The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “Khadija-jan.” He mustered a frown. “I worry that people might mistreat you in my absence. Everyone knows you’re under my protection, but is that enough? And Azizullah is fatherless. How can I allow that? The son of my sheikh! In sum—to make a long story short—I will come right to the point. It’s best to be direct, I think. So long as we understand each other. Do you see? Well, then, good, that’s settled.”

  “No, Malik-sahib. I don’t see. What’s settled?” Her gaze liquefied him.

  “About you and me. Mullah Yaqub can take care of it quickly next time he’s in Char Bagh. It should be done before I go. That way, I won’t have to worry while I’m traveling. Because what if something should happen on the road, God forbid? Azizullah would be left without my inheritance! But if you’re my wife, he becomes my son.”

  “Your wife?” she stammered.

  Warmth flooded his face right to the top of his ears His eyes met hers and a feeling washed between them, but he did not move. He must cage himself a little longer. He had not earned forgiveness yet. “Yes,” he gruffed. “My wife. The compound on the hill will be your house, Soraya will queen it down here, and I will split my time. You and Soraya get along, don’t you…dear?”

  “Yes,” she trembled, “but on this…I cannot speak for her...”

  The headman went to the door and stuck his head out. “Soraya! Come up here.”

  “Oh! Ibrahim, no! You should talk to her in private first. Just the two of you.” Khadija started to rise, but Ibrahim waved her down again.

  “I want both of you together. Stay where you are, woman.”

  Soraya came into the room, a piece of embroidery still in her hand. She glanced suspiciously from her husband to Khadija and back.

  “Soraya, my dear,” the headman said. “You do love Khadija-jan, don’t you?”

  Soraya caught her breath and just like that her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “Soraya-jan—”

  “You’re going to marry her!” she croaked.

  He felt rebuked. “I should, you know. It’s best,” he said. “It’s best I do. Sheikh-sahib’s son must have a father. This way the land and the water will be all one inheritance.”

  “Oh yes, it sounds very ‘necessary’,” sniffed Soraya. “What a wise malik you’ve turned out to be! How wonderful when the thing you want is the thing you should do. How nice when duty forces you to take what you’ve wanted for years and years and—”

  “Hush!” He glanced at Khadija, who sat with her hands clenched in her lap. “Come here,” he cajoled his fragile wife. “Come sit beside me.”

  She succumbed to his wheedling and settled next to him with the delicate caution of an injured little rabbit. Khadija remained across the room but all the emotion in the chamber was flowing between the headman and her. Their unity made Soraya the outsider. She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them and pouted.

  “Nothing needs to change,” the headman assured her. “You will see. Our prophet peace-be-upon-him said ‘take two wives if you can treat them equally,’ and I intend—“

  “I know what you intend. You always have the best intentions, Ibrahim. You intended to save the sheikh.”

  The barb made him flinch, but he knew she spoke hurtfully only because she was hurting herself, and knowing this sweetened his heart with pity. He took her hand. “You must stop interrupting me, Soraya. You don’t know what I’m going to say. Listen more.”

  “I’m no good at listening,” the girl moped. “I have a fever. I’m burning up.”

  “But my dear,” he said, “your hand feels like ice.”

  And Khadija came over to feel Soraya’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”

  Soraya tossed her head. “When is this marriage?”

  “Soon,” said Ibrahim. “I’m going to make a trip to Kabul and we must complete the ceremony before I go.”

  “To Kabul!” Soraya turned a stricken gaze on her husband. “Again? But you just came back. And you were gone so long the last time!”

  “This will be a shorter trip. Going and coming takes twelve days, add a few more for my business—I should be back in three weeks, if Allah wills it.”

  “But must you go now? Why?”

  “I made a promise to Sheikh-sahib. Don’t inquire further, this is a private matter between him and me, and my honor is at stake. Just accept it. I must go and come before the rosebushes on Sheikh-sahib’s grave lose their petals.”

  The solemnity of this silenced Soraya and she stood up.

  “Where are you off to?” Ibrahim demanded.

  “The well.” Soraya wrapped her long head scarf around her body like a shroud, but her face radiated none of the mad look she got when djinns were troubling her. “I need water.”

