The Widow's Husband

by Tamim Ansary

  “Am I forgiven?”

  “You have been kind. You’re forgiven.”

  Ibrahim moved toward his sheikh. The man unwound the turban from his head. It was made entirely of water and yet held its shape. Ibrahim handed his son over to the malang, who wrapped Ahmad in the cool blue liquid, gently winding the shimmering turban around and around him until he was entirely enveloped.

  “Malang-sahib,” Ibrahim exclaimed. “Where did you get this wonderful turban?” *

  “I got it from the blue sky above and from the stars at night,” the malang replied. “The Friend left it in the world for you and me to find.”

  “Oh,” sighed Ibrahim. “When will you take me to see the Friend?”

  “I am doing so now,” said the malang. “Stand beside me. Look out there.”

  Ibrahim moved next to the malang. Inside the bathhouse, he no longer felt hot, although he could still see flames. They were licking over his body as if he himself had been transformed into fire.

  The malang pointed toward the lanes jammed with turmoil, toward the shops blazing and burning. “What do you see?”

  “I see the bazaar,” said Ibrahim.

  “Look again!” the malang commanded, and again he pointed. “What do you see?”

  The people were all on fire. The shops were on fire. The merchandise was on fire. The ceiling was on fire. The very dirt seemed to burn. “I see fire.”

  “What do you see?” the malang cried a third time, pointing imperiously, and his voice filled the universe. Again, Ibrahim looked—the bazaar was gone! The fire mounted and roared, white heat interlaced with flickering reds and blazing yellows, and then the heat dissolved all colors, dissolved red into orange, orange into yellow, yellow into pure and colorless light.

  Ibrahim understood. “I see only God.”

  The malang wrapped him in water and drew him into the light, and Ibrahim’s yearning ceased at last.

  Epilog

  It took a few weeks for Char Bagh to hear the dreadful news—how the foreigners had returned to Afghanistan with an even bigger army than before, how they’d swept into Kabul and taken revenge for their losses by burning down the Grand Bazaar.

  Everyone knew that Malik Ibrahim had friends in that bazaar; but that didn’t mean he was dead. A man does not spend all his time with friends. He might have gone to the mosque that day; or he might have had business somewhere else. So the village waited for news; but the news they awaited never came. What did come were reports that at least ten thousand people had perished in the flames of the Grand Bazaar. No one could know if Ibrahim was one of the martyrs, for most of the corpses were burnt beyond recognition. Those at the heart of the bazaar were reduced to a few fragments of bone. And if had Ibrahim had escaped the fire, where was he?

  But slowly, the village accepted the loss of its headman. From the compounds where his wives still lived, a keening began to sound at odd hours of the day or night, now from one, now from the other, sometimes from both, permeating the village with unearthly sorrow. At last, the village gathered at the mosque to perform funeral prayers for Ibrahim. The ritual felt hollow, since they couldn’t bury the poor man’s body, nor even his bones, nor even his ashes, but that alone made the namaz especially fervent. Mullah Yaqub presided, of course, and many people from Sorkhab took part. Afterwards, hundreds stayed to eat and mourn and tell stories about the soon-to-be legendary headman and his mighty deeds. Char Bagh was able to host a worthy funeral feast, God be praised, because the water from the mountainside had made its fields so bountiful. Not even the eldest elders could remember such prosperity; and all the credit went to the visionary Malik Ibrahim, who had recognized the malang for what he was, and befriended him with the generosity that makes a good man great, binding him to Char Bagh with marriage and devotion.

  Ghulam Dastagir did not make his move until the 40-day period had elapsed. Normally he would have waited at least a year, but these were unusual circumstances. When Ibrahim was alive, his two wives had lived in separate compounds, but now that their husband was gone, they lived together, sometimes in one compound, sometimes in the other. Their children moved with them, the three girls and little Azizullah, who was the child of the great malang. Elderly step-uncle Agha Lala stayed in the lower compound, and so did a number of other male relatives of Ibrahim’s and of Soraya’s… One of Khadija’s cousins from Sorkhab, a young fellow with a mere shadow of a beard, had now moved into the upper compound, which used to be malang’s; and so had the eldest of Asad’s ox-like sons…nominally therefore males anchored each compound, but still, the whole village regarded the widows’ situation as precarious.

