by Lucy Ferriss
Afia could not turn, could not see him seated behind the others in the room, a sparse gathering of the curious and the interested. Even if she could, she might not know him. He had bleached his hair to a cinnamon color and shaved his beard so that his sharp chin felt raw and exposed. Several rows in front of him, he recognized a boy he’d seen with Shahid, the first time he’d spotted his brother on the campus. The rest were strangers. By rights he should have been at the front, calling for justice for his dead brother, but no one in this place would understand his claim.
Why Afia was allowing these absurd proceedings to go forward, he thought at first he understood. If she told this assembly what had happened, she would be compelled to confess her own blackness—for it was that blackness that had brought the whole tragedy about. She should be the one dead and under the ground, and she knew it.
The officials at the front had gone through various procedural motions. They had called up two police officers to report on what they had found at the crime scene. They had called up a pinch-faced man who explained what he kept calling “primitive Pathan customs” about family honor and women. When this man had stepped down, the stocky woman stood. “The defense calls Felicity Hayes,” she said.
Through the side door came the yellow-haired woman who was Shahid’s squash coach. Unbelievable, such a perversion of roles. Shahid had always said he when he referred to his coach; Khalid was sure of it. And to think Omar believed his nephew had world-class training! This Felicity Hayes spoke softly but with pride, like a wounded warrior. She had driven Afia to the garage in Devon, she said, and the explosion there had terrified them both. It was impossible that Afia should be involved in such a crime, and yet the thought of the police had panicked her. She had felt sorry for the girl, she said, and so she had given her what she thought was safe harbor.
“Safe from her brother?” the stocky woman asked.
“She wasn’t afraid of Shahid.”
“You saw them together, that afternoon.”
“I did. They’d agreed she would return to Pakistan. She wasn’t happy about it. But they loved each other.” Felicity Hayes looked around the courtroom, as if beseeching them to confirm this idea. “I can tell you, whatever happened at my husband’s cabin, Afia could not have instigated it. She wanted to protect Shahid.”
“Because she knew he planted that bomb?”
There was a slight hesitation. “She . . . never said anything like that.”
“But you had known him to be violent.”
“No,” said the coach.
A look of mild disgust crossed the stocky woman’s face. Leaning forward, Khalid almost smiled. This lawyer was not getting what she was after. “Tell us about the confrontation you had with Shahid,” she said, “the week before.”
The coach sat back in her chair. She sighed. She described suspending Shahid from play because he’d missed practices. “He was upset,” she said. “He wasn’t violent. He went for counseling.”
“And three days later,” said the stocky woman, “he tried to blow up his sister.”
“Objection.” The slope-shouldered man had jumped up. “Leading the witness.”
“Sustained,” said the judge.
The stocky woman sat down a couple of minutes later, and the man rose. As he asked Coach Hayes more questions about Shahid, Khalid’s chest and neck began to sweat. They were like snapshots of his brother, her answers to the man’s questions. How Shahid had resolved a feud between two other players, his second year at Enright. How he’d brought Afia to America, how he’d bought her the clothes she needed for the cold winters. His hopes for the future, a job at Harvard that would make his father proud. The ghost of Shahid vaulted into the courtroom—his quick grin, the spin of his hips when he feinted with the soccer ball, the light patter of his feet when he used to follow Khalid and the older boys down to the swimming hole. Dead, cold and dead, and buried in this strange land.
Four weeks, now, Khalid had mourned, and prayed, and waited. He had never been so alone. He had told Omar he had comrades in Amreeka, and indeed he had found them, a clutch of jihadists masquerading as students, in a dingy flat in South Boston where he had exchanged vague promises of action for a mattress in the corner. But that terrible moment had come when he had to put through a call to Peshawar. Had flames roared over the airwaves and scorched his chest, he could not have felt a hotter wrath than what Omar dealt out. He had been sent to save, and he had killed, he had destroyed everything Omar had built over a decade, he had put out the light of a shining beacon, he had ripped the heart from their family. Our family, Omar had said, and by that he meant not Khalid, even though Farishta and her children were meant to belong only to the Satars now—and, were it not for his millions, Omar would have no say in who lived or who died among the Satars. “It was the girl,” Khalid had protested. “It was Afia, she didn’t care if he died, she thrust him before her, she knew the gun would go off, she was shameless, it was Afia.” But Omar could not, or would not, hear him. Told him only to rot in hell, and then the line went dead.
