by Tamim Ansary
“It’s my duty,” he declared. “Respect for my dear brother comes first.”
“If you need anything, just command me. A widow must make herself useful,” Khadija murmured.
He wriggled in place. “Widows see the worst of things, I know, but I promise you, no one will ever harm my brother’s widow, so long as I live, inshallah.”
Khadija rose to her feet, never allowing her skirts to fall away from her pantalooned legs, and yet the grace of her body somehow showed through all the garments. For a moment, Ibrahim allowed his mind to dwell on the pleasures his brother must have taken with this woman. They were famously noisy behind closed doors. His own wife made no noise at all when he took her. She just lay still in the dark and succumbed to his embraces; and yet how could he complain? Delicate, haunted Soraya had given him a son, a wonderful son, bright-eyed little Ahmad—not to mention two beautiful daughters. His brother’s wife, by contrast, had remained tragically barren throughout the years of her marriage to Ashraf. Well, every man had his own special burdens to bear. Allah knows best.
2
That same spring morning, shortly after the widow Khadija returned from her journey, a stranger came down the goat track. Sunlight slathered the rocks that day, crocuses had bloomed and columbines dotted the hillsides with bits of blue, but a stiff breeze was blowing from the north and the upper passes were still choked with snow. No one traveled to distant places at this time of year, not even on the big highway visible from the peaks. Here in Char Bagh, at this season, most people still huddled in their houses at night, keeping warm around charcoal-burning braziers and eating through last year’s stores as they told and retold the ancient stories.
And yet, on this particular morning, here came a total stranger trudging down from Red Pass wrapped in a shabby cloak, an odd old man with a thicket of a beard, a vagabond by the looks of him. He was walking along empty handed and alone without even a dog along for protection. Where could he have come from? Where could he be going on a path that led only into a cul-de-sac?
No one asked those questions because no one spotted him except two young boys, Ahmad and Karim, who happened to be sitting high on the hillside that morning. They were supposed to be watching their families’ flocks, but instead these bad boys were playing knucklebones in a clear patch among the weeds, letting their heavy-jowled dogs do all the herding. When the little fellows saw the vagabond trudging over the crest of the hill, they stopped their game to watch the big-boned old man leave the path and traverse the hillside and climb over a ridge and then come down to the base of the rock known as Baba’s Nose. They watched him shove in amongst the gray weeds and settle next to one of the rock’s “nostrils,” where no one could see him from the path, nor from the village below. The old man took off his turban and from its green folds produce a boiled egg, which he peeled and consumed. Then, for a long while, he simply sat motionless, eyes closed, arms outstretched, hands open.
The boys scratched their heads and snuffled back snot. This wanderer certainly trumped any game of knucklebones, for how often did a fellow get to see a total stranger? Ten-year-old Karim had seen total strangers only once in his life, and that one time probably didn’t count because it was the time the marauders came, and he had mostly kept his eyes shut. Nine-year-old Ahmad, the headman’s son, was more sophisticated; he had been way upstream in Sorkhab, the bigger village north of Red Pass. His aunt Khadija came from there and he had been with her several times when she went home to visit her family. But even he had never seen a stranger like this.
Suddenly the vagabond stood up, folded his turban lengthwise five times until it was just the length and width of a prayer rug and spread it out on a patch of bare earth. He stroked it smooth with scrupulous care, brushing away twigs and stray insects, then stepped out of his slippers and onto the folded fabric. Facing west, he lifted his hands to his ears, and began to chant softly, “Allaaaaaaaaaaaahu…!”
“Who is he?” Karim demanded.
The younger boy shrugged.
“Is he from Sorkhab?”
“I never saw him before.”
“Look at that!” Karim spat with disgust. “You can see his skin.” He pointed and both boys stared at the holes in the man’s threadbare shirt. “Well, I’m going to throw a stone at him,” Karim declared. “Help me find a good one, Ahmad-jan. I’ll make that old dog move. You’ll see.”
“Don’t do that,” Ahmad cautioned. “Your mama will get mad.”
