by Gwen Florio
Farida braced herself as he worked at her sopping shoe. The fire returned to her feet, so hot that she feared the water might boil up around them. Her shoes finally came free, but then there was the matter of her stockings.
“Excuse me. But could you please . . .” He looked away.
Farida was fascinated to see him blush, especially given how energetically he took her body every night. But except for that first night, she realized now, he had never really looked at her, and even then only briefly. She tried not to smile as she hiked up her shalwar and rolled her stockings down to her ankles. Gul took over, tugging at the stockings as gently as he could, but the skin tore away with them and by the time he was finished, tears slid down Farida’s face. She blinked them away. Gul stared at her feet. Farida took a breath, then studied the damage.
She thought of meat hanging in the markets, bloody and raw. She remembered, wistfully and very briefly, brightly painted toenails, a bewitching tracery of mehndi all the way up her ankles to her calves. And then she pushed such thoughts away. “What shall we do? They cannot see me like this.”
“You are ill.” His voice was firm, decisive. Again, Farida was grateful for his instinctive understanding of her dilemma. “Possibly,” he added, his voice lighter, mischievous, “you are pregnant.” His expression became hopeful.
Farida coughed.
“So early in the pregnancy, the walk today cannot have been good for you,” he continued in his bantering tone. “You must rest. You will spend much of the next few days in bed, your feet covered where no one can see them. When you need to get up, I will help you. I am, as you know, a very cooperative husband. But when I cannot help you, you must walk as though there is no pain. I’m sorry, but it will be only a few steps. I think you can do this.”
Farida thought of the thousands of steps she’d walked that day. She lifted her chin. “I know I can do it.”
“I will go to the chemist and get some salve. Really, in a few days, you will feel much better.”
He was so solicitous that Farida feared she would cry again. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I don’t suppose . . .” he said, and stopped, his confidence abruptly gone.
“What?”
“That maybe you are indeed pregnant?”
Farida shrugged. Her breath came short at the thought of pregnancy, nearly inevitable, just one more thing that would cement the impossibility of escape. She fought an urge to flee the room, the house, to run on her broken feet back over the mountains to safety. “If I’m not, I’m sure I will be soon.”
It seemed to mollify him.
* * *
He came to her that evening, and the next, and the next with a pot of salve made of pine tar and mutton fat. He closed the door behind him and sat on the floor, and she pulled up the hems of her shalwar as he thumbed some of the salve into his palm and chatted with her as it warmed and softened in his hand.
The first few times, they were awkward, their conversations stilted, unsure of how to be alone together in ways that went beyond physical intimacy. But soon Farida spoke with him nearly as easily and freely as she had with her sister.
“And how is my mother taking the news of your pregnancy?” Even by the light of the oil lamp, Farida could see the playfulness in his eyes.
“Oof.” She smiled back. “You have no idea.”
“I think I do. But tell me, anyway.” He put his hand, sticky with salve, against the sole of her foot, holding it there until the pain eased. She forced herself to relax, grateful for his willingness to touch the dirtiest, most shameful part of her body.
He stroked her feet in widening circles as Farida told him how Maryam led a coterie of aunties into her room, where they surrounded her sleeping mat, alternately cosseting her with sweets and other delicacies, and pelting her with questions. In her parents’ home, Farida had been painfully aware that she was viewed as a problem. Now she found herself enjoying this sudden warm bath of approval.
“They want to know everything. How long had it been since—you know.” Farida hesitated, unsure if Gul did know, wondering how much any man in this place knew about the workings of women’s bodies. But he nodded as though he were familiar with such things, so she continued. They wanted to know if her stomach was upset. They wanted to know if the discomfort was high in her stomach, which would mean she was carrying a boy, or low, and therefore a girl. When Farida assured them it was high—“a gnawing pain, right under my ribs”—it spurred a collective intake of breath and a high-pitched burst of exclamations.