  The water that turns to wine when Love does the pouring. Ibrahim felt a pang. Was he misinterpreting the sheikh’s words? Perhaps the sheikh wanted him to stay right here with his women. “Soraya, you can’t run away from this conversation.”

  But Khadija asserted herself. “For pity’s sake, Hajji-sahib, let her go. She wants to think about this without your will pressing down on her. Let her go.”

  Soraya wafted from the room as silently as a shadow.

  “It’s hard for her,” said Khadija, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to her, I’ll ease her mind, and she’ll recover. We will all be happy. You will see.”

  “If God wills. You’re still recovering yourself, I know, from giving birth….” Ibrahim looked at her breasts, looked at her belly, and then lower.

  “I’m quite restored,” Khadija said. She had taken Soraya’s spot next to him and she leaned toward him until he could feel her breath on his face. “Ibrahim. The night I married your brother—during the very ceremony that made me his wife, I saw you—”

  “I know.” If he let her finish the thought, he might lose control.

  “And I knew.” Already her breath was resonating in his ears like a music that his blood was dancing to. “Already I felt your son inside me—I wanted—”

  “I know. Me too. From that first night. That first glimpse.”

  “Thirteen years ago!” She grazed her finger across his cheek and lips.

  He pulled back. “Someone might see.”

  “Let them see.” Her voice was low and slow. “We’re engaged now.”

  He could bolt the door and have her: she would turn this plain room into heaven as Soraya had never done—but it would be wrong. He did not yet have permission. He must go on yearning until he had done what his sheikh had asked; he had asked so very little! Ibrahim disengaged himself from her fingers, which were already insinuating themselves into his clothes. “What we did that day… ”

  She pulled back. “Nobody knows about that day. Nobody saw.”

  “Sheikh-sahib knows. We piled up a debt to him that we can never repay, Khadija, and yet in his compassion the sheikh has given me a way. He told me how to cancel the debt. He said I must go to Kabul and see a man. That’s all he asked. I don’t know why, but if I do it, I come back to you forgiven. After that, requiting my desire in you won’t take me away from my sheikh, it won’t take me further from Allah, it will only bring me closer. If we wait till then.”

  Khadija bit her lips. “I remember that day like a fever dream. I sometimes think it didn’t happen. I’ve put it out of my mind. I can’t think about it.”

  “Mullah Yaqub is coming next week,” said Ibrahim. “We’ll have the ceremony while he’s here. Then when I return from Kabul… ”

  “So much can happen to a traveler!” she murmured anxiously.

  “God is compassionate,” he assured her. “Trust Allah.”

  * * *

  

  When he called a meeting to discuss his journey, some of the village elders shook their heads. “Why so soon! Men lose their souls in cities.”

  But Ibrahim pressed his case. “Brothers, now that we know merchants in the capital, we might sell our products there. The Kabul bazaar is bigger than you can imagine.
We have excellent goat felt that blanket makers there will want to buy. We can grow cotton, now that we have so much water. Our pine nuts will fetch a good price in the city. What do you say, Ghulam Dastagir? Will you come with me?”

  Ghulam Dastagir shook his head. “I’ve had my fill of cities. In a year or two, if I’m still alive, I might visit my son’s grave. If you go now, visit him for me, Malik-sahib, but think hard about going right now. This might be a bad time. I hear rumors.”

  “What rumors?”

  “That the Engrayzee are coming back with another army. Mullah Yaqub heard it from his people in Baghlan. Everybody says they’re coming back.”

  The elders cocked their head to see what their young leader thought of this.

  “Rumors,” said Ibrahim. “I can’t change my plans on account of rumors.” Already one of the rosebushes had lost one of its petals. He had no time to lose.

  47

  Ibrahim traversed the passes alone this time. It still took him six days to get to Kabul, yet the trip seemed shorter, now that he knew where he was going. Along the way he kept hearing Engrayzees, Engrayzees, but he never saw a single redcoat. Several strangers warned him against going on to Kabul, but he ignored them. When he reached the capital, the city seemed quiet. The streets were crowded, certainly, but Ibrahim’s memory of the place bore the stamp of furious mobs boiling through alleyways and foreign soldiers running for their lives, and nothing like that was going on now.