“Drrt! Why should my mama get mad? My papa always says, protect the village from strangers—that’s what he says. Remember that time the marauders came?” The ten-year-old puffed out his chest and then sneered, “Oh! You don’t remember, you weren’t here. You were in Sorkhab. Well, you listen to me, Ahmad-jan. Strangers are bad. When you get to be my age, you’ll know.”
“You have to shelter travelers though. That’s the rule,” said Ahmad.. “That’s what my papa says.”
“Hmm.” Karim knew this rule. In fact, he knew both rules: never trust a stranger, always take in travelers. Which one applied? “What if he creeps down and looks at our women?” Karim frowned. “I bet that’s what he’s up to. I can hit him from here. Want to bet?”
“I don’t gamble,” Ahmad retorted, rolling onto his belly to look at the beggar some more. The man had finished his prayers and was wrapping his turban around his skull cap. And now he was settling himself cross-legged in front of Baba’s Nose and starting to thumb a string of prayer beads, taking no notice of the boys, even though they were well within his sight.
“You don’t gamble?” Karim snorted. “You donkey-butt! What’s knucklebones if it isn’t gambling? Well, I’m going to crack his skull open.” Karim had found his weapon, a round, black stone the size of his fist. He rolled it in his palm.
“Stop that.,” Ahmad whispered angrily. “What’s wrong with you? The poor man is just resting!”
“Let him rest somewhere else. This is our village, by Allah.” Karim took a two-step running start for momentum and flung his stone. The stranger still paid no attention; he just kept flicking his prayer beads, his thick lips moving in some chant. Karim’s rock rose into the sunlight. The trajectory was good. It looked like it would land near the stranger, maybe right on his head. Just at that moment, however, the stranger swung his arm casually and something left his hand—a clod of dirt. Even though he flung it up without aiming or looking, it banged into Karim’s rock at the tip-top of its arc. The clod shattered, but the rock dropped directly down to the earth and from the spot where rock and dirt clod had banged together, a lark swooped away.
The boys gaped at each other. Each one saw the terror in the other’s eyes. Suddenly Ahmad jumped to his feet and went scrambling down the hillside, with Karim only inches behind him, both boys running for the safety of Char Bagh, that cluster of cob huts and houses that was their home.
3
Lost in the turmoil of her thoughts, Khadija started across the courtyard. At the gateway to the women’s yard, she paused, however. Over by the kitchen, she saw Soraya’s daughter scolding the headman’s great-aunt once-removed. “Get your paws out of there,” the girl was yelling. “Who said you could gorge?” The poor crone had been scooping mutton fat out of the urn to lick off her fingers. Always the last in the compound to eat, she was always hungry.
“Shakila!” Khadija cried out. “You be nice!”
The girl saw Khadija advancing upon her and cast quick glances right and left to see which way she might bolt, but she was not going to get off so easily. An eight-year-old child shouting at a white-haired crone! What was Soraya teaching her children?
At that moment, however, the crone herself intervened. “This darling?” she grinned, displaying several missing teeth. “She’s always nice!” and the humble old woman gave the child a hug. That’s how it was, Khadija thought, when you were living on the charity of a distant relative and you got old and weak and no one needed you for anything. You could never let your smile slip, you could ne
ver be less than loving, and if someone stepped on your toes, you could never fail to thank them, as if a bit of pain was just what you were hoping for. Who were you to complain or make anyone feel guilty? In that relentlessly cheerful crone, Khadija saw her own eventual self, unless Ibrahim made her his second wife.
“Auntie-dear,” she said gently to the old woman. “Go rest now. You must be tired.” Then she addressed the girl severely. “Shakila, take those two big water jugs to the river and bring them back full. Hurry now. We need water for dinner.”
The girl scuttled off to do as she was told. Khadija’s husband might be dead, but her authority had not faded—yet.
***
Soraya sat next to a vegetable bin with a cutting board on her lap, peeling and chopping onions. A djinn was lurking nearby. She could tell because her head was throbbing in that special weird way. She just hoped the nasty spirit hadn’t gotten into the kitchen. She tended to sense them wherever it was dank and dark—those were the sorts of places djinns preferred. She heard them at night quite often just outside the windows, skulking in the rain, scratching at the sills, noises no one else could hear.
