Nadia Hashimi - A House Without Windows

“If it were today, she would have been my cellmate. Ten years for zina . Lucky for her she chose to be immoral in a better time. How is she doing, anyway? She must have grandchildren by now,” Zeba mused.

“She died years ago. Her devoted husband remarried three months later.”

“Three whole months. Love is beautiful, isn’t it?” Zeba smirked.

Gulnaz smiled faintly. When had Zeba become so sarcastic? What had happened to her docile daughter, the girl who had been tearful even as she closed the door on her mother?

“Anyway, my roommate and her mother did everything I told them to do. I was surprised, to tell you the truth, when we heard his family had gone to her home to ask for her hand. I didn’t know if it would really work.”

“Seven knots?”

“Seven knots,” Zeba confirmed. Gulnaz smiled smugly.

“Then there was no way it wouldn’t work.”

“It had to. She’s too young to have her life ruined like this. Not to mention the baby.”

“And her life would’ve been ruined for sure if you hadn’t pulled her ass from the fire. Imagine a girl choosing to go through all this,” Gulnaz said softly. “For one awkward moment in the dark.”

“The girl puts on a good show, Madar- jan, ” Zeba said in a low tone. Gulnaz looked at her with raised brows. “But I highly doubt it was one moment, and it was surely not in the dark.”

Gulnaz laughed, an unbridled, carefree laugh. Her eyes closed, and her head tilted back a degree.

She had to catch her breath. There was no fence. There was no jail. There was only a mother and a daughter, gossiping in the warm glow of the sun. The ache of Gulnaz’s bones eased and the knotted muscle in her neck released just enough for her to chuckle without pain. The blood pulsed to her toes and fingers, turning her nailbeds pink. She was, in that one trivial moment, more alive than she’d been in years.

Watching her mother, Zeba was overcome. She giggled like a schoolgirl.

Gulnaz’s eyes welled with happy, wistful tears.

Relishing the sound of lost laughter, mother and daughter looked at each other. The world around them dissolved.

“Madar, are you all right?” Zeba asked hesitantly.

“Ah, Zeba, you are my daughter after all, aren’t you?”

Six months ago, Zeba would have resented the comment. But now, surprisingly, Zeba felt a twinge of pride. She blinked and uncrossed her legs. The grounds of the prison were pebbly, and Zeba hadn’t brought out a blanket to sit on.

“I’ve spoken with your judge and your lawyer. The lawyer is off in the village now, trying to find out if anyone believes you could be innocent or if anyone knows anything helpful.”

“No one will talk to him.”

“Probably not, but it’s a possibility. And Yusuf looks like the type of man who goes wild when he smells a possibility. That could be a good thing for you.”

“There are worse traits, I suppose.”

“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” Gulnaz prodded gently. “I might be able to better help you if I know.”

“You sound like my lawyer.” Zeba sighed.

“I suppose I do,” Gulnaz said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out three chocolates wrapped in red foil. “I brought something for you. Something to sweeten your tongue in this sour place.”

She slipped the chocolates through the fence. Zeba took them from her mother’s fingers, wishing she could pull her mother’s whole hand and arm and body through the latticework as well.

Gulnaz leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the warm metal of the fence.

“I know you, Zeba. You might not think I do, but you’re my blood. Your soul talks to me even when your mouth doesn’t. It always has.”

Zeba looked up. Why did her mother always say such peculiar things? Why was her whole family bent on being holier or craftier than everyone else?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Madar. I tell you what I’m thinking and there’s no more to it. Whatever rings in your ears is your own — it doesn’t come from me.”

Zeba unwrapped one chocolate and popped the entire round candy, half softened by the warmth of Gulnaz’s body, into her mouth. She crumpled the foil in her palm and felt the chocolate melt against the inside of her cheek.

“Zeba, I’m here to work out what I can for you. Trust me that I know best.”

Her mother was wrong. She’d never listened to Zeba. Why should she when Gulnaz knew best? Gulnaz made all the decisions and, out of paranoia, had driven away every single family member who’d ever looked upon Zeba with kindness.

“You always have, haven’t you?” Zeba said sarcastically.

Gulnaz bit her lip. Zeba was too tightly wound. Where had Gulnaz gone wrong? Why did she have to tread carefully in speaking with her own child?

“Zeba, I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

“Then what did you come here for, Madar? Are you here because you don’t want to see me in prison or because you, the infamous Gulnaz, want to be the one to get me out with your powerful jadu ?”

Gulnaz took a deep breath.

“I went to speak to the judge, Zeba, because I have spoken with him before. I met him years ago, before you were born. He came to call upon the great Safatullah once with his father. They were desperate for his younger brother to recover from a crippling illness. The boy was near death, from what I remember.”

Zeba seethed. It was hard to listen to Gulnaz when thirty years of resentment was boiling to the surface.

“His younger brother believed he was saved by your grandfather, the murshid .”

“What does this have to do with me?” Zeba asked through tight lips.

“A life was saved. People don’t forget about that kind of thing.”

Zeba looked back at the yard, half listening to Gulnaz. Latifa sat on the ground with her back resting against the wall of the prison. An unlit cigarette dangled between her fingers, her way of making her stash last longer. Latifa’s eyes were closed to the half-hidden sun, and she looked to be asleep. Had she ever been so at peace in her life? The way she described her family, probably not.

Zeba had the urge to get up and walk over to Latifa — to sit beside her, shoulders touching, faces to the sky.

Maybe Zeba could give her mother one more chance. She unwrapped a second chocolate. They tasted stale and she wasn’t really hungry for them, but it was easier than deciding whether or not to share them with her cellmates later.

Gulnaz laced her fingers through the metal links. Zeba was stubborn as a corpse. There was a grim possibility that was exactly what she would be if the fingers remained crooked in her direction.

My poor grandchildren, Gulnaz thought . They’ll never see their mother again.

“Your father and I were a bad pair,” she said hesitantly.

Zeba was silent.

“Early on, we were decent together. We were both young, and it felt important and new to be a married person. I didn’t mind him and he didn’t mind me. We did what we thought husbands and wives were supposed to do. I cooked. He worked. We visited our elders for the Eid holiday. But we were different people. We argued. We argued about our arguments. We found ways to make each other angry.

“If I knew he wanted rice for dinner, I made soup. He would leave walnut shells on the floor only because I’d asked him not to. It got to the point that I couldn’t stand the smell of your father, to tell you the truth. We were a breath away from choking each other at all times. These are awful things to say now, but it’s the truth.”

Zeba’s anger abated. The timbre of her mother’s voice was different than she’d ever before heard.

“Why did you hate each other so much? Had he done something?”