Her skin was examined for its color, and she was made to open her eyes wide so that they could peer at the whites and ensure themselves of their clarity. “Stick out your tongue,” Maryam ordered, and Farida, puzzled, obeyed. Maryam nodded in approval.
Farida imitated her, tucking her chin, and frowning in concentration, and she wondered aloud to Gul if she would ever find out what information her tongue had yielded.
By this time, Gul was laughing so hard that Farida forgot the pain in her feet. “You look just like her.”
And he looked like no one in his family at this moment. Farida had yet to see any of them in a lighthearted lapse. Now here was Gul, his head thrown back, his face relaxed, his mouth soft and loose. His lips were nearly as full as a woman’s. Only the severe planes of his features, the wiry curls of his beard, saved him from girlish prettiness. Gul’s laughter subsided and he opened his eyes, and Farida looked quickly away, hoping he hadn’t caught her staring.
He broke the silence first. “Here. I have something of yours.” He held out a sheaf of crisp new rupees.
“I don’t understand.”
“There was money in your shoes.”
Farida searched for a plausible explanation to stave off the anger she expected. There was, after all, no reason for a wife to have money of her own.
Gul’s next words were calm. “It was destroyed. I couldn’t tell how much it was. I hope this is enough.” He laid the money on the floor beside her and left the room.
* * *
They developed a routine: the bedside visits from Maryam and the aunties by day, and the private time with Gul in the evening, which continued even after her feet had healed.
The women, as far as she could tell, almost never left the compound, although they spent the cooler morning and evening hours in its pleasant courtyards, working and gossiping in the shade of fragrant orange trees, slender poplars, and palms whose fronds rattled in the hot wind. Bibi’s family arrived near the end of September, when the poplars dropped leaves that piled up like gold coins against the compound’s earthen walls. Farida’s workmanlike Pashto improved quickly in her time among the women, who leavened their incessant advice with humorous references to their own days as young brides. Farida felt herself drawn to this female world far more welcoming than that of Islamabad’s educated women, where a corrosive competitiveness seethed just below the lacquered surface of any gathering.
The aunties showed her how to knead dough for naan, or helped her to crop a toddler’s hair close to her head—“It will grow in so long and thick and beautiful that when you see this girl in a few years, you won’t recognize her”—or showed her how to walk in her burqa, back and forth across the compound until she learned to look ahead through the screen, rather than down. They also spoke knowledgeably about the goings-on in the city and beyond. Farida was surprised to find them so well-informed, recalling with shame her father’s dismissal of Afghans as uneducated barbarians.
“How do you know so much if you cannot go out?” she whispered to Maryam one day for fear of giving offense. But Maryam repeated Farida’s words for all to hear, sparking a chorus of agreement about how men were foolish to think their women were incapable of weaving together the threads of overheard information into a tapestry as edifying as any newspaper—which, as Maryam acknowledged, rolling her eyes, none of them could read, anyway. “They think they keep us in ignorance.”
Farida detected the bitter undercu
rrent in the laughter that rippled through the room. She folded a bit of warm dough in her hands, then stretched it. In her head, she composed letters to Alia about her observations. Oh, how her sister would laugh at the image of Farida in a burqa, or baking bread, or chasing barefoot children around the courtyard. But she abandoned those imagined efforts. Alia’s amusement would turn to anger at the thought of her sister in such circumstances, and Farida could not summon the words to explain the increasing tug of this new life. Besides, with the closed borders and the Amriki expected to bring war soon, there was little likelihood that a letter would reach Alia. She had overheard Nur Muhammed telling Gul that even the smugglers’ routes were blocked. She felt a pang of guilt when she thought of the worry her earlier note likely caused Alia but then reminded herself that, given the servant’s defiance, that message had almost certainly never left the girl’s grubby hands.
In the evenings, she questioned Gul more closely about the events outside the compound, collecting news to present to the aunties.