  In the Grand Bazaar, men were drinking tea and trading gossip. Ibrahim made his way to the hat merchant’s store. He could have gone to Shamsuddin’s home, but he didn’t want to presume on courtesies extended to him during the war. Besides, the hat merchant spent most of his time in his shop, and indeed, there he was now, rotund as ever, resting his back on a hump of pillow while a boy massaged his feet.

  Abdul Haq was there too—the man never seemed to have any business elsewhere. “Scholar-sahib!” he exclaimed. “You drop upon us like some hero from the Book of Kings. We had given you up for dead, yet here you are, home from the smoky battlefield, covered in reputation! Where have you been all year? People keep asking about you and we tell them he’s vanished—you make liars of us all. Come in, papa, tell your story! List by name the giants you have slain. Tell us what countries you’ve explored. Describe the plants and animals there, and the customs of the people.”

  Ibrahim laughed and stepped into the store and wasted no time delivering a formal speech of gratitude for all the generosity the two men had showered on him. And with that speech, he completed the atonement he owed his sheikh. It felt curiously flat, strangely unimportant, much too easy; but who was he to question? He took a seat and began recounting the horrors he had witnessed in the Hindu Kush mountains. All of Kabul had heard the stories, but they never tired of hearing more. Shoppers and bystanders tarried to listen, and a few actually climbed into the stall. Hakim Shamsuddin shooed them out, but they came creeping back, and gradually accumulated into a sizable audience.

  Once, a flurry of raucous noises elsewhere in the Grand Bazaar made Ibrahim break off, but his listeners urged him on. “Never mind the rowdies,” said Abdul Haq. “It’s been like this all year. Order is a water pot, once shattered never mended. Thugs roam the streets these days. Ignore them.”

  Ibrahim took up his tale again. But a boy at the edge of the crowd tried to break in with some urgent news. When Ibrahim described how the last of the Engrayzees were killed, he did manage to cut in with, “Not the last of them! One got away! He told his kin and they’re back with murder in their hearts. They’re planning a massacre.”

  Hakim Shamsuddin growled at the boy to quit spreading his alarmist rumors. “Every day, you hear these stories, sir. They’ve hit Shor Bazaar, they’ve burned Siah Sung, they’ve killed ten thousand in Behmaru—it’s never true. When people are afraid they invent stories. Then their own stories come back to them and they consider it evidence! A few of the Engrayzee are back, it’s true. They’re here to collect hostages and haul away their puppets. Dost Mohammed Khan is coming back, I hear, and the Engrayzee are here to negotiate his return. that’s all it is. They lost a war to us. Do you think they’ve forgotten?”

  “So you don’t think they’re seeking revenge?”

  “God forbid,” cried Abdul Haq. “They might want revenge, but they wouldn’t dare! Fifty thousand of them marched out of Kabul and only one made it to Jalalabad! Who can fail to learn a lesson from a beating like that? And we’re the same Afghans here, we’re still ready. Hundreds of them, thousands upon thousands of us—no, no, Ibrahim-jan. Rest easy. We frighten them. That’s why they’ve brought so many soldiers. When I pass one on the streets, he barely has the courage to look me in the eye. Honestly, I feel sorry for them.”

  “You mean there are redcoats in the city right now?” said Ibrahim.

  Shamsuddin cocked his head. Beyond the immediate hubbub and clamor, shouting could be heard. A man screamed, his voice rising to a womanish pitch. “Listen to those bastards!” said the hat merchant. “We’ve got our country back but how do we now protect it from our own?”

  “Thugs!” Abdul Haq complained. “Bandits! Rowdies!

  “What are they fighting about?” Ibrahim asked.

  “Gold. Goods. Women. Who knows?” The hat merchant spat. “Ten years ago, a man could travel to Bokhara with a camel load of carpets and fear no harm. These days—” He broke off to glare at the troublesome boy who had come scurrying back. “Can’t you see your elders are talking?” He turned to the others. “Gentlemen, look at this younger generation! When I was a boy—”

  But the boy shouted, “Run, you goddamned old fools! The Engrayzee are attacking the Grand Bazaar. They’re here right now! Run!”

