A Sister to Honor (9 page)

As they piled into the Suzuki, his father plucked him back. “This American photo,” he said. “It is not objectionable, is it?”

“I . . . I don't know what you mean, Baba. It's not appropriate for an engagement, but—”

“You protect her.”

“I do, Baba.”

“It is what makes a girl happy. To know she is safe. She is protected.”

“But I worry, Baba. It's different over there. And if a rumor started—”

His father laid a heavy hand on Shahid's shoulder. “We'll get her engaged, before you go back,” he said. “I have been thinking about it. I'll speak to your mother. You both need to finish your studies with a plan for the future. This is a good plan, and a good time for it. Now, we'll talk no more of women. Tell me,” he said as the call to prayer rose above the village, “about this chance at Harvard.”

A
fia had dressed in her brightest shalwar kameez, with spring green flecking the deep turquoise silk, the bodice hand-embroidered and studded with freshwater pearls. The sleeves went only to her elbows but ended in handworked lace. She had washed her hair and doused it with the tea-scented rinse her mother always used. Brushing, she found her locks thicker, softer, brighter. She would bring a tube of this to Northampton. How far away Northampton seemed! Forty-eight hours she had been home, and already the whole world of Smith College seemed an invention.

Yesterday, at the
mehndi
, she had still set herself a little apart. Maryam was the sixth of her cousins to be married, and the others giggled and gossiped about which girl would be next. As a government doctor, the groom would receive a house once he and Maryam started a family. His father ran a sugar mill in Mardan. The groom was rumored to be short, with a receding chin, but not too old and in good health. One sticky point was that his parents had come first to the home of another cousin, Tahira, but Tahira's parents hadn't taken him seriously. Tahira was tall, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed; over the summer she had married a cardiologist in Peshawar. So everyone knew that Maryam's parents had accepted another's leavings. But marriage was marriage; marriage was the point.

Strange, how Afia felt the pull of this gossip. Her first instinct was to make the kind of speech she imagined in the voice of her roommate, Patty, about the superficiality of fair skin or a doctor's wages, the value of the single life. But after they had gathered to watch the design spread over Maryam's tiny hands onto her plump wrists, she found herself laughing at the mother-in-law jokes, eager to hear of other visits made by other bride-seeking families to other cousins, the bright hope of a good match. They had gathered in Maryam's home, a small compound but immaculate, with a garden that would bloom brightly in the spring. All were women except for the guard at the gate, and what a relief, to be away from men! Maryam's mother and aunt had spread a feast of kebabs and fried fish on the veranda's long table. Filling her plate, Afia thought idly of the buffets at Smith, laden with vegetables and trays of meatless lasagna, with knives as well as forks, and napkins because you weren't supposed to eat with your hands or lick your fingers. But your fingers tasted good! She bit off a chunk of juicy meat and then sucked the juice from her thumb.

That was when Moray had touched her elbow and said calmly, as if she were talking of hiring a new cook, “When all this is over, my sparrow, Maryam's people will be calling on us.”

Afia felt a space open in her heart. “But, Moray, we'll just have visited with them. Why—” Then she stopped, and flushed. Of course. Maryam had an older brother, another second cousin. Zarbat? Zardab? She had not seen him since she was small.

“You'll need to serve the tea,” her mother went on. “We'll go shopping in a day or two, after the ceremony. Find you something in the latest fashion. See what your cousin Tahira is wearing?”

Last night, Afia had lain awake in the bed she had longed for while at Smith—the wide frame constructed from an ancient wooden chest her grandfather had brought home from the Kashmir. The chest had split apart, but the panels were solid enough for Baba to refashion into a bed, which had been Afia's as long as she could remember. All through the long flight, she had craved a good night's sleep in it. Now sleep would not come. They wanted her married, Baba and Moray. Of course she had always expected to be married off. Being educated had been part of preparing for marriage; a more successful man, Moray had declared to Baba, wanted a wife with a university degree, even a wife who could practice medicine. Afia was short and wore glasses, but behind them her eyes were blue as sea glass, and when she let her hair go, it fell thick and soft over her shoulders. Marriage was never going to be a problem for her. Only since America had it become a problem. Only since Gus.

She turned on her side and thought how neither of her parents had talked of engaging her before her studies were finished . . . until now. Would Shahid have—?

No. Not possible. There would have been howls of shame, and the shame would have covered Shahid, too. People were starting to talk, that was all; starting to ask when Afia would be coming home, what Afia's prospects were. No one knew about Gus, not even—especially not—Shahid. She could lie here and think about her beloved to her heart's content, and bring dishonor to no one.

But when she tried to dwell on Gus, the dark air seemed to swallow him. That she had lain naked next to him only a week before was now a thought too horrible to own. Even to imagine his half-shaven face, his hands with the wisps of dark hair on the backs of the knuckles—no. She couldn't. If she lingered on his touch, or his breath against her ear, her stomach would rise within her. She would vomit the strangeness of it. What she had done was risky, in and of itself. But it had happened in that other world, where honor was topsy-turvy and rules frayed at their edges. To think about it was to do something
here
, in Nasirabad, something unforgivable.

