Kamal was not an easy father to love, Basir admitted. But he might have changed. Maybe things would have gotten better.
BASIR WAS UP AT FIRST LIGHT, SHAFTS OF YELLOW BREAKING through a hazy, purple sky. He sat cross-legged in the living room where he slept at night, away from his sisters and cousins. The house still breathed collectively, a slumbering clan. He could almost feel the walls bend and bow like the rise and fall of a chest.
Basir remembered his box, the experiment he’d left outside. He thought of his little cousins and his sisters and decided it would be best to get rid of the scorpion immediately, before it or its babies found a way out of their cage. Basir slipped out the front door and made his way to the back of the home. He would let the scorpions free before someone stumbled upon them.
The box was precisely where he’d left it just a few hours ago. With the tip of his sandaled foot, Basir kicked aside the rock he’d placed on the lid and then used a twig to lift the top. Basir the captor jumped back, his foot knocking the box onto its side. He gasped with disproportionate horror as he learned a bitter truth.
Out ran the unencumbered scorpion, leaving two dozen half-eaten, lifeless young in her wake.
CHAPTER 24
ZEBA STARED AT HER MOTHER.
“And what did the judge say?”
“Not much. But he won’t be your biggest problem.”
“What did you do?” Zeba asked, feeling an old anxiety rise within her.
“Nothing. We talked mostly about your children needing you.” Before Zeba could ask any more questions, Gulnaz gave a quick nod in the direction of the yard. “Why are those girls staring?”
Zeba glanced over her shoulder. Latifa looked away abruptly. Nafisa pretended to point at something in the distance. No wonder she was in jail. The girl couldn’t lie to save her life.
“Probably because I told them about you,” Zeba admitted. “You’re the kind of person women love to hear about—especially women with big problems.”
“Oh, is that so? How nice to know that at this age, I can still be interesting.” Gulnaz’s eyebrows lifted in amusement.
“Of course. You always have been. Even when your daughter’s accused of murder, you’re the more interesting person.”
“Are you sure it’s me they’re staring at?”
“Positive.”
Gulnaz sensed a difference in her daughter. Her back was a little straighter, her eyes a bit less downcast. Gulnaz pursed her lips.
“You’ve done something,” she declared.
Zeba hid a sheepish smile. Gulnaz’s intuition was confirmed.
“What did you do?” she pressed.
Zeba shook her head, but there was an undeniable twinkle in her eye.
“Zeba!” Gulnaz whispered brightly.
“Okay, Madar-jan, I’ll tell you,” Zeba whispered with halfhearted reluctance. “There was a girl here—a dumb, pregnant, lovesick girl. Though I have to admit she was clever in some ways. She managed to get herself and her boyfriend thrown into jail by turning herself in. For him to get released, he had to marry her.”
“You’re joking.”
“Not at all,” Zeba said cheerfully. “She needed his family to propose and they did.”
“If only they had a prison for couples,” Gulnaz said. “Though I suppose that’s what marriage is, isn’t it?”
Zeba didn’t flinch. In the years since her father had disappeared, she’d not really seen her mother lament his death the way other widows had. She’d almost seemed relieved, actually.
“Tell me what you did,” Gulnaz said, intrigued.
Zeba bit her lower lip. She suddenly felt like a child caught trying to walk in her mother’s shoes.
“I told her about the string and the chicken feathers.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
Gulnaz looked puzzled.
“Where did you learn that from?”
“From you, of course. You made me pluck the chicken feathers myself when we did it for Nooria-jan.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten about her.” Gulnaz looked off into the distance. There was a haze in the air, as if the day might bring rain. “There was no way Latif would’ve married her if we hadn’t helped out. The rumors in town about her sneaking around with him and his cousin were pretty bad.”
“If it were today, she would have been my cellmate. Ten years for zina. Lucky for her she chose to be immoral in a better time. How is she doing, anyway? She must have grandchildren by now,” Zeba mused.
