A Sister to Honor

by Lucy Ferriss

  She finished brushing her hair and applied a line of kohl to her eyelids before putting her glasses back on. She never wore makeup in America, but here it seemed part of getting dressed. She found her mother in the bathroom, helping Sobia drape her dupatta properly. “Don’t you look all grown up,” she said to her sister.

  “I want to wear heels,” Sobia said, eyeing herself in the mirror. She had lost her baby fat since Afia saw her last, and stood with her shoulders back, as if to show off the tiny bosom that the dupatta concealed. She’d had her period twice, she’d bragged to Afia the first moment they were alone, and Afia had hugged her and said, “Poor baby,” in a way that let her know she felt not pity but pride.

  “You’re tall for your age already,” she said. “I’d never wear them if I were tall like you.”

  “I’m tall too!” cried Muska, pushing her way into the bathroom. For a moment they stood together, craning their necks high like a trio of geese, while their mother stood off to the side, shaking her head.

  “My silly sisters,” Afia said.

  • • •

  Two hours later, Baba dropped Afia with her mother and sisters at the entrance to the wedding hall and drove to the lower parking lot with Khalid and Shahid. Afia had not looked at Shahid the whole drive—not because she was angry at him, she wasn’t anymore, but because even a look would bring Gus into the car with them. She let out her breath as they left the men and went in their silky outfits to join the women at the rukhsati.

  Inside the hall, the stage was festooned with fresh lilies and bloodred roses woven in with silver streamers and strings of white lights for a backdrop. On the puffy little couch at the center sat a shy, homely man in white kurta trimmed with gold embroidery, his turban-wrapped head balanced on his thin neck. He sported a wispy beard and a gentle smile for the dozen men of his family, the only men in the hall besides the DJ and the photographer, who came up to have their photographs taken with him. “He looks sweet,” said Muska.

  “He looks old,” said Sobia, who had started trying out saucy opinions.

  “He is thirty-two,” Moray said. She found them a spot at a table with aunts and cousins. “You can’t call that old, not when he’s had to get himself established.”

  Moray, Afia thought, was sensitive on this subject, though she shouldn’t have been. Her first husband—Afia’s real Baba, whom she couldn’t remember—had been young, twenty-seven to Farishta’s eighteen. It was only when she married Tofan, the eldest, that she had a husband two decades older than she was. But it didn’t matter, because Baba had never seemed old. He had been more playful with Afia and Shahid than either of his brothers. He would toss Afia in the air and catch her; he played cricket with Shahid and his friends. Moray knew she had been lucky, no matter the talk.

  Greeting her relatives, Afia found herself scanning the room as more women entered in their silks and heels. “Moray,” she said, leaning over to her mother, “do you think Lema will be here? Her brother married Maryam’s sister—”

  “She lives outside Charsadda now,” Moray said quickly. “Long way to come.”

  “I came. Cousin Gulnar came.” Afia nodded toward the only other female at the gathering who had traveled from North America. Gulnar had married an orthopedist and moved to his new home in Ottawa. The normally high-spirited Gulnar had been terrified of the journey, Afia remembered. Now she sat with her close relations, a baby on her lap and another in the belly, dressed in black niqab. They became more religious, it was said, the ones who were taken abroad.

  “The journey’s longer for some,” Moray said.

  The DJ put on a dancing song, a Pashtun song. Afia’s cousins pulled her away from the table. In front of the stage, they danced. The spike heels felt wobbly, and Afia dropped her dupatta twice. But the music fired her blood, and she forgot about anything she’d ever done to set herself apart from the girls around her. She clapped and swayed with them, the lights spinning. Somewhere in the dark at the back of the room, a knot of boys from the other side of the wedding building had gathered to watch the girls with their shiny hair and their arms half bared. Like the others, Afia lifted her arms higher, tilted her chin so her eyes caught the light. She couldn’t help herself. They were fifteen in the circle. Virgins dancing, Afia thought. A dark question arose but she quickly scuttled it; she clapped and shouted.

