Nadia Hashimi - A House Without Windows

She should have acted. Maybe she still could.

Zeba sat up suddenly, her pulse throbbing a new, upbeat tempo.

“MY MOTHER IS COMING TODAY,” ZEBA ANNOUNCED OVER A breakfast of bread and sweet tea.

Nafisa looked up with interest. She was fascinated by the transformation she’d seen Zeba undergo in the last two days. Zeba was a different woman. She joined her cellmates for meals and smiled warmly. There was no explanation for the shift. It had been sudden and gave the cellmates plenty to speculate about.

“Your mother? You’ve never mentioned your mother before. Where is she coming from?” Nafisa shot a quick glance at Mezhgan, who tried not to look too intrigued.

“She lives with my brother, about a half day’s travel from here. She’s. . different. . my mother. Not like most other women,” Zeba admitted hesitantly. She wondered what it would be like to see her mother now, in this place.

“What do you mean? What is she like?” Latifa’s hair was pulled back in a tight bun, which exaggerated her heavy facial features. She had been least impressed by Zeba’s abrupt recovery from hysteria. She had declared Zeba a charlatan who wanted to make fools of them all.

“She’s. . she’s a strong woman. Very strong-willed.”

“Is that all?” Latifa huffed, shaking her head. Every time she gave Zeba a chance to redeem herself, Zeba disappointed.

“No, it’s not that simple,” Zeba said softly. “She has her own special ways of doing things. Things she’s learned along the years.”

“What does she do?”

Zeba wasn’t quite sure how her cellmates would react to her mother’s talents. She tread carefully.

“Since I was a young girl my mother was always mixing up herbs and things. She knows all about concoctions to. . to help people get what they’re looking for.”

“A jadugar !” Latifa exclaimed, slapping her hand against her thigh. Her eyebrows lifted and her face broke into a smile. “She’s one of those women who can curse an enemy to choke on her food or set a husband and wife into a bitter fight!”

Mezhgan’s and Nafisa’s eyes widened.

“No, no. It’s not like that. The things she used to do. . she never made anyone choke. What she did was different.” Zeba struggled to find the right words because they didn’t exist.

“Does she use dead pigeons? Oh, I’ve heard of things like this!”

“Is that what your mother does?” Nafisa asked in awe.

Their suspicions were raised, and Zeba became all that much more interesting to them — because of her mother.

WHEN ZEBA’S CELLMATES SAW GULNAZ, THEIR THEORIES WERE confirmed. She was an impressive silhouette, sitting on the other side of the prison yard’s metal fence. The ends of her eggplant-colored head scarf draped elegantly across her chest, and her back was straight as a schoolchild’s. Her skin was smooth, with barely a crinkle at the corner of her eyes and no evidence of years she’d spent mourning her husband or glowering over the things said about her. Even across the yard, the green of her eyes caught the sunlight and shimmered like gemstones.

Zeba spotted her as soon as the women entered the courtyard. Her cellmates did their best and tried not to stare too directly. Latifa watched from the corner of her eye and raised her eyebrows instead of saying what she thought. It was her way of demonstrating restraint.

Zeba left her roommates behind, walking toward her mother instead of running only because there was a world around her that still expected her to behave a certain way. Her cellmates would sit at a wooden table with benches, Zeba knew without turning around, casting glances over their shoulders.

Gulnaz watched her daughter approach, her heart sore from longing.

It was thirty-five years ago and Gulnaz was nervously touching the soft spot on the top of Zeba’s newborn head. She blinked and it was a year later, Zeba toddling on pudgy legs, holding on to low tables, and bouncing as her father clapped his hands. A flash. A pigtailed Zeba was on her lap, singing songs and mixing up the lyrics. She was five and holding her tooth in a warm palm, showing off her gap-toothed grin with pride. A single heartbeat. Zeba was eight and her wide, brown eyes looked up at her mother, begging for a story. A candle flickered. Zeba was twelve and whispering to her mother that the old woman beside her in the fateha had just passed gas. Gulnaz had stifled her laughter as best she could and hid her face behind a handkerchief as if she were overwhelmed by the sadness of the funeral.

Zeba sat facing her mother, the two women separated by a mesh fence and the river of good intentions that flowed between them.

“ Salaam, Madar.”

“ Salaam, bachem .”

“You came a long way.”

“I would have come farther.”

Zeba lowered her head. Gulnaz watched her daughter’s face. She looked tired, much older than the last time she’d seen her. The past few weeks in this prison, away from her beloved children, had cast dark circles under her daughter’s eyes. Zeba looked as if she’d been the one traveling all day, not Gulnaz.

“Have you heard anything about my grandchildren?”

Zeba shook her head. She felt glass shards in her throat. If she spoke, her voice would break.

Gulnaz spoke for her.

“Basir’s always been levelheaded and mature,” Gulnaz said. “Nothing like his father.”

Zeba’s fingers laced through the fence. She’d been longing for someone, for anyone, to give her a reassuring word about her children. She let out a tight sigh.

“Last I heard they were well. Basir is looking after the girls. They are together and that’s all I can ask for now.”

“It’s a good start,” Gulnaz said as she touched her daughter’s fingers. She let her own fingers rest upon them lightly. She was relieved her daughter did not pull away. “Tell me what happened, Zeba.”

Zeba looked up and met her mother’s eyes.

“What difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference.”

“It was an ugly scene.”

“This much everyone knows.”

Zeba didn’t move her hand from the fence. It felt more comforting than she would have thought to have her mother here, touching her. She felt like a child.

“Madar- jan, I don’t know how this happened.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

Zeba looked at the ground. She’d rehearsed this conversation in her mind. Each time it went a little differently. Each time she was a little more honest.

“I know that when you came to me and warned me that something was wrong, I wasn’t ready to hear you. I thought I could protect my home better than you protected yours. I wanted to stay away from all. . all that. But it was there. I started to see it. I could feel it walking through my house and laughing at me while I slept. That day, I finally saw it for what it was. Standing in our own courtyard, the worst kind of evil. The kind that people whisper about when they think you’re not listening. The kind that keeps mothers awake at night. The kind that turns your insides black with rot to even think how close you’ve been to it. I don’t remember much from that afternoon. I just know that when I opened my eyes again, it was gone. And I found myself here, without my children, and I’m not honestly sure if I should worry about them more or less now.”

“Zeba—”

“The one thing that I think again and again is that I should have turned to you,” Zeba said flatly. Gulnaz’s eyes softened and misted. She brought her other hand to the fence, reaching two fingers through the wires. Zeba held them tightly. “That’s all I can think. Maybe things would have worked out differently then. I thought what you did, all those things you did for so many years, I thought it was so dark and evil, but I know now what evil really is. Forgive me, Madar- jan .”