She pumped her fist in the air.
“And Sunny?”
“Yes, Rick?”
“You’re doing the right thing.”
Sunny covered the mouthpiece as a pair of adolescent peacocks came screeching across the lawn. “Oh, I know I am, Rick,” she said with a smile. “I know I am.”
32
Zara stood looking out the window, her uncovered silky-straight hair framed by the soft afternoon light. Her shoulders lifted and sank with a sigh that said a thousand words, words that need not be spoken out loud. Yazmina’s heart ached for the girl. Though her wounds were healing on the outside, inside there remained a suffering too deep for even the most tender hand to reach. It didn’t help that she was locked up like a prisoner here in Halajan’s house, cut off from the pulse of the city around her, unable to feel the late summer warmth on her face. But the plan they had agreed on with Candace was to keep her hidden, dead and buried in the eyes of Faheem and his men, until they could find a safe way for her to join her family back in Herat.
Yazmina patted the toshak beside her. “Come. Sit and help me.” She flipped her long black braid over her shoulder and handed Zara a tiny pink sweater from the pile of clothes Najama had long outgrown. “This one needs just a little fixing, right here on the seam.”
“Your boy will be the prettiest dressed in Kabul, should you have one.” Halajan laughed as she struggled over control of a hairbrush with a fidgety Najama.
Yazmina sat back and used one swollen foot to pry the plastic shoe off the other. “But I know she is a girl. I am sure of it.”
“How do you know?” Zara asked.
“I dream of it, in the night. A mother can just know. You will see for yourself, when you marry.” Yazmina regretted her words as soon as they left her mouth. The girl’s eyes turned downward, her mouth becoming a thin, straight line.
“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night. You must stay positive, my child.” Halajan must have noticed as well. “And if it is your Omar you are worrying about, relax. He is in good hands with Rashif. My husband knows people who will help see him safely to Herat, far away from Faheem and his men. Perhaps you will be able to see him again before too long.” She pushed the sleeves of her cotton tunic up over her bony elbows, feeling a twinge of guilt at the lie she’d used with Ahmet; that Rashif had gone to Mazar-i-Sharif to visit his cousin.
Yazmina quickly agreed with her mother-in-law, assuring Zara of Rashif’s fine character and firm principles. If only Ahmet had been the one to step up to help. But instead of igniting a fire beneath his growing concerns for justice, the attack on the coffeehouse seemed to have blown him straight back toward the old ways.
“I forbid you from bringing that stupid girl into my family’s home!” was how their last argument had begun, right before the pretend funeral, when she had told him Zara had been taken from the hospital to Halajan’s house, hidden under a blanket on the floor of a van. Ahmet’s dark eyes flashed with anger, but the girl was already safe behind Halajan’s strong oak door. “It is her parents who are responsible for her. They are the ones who made her this way, who were not able to control her. They are the ones who sent her to the university, to fill her head with useless thoughts.”
“This girl should not study, should not be allowed to learn?”
“For what?” he asked, jerking his head toward her. “To make her husband’s meals, to keep his house, to bear his sons?”
Yazmina wrapped her belly in her arms, the sting of his words piercing deep into her core. She narrowed her eyes at him and replied with a hiss, “My girls will do more than that. And they will have the chance to go to school if they want. Not like me, who is lucky to even read.”
“Your girls,” he answered with a smirk. “Well it will be my son who runs this household someday, who will be the one to say what ‘your girls’ can and cannot do.”
Yazmina could not believe her ears. Who was this man her husband was becoming—or had he really been like this all along? Had she been wrong to believe that he would welcome a baby girl into the world? Now he was acting just as those in villages far from the city did, those who celebrate the birth of a son with elaborate celebrations where guns are fired, drums are beaten, and food is given to the poor. Even the ritual for driving away evil spirits would be forgotten when a girl was born, as if her future didn’t matter. For it was only a boy who could truly establish the virility of his father, the fertility of his mother, only a boy who would bring an heir to the family property and honor to its name.
