat was harvested, therefore, Ibrahim sent for Khadija. She handed the baby off to Soraya and went up the stairs. Ibrahim pointed her to a soft mat, and she took the honored spot uneasily. “What’s wrong, Hajji?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve been thinking of a trip to Kabul—my dear.”

  “God watch over you!” she blushed. “Must you go now?”

  “It won’t be as hard this time. I know the way. But yes, I must go before the first frost. Men were kind to us there, and we never expressed our gratitude properly.”

  “And you want my advice about the trip.” She gave him a pleased smile.

  “I do, but that’s not why I called you up here now.” He bowed his head, feeling curiously shy, and the silence dragged on.

  “Should I get some tea?” she asked at last.

  “Soon. Let us settle our business first.” Desire made his voice thrum.

  “What business, Ibrahim-jan?”