  One week after the second communal reading of the Quran for Ibrahim, a delegation of women from Ghulam Dastagir’s compound came to visit Ibrahim’s two widows. By this time, winter had closed the passes already, and the valley was cut off from the outer world, which gave a sense of urgency to the visit, for two women with children could not be left to their own devices. If they came to harm, it would shame the entire village. Ghulam Dastagir was now the biggest landowner in Char Bagh, and he had only one wife. Marrying two women at once would certainly mark a novelty in the annals of Char Bagh, but a man must shoulder the duties imposed on him by Allah.

  His courting delegation consisted of three younger women and two crones who added weight and dignity to the group. The presence of the crones signaled that this was no mere social visit but an embassy seeking to launch negotiations for an important marriage. The crones were Ghulam Dastagir’s aunt Shireen Gul and his step-mother Bibi Jan. Ghulam Dastagir’s wife stayed home.

  The women were escorted to the sitting room near the front door of the compound. Both Khadija and Soraya came to sit with them. Khadija was suckling Azizullah, who was over five months old now, praise God. Girls swarmed in with tea, candies, nuts, raisins, and cookies to make the guests feel welcome.

  For the first hour, the visitors merely reminisced about the tumultuous events of the past year, picking through the stories for tidbits not yet dulled by retelling. The widow’s listened largely in silence, shrouded in an air of tragic dignity. Then Shireen Gul got down to business. “Khadija-jan,” she said (oh, she knew which of the women to address). “My heart grows faint with sorrow every time I think of you and sweet Soraya alone in these big compounds, struggling to manage double households, no man to call upon for lifting and loading, no man to open the door when some stranger comes knocking. We all fret and worry about the two of you. We all would love to see the two of you made secure. I will not allow the torment you are suffering to endure, not so long as breath still animates this wrinkled flesh of mine and I can do one single thing to ease your difficulties.”

  “Oh, auntie, do not fret for us!” Khadija assured her. “When you weather such catastrophes as we two, your skin hardens against the storm. Come back in spring and you’ll find the two of us just as you see us now, God willing, a little more wrinkled, but who’s to care? Thrice-widowed as I am, how can I fuss about appearance? What man would want a hag like me except as a sort of servant?”

  “God forbid, God forbid, Khadija, my dearest! Of your hundred blossoms, not a one has withered yet. As for Soraya-jan! Well!”

  “Yes, she’s a pretty prize, isn’t she?” Khadija smiled fondly at the younger woman, her one-time co-wife and sister-in-law once removed. “But she too has survived terrible losses. She’s tougher than she looks—aren’t you, my dear?” She smiled again at Soraya. “She’ll survive this storm too, never fear—if Allah wills it.”

  “Survive! There is more to life than surviving. Now, my nephew Ghulam Dastagir—”

  “He has a nice wife,” Soraya noted sweetly. “Really. She is so nice.”

  “One wife! A man like him, a lord of such proportions, a man with land enough to feed a multitude should support more than one wife! And he stands ready to do his duty. After all, our Prophet, peace-be-upon-him-and-his-descendents—”

  “Ghulam Dastagir is a stalwart man,” Khadija decla
red. “In this house we have nothing but respect for him. My husband, God-bless-and-forgive-him—oh, I scarcely know whether to call him my husband or my brother-in-law—forgive me, Soraya-jan! I’m speaking of our dear Malik Ibrahim—he regarded Ghulam Dastagir as a brother.”

  “Ghulam Dastagir is like a mighty elm,” his step-mother proclaimed. “How fine it will be to draw you pitiful widows under his sheltering arms!”

  “He owns so much land,” Khadija noted.

  “And he has the strength to cultivate it all, with the help of his tenant-farmers, God be praised! And very soon, of course, the men will name him our new malik, and then you two will be able to say, ‘We are the wives of the malik’.”

  “If he marries both of us,” said Khadija, “what a tremendous landowner he will be. Quite rich enough to stand eye to eye with the Khan of Sorkhab. After all, his lands will then be joined to our domains.”

  The old woman blinked. “Your domains?”

  “Yes,” Khadija explained. “When Ibrahim Khan married me, he became master of everything the malang owned which I had inherited, of course, because I was Malang-sahib’s widow. Now that Ibrahim has been gathered to God, all his property and all the malang’s property belongs to us widows and our children.”

  “But—but you’re women,” Shireen Gul spluttered.

  “Khadija consulted with Mullah Yaqub,” Soraya said, with a quiet confidence no one had seen from her before. “We’re permitted to inherit.”

  “It’s true,” said Khadija, transferring the child to her other breast. “Mullah Yaqub says we inherit one-eighth of the estate—Soraya-jan and me. The girls share one third amongst them. All the rest belongs to Azizullah. In the end, of course, we will transfer all the land to him. It will not be divided. Never.”

