Part three 3 страница

Mariam would sneak back to her room.

" Can't you help? " Rasheed said now. " There must be something you can do."

" What do I know about babies? " Mariam said.

" Rasheed! Can you bring the bottle? It's sitting on the almari. She won't feed. I want to try the bottle again."

The baby's screeching rose and fell like a cleaver on meat.

Rasheed closed his eyes. " That thing is a warlord. Hekmatyar. I'm telling you, Laila's given birth to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar."

MARIAM WATCHED as the girl's days became consumed with cycles of feeding, rocking, bouncing, walking. Even when the baby napped, there were soiled diapers to scrub and leave to soak in a pail of the disinfectant that the girl had insisted Rasheed buy for her. There were fingernails to trim with sandpaper, coveralls and pajamas to wash and hang to dry. These clothes, like other things about the baby, became a point of contention.

" What's the matter with them? " Rasheed said

" They're boys' clothes. For a bacha."

" You think she knows the difference? I paid good money for those clothes. And another thing, I don't care for that tone. Consider that a warning."

Every week, without fail, the girl heated a black metal brazier over a flame, tossed a pinch of wild rue seeds in it, and wafted the espandi smoke in her baby's direction to ward off evil.

Mariam found it exhausting to watch the girl's lolloping enthusiasm – and had to admit, if only privately, to a degree of admiration. She marveled at how the girl's eyes shone with worship, even in the mornings when her face drooped and her complexion was waxy from a night's worth of walking the baby. The girl had fits of laughter when the baby passed gas. The tiniest changes in the baby enchanted her, and everything it did was declared spectacular.

" Look! She's reaching for the rattle. How clever she is."

" I'll call the newspapers, " said Rasheed.

Every night, there were demonstrations. When the girl insisted he witness something, Rasheed tipped his chin upward and cast an impatient, sidelong glance down the blue-veined hook of his nose.

" Watch. Watch how she laughs when I snap my fingers. There. See? Did you see? "

Rasheed would grunt, and go back to his plate. Mariam remembered how the girl's mere presence used to overwhelm him. Everything she said used to please him, intrigue him, make him look up from his plate and nod with approval.

The strange thing was, the girl's fall from grace ought to have pleased Mariam, brought her a sense of vindication. But it didn't. It didn't. To her own surprise, Mariam found herself pitying the girl.

It was also over dinner that the girl let loose a steady stream of worries. Topping the list was pneumonia, which was suspected with every minor cough. Then there was dysentery, the specter of which was raised with every loose stool. Every rash was either chicken pox or measles.

" You should not get so attached, " Rasheed said one night.

" What do you mean? "

" I was listening to the radio the other night. Voice of America. I heard an interesting statistic. They said that in Afghanistan one out of four children will die before the age of five. That's what they said. Now, they – What? What? Where are you going? Come back here. Get back here this instant! "

He gave Mariam a bewildered look. " What's the matter with her? "

That night, Mariam was lying in bed when the bickering started again. It was a hot, dry summer night, typical of the month of Saratan in Kabul. Mariam had opened her window, then shut it when no breeze came through to temper the heat, only mosquitoes. She could feel the heat rising from the ground outside, through the wheat brown, splintered planks of the outhouse in the yard, up through the walls and into her room.

Usually, the bickering ran its course after a few minutes, but half an hour passed and not only was it still going on, it was escalating. Mariam could hear Rasheed shouting now. The girl's voice, underneath his, was tentative and shrill. Soon the baby was wailing.

Then Mariam heard their door open violently. In the morning, she would find the doorknob's circular impression in the hallway wall. She was sitting up in bed when her own door slammed open and Rasheed came through.

He was wearing white underpants and a matching undershirt, stained yellow in the underarms with sweat. On his feet he wore flip-flops. He held a belt in his hand, the brown leather one he'd bought for his nikka with the girl, and was wrapping the perforated end around his fist.

" It's your doing. I know it is, " he snarled, advancing on her.

Mariam slid out of her bed and began backpedaling. Her arms instinctively crossed over her chest, where he often struck her first.

" What are you talking about? " she stammered.

" Her denying me. You're teaching her to."

Over the years, Mariam had learned to harden herself against his scorn and reproach, his ridiculing and reprimanding. But this fear she had no control over. All these years and still she shivered with fright when he was like this, sneering, tightening the belt around his fist, the creaking of the leather, the glint in his bloodshot eyes. It was the fear of the goat, released in the tiger's cage, when the tiger first looks up from its paws, begins to growl.

