One thought echoed louder than all the others: Najiba now had two mothers and I had none.
HIS NAME WAS HAMEED. SINCE HE WAS NO LONGER MINE, I COULD
say it without blushing. In a way, I was glad I’d never spoken his name. To me, it was nothing but a hollow string of sounds. Nor did his face affect me. I had no memory of his eyes and had never seen his hands. In so many ways, Hameed was a stranger to me.
The scent of the orchard, the sound of his voice, his approaching footsteps—those were the triggers for both my heartache and my rage.
I would never be so blind again.
The newly engaged couple spent time together, walking through the neighborhood in full view of others with their shy smiles and quiet conversations. Najiba blushed when she returned home. I knew why. I could have told her about our private conversations and the empty promises her fiancé had made to me, but I bit my tongue. It was the noble thing to do, I told myself.
For weeks, I watched the couple come and go. KokoGul beamed and busied herself with the wedding arrangements. There were many
busy afternoons spent with Bibi Shireen. They were just as taken with each other as the new bride and groom were. I kept my feelings to myself after that day. KokoGul excused my behavior after the
shirnee,
uninterested in exploring the matter further. She said nothing to my father about the dress I’d shredded.
I ran into Hameed in the courtyard once. He was waiting for Najiba, who’d run into the house to get a scarf. It was fall and the chill of the night air carried into the early morning. The house door slammed behind me. Hameed turned, his boyish smile evaporating at the sight of me. I could see the tension in his legs and arms. Every fiber of his body wanted to escape, our courtyard suddenly feeling like a small cage. He might as well have been inches from my face.
He muttered a faint greeting and turned to the side, his hands disappearing deep into his pockets.
I hesitated, wanting to retreat with the basket of wet clothes and return to the house, but the look on his face gave me strength. His eyes looked away in shame and his shoulders were pulled together, as if he were trying to fold himself in half.
“
Salaam,
” I said loudly and clearly. My voice surprised me. Hameed winced.
I walked past him slowly, aware of each breath and counting the steps between us. I made my way to the side of the house, still visible to him, where I began to hang the damp laundry from a clothesline. I snapped the moisture from each piece before draping it over the rope. It would be hours before anything would dry in the brisk air.
I could see Hameed fidget from the corner of my eye.
I wanted to hate him.
“Fereiba . . .” His voice was nothing more than a whisper.
My back was turned to him. I closed my eyes. Two drops of water fell from my father’s damp shirt and landed on my toes.
“These things are family matters. Nothing was ever really in my hands.”
I listened.
“And now I just want you to be happy. For the sake of the families, let’s put it behind us.”
His tone was dismissive. My shame boiled into indignation.
“Put what behind us?” I snapped.
“Do you really want to be this way? You know I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“I don’t know anything about you. Najiba knows even less.”
He huffed in frustration. I turned around and met his narrowed eyes.
“You know if you say anything, it would look very bad for you,” he seethed.
“If I say anything? Is that what worries you? I have no interest in spoiling my sister’s life,” I said, though it was a half-truth. “I pity her for winding up with a boy who pretends to hang his heart from a tree.”
“You’ve no idea what you’re saying.”
“Don’t I?”
He cast a quick glance over his shoulder and took two steps toward me.
“I told my mother to ask for the hand of the eldest daughter next door. Don’t think I wasn’t surprised when she came back having engaged me to Najiba. Anything I said after that would have brought shame on both our families.”
I stared at him blankly. There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken. I did not know his face well enough to decide if he meant those words. I could not read the movements of his lips or the shadows behind his eyes. Did he want me to understand or did he want me to believe? And if I believed, would that be enough to change the rest of our story?
Najiba emerged with one of Sultana’s scarves knotted at her neck. Her face broke out in a smile. She was no longer the bashful girl with eyes glued to the floor. She’d grown comfortable around Hameed and
could walk at his side without feeling indecent. I could see the thrill on her face.