“The people are very angry. There are demonstrations almost every day. The police are building fortifications of sandbags at the major intersections,” he said.
“Because of the demonstrations?” The thought of such large and unruly crowds frightened her, but stirred her also, after the stultifying tranquillity within the compound.
“No, the police just tear-gas the demonstrators and beat them with canes. It’s because of the war.”
“What war?” Farida sat up, her feet forgotten.
“It’s said Amrika will attack any day. They are wild to get Osama. But I think they will not take him.”
“Are we in danger here?” Farida had never been to America, but she well remembered Britain, with its casual abundance of wealth and technology. She imagined America would be the same way, only more so.
“I think they will go first to Kabul. That’s why my father lingers in Jalalabad. Are you afraid?”
Farida lied and said no.
“Even if you are, no one will know. You should hear what the aunties say about you.” Gul’s eyes shone with pride.
“And what is that?”
“They were sure the walk across the border would finish you. Even with the burro, my mother told everyone that you would not make it, that you would have to turn back. She wanted to leave you in Pakistan.” Farida was glad he so rarely looked at her. Otherwise, he’d be able to tell how she wished she’d been able to do just that. But Gul was still talking. “They say that you are a real Pashtun woman. Very brave, like us, and strong, too, walking all that way. This trip was much more difficult than when my family left Afghanistan.”
Farida held her breath. Gul never talked about his past. She faked a yawn. “You never talk about that time. What was that trip like?” She closed her eyes as though dozing. He tensed beside her. She slitted her eyes. His brows met in a single line. His chin jutted. His eyes, fixed upon some point above her head, blazed.
“It is good you came with us,” he said finally, his voice clipped. “You would not have been happy in a soft place like Pakistan.”
Farida thought of flush toilets, real beds with smooth sheets—she would have preferred even a rope charpoy over her sleeping mat—of dining with proper utensils rather than scooping up greasy morsels with her bare hand. “No,” she said, hurrying to agree with him before he noticed her reticence, “I do not like soft places.”
“Sometimes soft is good. Your feet,” he said by way of explanation, changing the subject so thoroughly that Farida gave up any thoughts of discovering details of her husband’s youth. “They’re healing well. The new skin came in quickly.”
Indeed, Farida realized that it no longer hurt for him to rub in the salve, which he continued to do, long past the need for it. He worked his thumbs against her soles, stroking them from her toes to her heels, the movement so hypnotic that Farida found herself nearly asleep. She came awake when she realized that his touch had changed, that his hands had moved higher, reaching tentatively toward her calves.
“That feels good,” she encouraged, and he massaged her with more certainty, working out the kinks. His hands moved above her knees to her thighs. He stopped rubbing and began to stroke them lightly, letting his fingertips trail a little higher each time.
“Oh,” said Farida, and then again, “oh.”
Later, when she remembered how hurriedly she shoved down the waist of her shalwar, kicking at the baggy pants, the more quickly to bare her body for him, she would flush with the embarrassment of her boldness. But that thought was always followed by the intoxicating memory of how he had fallen upon her, as hungrily as ever, but more tenderly than before, whispering “beautiful Farida, sweet love”—and how she had pulled him hard to her, sharing his hunger, moaning so urgently that he covered her mouth, first with his hand, and then his lips, so that their shared pleasure was all the more intense for its silence.
* * *
Gul lay wakeful, his heart yearning backward, his agony a fresh wound. It had taken years before it scabbed over, grew scar tissue that toughened with time and even faded. But Farida’s innocent question—“You never talk about that time. What was that trip like?”—landed upon that old injury like a blow, and now it throbbed anew with each beat of his heart, waves of pain pulsing through him.
There’d been no hike across the mountains, belongings piled high upon a burro, when his family had fled Kabul those many years before. They’d made the journey in the comfort of cars, the way smoothed by Nur Muhammed’s generous dispensation of cash at each checkpoint, with each mile leaving the raging civil war farther behind, speeding toward the safety of Pakistan.