The kitchen had no windows, only smoke holes and a doorway to augment whatever light the fires cast. Decades of cooking had turned the walls and ceiling black. The holes above the fire-pits worked well enough on ordinary days, but on feast-days, when all the fires were going at once, the room filled with so much smoke, the women had to work with their head scarves pressed over their mouths. Today was no feast day, but the soot had formed a permanent crust that suited djinns perfectly: against that soot, the dreadful creatures could quite disappear.
A shadow suddenly darkened the room, and Soraya looked up fearfully, but it was only her sister-in-law stooping to enter through the low doorway. The widow set a bucket of water next to one of the fire pits and crouched beside Soraya.
“Salaam aleikum,” the slender girl murmured.
“Waleikum a’salaam, my precious,” said the widow Khadija.
“May you not be tired.”
“May you be healthy.”
“When did you get home? You must be exhausted? Sorkhab is so far away.”
“I had a chance to catch my breath,” Khadija assured her. “I just had a quiet cup of tea with Hajji Sahib. Are you cooking dinner already? Good girl. Let’s get some rice soaking.”
“Rice!” Soraya exclaimed, her forehead wrinkling. “Are we having rice? Are there guests tonight?”
“Not tonight.”
“Are we celebrating something?”
“No, little one. It’s just that Hajji-sahib has some big worries right now. He’ll need some cheering up.” Khadija leaned a little closer and dropped her voice. “Sorkhab is going to plow extra fields.”
She spoke as if this were ominous news but Soraya couldn’t see the danger “Let them plow,” she shrugged. “So what?”
“So what!” Khadija rocked back on her heels a little, laughing. “You innocent little sugar cube. That’s what I love about you. If they plow more land, they’ll take more water. Don’t you see? More for them means less for us.”
“But the river is so big!”
Khadija smiled. “Big now, but what happens to it in the summer?”
Soraya muffled a giggle. “Shrinks like a man’s thingie?”
“Yes, dear, like a man’s thingie, and once it shrinks, there won’t be enough for all of us.” Khadija stared into the coals. “It’s a strange world, isn’t it?” she mused. “A man is so small, and yet there’s enough of him for two, three, even four wives. A river is so big, and yet there isn’t enough of it for even two little villages.”
“Hmm.” Soraya pondered this analogy dubiously. “Ghulam Haidar has only two wives, but they exhaust him. That’s why he’s so pale, they say. That’s why he faints.”
“Oh, pfft!” Khadija dismissed Ghulam Haidar with a snort. “He’s pale because he’s thin blooded, and he faints because his wives quarrel. Wives don’t have to quarrel. Take us, for example. You and I would never quarrel, would we, Soraya-jan? If my Ashraf had taken a second wife—someone sweet-tempered like you—I would not have cared a bit, not one bit, and I don’t even have a son. A woman with a son has nothing to fear from a second wife. The mother of a man’s first-born son will always be the queen of his household.”
“But I’m his wife now and I don’t even get to decide if we’ll have rice.”
“My precious! Of course you get to decide, you just don’t want to. It’s easier to let me go on managing things, isn’t it? But surely you don’t want to deprive your husband of some tasty rice tonight, with all his worries. Oh, believe me, if the river runs dry, we’ll all have cause to worry. We might have to fight Sorkhab for water. That’s why Hajji-sahib is anxious, you see? It’s difficult for a man so young to be malik and bear all that responsibility. You and I must ease his life, so let’s give him a feast of spinach rice tonight, shall we?”
But Soraya was not listening. Out in the courtyard, she saw her darling little Ahmad wrestling with his friend Karim. That big brute had one arm locked around her darling’s neck and he was twisting about wildly, making the younger, smaller boy thrash and yelp. A horrid picture filled Soraya’s mind, of her son’s head ripping right off his neck. “Karim!” she shouted, rising.
Khadija caught at her green skirts. “Leave them alone. They’re learning to be men.”