Hameed and I never spoke of our brief past again. I would never know if he truly felt anything more than a playful interest in me or if he’d been baited into a marriage he never wanted. The impropriety of our days in the orchard lingered and we rarely let our eyes meet. Najiba never sensed the shadow between us. If she did, she said nothing about it. I might have done the same if I were in her place.
IN THE DAYS AFTER MY SISTER’S WEDDING, KOKOGUL WAS AGAIN
visited by Bibi Shireen and her sister. This time it was Bibi Shireen’s sister, Khanum Zeba, who came in search of a bride.
Khanum Zeba came for me.
KokoGul had laughed. I knew my stepmother well enough that it did not bother me. I was not ready for marriage, not because I was too young or immature but because my heart was hardened. I’d seen the illusion of love but never the real thing. I had no reason to believe in love’s existence.
But Khanum Zeba was the kindest woman I’d ever met. I imagined my mother would have loved her. As I stared at the intricate pattern of our living room rug, I heard her say things about me that had never before been said.
She is everything I want for my son.
The first time I saw her, I knew she was meant for our family.
I had to look at her. Her words emboldened me to raise my eyes and meet hers. The skin around her clear, brown eyes crinkled as she serenely explained to a very curious KokoGul why she chose me.
I dreamed once . . . years ago . . . of my son’s wedding day. When I woke, I remembered every detail of it as if I’d attended the celebration the night before, including the face of the bride when we lifted the green veil for the
nikkah.
When I came to your home and met Fereiba, I recognized her.
Good for your son, KokoGul quipped, that you didn’t dream of the baker’s daughter—her skin’s as dark as the bread he burns.
While others hid their smirks with a hand over their mouths, KokoGul’s comments fell flat on my future mother-in-law.
Your daughter is a special girl. She deserves a life full of
roshanee,
light as warm as she is.
Khanum Zeba’s words were a bright, glowing moon hanging low in the night sky. KokoGul was aghast and ordered me out of the room, but Khanum Zeba walked over and placed her hand over mine, steadying my nerves.
I wanted to believe.
IN MY YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN, I SURVIVED MANY REGIME
changes, starting with my mother’s death and my father’s remarriage. Some changes had been harder to swallow than others.
Khanum Zeba became Khala Zeba to me, once KokoGul placed my
shirnee
before her and agreed to give my hand in marriage. I’d never before seen her son, Mahmood. In a way, it was Khanum Zeba I had fallen for. Her son was merely her outstretched hand. But going through the motions of life together, Mahmood and I slowly became husband and wife.
When I told Khanum Zeba that I wanted to be a teacher, she insisted I pursue it. She’d been a teacher as well. I enrolled in a teaching program and worked my way through the courses with the support of a family I was barely a part of. My father and KokoGul were content to see me attend the classes.
“School, school, school. Your husband is going to buy you chalk and notebooks for gifts if you don’t make it clear you like things besides a classroom,” KokoGul teased.
MAHMOOD AND I WERE MARRIED IN 1979, A YEAR AFTER OUR ENGAGEMENT
and just as the Soviet Union’s first baby-faced soldiers landed their heavy boots on Afghan soil. Having proudly earned a teaching degree in two years, I woke with fresh energy every day and took my place at the head of an elementary school classroom. The students were as eager as flightless, freshly hatched birds in a nest. It was for me to nurture their open minds, to teach them the words and numbers and ideas that would spread their wings.
Just two months after our wedding, Mahmood received word that his uncle’s family, including four children, had been killed by Soviet rockets in the Panjshir Valley. We spent the next few months as newlyweds in mourning. I could hear Mahmood’s aunts and cousins cluck their tongues at the incongruous sight of a new bride in a somber
fateha,
where the visitors came to pay their respects to the family of the deceased.
It’s just as they warned,
came the whispers.
She carries the curse of bad fortune with her . . . and now she’s among us. Her own family cautioned . . .