“She died years ago. Her devoted husband remarried three months later.”
“Three whole months. Love is beautiful, isn’t it?” Zeba smirked.
Gulnaz smiled faintly. When had Zeba become so sarcastic? What had happened to her docile daughter, the girl who had been tearful even as she closed the door on her mother?
“Anyway, my roommate and her mother did everything I told them to do. I was surprised, to tell you the truth, when we heard his family had gone to her home to ask for her hand. I didn’t know if it would really work.”
“Seven knots?”
“Seven knots,” Zeba confirmed. Gulnaz smiled smugly.
“Then there was no way it wouldn’t work.”
“It had to. She’s too young to have her life ruined like this. Not to mention the baby.”
“And her life would’ve been ruined for sure if you hadn’t pulled her ass from the fire. Imagine a girl choosing to go through all this,” Gulnaz said softly. “For one awkward moment in the dark.”
“The girl puts on a good show, Madar-jan,” Zeba said in a low tone. Gulnaz looked at her with raised brows. “But I highly doubt it was one moment, and it was surely not in the dark.”
Gulnaz laughed, an unbridled, carefree laugh. Her eyes closed, and her head tilted back a degree.
She had to catch her breath. There was no fence. There was no jail. There was only a mother and a daughter, gossiping in the warm glow of the sun. The ache of Gulnaz’s bones eased and the knotted muscle in her neck released just enough for her to chuckle without pain. The blood pulsed to her toes and fingers, turning her nailbeds pink. She was, in that one trivial moment, more alive than she’d been in years.
Watching her mother, Zeba was overcome. She giggled like a schoolgirl.
Gulnaz’s eyes welled with happy, wistful tears.
Relishing the sound of lost laughter, mother and daughter looked at each other. The world around them dissolved.
“Madar, are you all right?” Zeba asked hesitantly.
“Ah, Zeba, you are my daughter after all, aren’t you?”
Six months ago, Zeba would have resented the comment. But now, surprisingly, Zeba felt a twinge of pride. She blinked and uncrossed her legs. The grounds of the prison were pebbly, and Zeba hadn’t brought out a blanket to sit on.
“I’ve spoken with your judge and your lawyer. The lawyer is off in the village now, trying to find out if anyone believes you could be innocent or if anyone knows anything helpful.”
“No one will talk to him.”
“Probably not, but it’s a possibility. And Yusuf looks like the type of man who goes wild when he smells a possibility. That could be a good thing for you.”
“There are worse traits, I suppose.”
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” Gulnaz prodded gently. “I might be able to better help you if I know.”
“You sound like my lawyer.” Zeba sighed.
“I suppose I do,” Gulnaz said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out three chocolates wrapped in red foil. “I brought something for you. Something to sweeten your tongue in this sour place.”
She slipped the chocolates through the fence. Zeba took them from her mother’s fingers, wishing she could pull her mother’s whole hand and arm and body through the latticework as well.
Gulnaz leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the warm metal of the fence.
“I know you, Zeba. You might not think I do, but you’re my blood. You
r soul talks to me even when your mouth doesn’t. It always has.”
Zeba looked up. Why did her mother always say such peculiar things? Why was her whole family bent on being holier or craftier than everyone else?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Madar. I tell you what I’m thinking and there’s no more to it. Whatever rings in your ears is your own—it doesn’t come from me.”
Zeba unwrapped one chocolate and popped the entire round candy, half softened by the warmth of Gulnaz’s body, into her mouth. She crumpled the foil in her palm and felt the chocolate melt against the inside of her cheek.
“Zeba, I’m here to work out what I can for you. Trust me that I know best.”
Her mother was wrong. She’d never listened to Zeba. Why should she when Gulnaz knew best? Gulnaz made all the decisions and, out of paranoia, had driven away every single family member who’d ever looked upon Zeba with kindness.
“You always have, haven’t you?” Zeba said sarcastically.