  Then the music slowed, and they returned to their seats, where there were trays of Mountain Dew and Pepsi, and Afia drank thirstily, wishing for plain water. Funny, how no one at Smith College drank Pepsi even though they drank beer. But the thought of Smith ushered in a thought of Gus—of his hands, his mouth, the fullness of the lower lip—and she guzzled the Pepsi and washed it away.

  “Here she comes,” said Sobia at last. They turned as the spotlight swung over the crowd of women. It picked out Maryam, approaching from the back of the room, on the arm of her brother.

  She was, Afia thought, a work of art. A red veil edged with a broad swath of gold and green embroidery, studded with mirrors and bits of colored glass, fell from the crown of her head over her shoulders, leaving her face exposed. From the top hung a diadem of ruby and gold in the center of her forehead, echoed by the heavy necklace that lay across her collarbone, above the tight embroidered bodice of her ruby-red gown. Her face looked, not beautiful, but majestic, with the deep kohl around her eyes and several pairs of false lashes; her cheeks both whitened and rouged at the bones, her small mouth stained red, almost in the shape of a heart. Holding fast to her brother, she took a step forward. Then the lights went out.

  The women groaned. “Load shedding,” said Moray. “What a moment for it.”

  “Poor girl,” said one of the aunts.

  Afia sat in the dark. She had forgotten how it was always like this, the electricity going out at a moment’s notice, the air dark and still and hot. She felt the anticipation in the room like that uncanny moment when the airplane leaves the tarmac, defying gravity. This was the journey, all the women were saying together. These heavy, glittering garments, this gold against the throat, this man waiting on a white couch. As soon as the lights came back on, they would have liftoff. What had Afia been thinking, off in that strange land, America? Had her brain gone upside down, that she should think of men and women like stray planets drawn to each other and not like stars in a constellation of family? Around her, the women buzzed. Sobia and Muska, holding hands, went scuttling in the dark between tables, headed for the trays of tiny cakes.

  Zardad, that was the name. Whose parents would come to call, in a few days. She would need to look rested, healthful, humble, helpful. Zardad. She tried saying the name, silently, with her teeth and tongue. Back toward her throat, another name lingered. Gus.

  The lights returned, along with the distant roar of a generator. In the room’s center, Maryam had not moved a muscle. Now she wobbled forward on her heels, her mouth frozen in a half curl. Ahead of her, on his makeshift throne, the groom appeared pleased. He had perhaps seen a picture of her, but her real self was an improvement. She was not an ugly girl, far from it. But he did not look at her, really, nor she at him. Her brother sat Maryam on the couch, and she folded her hennaed hands in her lap, the hands they had all exclaimed over just yesterday, when the transformation of Maryam into a bride had begun.

  However short her forehead, however clumsy her walk, Maryam was coming to her husband pure. Afia forced herself to study her cousin as she smiled for the cameras and nodded at the friends and relatives who approached the couch to give their blessings. Maryam’s mouth, she thought, trembled a little. Her eyes, so prominent with the kohl and extra lashes, betrayed eagerness, hope, anxiety, excitement, and terror. Tonight, this girl who had not been kissed—who had not been touched—would go with her strange new husband to his parents’ house, where he would undress her and make love to her, perhaps gently, perhaps roughly. The next day his family would celebrate the consummation while her own re
treated home and adjusted to life without their daughter.

  Afia had never dwelled on any of this before, not in such terms. Everyone knew what happened, but you didn’t think about it, and she wouldn’t think about it, not now. As she turned her gaze away from the new couple on the stage, she caught sight of a familiar figure, though wrapped tightly in her dupatta, her kameez shapeless as a tent. “Moray,” she said, turning back to the gossiping women at her table, “there’s Lema.”

  “Maryam’s mother wants us to take a picture—”

  “In a minute. I’m just going over to say hello. I’ll be right back.”

  “Afia, I don’t want—”

  But she was already weaving her way across the room. Impudent, to ignore her mother. But she had been trying to reach Lema for too many months; she wasn’t going to pass up this chance.