Now the girl was in the room, her eyes wide, her face contorted

" I should have known that you'd corrupt her, " Rasheed spat at Mariam. He swung the belt, testing it against his own thigh. The buckle jingled loudly.

" Stop it, bas! " the girl said. " Rasheed, you can't do this."

" Go back to the room."

Mariam backpedaled again.

" No! Don't do this! "

Now!

Rasheed raised the belt again and this time came at Mariam.

Then an astonishing thing happened: The girl lunged at him. She grabbed his arm with both hands and tried to drag him down, but she could do no more than dangle from it. She did succeed in slowing Rasheed's progress toward Mariam.

" Let go! " Rasheed cried.

" You win. You win. Don't do this. Please, Rasheed, no beating! Please don't do this."

They struggled like this, the girl hanging on, pleading, Rasheed trying to shake her off, keeping his eyes on Mariam, who was too stunned to do anything.

In the end, Mariam knew that there would be no beating, not that night. He'd made his point. He stayed that way a few moments longer, arm raised, chest heaving, a fine sheen of sweat filming his brow. Slowly, Rasheed lowered his arm. The girl's feet touched ground and still she wouldn't let go, as if she didn't trust him. He had to yank his arm free of her grip.

" I'm on to you, " he said, slinging the belt over his shoulder. " I'm on to you both. I won't be made an ahmaq, a fool, in my own house."

He threw Mariam one last, murderous stare, and gave the girl a shove in the back on the way out.

When she heard their door close, Mariam climbed back into bed, buried her head beneath the pillow, and waited for the shaking to stop.

THREE TIMES THAT NIGHT, Mariam was awakened from sleep. The first time, it was the rumble of rockets in the west, coming from the direction of Karteh-Char. The second time, it was the baby crying downstairs, the girl's shushing, the clatter of spoon against milk bottle. Finally, it was thirst that pulled her out of bed.

Downstairs, the living room was dark, save for a bar of moonlight spilling through the window. Mariam could hear the buzzing of a fly somewhere, could make out the outline of the cast-iron stove in the corner, its pipe jutting up, then making a sharp angle just below the ceiling.

On her way to the kitchen, Mariam nearly tripped over something. There was a shape at her feet. When her eyes adjusted, she made out the girl and her baby lying on the floor on top of a quilt.

The girl was sleeping on her side, snoring. The baby was awake. Mariam lit the kerosene lamp on the table and hunkered down. In the light, she had her first real close-up look at the baby, the tuft of dark hair, the thick-lashed hazel eyes, the pink cheeks, and lips the color of ripe pomegranate.

Mariam had the impression that the baby too was examining her. She was lying on her back, her head tilted sideways, looking at Mariam intently with a mixture of amusement, confusion, and suspicion. Mariam wondered if her face might frighten her, but then the baby squealed happily and Mariam knew that a favorable judgment had been passed on her behalf.

" Shh, " Mariam whispered " You'll wake up your mother, half deaf as she is."

The baby's hand balled into a fist. It rose, fell, found a spastic path to her mouth. Around a mouthful of her own hand, the baby gave Mariam a grin, little bubbles of spittle shining on her lips.

" Look at you. What a sorry sight you are, dressed like a damn boy. And all bundled up in this heat. No wonder you're still awake."

Mariam pulled the blanket off the baby, was horrified to find a second one beneath, clucked her tongue, and pulled that one off too. The baby giggled with relief. She flapped her arms like a bird.

" Better, nay?

As Mariam was pulling back, the baby grabbed her pinkie. The tiny fingers curled themselves tightly around it. They felt warm and soft, moist with drool.

" Gunuh, " the baby said.

" All right, bas, let go."

The baby hung on, kicked her legs again.

Mariam pulled her finger free. The baby smiled and made a series of gurgling sounds. The knuckles went back to the mouth.

" What are you so happy about? Huh? What are you smiling at? You're not so clever as your mother says. You have a brute for a father and a fool for a mother. You wouldn't smile so much if you knew. No you wouldn't. Go to sleep, now. Go on."

Mariam rose to her feet and walked a few steps before the baby started making the eh, eh, eh sounds that Mariam knew signaled the onset of a hearty cry. She retraced her steps.

" What is it? What do you want from me? "

The baby grinned toothlessly.

Mariam sighed. She sat down and let her finger be grabbed, looked on as the baby squeaked, as she flexed her plump legs at the hips and kicked air. Mariam sat there, watching, until the baby stopped moving and began snoring softly.

Outside, mockingbirds were singing blithely, and, once in a while, when the songsters took flight, Mariam could see their wings catching the phosphorescent blue of moonlight beaming through the clouds. And though her throat was parched with thirst and her feet burned with pins and needles, it was a long time before Mariam gently freed her finger from the baby's grip and got up.

