Nadia Hashimi - A House Without Windows

It was all my doing, she’d said, tapping her hand over her breastbone and nodding affirmatively. I decided to flee that miserable home. I wanted to save myself and my sister.

Latifa had no interest in leaving Chil Mahtab, a place where she was treated better than she’d ever been treated in her life. Had she known what prison would be like, Latifa often thought, she might have marched herself past the barbed-wire fence long ago, turning herself in for some kind of impropriety.

Now she was serving a seven-year sentence for running away from home, kidnapping, and attempted prostitution.

Mezhgan was a doe-eyed nineteen-year-old, half the size of her cellmates and nowhere near as bold. When she’d refused to marry her sister’s brother-in-law, her suitor’s family had become indignant. Soon, they became aware that she was in love with a boy in her neighborhood and, in retaliation, had pointed their angry fingers and had had her arrested. Two weeks after her arrest, Mezhgan had been taken to a health clinic for a virginity test. Watching her empty the contents of her stomach in the small exam room, the doctor had performed a pregnancy test that only proved Mezhgan’s guilt.

She’d cried for days, unsure how those few stolen moments could have possibly led to a child and the undoing of her reputation.

“The worst part is that Haroon is in prison too,” she mourned. “I swear I did not do what they say I’ve done. It was nothing like that.”

Mezhgan’s parents had pleaded with Haroon’s family to allow the two to marry but Haroon’s family wanted nothing to do with them.

“I’m sure Haroon is upset. I know he loves me and would do anything he could to get us both out of here. His parents must be refusing to listen to him.”

Latifa let out a deep, throaty laugh.

“Ah yes. There could be no other explanation for why he’s not asked for your hand in marriage yet.”

Mezhgan sighed sharply.

“He has, I’m sure. But his mother, she’s impossible. She doesn’t like me very much. She said I chased after her son, but that’s not true at all. Haroon used to follow me home from school. He really and truly loves me. Did I ever tell you that he even called Radio Sabaa once and talked about how the world was trying to keep us apart?”

“You’ve told me once a week since you’ve been here. But no one gives their names on Radio Sabaa. You can’t be sure he called. Maybe it was someone else.”

“I heard the call, Latifa. He said his beloved was elegant as the letter alif, with eyebrows as graceful as the letter sheen . Isn’t that beautiful?” She sighed, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to regain control of her emotions. “That’s just the kind of thing he would say and, besides, I know my love’s voice.”

“You know a lot more than his voice, little mother,” Latifa laughed. “If you ask me, the producers and hosts of Radio Sabaa should be in jail instead of all these women. They’re letting people talk about romance and love as if there’s a place for it. Some poor girl is going to fall in love because she hears an idiot boy on the radio talk about how he can’t live without her. Guess where she’s going to wind up? She’ll be taking up the last empty bed in Chil Mahtab, that’s where.”

“People don’t fall in love because of something they hear on the radio,” Mezhgan contested, her tone steeped in frustration. Her lips pulled into a thoughtful pout. She was early enough in her pregnancy that it had barely changed her figure. She’d also stopped vomiting about a week before Zeba’s arrival, which she knew meant she was about three months along. She’d seen her mother through the last two of her pregnancies and knew just what to expect. She put her hands on her flat belly, and her expression turned wistful. “It’s about feeling a connection. It’s about not being able to sleep without talking to them every day and holding your breath until you can be together again.”

“He was that hard to resist, this boy?”

“Oh, Latifa. I’m not a poet. I don’t have the words for this. All I know is that from the second I set eyes on him, his dark hair, his handsome eyes. . I could be dead and buried and I’d still be hot for him!”

Nafisa smiled brightly. Mezhgan spoke for her, too, though she would never dare confess her passions. How could she ever hope to be found innocent if she acted that way?

The words escaped her lips before Zeba could think twice about speaking them:

“Men love for a moment because they are clever

Women are fools because they love forever.”

“What did you say?” Nafisa demanded.

“She called you both fools!” Latifa chortled. “Didn’t take her long to get to know you!”

Zeba broke her silence, her voice airy and distant. She spoke to the windowless walls and the plastic chairs, the metal frame of the bunk bed, and the rough green carpet under her feet. She had yet to look directly at her cellmates, maybe because it would redefine her as one of them, a prisoner of Chil Mahtab.

“It’s just something I do out of habit, something I learned long ago from a woman who had lived in the south. Women would get together in secret, in a house or by the river, and share these short poems, just words. Just ways to empty a heavy chest.”

Mezhgan shrugged her shoulders.

“I like it. I suppose that makes you something of a poet.”

“Anyone with a heavy chest can be a poet,” Zeba said before closing her eyes.

IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, ZEBA REMAINED DETACHED. THE women gave up interest in her and went about their business. She was with them but not one of them. Listening to their conversations, she learned the spectrum of criminals housed in Chil Mahtab: petty thieves, drug smugglers, and murderers. Zeba’s cellmates, however, were some of the many women imprisoned for crimes of morality — falling in love or running away from home.

The women forgave Zeba’s aloofness because of something they saw in her bloodshot eyes, the way she stared off into space. They shared their stories, waiting for the day when they would learn hers.

The prison was a small world. The cells were unlocked for the most part, and women walked through the hallways, gathering in open rooms or in the yard. There was a dark kitchen full of pots deep enough to hold a watermelon, a classroom that consisted of a blackboard and slivers of chalk, and a playroom for the many children who lived in the prison with their mothers. The classroom was a shared space, used sometimes for the women and other times for the children. There was even a beauty salon, a lopsided chair set up in front of a lighted mirror. In front of the mirror were eyeshadow palettes of varied shades, lipsticks in bold hues, and tweezers. Some were purchased through the guards. Some were brought by family members or even the legal aid attorneys to keep up the women’s spirits. Crayon graffiti covered the hallways, the canvas for the children of Chil Mahtab.

There was only one good way to battle the ennui of their days. The women sat in their rooms and shared stories, dazzling cellmates with their tales, even as they accused one another of pilfering hair oil or laundry detergent. Some of their stories were as embellished as the women leaving the beauty salon. It was in these halls of gossip, from a woman with brass-colored hair and a crown of treasonous dark roots, that Latifa came to learn Zeba’s story.

She whispered the news to the others in the fenced-in yard one afternoon.

“So it’s true, what we heard when she first came. They found her husband with a hatchet in his head,” she said with deliberate cool. Latifa took a long drag on her cigarette, her eyes narrowed and her head cocked to the side. “I’m surprised she made it here. Where I come from, they would have killed her and made sure the whole village showed up to watch.”