  From age nine, when Lema first moved to Nasirabad with her family from the tribal areas, the two girls had been inseparable. Together with Panra, Tayyab’s daughter who was two weeks older than Afia, they had climbed mulberry trees and sneaked off to swim in the river. Dark-eyed and broad-cheeked, Lema was always the boldest of them. In school, she dared other girls to sneak over to the boys’ side, or to chug a bottle of bright red Rooh Afza until they choked and spewed red over their kameez. While Afia was getting high marks and dreaming of test tubes, Lema dreamed of a snug house in Hayatabad, away from the stench of chicken dung. While Afia arranged her goals like a staircase, conquering each step, Lema talked people into pulling her up the ladder. Two years ago, she had persuaded her parents to let her try a secretarial school in Lahore. IDK how I ever lived outside the city before! she wrote Afia. Then last summer she had suddenly returned to be married, to a small farmer in the dry valley by Charsadda. Afia had learned of it only through her mother.

  “Lema,” Afia said, touching her friend’s sleeve.

  Lema turned. There were her large, dark eyes, the high arch of her brows framed by the blue cloth over her hair and across her cheeks and nose. The eyes lit up when she recognized Afia. But across her left temple and running down into her cheek, the skin puckering by the eye, ran a deep scar, still purple with old scabbing.

  “Why, look at the American, come home to Nasirabad!” Lema said. When she put her arms around Afia, the hard bulge of her belly met Afia’s ribs. Afia embraced her friend, then stepped back. Carefully she lifted away the scarf. The scar ran down to Lema’s chin, like the scratch of a giant’s nail. She reached out a hand, but Lema flinched away.

  “What did they do to you?” Afia gasped.

  “I’m fine. Really.” Lema wrapped her face and neck again. Nervously she glanced left and right. A heavyset woman glowered at her from a table—her mother-in-law, Afia guessed. “I’m sorry I haven’t written. I’ve been so busy. I’m due in May,” Lema said quickly, caressing her belly.

  “That’s . . . that’s wonderful. But what did they—”

  “I’m going to tell you while we admire Maryam. All right? Smile, will you? Let’s turn and look at her.”

  Afia tried to turn toward the stage, but she stole glances at her old friend. Her joy at finding Lema had shriveled. Lema had lost weight—she could tell despite the covering, despite the pregnancy—and her hands were chapped, the nails ragged. Keeping her voice light, Lema ran through her story. She had become pregnant in Lahore. It didn’t matter who the man was—it was a man, she had liked him, she had thought herself free, she had not been forced but neither had she been in love. Not that it would have mattered, because he was a Sikh. He paid for the abortion, but by then it was too late. Word had got out. When she came home last spring for Ramadan, her mother held her down while her father and brother took the knife to her face. It was a warning, they told her.

  “But I don’t understand,” Afia managed to say. “If they wanted you married—”

  “No one decent would marry me anyway. That’s what they said.” Lema laughed, a strange yipping sound with no humor in it. “But when I healed, it turned out they had found someone.”

  “And—and are you happy?”

  Lema shrugged. “I live with my in-laws now,” she said. “They brought me here tonight.” Her eyes crinkled; she was smiling sheepishly. “I knew I’d see you,” she said.

  “But you didn’t come across the room. I don’t even know how I recognized you, all covered up. Why—”

  Lema shook her head. “You looked so happy, dancing,” she said. “I didn’t want to spoil your evening.”

  “Oh, Lema.” Afia reached to squeeze her friend’s hand, but Lema flicked her away.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “But can’t I do something?”

  “I’m fine.” Lema pretended to wave at someone across the room. “He doesn’t beat me. I get along with his brother’s wife. Soon I’ll have a child. But you.” She faced Afia. With the back of her dry hand, she stroked Afia’s cheek. “You’re so smart,” she said. “You’ll fetch a fine husband. Maybe one who’ll take you back to America!”

  “I don’t know, Lema. Things have happened.” Afia’s eyes filled with tears. Lema was about to turn away, back to the crowlike mother-in-law; there wasn’t time to tell her the truth.

  “Don’t let things happen.” Lema’s scar deepened as she drew her hand away. “You’re not stupid, like me. You’ll be taken care of. You’ll be wealthy. You’ll be safe.”