34.

Laila

Of all earthly pleasures, Laila's favorite was lying next to Aziza, her baby's face so close that she could watch her big pupils dilate and shrink. Laila loved running her finger over Aziza's pleasing, soft skin, over the dimpled knuckles, the folds of fat at her elbows. Sometimes she lay Aziza down on her chest and whispered into the soft crown of her head things about Tariq, the father who would always be a stranger to Aziza, whose face Aziza would never know. Laila told her of his aptitude for solving riddles, his trickery and mischief, his easy laugh.

" He had the prettiest lashes, thick like yours. A good chin, a fine nose, and a round forehead. Oh, your father was handsome, Aziza. He was perfect. Perfect, like you are."

But she was careful never to mention him by name.

Sometimes she caught Rasheed looking at Aziza in the most peculiar way. The other night, sitting on the bedroom floor, where he was shaving a corn from his foot, he said quite casually, " So what was it like between you two? "

Laila had given him a puzzled look, as though she didn't understand.

" Laili and Majnoon. You and the yaklenga, the cripple. What was it you had, he and you? "

" He was my friend, " she said, careful that her voice not shift too much in key. She busied herself making a bottle. " You know that."

" I don't know what I know." Rasheed deposited the shavings on the windowsill and dropped onto the bed. The springs protested with a loud creak. He splayed his legs, picked at his crotch. " And as… friends, did the two of you ever do anything out of order? "

" Out of order? "

Rasheed smiled lightheartedly, but Laila could feel his gaze, cold and watchful. " Let me see, now. Well, did he ever give you a kiss? Maybe put his hand where it didn't belong? "

Laila winced with, she hoped, an indignant air. She could feel her heart drumming in her throat. " He was like a brother to me."

" So he was a friend or a brother? "

" Both. He-"

" Which was it? "

" He was like both."

" But brothers and sisters are creatures of curiosity. Yes. Sometimes a brother lets his sister see his pecker, and a sister will-"

" You sicken me, " Laila said.

" So there was nothing."

" I don't want to talk about this anymore."

Rasheed tilted his head, pursed his lips, nodded. " People gossiped, you know. I remember. They said all sorts of things about you two. But you're saying there was nothing."

She willed herself to glare at him.

He held her eyes for an excruciatingly long time in an unblinking way that made her knuckles go pale around the milk bottle, and it took all that Laila could muster to not falter.

She shuddered at what he would do if he found out that she had been stealing from him. Every week, since Aziza's birth, she pried his wallet open when he was asleep or in the outhouse and took a single bill. Some weeks, if the wallet was light, she took only a five-afghani bill, or nothing at all, for fear that he would notice. When the wallet was plump, she helped herself to a ten or a twenty, once even risking two twenties. She hid the money in a pouch she'd sewn in the lining of her checkered winter coat.

She wondered what he would do if he knew that she was planning to run away next spring. Next summer at the latest. Laila hoped to have a thousand afghanis or more stowed away, half of which would go to the bus fare from Kabul to Peshawar. She would pawn her wedding ring when the time drew close, as well as the other jewelry that Rasheed had given her the year before when she was still the malika of his palace.

" Anyway, " he said at last, fingers drumming his belly, " I can't be blamed. I am a husband. These are the things a husband wonders. But he's lucky he died the way he did. Because if he was here now, if I got my hands on him…" He sucked through his teeth and shook his head.

" What happened to not speaking ill of the dead? "

" I guess some people can't be dead enough, " he said.

TWO DAYS LATER, Laila woke up in the morning and found a stack of baby clothes, neatly folded, outside her bedroom door. There was a twirl dress with little pink fishes sewn around the bodice, a blue floral wool dress with matching socks and mittens, yellow pajamas with carrot-colored polka dots, and green cotton pants with a dotted ruffle on the cuff.

" There is a rumor, " Rasheed said over dinner that night, smacking his lips, taking no notice of Aziza or the pajamas Laila had put on her, " that Dostum is going to change sides and join Hekmatyar. Massoud will have his hands full then, fighting those two. And we mustn't forget the Hazaras." He took a pinch of the pickled eggplant Mariam had made that summer. " Let's hope it's just that, a rumor. Because if that happens, this war, " he waved one greasy hand, " will seem like a Friday picnic at Paghman."

Later, he mounted her and relieved himself with wordless haste, fully dressed save for his tumban, not removed but pulled down to the ankles. When the frantic rocking was over, he rolled off her and was asleep in minutes.

