Nadia Hashimi - A House Without Windows

“You don’t know anything,” Ama Tamina blurted in frustration. “You think it’s that simple but it’s not!”

Basir took a step back. It was exactly as he feared. Ama Tamina was the only person who’d offered to take them in, but even her kindness would have limits.

Kaka Mateen put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Don’t get so worked up about it, Tamina. I’m going inside.”

The girls in the doorway parted so that he could pass. He barely looked at Shabnam and Kareema, touching only his daughters’ heads before telling them all to go to bed.

“You don’t understand,” Ama Tamina said in a voice that Basir heard only because the courtyard was stone silent. “You couldn’t possibly understand what your mother has done.”

Basir waited. Even when Ama Tamina had disappeared into the house, he stood unmoved. She would return, he anticipated, and tell them all to leave. Or maybe she was waiting for him inside the house. Maybe she was bundling their two sets of clothes by the light of a lantern so that she could rid herself of their presence by morning.

Basir sat on one of two plastic chairs.

What was Madar- jan doing now? Was she thinking of him and the girls? Did she have any idea how tenuous their situation was?

Why didn’t you tell everyone what happened, Madar- jan ? There has to be a truth that will explain all this.

Truth. Basir knew more truths about his father than he cared to admit.

They tried to save each other, mother and son, but their mutinous efforts were rewarded with broader bruises, louder shouts, and harsher curses. Recalling the futility of it, Basir sometimes chose to shrink away when he felt the chilling wind of his father’s presence entering their home. It may not have felt like the most honorable action to take, but it did minimize the damage.

In the year before his father had been killed, Basir had tried new tactics. Instead of allying himself with his mother, he began to reach out to his father. If his mother couldn’t figure out how not to rile his father’s anger, perhaps he could show her. Basir took it upon himself to dust off his father’s shoes in the morning, as if he were going to a city office instead of a blacksmith’s shop. He would bring his father a cup of tea and scrounge up whatever he could from the kitchen to place before Kamal as soon as he came home.

And Basir’s plan worked. Though he was barely an adolescent, he celebrated each peaceful day as a general would celebrate a strategic victory. He would smile at his mother and could not understand why she did not mirror his cheer. She looked wary. They did not talk about the delicate balance of power in their small home. It was the same in so many other homes dominated by heavy-handed fathers. Periods of peace were calms between storms.

It never lasted very long. Kamal was one of those men who needed to exert his strength to reassure himself he was capable of something. He needed to see his wife and children react to his presence to confirm he was in command. A man’s might was right because no one had ever told him otherwise. And Kamal had secrets, filthy shameful secrets. When he was inebriated or angry or preoccupied, he was quite able to forgive his sins. But there were rare moments, small awakenings of a deeper conscience he didn’t much care to face. In those moments, Kamal’s face would flush with shame, his spine would hunch with horror. It was unbearable. Kamal could not tolerate anyone pointing out even the smallest of his shortcomings because he sensed that it would undo him completely, in the way that pulling on a stray piece of yarn just so can turn a sweater back into a pile of string.

Kamal was not an easy father to love, Basir admitted. But he might have changed. Maybe things would have gotten better.

BASIR WAS UP AT FIRST LIGHT, SHAFTS OF YELLOW BREAKING through a hazy, purple sky. He sat cross-legged in the living room where he slept at night, away from his sisters and cousins. The house still breathed collectively, a slumbering clan. He could almost feel the walls bend and bow like the rise and fall of a chest.

Basir remembered his box, the experiment he’d left outside. He thought of his little cousins and his sisters and decided it would be best to get rid of the scorpion immediately, before it or its babies found a way out of their cage. Basir slipped out the front door and made his way to the back of the home. He would let the scorpions free before someone stumbled upon them.

The box was precisely where he’d left it just a few hours ago. With the tip of his sandaled foot, Basir kicked aside the rock he’d placed on the lid and then used a twig to lift the top. Basir the captor jumped back, his foot knocking the box onto its side. He gasped with disproportionate horror as he learned a bitter truth.

Out ran the unencumbered scorpion, leaving two dozen half-eaten, lifeless young in her wake.

ZEBA STARED AT HER MOTHER.

“And what did the judge say?”

“Not much. But he won’t be your biggest problem.”

“What did you do?” Zeba asked, feeling an old anxiety rise within her.

“Nothing. We talked mostly about your children needing you.” Before Zeba could ask any more questions, Gulnaz gave a quick nod in the direction of the yard. “Why are those girls staring?”

Zeba glanced over her shoulder. Latifa looked away abruptly. Nafisa pretended to point at something in the distance. No wonder she was in jail. The girl couldn’t lie to save her life.

“Probably because I told them about you,” Zeba admitted. “You’re the kind of person women love to hear about — especially women with big problems.”

“Oh, is that so? How nice to know that at this age, I can still be interesting.” Gulnaz’s eyebrows lifted in amusement.

“Of course. You always have been. Even when your daughter’s accused of murder, you’re the more interesting person.”

“Are you sure it’s me they’re staring at?”

“Positive.”

Gulnaz sensed a difference in her daughter. Her back was a little straighter, her eyes a bit less downcast. Gulnaz pursed her lips.

“You’ve done something,” she declared.

Zeba hid a sheepish smile. Gulnaz’s intuition was confirmed.

“What did you do?” she pressed.

Zeba shook her head, but there was an undeniable twinkle in her eye.

“Zeba!” Gulnaz whispered brightly.

“Okay, Madar- jan, I’ll tell you,” Zeba whispered with halfhearted reluctance. “There was a girl here — a dumb, pregnant, lovesick girl. Though I have to admit she was clever in some ways. She managed to get herself and her boyfriend thrown into jail by turning herself in. For him to get released, he had to marry her.”

“You’re joking.”

“Not at all,” Zeba said cheerfully. “She needed his family to propose and they did.”

“If only they had a prison for couples,” Gulnaz said. “Though I suppose that’s what marriage is, isn’t it?”

Zeba didn’t flinch. In the years since her father had disappeared, she’d not really seen her mother lament his death the way other widows had. She’d almost seemed relieved, actually.

“Tell me what you did,” Gulnaz said, intrigued.

Zeba bit her lower lip. She suddenly felt like a child caught trying to walk in her mother’s shoes.

“I told her about the string and the chicken feathers.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

Gulnaz looked puzzled.

“Where did you learn that from?”

“From you, of course. You made me pluck the chicken feathers myself when we did it for Nooria- jan .”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about her.” Gulnaz looked off into the distance. There was a haze in the air, as if the day might bring rain. “There was no way Latif would’ve married her if we hadn’t helped out. The rumors in town about her sneaking around with him and his cousin were pretty bad.”