  “Aren’t you safe?”

  “I have to go.” Lema pulled her dupatta loose. She leaned forward. She planted a kiss, moist and slightly sour, on Afia’s cheek. Then she turned away, back to the women at her table, who frowned as she joined them. She did not glance back.

  • • •

  Afia burned for her friend. That night and the next she dreamed first of Gus and then of Lema. She woke both mornings dry-mouthed and achy.

  Then, when her little sisters had left for school, she persuaded Tayyab to walk her down to Ali Bhai’s Internet café, where she booted up her e-mail. And there, both mornings, was a new message from gusschn@gmail.com. M’Afia, the messages began, Gus’s little cleverness. He went on about missing her, tried to tease her into sending a photo of herself, complained of the wet snow and the sudden loneliness of Devon, with only his menagerie for company. For Christmas he’d gone about ten miles away, to his mom’s house in Pittsfield.

  She didn’t answer the e-mails. She could not write anything to Gus, not here, not in this place where even thoughts of Gus were weeds to be plucked by the root and discarded. She read the blithe sentences—M’Afia, I know you said Internet would be spotty but what I wouldn’t give to get a word from you. I worry about you. Your country is one very scary place. Not to mention how scary the thought that you’ll meet some cute guy with a Kalashnikov and that’ll be the end of us—and erased the e-mail, then went to the trash and deleted it there too. When she returned home, she fished in her purse for her mobile, and for a moment she panicked. Then she found it, in the back pocket where she didn’t usually stash it. She opened the photo she had of her and Gus, where she was sitting on his shoulders in the apple orchard just west of Northampton. Patty had taken that photo on Columbus Day, before Gus’s lips had even come close to hers, and still the sight of it flooded her with shame. Quickly she deleted it. Then she turned off the phone and tucked it deep in her drawer, where no one could get at the photos or text messages. Seeing Lema had brought on caution; she should have felt it before. Shahid was always with the men, no chance to discover if he’d said anything about that stupid shot of her on the Smith website.

  Lema had drawn a poor hand with her family, she told herself as she woke next morning—a family that came from the hills, that understood nothing of life in a city or of what Lema wanted for herself. Afia’s family wasn’t like that. Afia’s parents had been proud to send Shahid to Peshawar. They had faced down whatever rumors arose to let Afia study in America. Yesterday, drawing extra rupees from th
e stash in her mending basket, Moray had taken her to the shops in Mardan and bought an outfit in the latest style, Afia’s favorite, an A-line kameez with a flare from the hips, and the new ruched pants underneath. And how many times, over the years, had she heard Baba argue with Khalid? A good Pashtun, he would declare, is not a primitive Pashtun. Your Taliban with their amputations and their stonings, they are like cavemen, they know nothing of Islam.

  Thus far, this visit, Khalid had been nice. When she was little he’d given her rides on his broad shoulders. But she remembered teasing him once, for the way his left foot dragged a little as he ran across the pitch in cricket. After that he’d treated her with contempt, guffawing when she first got glasses and reaching with a smirk to pull her dupatta over her chest. Since she left for America he’d ignored her. But yesterday he had asked about her studies, about whether she kept halal. He hadn’t asked about the Smith website. Her family, she reminded herself, trusted her. With that thought she curled herself into a ball, as if to shield her body from its own memories. She couldn’t let the wall between that distant world and this familiar one become porous; it had to stay solid, each side opaque to the other.

  It was her fifth morning at home. Sounds of commotion penetrated the bedroom door. She heard her father’s voice; Moray’s; Khalid’s, with a shrill edge. Then her mother pushed open the door, no knock.

  “Afia,” she said, “you’ve slept enough. Get dressed and help your anâ and me in the kitchen.”

  Moray was dressed in a dark kameez. Her eyes were puffy, her mouth turned down as if she held a bitter pill on her tongue.

  Afia affected a yawn. “What time is it? Can we have puri breakfast?” Rich and delicious, the breakfast of fried bread and sliced fruits was one they used to share as a family, though more and more her father took most meals with her uncles while she and her sisters took stools at the kitchen counter across from her mother and Anâ.