Word of the rumors got back to us. My mother-in-law, Khala Zeba, scoffed at them. She said nothing when Mahmood made the painful decision to distance himself from the gossips in the family. He sheltered me from relatives with suspicious eyes and those who kept their children away out of fear.
Idle women are dangerous. Better you stick with your colleagues, women who busy themselves with home and work, like yourself. Don’t mind the noise from the henhouse,
Mahmood would caution.
I was relieved and surprised to have my husband reject such slander. My shoulders straightened to hear him defend me, especially to his own family. Mahmood and Khala Zeba reminded me of my grandfather, whose moral strength and unrelenting love often deflected KokoGul’s hurtful words. Mahmood made the ground beneath me stop quaking. He gave me room and reason to love him.
I busied myself as he suggested. I spent an occasional afternoon with another teacher I’d befriended and immersed myself in teaching.
I expected a lot from my students and they worked hard. I knew I wasn’t as stern as the other teachers, but I vied for their affection as much as they did for mine.
I cared about what I wore then and did my best to dress smartly. In my father’s home, I’d dressed more like a girl—jeans, calf-length skirts, and collared T-shirts. In my new home, I dressed more like a woman—pencil skirts, ruffled blouses, buckled pumps, and always a shoulder bag. With Mahmood, I had my own household and was free to decide how my salary would be spent. I wasn’t extravagant, just stylish enough to make my husband beam when we left the house for a gathering or to visit relatives. He looked at me as if I, too, gave him room and reason to love.
He believed in romance. He went on a trip once across the country. He was gone for two weeks and returned with fourteen letters he’d written me, a thick stack of his thoughts on our first meeting, the future of his job, and his favorite Hindi movie.
Your poor ears, Ferei. If I had this much to write to you, imagine how much I must talk!
At least we had each other to smile about in those days. The country suffered immeasurable losses in the tug of war between the Soviet Union and the mujahideen, Afghanistan’s freedom fighters. More mothers buried their sons. More children limped to school, their limbs amputated by explosives disguised as dolls or toy cars. Mahmood and I listened to the news together on our sofa—his arm around my shoulder or my back leaned against his chest. He would shake his head in sadness as Afghans fled the bloodied countryside and sought refuge in the capital.
WE LIVED CONTENTEDLY FOR SIX YEARS AS HUSBAND AND WIFE,
but were quietly dismayed that my belly never swelled with child. We didn’t speak of it directly but when I suggested that I wanted to be a mother, Mahmood agreed I should see a doctor. I went to see Kabul’s
most lauded women’s doctors and took whatever pills they confidently prescribed. I swallowed the vilest concoctions of herbs blended by the elderly woman down the road. Month after month, my bleeding returned, until I finally crumpled as I dressed for school one morning and sobbed to Mahmood that he should not be deprived of fatherhood because of my barren womb. He held me as tightly and gently as I imagine only my mother could have and whispered in my ear that I should not speak such words again. I learned something very important that day.
Love grows wildest in the gardens of hardship.
Not long after, Saleem came along—a happy surprise that reignited the gossips.
See what they’ve married into,
they’d said in the years we were without a child. This quickly turned into whispers that I’d enlisted some black magic to lift my curse. My fellow teachers, on the other hand, rejoiced with me, and though most families were struggling in Kabul at that turbulent time, they scraped together what they could to bring gifts for the new baby. Hand-knitted, impossibly small sweaters, plush blankets, and a plate of sweet rosewater biscuits. Khala Zeba celebrated with us, bringing her best cooking and caring for her grandchild as I recovered from a difficult childbirth.
When we went to visit my family, I noticed a change in KokoGul. She treated me like one might treat a cousin who’s come from out of town. She did not know what to do with me now that I was not hers to tease with her sharp tongue. Najiba was out of the house as was my brother, Asad, and my father had withdrawn from the world even more since I’d left our home. KokoGul was lonely without her audience. While outwardly it may have seemed that she’d warmed to me at last, I felt as if she had cooled. I went home often to see my younger sisters, but KokoGul kept her distance.