  “Of course, when Azizullah grows up,” Soraya mused, “perhaps he’ll seek one of Ghulam Dastagir’s daughters as a bride. Then—unless Ghulam Dastagir’s wife gives him another son—his lands and ours will all be combined into one gigantic estate.” She clapped her hands in sudden delight. “What a big, big landowner Azizullah will be!”

  “If God wills it,” Khadija added prudently. “Oh, just think of it—Malang-sahib’s boy and one of your mighty Ghulam Dastagir’s girls —joined! What an heir they will produce! Surely Ghulam Dastagir would favor such a match. Let’s talk about the possibilities. Who might Azizullah marry?”

  The five women from Ghulam Dastagir’s household simply gawked, unable to absorb so much astonishing news or to formulate a proper response. At that moment, perhaps, as they gazed upon tiny, gurgling Azizullah, they felt some inkling of the future progeny that would flow from the seeds already in this room, the warriors and politicians, the calligraphers and poets, the professors, doctors, engineers, diplomats, and so many others who would trace their ancestry to the legendary Malang of Char Bagh, raised by the widows of his devoted student, the great Malik Ibrahim.

  Finally Bibi Jan managed to gasp out, “How could you listen to Mullah Yaqub? He’s only telling you these things because he wants these properties for himself. Two women, on their own, managing estates! How could that be? Good heavens, that Mullah is a conniving one. Where did he get this fantastic story? Women owning property! It’s unheard of!”

  “He got it from Allah’s revered Quran. It’s right there, Bibi Jan. That great Khadija whose name I bear—the wife of our Prophet, peace-be-upon-him-and-his descendants—she was a woman of property before she married our dear Prophet. Malang-sahib himself once told me so.”

  “Don’t try to back me down with Quran, you—you woman. You can recite verses all day long but at the end of it, you will still be a pair of helpless, defenseless women, living on your own, without men!”

  “Not true! This is a man.” Khadija pulled her son away from her breast and held him up. He gurgled and beat the air with his tiny fists. “A little one,” she admitted, “but with God’s favor he will grow bigger every day. And we do have Agha Lala.”

  “He’s eighty years old! And senile!”

  “And yet, he’s still a man. Not that I’ve checked between his legs, but anyone who claims he’s not a man will have to prove it.”

  Soraya half-hid a smile and slapped at Khadija’s arm, reveling in the domineering wit, the cocky confidence of this co-wife of hers, this big sister.

  “And my cousin’s nephew Mahmoud is living in the compound on the hill and Asad’s boys, and, well—in short, we have almost too many males in these households. No need for the village to fret over our safety. Go home and tell Ghulam Dastagir we thank him for his concern, we appreciate his compassion, we love him as a brother, but we have accepted our sad destiny: to live out the rest of our lives as pitiful widows, devoted to the memory of the men we both loved so much, and to the toil and glory of raising the only son of the Malang of Char Bagh, who is the final heir of both Malang-sahib and our great malik.”

  “But the water—”

  “Will belong to him.” Khadija gave her son an affectionate kiss.

  “You mean to you!” Bibi Jan accused.

  Khadija gazed at her soberly. “No, my dear Bibi Jan. To him. We will manage these properties for him. When the heir comes to manhood, he will have it all.”

  “And if marauders come one day?”

  “We will depend on the entire village to protect us,” Khadija crooned. “Surely the men of Char Bagh will never stand by and let the Malang’s son be harmed? Oh, not a single hair of his head. Surely not! Allah forbid! We trust in Allah and in the goodness of the people of Char Bagh.”

  The master of the household and the future owner of all the water in the village of Char Bagh and much of the land let loose a melodious burp. The startled women looked at the little fellow. At that moment, another sound caught their ears. Frogs? Could it possibly be frogs? Now? In the dead of winter? Here, in the middle of the compound? How could that be?

  Then they realized what they were hearing: it was the unbroken rumble of the Sorkhab River gushing through its channels, even under the thick cap of ice it wore at this season. No one could remember hearing the river from this spot before, so deep inside the compound, so far from the river banks, even though the sound must have been there all along, for the water never stopped flowing, the water never did stop rushing through Needle Gorge, rushing down the endless slopes to join with other streams and other waters, rushing down to join the mother of all waters, the great ocean that was said to encircle all the land, somewhere out there in the vast world beyond the four sweet gardens of little Char Bagh.

  