Nadia Hashimi - A House Without Windows

“Not much. I don’t know if he’ll try to see him or if he’ll just pretend he never heard about this. He was almost a young man when your father left to—” Gulnaz caught herself before she completed the phrase with the lie she’d been telling for so long that it had grown roots in her mind. “When your father left. He’s angry about that.”

“He has a right to be. We all have a right to be angry at him for leaving.”

Gulnaz looked up, grateful for the bit of anger that survived in her daughter after learning the truth.

“Those were difficult years.”

“I’m sure they were, Madar. I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

“Shame is a terrible thing.”

Zeba knew it well. It was terrible. Shame was more binding than the shackle around her ankle at the shrine. Shame, in its many shapes and colors, was what had broken Zeba, Gulnaz, and the girl Kamal had raped. It threatened to cast them out of their communities. It threatened the promise of a new day. It was an indelible stain on their spirits.

“I’m sorry you felt ashamed,” Zeba said. It was the best she could offer. She could not tell her mother that she should not have felt shame or that she should not feel shame even now. She would not compound one fallacy with another, not when her mother could see right through it.

“It’s done,” Gulnaz said flatly. “I should have expected this to happen. Nothing stays buried, especially in a place like this where people are always sticking their hands into the dirt and trying to dig things up. But he doesn’t want to come back. Nothing will change with the family. Your father turned his back on them, and for him to return now would bring shame to him, too. He’ll stay hidden behind that beard and shrine until the day he dies and his wife can bury him there as the great mullah who spent his years helping the troubled.”

“He is not a bad person. He told me he meant you no harm.”

“I didn’t disagree with his choice,” Gulnaz admitted. “We were once happy, but that was before I knew him. When he was only my fiancé and we were at arm’s length, we were very happy with each other. But by the time my wedding henna had faded from my hands, I hated being his wife. I would have hated being anyone’s wife, to tell you the truth, and I told him that at the shrine.”

“What did he say?” It was a bold question for Zeba to ask, such a private matter between her parents. She asked anyway because boundaries had already been crossed.

“He knew it. He’s always known it. That was why he did me the favor of not divorcing me. He could have, just to free himself, but it would have been a bigger shame than his walking out. He could have stayed and taken a second wife, but even that didn’t appeal to him. He wanted to wander, and hating me gave him a good excuse to do it.”

Zeba hooked her fingers on the metal fence and pressed her face against the mesh, the rings making impressions on her skin. Her mother touched her cheeks and nose with a fingertip, a caress as light and warm as sunlight.

“I don’t think any less of you, Madar- jan . I would have done the same. I probably will do the same, actually, when it comes time to tell Shabnam, Kareema, and Rima about their father. I’ll come up with the prettiest version of the truth I can and pray that they believe it until we’re all dead and buried.”

“What did happen, Zeba?”

Zeba bit her lower lip and grimaced. She shifted her weight and felt the softened earth give way beneath her, molding itself to the shape of her feet.

“I found him attacking a girl I’d never seen before — a girl barely older than Shabnam. I’d never expected to see something so evil in my own home. It was the blackest thing a mother could see. He. . he ruined her.”

Gulnaz inhaled sharply. She’d recognized the darkness in Kamal long ago, but she’d not guessed it was this. She looked at her daughter and felt pride rush through her veins.

“You were strong. The judge doesn’t know?”

Zeba looked at her mother.

“Why would he believe me? I’m only half a witness as a woman. And if it comes out what happened. . she will be destroyed again. I have to think of my own children, too. People would say such horrible things to them.”

Zeba’s reasoning was sound. Girls without honor were better off dead, many thought. And then there was vengeance. If the girl’s family was disgraced in town, they could seek retribution. Maybe they would demand Shabnam or Kareema be given to them as a wife or servant.

“One day, you’ll talk to the children about all this,” Gulnaz predicted, her heart torn between her own mistakes and those her daughter could still make. “When you do, don’t spare them too much. It’s much better to believe your children can be your friends. Look at Basir. He knows what you’ve done and why, and when I spoke with him, his eyes glow to hear your name. There is no shame you need to hide from him.”

Zeba nodded. Her throat swelled at the mention of her son’s name. To believe he could still love her was everything. She’d told him so much more than a boy should hear about his parents. She’d yearned to tell him everything, every cold detail, but he was only a child himself, and she could not trust him to keep the fact of her innocence to himself.

She’d told him what she’d seen and that the hatchet had been lying there. She’d told him even that she had been most afraid it was one of her daughters hidden beneath Kamal’s figure. She’d told him she’d acted without thinking. He’d looked at her in fear, as if the most frightening thing in that night had not been the long way he’d traveled alone or the cries of the insane in the shadow of the shrine.

She resisted, though, telling him that she’d picked up the hatchet and swung it, sideways, at the back of his father’s head, only managing to knock him over. She’d stepped on Kareema’s plastic doll, lost her footing, and crumpled on the ground, the hatchet a few feet away. Kamal had howled at her in anger while on his hands and knees.

You whore! I’ll kill you!

He’d leaped onto her, straddling her as she kicked. She’d covered her face with her hands. His heavy hand had clamped over her mouth so that she’d tasted the salt of his skin. She felt a tightness in her chest. Breathing was difficult. She’d not seen the girl crawl away. Like Kamal, she’d not seen what was coming next.

“I think Tamina is going to bring them here soon,” Gulnaz added. “She hasn’t said for sure, but I think she will.”

“Tamina? Why. . what makes you think she would do such a thing?” Zeba’s voice was a whisper.

“She does not have the fondest memories of her brother. It seems he was a menace in her childhood as well, which is why she wanted to take in the children when he died. She doesn’t trust Basir completely, but she’s decent to him and I think she’ll come around once the dust settles. I didn’t understand completely, but now I do. The past months have been hard on her, especially with the rumors about the Qur’an. She’ll come once it doesn’t look like she’s spitting on her brother’s grave to do so. It’s actually better for her that the village hates him so, even if he’s dead. It gives Tamina more freedom not to hate you.”

Tamina. Zeba could only imagine what Kamal had done to his younger sister in the privacy of their childhood home. No wonder she’d kept her distance from their family entirely. She, too, shuffled through life with shackles.

“Poor Tamina. I had never even thought. .” Zeba groaned.

“But she’s survived. Most do, in some way.”

Zeba nodded and prayed that her mother was right.

Little girl, she thought, recalling the way pale-faced Laylee had dropped the hatchet after striking the fatal blow to the back of Kamal’s head. Her hair clinging to her wet face, her hands shaking, and a bottled scream in her throat, she’d looked at Zeba wild-eyed.