Now the lawyer was wheedling, pressing the coach. “In your view, then,” he was saying, “Shahid Satar would not have attacked his sister. Are you saying you see no reason she would have had to defend herself?”
“In my view,” the coach said—again her eyes swept the room, and seemed to stop for a fraction of a second on Khalid—“Afia didn’t shoot her brother in self-defense or in murder. I don’t think she shot her brother at all. I think something else must be going on.”
He needed air. Pushing his way past the others in his row, he slipped from the courtroom. He made his way down the circular staircase, past armed police who looked right through him. Outside, piles of dirt-browned snow lined the sidewalks. Traffic sped by, all automobiles, not a rickshaw or donkey cart in sight. He lit a cigarette—haram, but who was watching?—and inhaled deeply.
He would not rot in hell. He would pick up the shreds of his family’s honor and stitch them together with the veins of this blackened sister. Before, yes, his motives had not been entirely pure. Envy had crept in, envy of Shahid, who had been so blindly preferred. Now there was only Afia and the shame she had brought upon them all, Shahid included. Omar had sent no more funds since that telephone call, but Khalid would get by, he would trust in Allah to guide him, his hand would be the hand of righteousness. All he needed was for these people to let Afia go, and he would be waiting for her.
He ground the cigarette under his shoe and returned through the metal detector they had set up in the lobby. Clean-shaven, russet-haired, he was unremarkable to these officers. When he returned to the courtroom, the coach had stepped down. At the tables toward the front of the room, people murmured together. Then the stocky woman straightened. She called a new witness. Gus Schneider.
A side door opened, and a young man entered the room, his torso canted forward, making his way on crutches. For the first time, Khalid’s gaze fixed on Afia. Her body strained in the young man’s direction, like a plant toward the sun. Yes, this was the one—the one from the hospital, the one whose empty makeshift apartment Khalid had entered by an open window to see the unmade bed, the women’s underthings on a chair, the caged creatures staring at him with their glassy eyes while he strung wires around the door frame.
Letting go of one crutch, the young man raised his hand and pledged to tell the truth. His sister’s seducer. The Jew. Gus.
“Tell us,” the stocky woman was saying when he’d made his way clumsily into the witness seat, “about your relationship with Afia Satar.”
“She was my girlfriend.”
“Meaning you saw a lot of each other?”
Gus’s eyes shifted toward Afia, then back. He wore a sport jacket and tie that seemed to squeeze his neck. “She was at Smith. But you know, it was normal. A normal dating relationship.”
“And your relationship with Shahid Satar?”
/> Pressing against the tie, Gus’s Adam’s apple pulsed. “We were roommates once. We were on the team together. The squash team.” Another glance, this time toward the mannish coach in the third row.
“Were you friends?”
“Friends?” Gus’s voice slid upward. “Sure. Friends. He was an awesome guy.”
“But you fought.”
“Once, yeah.”
“Over Shahid’s sister, Afia.” The stocky woman paused a beat, for effect. “The accused,” she added.
The boy had begun to sweat. Good. Let him sweat. Let the world begin to see his shame. Khalid made himself breathe. His fingers clutched the front of the wooden seat.
“Yeah,” Gus said. “I guess. He didn’t like it. You know. The dating. He, uh”—his eyes flicked around the room, trying to follow whatever story he’d been coached to tell—“he could be a pretty scary guy. Jealous, you know.”
“So you imagine he could get violent.”