  “Why, you—give me that squishy peach there, Ibrahim-jan.” Shamsuddin threw the rotting fruit at the boy, barely missing a pedestrian. The peach splattered and the boy dashed out of sight. “And stay away!” Hakim Shamsuddin yelled.

  But the hullabaloo had grown louder as if a fight had broken out just a few lanes over. Shamsuddin rose from his shopkeeper’s nest and went to investigate. The idlers in front of the shop sniffed at the air. “What’s that smell?” said one. “Is it smoke?”

  Just then, a scuffle burst through the row of stalls visible at the end of the lane. No one could see quite what was happening down there, only that awnings were coming down and people were wrestling and scrambling. Within one shocking instant, however, all the idlers and lay-abouts turned into a mob, coming like brushfire, coming in such desperation they plugged up the lane and began punching at one another to get through, trampling each other in their haste.

  Fear radiated ahead of the moving mob, fear ignited all along its path. The gawkers in the hat store jumped to their feet. Some heaved out the back and some into the lane, but all found walls of people charging at them, running from some danger no one could see.

  Ibrahim dove out the rear but found himself in the narrow aisle between two rows of stalls that faced in opposite directions, an aisle just big enough for one skinny person to run through, but this was choked with people who had come out the back of all the stores along its length. Ibrahim raced back through the hat store and into the front lane again.

  Even if the Grand Bazaar had been empty, it might have taken him half an hour to get out of the maze from here. Today, it was literally impossible. The lane was plugged with people and filling up with smoke. Ibrahim could see flames at both ends. Trapped between two sheets of fire, screamers tore at the walls that hemmed them in. The people closest to the flames had caught fire. Ibrahim retreated in panic, past Shamsuddin’s store, through another store, into a second crowded lane, punching and bulling with his shoulders, forging on with no idea if he was headed out of the bazaar or into it. The lanes in this area were covered, so he could not see any sky. Smoke seared his eyes, but through his tears he had an impression of men on horses, men in red coats, blocking the only way out. The crowd kept surging at them, they kept firing guns, and
bodies kept dropping and piling up. People clawed to get over those mounting mounds of corpses, but soldiers were hacking them to pieces as they emerged.

  But all of that seemed far away to Ibrahim and impossibly out of reach. His back was so hot! His shirt felt ready to burst into flames, but at least back here in the blazing depths, a man had room to move freely. At head level, the smoke was too thick to breathe so he dropped to his knees. And there, as he crouched close to the dirt, he saw a boy, the same boy who had warned of the Engrayzee attack.The poor little lad’s clothes were on fire. Ibrahim wanted to save him, even though he had no idea how to save himself. He crawled toward the motionless body, and the closer he came, the hotter he felt. Ibrahim thought the boy was crying, for his mouth was moving. But when he got close enough to hear, he discovered that the little fellow was singing, actually. And he wasn’t the urchin who had been annoying Hakim Shamsuddin earlier—this boy was Karim!

  “I thought you were dead,” Ibrahim exclaimed, wrapping his arms around the singing boy. “Oh, you’re hot, you’re so hot. I must find you some water.”

  He rose to his feet with the boy in his arms. Everyone else was intent on getting out of the burning bazaar; so traveling further in was easy. Ibrahim wondered why everyone didn’t go this way, since it was so easy. The crowds parted to let him through. But the boy he was carrying was not Karim, he suddenly realized. How could he have made such a strange mistake? This was Ahmad in his arms, his own dear little son Ahmad. How could he have failed to notice? And he wasn’t dead or even seriously hurt! He was simply asleep. And even in his sleep, he was singing, this precious son of his, this heir of his, a smile clinging to his lips.

  Ibrahim was alone, now. All the other people had rushed away. Here in the heart of the Grand Bazaar, he found a bathhouse. He knew it would be here. Why else would he have brought Ahmad to this spot? The little fellow needed some cooling off. The malang stood in the open doorway. No surprise there. Of course he would appear when he was needed. “Come inside,” he beckoned. “Come in. Now at last you will see water.”