A House Without Windows (42 page)

Zeba would live.

YUSUF SCANNED THROUGH HIS CALL LOG AND PRESSED THE
green button when he saw her name. It was Thursday evening, and the events of the sentencing were still fresh on his mind. The prosecutor had walked out without saying a word, a sulk that did not go unnoticed by Qazi Najeeb. Gulnaz and Zeba had pressed their foreheads together and sobbed. Yusuf had looked at the judge, but he had already risen from his chair and mumbled something about seeing to another case. He had paused only to put a hand on Yusuf's shoulder and nod. He said nothing more.

When Sultana answered the phone, Yusuf pressed his back against the seat of the taxi in relief.

“She's free,” he said, his words sparse so that he could get them out without his voice breaking. “Zeba's free.”

“Honestly? You're serious?” Sultana exclaimed.

“Yes, very serious. It happened just this afternoon. If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't believe it myself!”

“But . . . but . . . why? What did he say?”

Yusuf recounted the judge's reasoning, a new jurisprudence incongruous with his age and the traditions of the city. Yusuf was left to wonder what constellation of influences had pushed the judge to set Zeba free.

“That's astounding.”

“It most certainly is. Listen, I don't know what you told the judge and whether or not it had anything to do with this afternoon. What did you tell him?”

“Yusuf, I didn't say much. I only told him that I was thinking of interviewing the folks from Zeba's village and investigating the rumors circulating around her husband. He asked me why I would want to do that and I said because I thought the dead man deserved to have his name cleared if all the horrible things being said about him were lies. I asked Qazi Najeeb for his opinion on the matter, but he refused to say anything else. He was in a hurry to get off the phone.”

“Something clicked, Sultana. I don't know what it was, but something worked.”

The taxi had just rounded the corner of his road. His apartment was half a block ahead, and it was that time of day that men were milling about the streets. The electronic rhythm of a pop song spilled out of a kebab shop along with the aroma of charred meat. A young boy offered to shine the shoes of pedestrians.

“She's really going to go free? Completely?”

Sultana's disbelief echoed the thoughts in his own head. Had Qazi Najeeb been turned by the mullah's entreaties? By Gulnaz's pleas? Or had he feared the attention that Sultana might bring to the case, revealing what kind of man Kamal was and inviting criticism of the judge who dared punish the defender of the Qur'an? There was also the possibility that the judge had reached this conclusion based on the truth, having finally received all the facts, even if it had not come in the form of the defense's case.

“I wanted to thank you for what you did. That phone call you made, it just might have been the thing that got to him.”

“I doubt it.” Sultana sighed. “He didn't seem too affected by what I said. He sounded annoyed that I was interrupting his evening, honestly.”

“It's not the way I imagined the case going, but it is the result I wanted. I'm happy about that part.”

“That's the frustration of trying to do something good here. Even
when there's a real judicial process, the result can make you think we've gone back to Taliban times. There was a woman lashed in Ghor Province just this week for
zina
. Her case went through a real court and in the end, an audience of men watched as they carried out one hundred strikes against her.”

But Yusuf wasn't discouraged by that bit of news or by the way his attempts to bring the procedural code to life had failed in Qazi Najeeb's office. He understood that courtrooms could look like anything, briefs could be handwritten and scribbled on sheets torn from a composition notebook. He knew arrest registries could be works of fantasy and that
zina
could be deemed more criminal than murder. It only meant there was more work yet to be done.

“And what's next for you?” Sultana asked as if she'd read his mind. “Back to the United States?”

“No, not yet,” Yusuf replied, smiling to hear Sultana ask about his plans. His mother would have the same question for him, though she would frame it more as a demand. He would go back to New York . . . eventually. He would be back on his parents' sofa soon enough—maybe even in time to hold his new niece or nephew—but it wouldn't be this minute. “I think I'm going to stick around for a while.”

“You are, really?” Sultana asked, a hint of playfulness to her voice.

“Absolutely. So if you have any other questions you want to ask me, I'm still available.”

The taxi stopped at the door of Yusuf's apartment building. He could see the awning of the gym down the block and made a mental note to get back there later today, feeling a boost of energy. He slipped the cabdriver a few bills and stepped into the street. The smell of diesel and freshly baked bread hung in the air.

“Good to know, Yusuf-
jan,
” Sultana said. That she'd addressed him by his name and in such a familiar way was not lost upon him. It was the way things were done here—the land where rumors, hints, and insinuations were as solid as the mountains that contained them.

THE CHILDREN HAD BEEN DELIVERED TO HER A WEEK AFTER HER
release, brought to her by Tamina, who did not dare step foot in her brother's home. She'd come in the evening, once the sun had set, arriving in a taxi that parked at the end of the block. She'd paid the taxi driver to wait for her, knowing it was costing more than she and Mateen could afford, but she did not want to be seen by the neighbors whose ears prickled for news from the home of the freed murderess.