“Objection!” This was the slope-shouldered man, jumping up from the table where he sat. “She’s asking the witness to speculate.”
“I withdraw the question,” said the stocky woman. Extraordinary, Khalid thought. That the so-called judge and the council should sit silent while these two hired lawyers spoke in place of the people who were truly involved. Someone should have been demanding atonement from this Gus creature. Not all this thrashing about with words.
Slowly the stocky woman led Gus through the accumulation of lies that would lead his passive audience to think Shahid Satar was a jealous fiend whose intent to harm would be stopped only by a bullet. When she had finished, the slope-shouldered lawyer rose. He had a few questions, he said, and Gus’s Adam’s apple bobbed again. He should be strangled, Khalid thought. Slowly, with picture wire, until his round eyes bulged in his head and his tongue stuck out like a serpent’s.
“About your relationship with the accused, Afia Satar,” the lawyer said. “Was it intimate?”
Gus looked confused. His eyes darted to Afia. Khalid’s fingers gripped harder. “Could you repeat the question?” Gus asked.
“Was your relationship intimate?” the lawyer said, almost gently. “Was it sexual?”
Shame was a tide, sweeping from Afia back over the courtroom, blanketing Khalid. He barely heard Gus answer, “I don’t really want to talk about that.”
“So,” the slope-shouldered man said, “the answer is yes.”
“Objection!” The stocky woman, leaping up next to Afia. “Leading the witness,” she said.
“Given what we heard earlier about Pathan customs,” said the slope-shouldered man, “the degree of partner intimacy is crucial to the facts in this case.”
At last, the judge spoke. Gray-haired and jowly, her elbows in their black sleeves planted wide on the table, she leaned forward. “The court will strike prosecution’s inference from the record,” she said. “The witness will answer the question.”
Gus’s cheeks were burning red. “Yes,” he said softly. “It was . . . intimate. But not like you’re saying. It was—it was normal. That’s all.”
Normal.
And did the accused, the prosecutor wanted to know, ever complain of her brother’s treatment of her? “No, but—” Did she not, in fact, mention that she might prefer her own death to dishonor? “Look, she didn’t put it exactly that way. She just said, you know, maybe she’d rather be dead.”
Khalid half rose from his seat. Maybe she’d rather be dead. At last, they were getting to the heart of the matter. When Gus had stepped down, the court declared a recess. As he followed the rest out of the room, Afia was led away, somewhere else. The Gus guy was not in sight.
He was short on sleep. At the Boston flat he had found nothing useful to do, other than stay up late with the six others crowding the flat, smoking hash and hatching absurd plans for jihad. Now he shut his eyes as he sat on the curved bench rounding the atrium. What did he want, from these curious proceedings? Could they order Afia, as a jirga might, to take her own life? He had never heard of such an order in the West. But if they could—or if, as he had heard was possible, they condemned her to execution by the state for the killing of Shahid—would he then be satisfied?
His heart filled with dread. No, he would not. No honor came from such a death, no wiping clean of Afia’s shame, no absolution for what she had done, drawing Khalid’s fire like that until it hit Shahid. No. He must bring it about himself, this death. And so he must hope for them to let her go, to deliver her up to him.
From a bench outside the courtroom he had been staring at the floor, following the pattern of the tiles, when he felt a body sink next to his and heard a long sigh. He tipped his head sideways. The woman coach, Felicity Hayes. A surge of panic rose within him, but he tamped it down. Up close, with her clean jaw and small mouth, she looked more like a woman, even a beautiful woman. She looked curiously at him. “Long trial, huh?”
He didn’t know. What was long, in the West? In the tribal belt, a decision would have been reached in an hour. “Yes,” he said.
“Do I know you?”
He widened his eyes. There could be no disguising the accent. “I go to school,” he said, “with Shahid.”
She frowned. “Enright?” When he nodded her frown went deeper. He thought of the time he had followed her Toyota out of the town to the highway, hoping she would lead him to Afia. “You don’t play a sport,” she said.