What was that trip like? It was the journey that had forever taken him away from Khurshid.
Ten
PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER 2001
Martin didn’t immediately recognize the diffident, nondescript man outside his office.
The wardrobe, more than the name, jogged his memory. He held the door wide at the man’s further identification as the head of a newly formed nongovernmental organization to aid Afghan women. He wondered why that fact hadn’t been divulged at the faculty dinner some weeks earlier. Maybe he’d forgotten. No, he’d have taken care to remember something like that.
As before, the man was all in gray, although this time he wore a cashmere sweater rather than a blazer. His hair was such an even shade of pewter that Martin, before he focused fully on what the man was saying, wondered if he dyed it. Martin asked him to repeat himself.
“We’re building our staff. The job—deputy director—is yours to reject.”
Martin gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk. “Perhaps we should sit down.”
Yes, it would be a hardship, the man went on as he sat, and the organization was prepared to compensate him handsomely for the inconvenience. “This will change your career. You’ll find our confidentiality clause quite workable. No reason at all you can’t write a new book while honoring our need for some discretion. And it goes without saying you’ll be offered a post at a major university upon your return. You’ll have your pick, most likely.”
The grant he’d sought would have taken him overseas for a matter of weeks. The Gray Man was talking years. Martin groaned. Everything he’d wanted, a glittering prize, held just out of reach by—
“What about my wife?”
“Best to let me handle that end of it. Spouses are the most difficult part of the equation. We have years of experience. I’ll come to your house this evening.”
Williams. That was his name. Clayton Williams. As forgettable as the rest of him.
They agreed on seven p.m.
* * *
Martin, brain ablaze with the unexpected gift of future, switched on his computer and outlined a farewell email to his colleagues and students, each gracious phrase designed to inspire envy.
He hoped they’d keep his account active for at least a few weeks after he left. He’d want to send another email, attaching a photo o
f himself at the Khyber Pass, standing where so many conquerors had trod throughout the centuries. The reporters who called him always cut him off when he flexed the muscles of historical perspective. And those requests for interviews, most with the smaller suburban newspapers and lesser radio stations that ringed Philadelphia, were already dwindling.
Martin thought of the exposure this new job would give him, maybe a regular rotation as a talking head on CNN and the Sunday morning shows, the voice of authority patched in from location by satellite phone, his portentous words jittery with static and odd electronic pauses.
He took a breath. For far too many years, he’d spent his time despairing in his cramped office. No more. He turned from the computer and wrestled the high casement window open. Unseasonably warm air poured in like syrup. Papers on his desk curled as the humidity hit them. He stuck his head out the window.
Two students tossed a Frisbee on the Oval, their throws desultory, wobbly. A young woman lounging in the grass directed good-natured mockery their way. They were too far away for Martin to see their faces, but he could imagine them, all good bones and straight teeth and clear skin over high and rattlingly empty foreheads. The college attracted the stupid scions of the rich-but-not-rich-enough-for-the-Ivies. They populated his classes unwillingly, the more alert playing games on their laptops, the rest outright sleeping through his lectures. In all his years there, not a single student had expressed a desire to follow Martin’s course of study.
He’d never understood why Liv loved the college so, despite the flaws he often pointed out—the bricks too bright, the columns too narrow, the ivy too sparse, a parody of better-known institutions that fooled only those who didn’t know they should have aimed higher. He even hated the goddamned Oval, subject of so many posters and cards, its towering fringe of trees saved from Dutch elm disease by an amount of money that would have funded Martin’s department into the next millennium. Supposedly the Oval was a metaphor. For what, he’d never quite understood. That was Liv’s department. She nattered on about ovals and eggs and life and possibilities hatched, but all he saw was a racetrack, something with horses, maybe, or better yet, greyhounds, endlessly chasing a rabbit they’d never catch. Except now Martin had the rabbit in his jaws, a hot burst of blood down his throat.