Gulnaz bit her lip. Zeba was too tightly wound. Where had Gulnaz gone wrong? Why did she have to tread carefully in speaking with her own child?
“Zeba, I didn’t come here to argue with you.”
“Then what did you come here for, Madar? Are you here because you don’t want to see me in prison or because you, the infamous Gulnaz, want to be the one to get me out with your powerful jadu?”
Gulnaz took a deep breath.
“I went to speak to the judge, Zeba, because I have spoken with him before. I met him years ago, before you were born. He came to call upon the great Safatullah once with his father. They were desperate for his younger brother to recover from a crippling illness. The boy was near death, from what I remember.”
Zeba seethed. It was hard to listen to Gulnaz when thirty years of resentment was boiling to the surface.
“His younger brother believed he was saved by your grandfather, the murshid.”
“What does this have to do with me?” Zeba asked through tight lips.
“A life was saved. People don’t forget about that kind of thing.”
Zeba looked back at the yard, half listening to Gulnaz. Latifa sat on the ground with her back resting against the wall of the prison. An unlit cigarette dangled between her fingers, her way of making her stash last longer. Latifa’s eyes were closed to the half-hidden sun, and she looked to be asleep. Had she ever been so at peace in her life? The way she described her family, probably not.
Zeba had the urge to get up and walk over to Latifa—to sit beside her, shoulders touching, faces to the sky.
Maybe Zeba could give her mother one more chance. She unwrapped a second chocolate. They tasted stale and she wasn’t really hungry for them, but it was easier than deciding whether or not to share them with her cellmates later.
Gulnaz laced her fingers through the metal links. Zeba was stubborn as a corpse. There was a grim possibility that was exactly what she would be if the fingers remained crooked in her direction.
My poor grandchildren, Gulnaz thought. They’ll never see their mother again.
“Your father and I were a bad pair,” she said hesitantly.
Zeba was silent.
“Early on, we were decent together. We were both young, and it felt important and new to be a married person. I didn’t mind him and he didn’t mind me. We did what we thought husbands and wives were supposed to do. I cooked. He worked. We visited our elders for the Eid holiday. But we were different people. We argued. We argued about our arguments. We found ways to make each other angry.
“If I knew he wanted rice for dinner, I made soup. He would leave walnut shells on the floor only because I’d asked him not to. It got to the point that I couldn’t stand the smell of your father, to tell you the truth. We were a breath away from choking each other at all times. These are awful things to say now, but it’s the truth.”
Zeba’s anger abated. The timbre of her mother’s voice was different than she’d ever before heard.
“Why did you hate each other so much? Had he done something?”
Gulnaz shrugged her shoulders.
“I never hated him for anything in particular. And I don’t know which of us started disliking the other first, but once it started, there was no turning back. When I look at other husbands and wives around me, I see so many people who were just like us—snapping at each other, sitting on opposite sides of the room. That’s how we were, but bolder. We could admit we were bad together.”
“Do you think he chose to fight in the war because of your arguing?”
“Who knows?”
“You must have some idea. There must be something you’re not telling me.”
“Now you, of all people, think I’m not sharing enough of the story?” Gulnaz snapped.
Zeba bit her tongue.
“Why did you never tell me about him before now?”
“What good would it have done? The man was gone. He wasn’t a bad father to you in those early years, though. But after that, you really didn’t have a father, so there was nothing to talk about.”
“But you call him my father.”
“Better for me to call him a father than to have others call you a bastard.”
Zeba knew it to be true, though she didn’t dare agree. Long ago she’d denied her mother’s wisdom. Recovery would be slow.
Zeba arched her back. Her body felt stiff. Why was Gulnaz able to look so comfortable for so long? Did the pebbles not press into her flesh the way they did for Zeba?
“You couldn’t fix things with him?” Zeba asked, thinking of Kamal as much as she was thinking of her father. “When I was a little girl, I believed you could fix everything.”