On the far wall of Halajan’s sitting room, atop of the high chest where the old woman used to hide the secret letters from Rashif, sat the mosaic box Yazmina knew Ahmet’s father had presented to Halajan as an offering of thanks for bearing him a son. “Your husband, did he only want a boy?” she asked her mother-in-law.
Halajan handed Najama and the hairbrush over to Zara and went to the window. She unlatched the handle and pushed it open just far enough to allow some air to enter. The shiny draperies ballooned like sails into the room. Halajan pulled a loose cigarette from her pocket. “They all want a boy,” she said as the flame from her plastic lighter shot into the air. “Of course, we already had our Aisha, and Sunil was a very good father to her. I cannot complain. But when I finally gave birth to Ahmet, many years later, my husband was overjoyed, as if he had won the Afghan Cup championship.” She took a drag from the cigarette and slowly exhaled through the slit in the window, the smoke curling out toward the empty courtyard.
“But I do not blame him for that,” she added, to Yazmina’s surprise, knowing how modern her mother-in-law’s views always were. “Since forever it has been with a son that the parents will live out their lives, and a son on whom they will rely on for their needs, and for the growing of their family. And it is the stronger child that a farmer must have after his daughters are married off, for when he can no longer do the work that must be done. And unless things change, it’s still a son who is needed to accompany the women of the family in public to protect their honor.”
“So basically, women have no value.” Zara slid onto the rug with Najama, and began to turn a pile of small wooden blocks into a teetering tower.
“Well, it is not that simple.” The old woman took another puff from the cigarette she held out the window. “It is true, that in some ways our value is considered half that of a man, like when someone dies and we inherit half of what a man gets, and in some courts, where a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man.”
“That is true,” Yazmina agreed. “Or when blood money is paid to a family who has lost somebody to murder, the amount if the victim was a man is twice that it would be had the victim been a woman.”
Zara sat up on her knees. “Yes, and what about a woman whose husband has four wives? He is allowed four, and she is allowed just one husband? In that marriage, is she worth just one quarter of a man?”
“Ach, who would want more than one?” Halajan laughed. She carefully extinguished her cigarette on the windowsill, to be finished later. “But it is also true,” she said, “that without us, these men who are so valuable would have no sons. Heaven is under the Mother’s feet, so treat her kindly. Have you not heard that said? Our tradition tells us that women should be given kindness, love, and respect if a man truly wants to be righteous.”
“Well then there are some very impure men around.” Zara turned her attention back to Najama and the blocks.
Yazmina was a little taken aback by her mother-in-law’s words. Usually she was as quick and unbending with her opinions as a donkey eager for the trough. Yazmina always thought her wise, but today her tongue seemed to have softened. “Are you feeling all right, maadar?”
Halajan laughed. “Why? Because I am telling two sides of a story? I am an old woman. I have seen things change, and change again. Some beliefs that are there for such old reasons will take many years to erase. And some ideas that are falsely spread in the name of religion will take even longe
r.”
“But how can you know they will be erased?” Yazmina thought back on her conversation with Ahmet, whose words she had not shared with her mother-in-law.
“I have seen a very different Afghanistan than any of you,” she said, passing her eyes over the three girls in her sitting room. “When I was born, women could already vote. I was a child when pardah, the separation of men and women, was ended. We wore miniskirts and went to the cinema.”
“Yes, and look at us now.” Zara flung her discarded head scarf into the air.
“But at least you can go to school,” Halajan said. “There were many years when that was not possible.”
“Still, the boys taunt us and say what is the point for us to be studying, when after all the foreigners leave we will have to go inside the home again.”
Halajan leaned out the window and re-lit her cigarette. “It is true that we live in uncertainty.”
“It is such a difficult time. Sometimes I think I should not be bringing another innocent child into this world, especially a girl,” Yazmina said in a quiet voice.