Laila slipped out of the bedroom and found Mariam in the kitchen squatting, cleaning a pair of trout. A pot of rice was already soaking beside her. The kitchen smelled like cumin and smoke, browned onions and fish.

Laila sat in a corner and draped her knees with the hem of her dress.

" Thank you, " she said.

Mariam took no notice of her. She finished cutting up the first trout and picked up the second. With a serrated knife, she clipped the fins, then turned the fish over, its underbelly facing her, and sliced it expertly from the tail to the gills. Laila watched her put her thumb into its mouth, just over the lower jaw, push it in, and, in one downward stroke, remove the gills and the entrails.

" The clothes are lovely."

" I had no use for them, " Mariam muttered. She dropped the fish on a newspaper smudged with slimy, gray juice and sliced off its head. " It was either your daughter or the moths."

" Where did you learn to clean fish like that? "

" When I was a little girl, I lived by a stream. I used to catch my own fish."

" I've never fished."

" Not much to it. It's mostly waiting."

Laila watched her cut the gutted trout into thirds. " Did you sew the clothes yourself? "

Mariam nodded.

" When? "

Mariam rinsed sections of fish in a bowl of water. " When I was pregnant the first time. Or maybe the second time. Eighteen, nineteen years ago. Long time, anyhow. Like I said, I never had any use for them."

" You're a really good khayat. Maybe you can teach me."

Mariam placed the rinsed chunks of trout into a clean bowl. Drops of water dripping from her fingertips, she raised her head and looked at Laila, looked at her as if for the first time.

" The other night, when he… Nobody's ever stood up for me before, " she said.

Laila examined Mariam's drooping cheeks, the eyelids that sagged in tired folds, the deep lines that framed her mouth – she saw these things as though she too were looking at someone for the first time. And, for the first time, it was not an adversary's face Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and endured. If she stayed, would this be her own face, Laila wondered, twenty years from now?

" I couldn't let him, " Laila said " I wasn't raised in a household where people did things like that."

" This is your household now. You ought to get used to it."

" Not to that I won't."

" He'll turn on you too, you know, " Mariam said, wiping her hands dry with a rag. " Soon enough. And you gave him a daughter. So, you see, your sin is even less forgivable than mine."

Laila rose to her feet. " I know it's chilly outside, but what do you say we sinners have us a cup of chai in the yard? "

Mariam looked surprised " I can't. I still have to cut and wash the beans."

" I'll help you do it in the morning."

" And I have to clean up here."

" We'll do it together. If I'm not mistaken, there's some halwa left over. Awfully good with chai."

Mariam put the rag on the counter. Laila sensed anxiety in the way she tugged at her sleeves, adjusted her hijab, pushed back a curl of hair.

" The Chinese say it's better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one."

Mariam gave a half smile. " It's a good saying."

" It is."

" But I can't stay long."

" One cup."

They sat on folding chairs outside and ate halwa with their fingers from a common bowl. They had a second cup, and when Laila asked her if she wanted a third Mariam said she did. As gunfire cracked in the hills, they watched the clouds slide over the moon and the last of the season's fireflies charting bright yellow arcs in the dark. And when Aziza woke up crying and Rasheed yelled for Laila to come up and shut her up, a look passed between Laila and Mariam. An unguarded, knowing look. And in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew that they were not enemies any longer.

35.

Mariam

From that night on, Mariam and Laila did their chores together. They sat in the kitchen and rolled dough, chopped green onions, minced garlic, offered bits of cucumber to Aziza, who banged spoons nearby and played with carrots. In the yard, Aziza lay in a wicker bassinet, dressed in layers of clothing, a winter muffler wrapped snugly around her neck. Mariam and Laila kept a watchful eye on her as they did the wash, Mariam's knuckles bumping Laila's as they scrubbed shirts and trousers and diapers.

Mariam slowly grew accustomed to this tentative but pleasant companionship. She was eager for the three cups of chai she and Laila would share in the yard, a nightly ritual now. In the mornings, Mariam found herself looking forward to the sound of Laila's cracked slippers slapping the steps as she came down for breakfast and to the tinkle of Aziza's shrill laugh, to the sight of her eight little teeth, the milky scent of her skin. If Laila and Aziza slept in, Mariam became anxious waiting. She washed dishes that didn't need washing. She rearranged cushions in the living room. She dusted clean windowsills. She kept herself occupied until Laila entered the kitchen, Aziza hoisted on her hip.

When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety.

" What a scene you're making, " Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. " What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now."

As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck.

Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.

Aziza made Mariam want to weep.

" Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me? " Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. " Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you? "

But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.

EARLY THE FOLLOWING YEAR, in January 1994, Dostum did switch sides. He joined Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and took up position near Bala Hissar, the old citadel walls that loomed over the city from the Koh-e-Shirdawaza mountains. Together, they fired on Massoud and Rabbani forces at the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Palace. From either side of the Kabul River, they released rounds of artillery at each other. The streets became littered with bodies, glass, and crumpled chunks of metal. There was looting, murder, and, increasingly, rape, which was used to intimidate civilians and reward militiamen. Mariam heard of women who were killing themselves out of fear of being raped, and of men who, in the name of honor, would kill their wives or daughters if they'd been raped by the militia.

Aziza shrieked at the thumping of mortars. To distract her, Mariam arranged grains of rice on the floor, in the shape of a house or a rooster or a star, and let Aziza scatter them. She drew elephants for Aziza the way Jalil had shown her, in one stroke, without ever lifting the tip of the pen.

Rasheed said civilians were getting killed daily, by the dozens. Hospitals and stores holding medical supplies were getting shelled. Vehicles carrying emergency food supplies were being barred from entering the city, he said, raided, shot at. Mariam wondered if there was fighting like this in Herat too, and, if so, how Mullah Faizullah was coping, if he was still alive, and Bibijo too, with all her sons, brides, and grandchildren. And, of course, Jalil. Was he hiding out, Mariam wondered, as she was? Or had he taken his wives and children and fled the country? She hoped Jalil was somewhere safe, that he'd managed to get away from all of this killing.

For a week, the fighting forced even Rasheed to stay home. He locked the door to the yard, set booby traps, locked the front door too and barricaded it with the couch. He paced the house, smoking, peering out the window, cleaning his gun, loading and loading it again. Twice, he fired his weapon into the street claiming he'd seen someone trying to climb the wall.

" They're forcing young boys to join, " he said. " The Mujahideen are. In plain daylight, at gunpoint. They drag boys right off the streets. And when soldiers from a rival militia capture these boys, they torture them. I heard they electrocute them – it's what I heard – that they crush their balls with pliers. They make the boys lead them to their homes. Then they break in, kill their fathers, rape their sisters and mothers."

He waved his gun over his head. " Let's see them try to break into my house. I'll crush their balls! I'll blow their heads off! Do you know how lucky you two are to have a man who's not afraid of Shaitan himself? "

He looked down at the ground, noticed Aziza at his feet. " Get off my heels! " he snapped, making a shooing motion with his gun. " Stop following me! And you can stop twirling your wrists like that. I'm not picking you up. Go on! Go on before you get stepped on."

Aziza flinched. She crawled back to Mariam, looking bruised and confused. In Mariam's lap, she sucked her thumb cheerlessly and watched Rasheed in a sullen, pensive way. Occasionally, she looked up, Mariam imagined, with a look of wanting to be reassured.

But when it came to fathers, Mariam had no assurances to give.

MARIAM WAS RELIEVED when the fighting subsided again, mostly because they no longer had to be cooped up with Rasheed, with his sour temper infecting the household. And he'd frightened her badly waving that loaded gun near Aziza.

One day that winter, Laila asked to braid Mariam's hair.

Mariam sat still and watched Laila's slim fingers in the mirror tighten her plaits, Laila's face scrunched in concentration. Aziza was curled up asleep on the floor. Tucked under her arm was a doll Mariam had hand-stitched for her. Mariam had stuffed it with beans, made it a dress with tea-dyed fabric and a necklace with tiny empty thread spools through which she'd threaded a string.

Then Aziza passed gas in her sleep. Laila began to laugh, and Mariam joined in. They laughed like this, at each other's reflection in the mirror, their eyes tearing, and the moment was so natural, so effortless, that suddenly Mariam started telling her about Jalil, and Nana, and the jinn. Laila stood with her hands idle on Mariam's shoulders, eyes locked on Mariam's face in the mirror. Out the words came, like blood gushing from an artery. Mariam told her about Bibi jo, Mullah Faizullah, the humiliating trek to Jalil's house, Nana's suicide. She told about Jalil's wives, and the hurried nikka with Rasheed, the trip to Kabul, her pregnancies, the endless cycles of hope and disappointment, Rasheed's turning on her.

After, Laila sat at the foot of Mariam's chair. Absently, she removed a scrap of lint entangled in Aziza's hair. A silence ensued.

" I have something to tell you too, " Laila said.

MARIAM DID NOT SLEEP that night. She sat in bed, watched the snow falling soundlessly.

Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.