The girls had fallen into Zeba's arms. Basir had stood next to his mother, nestling his head against her side at first, then pressing his face into the sleeve of her dress to blot his tears.

Zeba had turned to thank Tamina, who stood straight as steel.

“I think it's best you stay away from me,” she'd said, staring at the backs of the girls' heads. “We are nothing to each other anymore.”

“Tamina-
jan,
I am so grateful that you—”

“Don't say anything, please. There's nothing to say. I did what needed to be done. That's what a mother does, I think. We do whatever it is God asks us to do.”

Zeba had only nodded, knowing she would not see her husband's sister again. Kamal was buried beneath two meters of earth and with him was buried everything Tamina wanted to forget. This was her chance to do so, and she would not squander it.

Tamina had turned to slip back into the street when she paused
and, without turning, said: “I'm glad for the children, Zeba. You didn't deserve to die.”

Zeba, her arms still tightly wrapped around her daughters, her cheek pressed against the top of her son's head, had sobbed loudly and fallen to her knees.

ZEBA HAD SPENT THE FALL AND WINTER AT HOME WITH HER
children. Her grandfather, Safatullah, had given her ownership of a plot of land the family had leased to farmers. The rent payments she received were not much, but they were enough to sustain a small family. They'd seldom left the house during the three-month school winter break. Zeba used the time to recover. She'd opened the windows of her home to air out the stench of rotted food and vacancy. She'd raked over the dirt in the courtyard, though Kamal's blood has been washed away by the heavy rains that had fallen while she was in Chil Mahtab. She cut away the dead branches of the rosebush and let her fingers linger in the softened earth beneath it.

Inside, Zeba swept the floors and washed every pot, pan, and glass in boiled well water. She did so in peace, noticing as she wiped down the walls of their living room that she did not sense the blackness. It had disappeared just as furtively as it had entered. In the room she had shared with Kamal for seventeen years, Zeba separated her husband's clothing from her own, holding his shirts and pants at arm's length. She folded each piece and stacked them in the center of an old bedsheet, tying the ends of the sheet into a tight knot. On the coldest days of winter, she'd opened the bundle and used his tunics and hats as fuel for the cooking fires, stoking the flames with a twinge of satisfaction.

The children did not speak of their father. They did not need an explanation, having known what their father was in life. That he was no longer part of their world did not trouble them. They would not miss his violent outbursts, the way he would leap at their mother's cowering form. Their ears still burned under his twisting fingers,
their cheeks still stung from his slaps. They did not miss the sound of breaking glass or the anxiety that sent a stream of urine running down their legs in the middle of the night. It was better and fair that he was gone and their mother was returned.

Let justice find its rightful owner,
the judge had said. It was a truth her children had understood without hearing the fable. The jurisprudence of a child astounded Zeba.

It was spring now. Frigid temperatures were giving way to milder days. The palette of the world outside shifted, a spin of the color wheel. Yellow turned to green and gray turned to blue. The snowcaps of the mountain receded. The river waters ran cold and fresh, a new generation of fish filling its beds. It was time for her family to reenter the world, Zeba decided. Should the villagers gawk and stare, so be it. Should they point fingers and whisper or shout, it would not matter. She had not left Chil Mahtab only to make her children prisoners of their own home.

Rima's small fingers, the soft pad of her palm, fit snugly into Zeba's right hand. Basir carried a black plastic bag they would use to bring back fish from the river. Zeba followed her children, her chest bursting to see them in the warm sunlight. Basir, Shabnam, and Kareema were a few meters ahead of her, close enough that she could see their profiles when one turned to laugh at something another had said.

Kareema stopped abruptly, turned, and called back to her mother.

“Do you promise we will see Bibi-
jan
tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Zeba nodded. “We'll leave in the morning to go to your uncle's home. We'll have to bathe well, though, so we don't stink of fish when they hug us.”

Kareema burst into laughter and hopped a few steps to catch up with her siblings.

These are my children,
Zeba thought to herself.
Look at those brilliant faces, the way their arms swing as they walk, the way they nudge one another with a playful shoulder. There's no part of the devil in them. They are mine.

Gulnaz would be waiting for them, as would Rafi and his wife.
Without Kamal to spoil things between them, Zeba felt like she'd been returned to her childhood. Knowing the truth about their father had freed Rafi and Zeba to love their mother more completely, for they could finally understand her as a whole person. They didn't need their father's explanations nor did they have much desire to be part of his life. It was enough to know he was there, not a martyr, but not the devil, either.

Many of the villagers had come to the river, enough that the sight of them made Zeba hesitate for a second. She considered calling the children back and turning around, promising them to come another day. But then she thought of the women she'd left behind at Chil Mahtab. She thought of Latifa and Nafisa, Bibi Shireen and the young woman with the twin boys. She remembered that they'd called her Malika Zeba and burned her name onto their bodies.