A passing cloud cast a shadow over Gulnaz’s face. Zeba’s question pushed on an old but tender wound. Why hadn’t Gulnaz done anything about the way they’d argued? She’d started to once. She’d snipped locks of his hair while he slept and torn a pair of his underwear into shreds. A bit of ash, a bit of blood, and he could have been a different man.
But she did not go beyond those first simple steps. Instead, she let him go. It had been as simple as releasing the string on a wind-borne kite. All she had to do was nothing.
“Our minds are wild beasts. We tame them with fear of God or punishment, but sometimes they refuse to cower. That’s when things turn ugly.”
Zeba understood her mother precisely. In the last few months she shared with her husband, she’d begun to feel exceptionally ugly.
CHAPTER 25
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON IN CHIL MAHTAB AND JUST DAYS AWAY from the Eid holiday. The temperature within the prison had climbed to over a hundred degrees. Women who should have been home preparing to celebrate the holiday of sacrifice were wilting within the prison’s high walls instead. The heat should have rendered the women immobile . . . but it hadn’t.
Zeba’s success with Mezhgan had set the women’s prison alight with hope.
A steady stream of women moved through the cell Zeba shared with the others. The guards had, at first, tried to prevent the women from congregating but they quickly gave up. The women were persistent and the guards curious.
“Would you let me speak? You’ve had your chance!” Bibi Shireen, a woman old enough to be Zeba’s grandmother, pushed her way to the front of the line. “Zeba-jan, you’re a mother. You’ve got to understand. My son was in love with a girl and when they ran off together, the girl’s brothers found them and killed him. They’ve locked me up because my son is dead and someone’s got to be blamed. And they want my daughter to be married to one of the killers, in retribution for my son’s transgression. I’ve been here three years and have another twenty-seven to go. Do you see my hair—white as a garlic clove? I will die here! What can you do for me?”
“What idiots. Bibi Shireen, I had no idea you had another twenty-seven years still. That’s a disgrace,” Latifa remarked with blatant disgust. She sat on the edge of her bed and watched over the pleas. She was learning things about her fellow prisoners that
she hadn’t learned in her eighteen months in Chil Mahtab.
“Tell me, Zeba-jan. What should I do? I once heard something about the feathers of a white pigeon bringing mercy, but I don’t trust the person who told me. Whatever you say, I’ll do it.”
Zeba listened in silence. She had not intended to create such a maelstrom. It had been an exercise really, a way for her to prove to herself that she could do something, even if it meant dipping her feet into murky waters.
“Bibi-jan,” she said respectfully. “I will think carefully about your situation.”
The women came in two or three at a time with all kinds of requests. Zeba quickly became accustomed to the ones in need of recipes to make families accept their beloved. But the prison housed women accused of more than being star-crossed lovers. Because of their various improprieties, many had been convicted of the broad crime of zina, sex outside of marriage. Some were convicted of attempted zina or imprisoned for assisting another woman to commit zina. An eighteen-year-old girl had run away from her elderly husband. A wife had left a husband after he sold their ten- and twelve-year-old daughters into marriage. Another had been arrested when a stranger reported seeing her leaving a man’s private office.
They all begged Zeba for help. They needed the judge’s mercy. They needed their families to be understanding. They needed their husbands to grant them divorces. The prison was teeming with stories of sex, love, and violence.
Zina. Zina. Zina.
Two women came to Zeba together.
“Go on, you tell her,” said the older of the two, the soles of her feet stained with henna. Zeba thought them to be mother and daughter at first but soon realized she was mistaken.
“Our husband was killed by his cousins, but the family pointed their fingers at us. They’re free while we’re in here. We did nothing, but no one seems to care. What should we do?”
“You were both married to him?”
“Yes,” explained the older woman. “I was his first wife. Then he took her. He was a decent man. He had land that his cousins had been eyeing for years. They wanted it and finally killed him for it. Three of them came into our home and strangled him. Blaming the two of us only made it easier for them to claim his lot.”
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