Halajan hastily brought an index finger to her mouth and bit down hard, in an old gesture meant to ward off a jinx. “Eat your words,” she snapped back, sounding like her old self again. “It was not such an easy time when I gave birth to Ahmet, either. The Russians were sitting on us like a cat with a mouse, the mujahideen were firing missiles though the skies night and day, half the countryside had left their homes for Iran or Pakistan, with the rest of them flooding the streets of Kabul, turning it into a place where there was not even room for an apple to fall.” She paused for another puff of the cigarette. “We had no idea what would be coming next, and we worried for our children. But still we happily welcomed them into the world. Because if not for them, who will it be who decides the future of our country?”
Again Ahmet’s words echoed in Yazmina’s mind. How disappointed his mother would be to know of the things her son had been saying.
Halajan took one last taste of her cigarette, and exhaled slowly into the afternoon air. “And I will tell you one thing I know,” she continued. “It is with our girls that change will happen. Girls who will grow up like Zara, and like Layla, who have the blessing of an education. It is the power of a girl with a book that is the best weapon for progress.”
“So that is why the extremists try to keep girls from going to school? That is the reason we are poisoned and beaten, and our teachers threatened and killed?” Zara joined Halajan at the window, her eyes searching the skies for an answer. “How are we to be the ones to make anything happen?”
“Because with educated women comes prosperity. And with our voices comes mercy. And with our strength comes change. Like Rumi says, when a bird gets free, it does not go back for remnants left on the bottom of the cage.”
Yazmina looked at her mother-in-law, with her lined lips and permanently furrowed brows. “Since when did you become so positive, maadar?”
Halajan laughed. “I have gained and lost hope so many times in my long life, dokhtar. Today, I just choose to be hopeful.”
Yazmina shifted on her toshak as she felt the baby stir inside her. How she envied her mother-in-law’s strength, and the courage she showed with her actions. She reached out and pulled Najama close, placing her daughter’s little hand on top of the rippling surface of her belly. And was it not her duty to pass on those virtues to her own daughters? She sighed at the weight of it all. Sometimes she wished she were still back in the mountains, hidden away from all the difficult thoughts that had been poured into her head since she had arrived in Kabul. But yet, she was grateful to be here, and thankful for the opportunities she had been given. Maybe helping Zara was a start, but there had to be more she could do to help, perhaps with others. She would teach her daughters not with words, but with action. But first, it was her troubles with Ahmet that needed her attention.
33
Inside The Dirty Monkey it was as dark as midnight. The cyclists and joggers she’d passed on the drive over might as well have been living in another world, one where the summer twilight hours were a gift, a bonus for the daily grind, as opposed to a time to drown their sorrows and forget the day ever happened. The lineup at the bar came into view as her eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of light in the windowless room. Regulars, she thought, as she took in the stooped spines bent over thick, sweaty glasses of brown liquid. Above the corner of the bar, the Mariners were silently playing to a near-empty stadium. The only one watching the muted set, from behind the counter, was Sky.
“Hey.” Sunny pulled up a stool.
“Hey yourself,” he answered, pouring her a glass of red wine without her even asking.
“You seen him yet?” She scanned the faces in the darkness around her for Rick’s pearly whites.
“Nope. You’re a little early.”
Sunny took a deep breath and planted her leather knapsack firmly between her two feet. “Good. I could use this.” She took a nice long sip from her glass.
“It’s all good, Sunny. You’ll be fine.” Sky turned to pour a refill for the beefy-faced man two stools to her right.
How sad it must make Sky to work here, she thought. It was no wonder he spent every spare minute outside. A fleeting sliver of light slid across the bar as the door behind her opened and shut. The look on Sky’s face told her who it was.
“It’s showtime,” she mouthed to him before swiveling around to greet Rick.
“Good evening, Sunshine.” Rick tossed his car keys on the bar, lifted her hand from her lap and planted a warm, wet kiss on its back. She wondered how long she’d have to wait before heading to the ladies room to wash it off.