We are so happy for you,
they'd cried the day she was freed.
Pray for us, Malika Zeba. You know no one else will.

They'd rejoiced in her release because that, too, gave them strength. If a murderess could be set free, there was some hope for the rest of them.

Bolstered by their voices that echoed still in her head, Zeba lifted her chin and pushed forward, nearing the villagers she'd avoided for two seasons. Boys laughed, carrying sticks strung with trout, their silvery-green skins dotted with red. A family was flash-frying the fish by the side of the river, just feet away from the stones where small children sat perched, dipping their fingers into the icy waters and shivering.

Zeba settled on a flat area, not far from where the river took a gentle bend. They were close enough to others that she could make out their faces but far enough away that she could not make out their words. She spread out the bedsheet she'd brought and they sat, cross-legged, while Basir went off to try the fishing net he'd borrowed from a neighbor. Shabnam and Kareema brought jacks and began their quiet game, bouncing the ball and deftly grabbing the silver spiders from
the ground. Rima giggled each time they softly batted her meddling hands away.

The river water shimmered in the afternoon sun, and Zeba put a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the glare. She looked for Basir's silhouette and found him amid a group of boys his age. While some stood on a cluster of rocks, Basir and a few others had sloshed into the waters with knees high, dragging their nets.

Zeba heard a rustling behind her, and her head swiveled instinctively. Seeing a mother and father making their way back home with a young girl walking between them, she turned her attention back to her daughters.

She had leaned over to brush Shabnam's hair from her eyes when she suddenly felt her breath catch in her chest. She turned once more, slowly, half hoping the family would not notice her and half hoping they would. There were people around them, but no one paid them much mind, as if Zeba and her children were the most ordinary people.

The wife was speaking to her husband who nodded. The little girl's hand was clasped in her mother's. They were coming closer and would soon pass Zeba and her three daughters. Zeba lowered her gaze and felt her eyes mist. She blinked but could not look away. What a beautiful girl she was—just as lovely as the three who sat before her.

The girl's slender frame came in and out of view, half hidden by her father's form. He looked to be a good man, Zeba thought, a wave of peace washing over her. He looked to be the kind of man who knew right from wrong, the way he walked with his wife and daughter and not ahead of them.

Something the mother said made the little girl look up and laugh, a bashful expression of cheer on her precious face. Zeba let out a soft cry, quiet enough that her own girls were not distracted from their play. But as if her breath crossed the open ground between them and tapped on the little girl's shoulder, her head turned.

She looked in Zeba's direction, and her mouth opened slightly. Zeba still could not bear to turn away, meeting the girl's eyes and
feeling her heart pound in her chest. Would she say something to her parents?

But she did not. She only blinked her eyes and smiled, a soft curve of her lips that felt to Zeba like tiny arms thrown around her neck. The many words left unsaid between them, the many questions each had about the other dissipated into the spring air, replaced by the sound of the babbling river, renewed with mountain water.

From this distance, Laylee looked distinctly unbroken. Her father's hand absently touched the top of her head, as if to confirm her presence even as she walked beside him. She had lived over four thousand days but spent the recent months reliving the one day that had been infinitely worse than all the rest. While Fareed's angry hands tried to wring the life from Zeba's neck, Laylee's mother had been bent over her daughter, her tears mixing with the ghastly crimson she was dabbing away from between Laylee's tensed and bruised thighs. At the moment when Zeba had thrown her head back and screamed in the judge's office, Laylee had begged her mother to end her misery.
Kill me,
she'd pleaded. In the next room, her father, Timur, had fallen to his knees to hear his daughter make such a quietly catastrophic plea. They had no other children. Laylee was everything.

You are a good, good girl,
he'd whispered to her over and over again. Laylee's mother had to turn away, broken a second time to see the way her husband cradled his daughter. His spirit was shattered but his honor intact.

Only because her father's hand touched her head with pride and only because her mother had nursed her day and night back to health had Laylee survived to live these spring days. She would never be the little girl she'd once been, but her wounds would continue to heal.

Zeba lifted a hand and pressed it to her chest. Her eyes could have followed the girl forever, until she became nothing more than a purple dot against the sparse trees, but Zeba closed her eyes, burning the image of that timid smile into her memory.

“Madar, are you all right?” Shabnam asked, looking at her mother
nervously. She and Kareema had paused their game, giving Rima a chance to scatter the jacks with one mischievous sweep of her hand.

Basir was on his way back to them, a glittering trout tied to the end of a stick, raised in the air like a triumphant scepter.

“I am more than fine,” she told her daughters, and for the first time in a long time, she believed those small, precious words to be true.