“No, I”—he reached for the easiest lie—“I study engineering.”
“But we don’t have an engineering school.”
“No.” He tried to chuckle. It came out as a small yelp. “I am applying elsewhere.”
“But you—you were friendly with Shahid. You’re Pakistani?”
He straightened up. He needed to get away from this woman. “From Karachi,” he said quickly. “I don’t know his family. I am only sorry she had killed him. I want justice.”
“Well, so do we all, but surely you don’t think Afia—”
“Excuse me,” he said. He rose and headed for the men’s room. She had been with Afia, that night. If the device had gone off properly, she would be dead as well, and her eyes could not bore holes in his back, as they did now while he crossed the atrium, trying to appear—what had this Gus called it?—normal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After the verdict, released into the round atrium, Afia looked in vain for Gus. The aunties from the Price Chopper surrounded her, and Sue Glasgow, who had testified as a character witness. And Shahid’s friend Afran, his hair cropped close and his eyes full of sadness. A few yards away, gesturing emphatically with her hands, Sara Desfani was giving the news to a reporter. Coach Hayes stood on the other side of the atrium, with a loose-shouldered man Afia recognized from the photos on the wall at that cabin. His cabin, his family’s cabin.
“Of course it was self-defense. Poor honey,” Esmerelda from the Price Chopper kept saying. “To go through all that and then have them treat you like a criminal. You brave, brave girl.”
“Shouldn’t never have gone to trial,” added Carlotta.
“At least you’re out,” said Sue Glasgow. And then, after a glance at the security officer who still stood next to Afia, handcuffs dangling from his pocket, “Are you coming back to Smith?”
“I—I don’t know.”
How had she not thought past this moment? Over and over, Sara Desfani had told her she would be acquitted, and yet somehow she had held on to the illusion that the court would believe her story, that they would find a way to punish her so Khalid would not have to. She had glimpsed him, leaving the courtroom, his hair hennaed and his face strangely naked. Fear had injected her like a hypodermic. Khalid would bide his time, strike when he chose.
“Course she’s going back,” Esmerelda said. “Can’t stop her, can they?”
“But I have missed classes—”
“Spring break,” Afia repeated. Of course. Outside the jail, the snow had been steadily melting. On the Smith campus, there would be crocus. She glanced toward the courtroom. It had emptied. The reporter—a bald man with bulging eyes and a recording device in his small hand—had turned from Sara and was approaching Coach Hayes. She looked down the corridor that led to the front of the courtroom. No Gus. She willed her heart to stay afloat.
“You can stay with me,” Afran said. He looked older, in street clothes; she had only seen him dressed for squash. “The other guys in my house’re in Florida. Plenty of beds.”
“You are kind,” she said. “But after . . . after what has happened, I don’t think—”
“You mean your brother.” He waited a beat. “My best friend.”
She gaped. She felt the women, clustered around her, begin to close tighter.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad at you,” Afran went on—and he didn’t sound angry, only nervous, blustering. “But it’s messed up, that honor thing. It is totally fucked up. If the dude had just talked to me. . . . Well.” He looked around at the other women. “I’m just saying,” he finished, meaning there was more to say. “I can be, like, you know. Your other brother. If you need to crash.”
“She’ll be fine,” Carlotta said quickly. “Won’t you, honey? You’ll be fine.”
“Yes,” Afia breathed. It dizzied her, being with these people who believed in a lie. She could not go home with Sue Glasgow or the aunties—or, Allah forbid, her brother’s friend. “Excuse me,” she said.
She made her way past her well-wishers, to the staircase where Coach Hayes’s husband stood while his wife gave the reporter tight-lipped responses. “Dr. Hayes,” she said.
“It’s Springer,” he said. “Ethan Springer.” He put out his hand, and she let him shake hers. His hand was warm, like his voice. “Glad your ordeal’s over,” he said. “I am sorry about your brother.”