“Karim!” the mother cried out again. “You bad boys stop wrestling! Come indoors or Auntie Khadija will take a whip to you!”
The boys stopped wrestling but even as Soraya turned back she felt the twist in her gut. A shiver ran up her spine and flashes filled her eyes. She knew what was coming, and sure enough, as soon as the flashes faded, there was the horrid thing, right in the corner, squat and evil, merging with the shadows. Khadija’s voice came to her from far away. “Soraya-jan? Is something wrong?”
“Don’t you see it? Look!”
“Look at what? The cat?”
Instantly the darkness resolved into a feral gray cat skulking in the corner, but Soraya was not fooled. “That’s no cat,” she whimpered. “That’s a djinn. See how it stares? Don’t leave me, Khadija!”
“I will never leave you.” Khadija snatched up a spoon as if to threaten the cat-shaped djinn, but the boys tumbled into the room just then, scaring the creature away.
“Mama,” the little fellow blurted. “There’s a man on the hill.”
“Is there,” Soraya managed to say. Thank God for her son: the sight of him made her heart bloom. Already the stench of djinn was subsiding and the aroma of warm bread was filling Soraya’s senses. “Come over here, Ahmad-jan. You too, Karim, let me give you both a bit of bread with clotted cream. Would you like that?”
The boys sidled in, but Ahmad kept talking about the man on the hill. “Should I go tell Papa?”
“Your father has a lot on his mind,” Khadija scolded.
“But Auntie, a stranger’s sitting right next to Baba's Nose and Karim says he’s come to gawk at our women.”
“I tried to move him along, by God!” Karim boasted.
“But the man just waved and suddenly this clod of dirt flew up and poof,” said Ahmad. “A bird flew away. I’m not lying. He’s a wizard or something.”
“A wizard! Well, well, well,” Khadija twinkled. “We haven’t had a wizard in this valley since…How long since we’ve had a wizard in these parts, Soraya-jan?”
“Not since that flying monkey-man…” said Soraya. She closed her eyes and let the pictures fill her mind. “The one with the beard made of fire,” she recounted, “and the tail that stretched all the way to Kabul.” The story started taking shape. “That was before you two were born. He came into the village right after sunset prayer and sitting on his shoulders was an old woman with a lump on her back. When she sneezed, the lump exploded into birds, thousands of birds!” She paused again to let the story grow details. Friendship, she thought… between the monkey and the man … a bag full o
f stones that turned into … turned into jewels at night—
But Khadija broke the story-dream with a laugh “Soraya, the things you say!”
“It’s not a joke!” Ahmad cried bitterly. “it’s not a story. There’s a man up there.”
The women smiled. “Perhaps we should put this sorcerer to work on Ghulam Haidar’s two wives,” Khadija suggested. “He might end their quarrelling.”
“Stop laughing,” Ahmad pouted. “There is a man, he turned a stone into a bird, Auntie. He’s all raggedy and strange.”
“What stone?” Khadija’s sudden sharp tone made Soraya look up.
“The one Karim threw at him.”
Soraya pushed her work aside. “You threw a stone at a traveler passing through? A stone, Karim?”
“He’s not passing through,” the boy protested. “He thinks he lives here now. He’s just sitting next to our rock like it’s his rock. He made a prayer mat out of his turban and said namaz right in front of us.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Khadija demanded. “He fears God.”
Ahmad and Karim shuffled in place, trading guilty glances. “But he’s a stranger!” Karim insisted and then seemed to remember another point in his defense. “He criss-crosses his turban in front. We don’t do like that. He’s probably a bandit, he’s probably got a gang coming to steal women, just like those other ones. Well, I have to go. My mother needs me at home.” He jumped to his feet.
“Sit,” Khadija commanded. “What was this stranger doing when you left?”
Ahmad answered. “Counting his prayer beads.”
“And walking in circles,” Karim added.
“And chanting,” said Ahmad.
“Chanting what? Qur’an?”
“No, not Qur’an, Auntie. He was just sort of humming. Like this.” Ahmad began buzzing out an aimless, tuneless hum.