“Hello, Rick. You’re certainly in a good mood.”
“And why not?”
“Why not indeed?” She scooted over a little as he pulled out the stool beside her and sat. “I don’t know about you, but I think a celebration is called for. Sky?”
Sky reached across the bar to shake Rick’s hand. “How’s it going?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Rick answered, his knees jiggling up and down as if he had just consumed a quadruple espresso.
“Surprise us with something special, would you, Sky?” Sunny flashed him a huge smile.
“You’re on.” He scooped up some ice into a silver cocktail shaker with one hand and grabbed a bottle of gin with the other, and began to pour. Sunny watched as his tanned arms danced around the shelves—a dash of this, a squirt of that—and then he shook with a beat worthy of a Latin jazz band. He slid the two dewy glasses across the bar to Sunny and Rick.
“I’d like to propose a toast.” Rick lifted his glass toward Sunny. “To Jack. A real stand-up guy, and one helluva friend. I owe more to you than you’ll ever know.”
Sunny covered her laugh with a cough and tightened her feet around the knapsack below. Then she raised her own glass to the ceiling. “To Jack. May you be enjoying all this from up there somewhere.” She turned to Rick. “Bottoms up!”
“Chin-chin!”
Sunny watched with glass in hand as he consumed half the drink in one shot. Sky deftly topped it off with what remained in the shaker.
“You know, Jack sure was a lucky man.”
“Yes he was,” Sunny answered, thinking about all that time he’d spent in the remotest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq, all those near misses and narrow escapes. And that day he’d headed up into the rugged mountains of Nuristan to search for Layla, well aware of the dangers that lay ahead in the isolated, lawless villages run by drug lords and warlords, the chances of locating her like finding a needle in a highly combustible haystack. The fact that they both came back alive was a miracle. Thank God he had luck on his side for as long as he did, with that fearless attitude of his. If she had to, she’d make a bet that the biggest risk a guy like Rick ever took was to leave the house in November without an umbrella.
“I mean it, Sunny. He was lucky to have a woman like you.”
“Thank you, Rick.
That’s a very nice thing for you to say.”
“No, really. What you’re doing, keeping the house and all, it’s what would have made him happy. You made the right decision.”
“Well, sometimes a girl’s just gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“Amen to that.”
“Did you know we’re making some wine this year?” she said as she briefly looked down to check her phone.
“No shit? Well, more power to you. Better men than you have tried and failed around here. It’s not easy.”
Sunny nodded and took a tiny sip from her still-full glass.
“It’s kind of a fool’s errand, if you ask me. But hey, it’s what Jack wanted, right? So here’s to Jack.”
“To Jack,” she repeated as she watched him drain his glass. Sky was there with a fresh shaker-full before she could even blink an eye. Rick sat motionless with his elbows resting on the bar as Sky poured, his legs having finally ended their relentless jig. Sunny stared at her phone, willing the call to come.
“C’mon, Sunny, drink up!”
“I’m good. Just savoring what I have.” She bent to take another sip just as her phone buzzed. “Hey, Joe. What’s up?”
“Everything going A-Okay there, kiddo? Are you reeling him in like a fish on a line?” he yelled from the other end.
She jammed her thumb into the volume down button and held the phone tighter to her ear. “Holy shit. It is? How bad?”
“Ha!” Joe said from his end of the line. “You’re too good at this, Sunny Tedder. I’ll have to remember to watch my back around you.”
“You mean the whole thing is busted? I’ll be there in twenty. Call the plumber.” She stuffed the phone into her pocket and reached down for her bag. “I’ve gotta go, Rick. I’m so sorry to run out like this, but it’s an emergency. Here you go.” She pulled out a half-inch thick envelope and transferred it to him under the bar. “You can count it if you’d like.”
Rick laughed. “I trust you, Sunny.” He waved her away as she reached back into the knapsack for her wallet. “I’ve got this one. It’s on me.”
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