And so she stopped thinking about Gus. It happened like that, like the door of the freezer sucking closed. There was, after all, so much else to think about. Maryam's wedding, of course, and the tremendous anticipation of how Maryam would look at the close of the
rukhsati
, how her new husband would regard her, how the men of the wedding party would slip into the back of the hall to watch the girls dancing. Whether Lema would be there—Lema, her best friend from school, who had gone on to secretarial college in Peshawar and come home over the summer to be married. She had written to Lema and tried to connect with her on Facebook, but no answer. She had to think, too, about Moray and about Sobia and Muska, who were fourteen and ten now and starting to cover their little chests with their dupattas. The village was already a more conservative place for them than it had been for Afia. Yesterday Sobia had talked about three girls from her class who had quit school and were staying home, in purdah like their mothers.

She finished brushing her hair and applied a line of kohl to her eyelids before putting her glasses back on. She never wore makeup in America, but here it seemed part of getting dressed. She found her mother in the bathroom, helping Sobia drape her dupatta properly. “Don't you look all grown up,” she said to her sister.

“I want to wear heels,” Sobia said, eyeing herself in the mirror. She had lost her baby fat since Afia saw her last, and stood with her shoulders back, as if to show off the tiny bosom that the dupatta concealed. She'd had her period twice, she'd bragged to Afia the first moment they were alone, and Afia had hugged her and said, “Poor baby,” in a way that let her know she felt not pity but pride.

“You're tall for your age already,” she said. “I'd never wear them if I were tall like you.”

“I'm tall too!” cried Muska, pushing her way into the bathroom. For a moment they stood together, craning their necks high like a trio of geese, while their mother stood off to the side, shaking her head.

“My silly sisters,” Afia said.

•   •   •

T
wo hours later, Baba dropped Afia with her mother and sisters at the entrance to the wedding hall and drove to the lower parking lot with Khalid and Shahid. Afia had not looked at Shahid the whole drive—not because she was angry at him, she wasn't anymore, but because even a look would bring Gus into the car with them. She let out her breath as they left the men and went in their silky outfits to join the women at the
rukhsati
.

Inside the hall, the stage was festooned with fresh lilies and bloodred roses woven in with silver streamers and strings of white lights for a backdrop. On the puffy little couch at the center sat a shy, homely man in white kurta trimmed with gold embroidery, his turban-wrapped head balanced on his thin neck. He sported a wispy beard and a gentle smile for the dozen men of his family, the only men in the hall besides the DJ and the photographer, who came up to have their photographs taken with him. “He looks sweet,” said Muska.

“He looks old,” said Sobia, who had started trying out saucy opinions.

“He is thirty-two,” Moray said. She found them a spot at a table with aunts and cousins. “You can't call that old, not when he's had to get himself established.”

Moray, Afia thought, was sensitive on this subject, though she shouldn't have been. Her first husband—Afia's real Baba, whom she couldn't remember—had been young, twenty-seven to Farishta's eighteen. It was only when she married Tofan, the eldest, that she had a husband two decades older than she was. But it didn't matter, because Baba had never seemed old. He had been more playful with Afia and Shahid than either of his brothers. He would toss Afia in the air and catch her; he played cricket with Shahid and his friends. Moray knew she had been lucky, no matter the talk.

Greeting her relatives, Afia found herself scanning the room as more women entered in their silks and heels. “Moray,” she said, leaning over to her mother, “do you think Lema will be here? Her brother married Maryam's sister—”

“She lives outside Charsadda now,” Moray said quickly. “Long way to come.”

“I came. Cousin Gulnar came.” Afia nodded toward the only other female at the gathering who had traveled from North America. Gulnar had married an orthopedist and moved to his new home in Ottawa. The normally high-spirited Gulnar had been terrified of the journey, Afia remembered. Now she sat with her close relations, a baby on her lap and another in the belly, dressed in black niqab. They became more religious, it was said, the ones who were taken abroad.

“The journey's longer for some,” Moray said.

The DJ put on a dancing song, a Pashtun song. Afia's cousins pulled her away from the table. In front of the stage, they danced. The spike heels felt wobbly, and Afia dropped her dupatta twice. But the music fired her blood, and she forgot about anything she'd ever done to set herself apart from the girls around her. She clapped and swayed with them, the lights spinning. Somewhere in the dark at the back of the room, a knot of boys from the other side of the wedding building had gathered to watch the girls with their shiny hair and their arms half bared. Like the others, Afia lifted her arms higher, tilted her chin so her eyes caught the light. She couldn't help herself. They were fifteen in the circle. Virgins dancing, Afia thought. A dark question arose but she quickly scuttled it; she clapped and shouted.

Then the music slowed, and they returned to their seats, where there were trays of Mountain Dew and Pepsi, and Afia drank thirstily, wishing for plain water. Funny, how no one at Smith College drank Pepsi even though they drank beer. But the thought of Smith ushered in a thought of Gus—of his hands, his mouth, the fullness of the lower lip—and she guzzled the Pepsi and washed it away.

“Here she comes,” said Sobia at last. They turned as the spotlight swung over the crowd of women. It picked out Maryam, approaching from the back of the room, on the arm of her brother.

She was, Afia thought, a work of art. A red veil edged with a broad swath of gold and green embroidery, studded with mirrors and bits of colored glass, fell from the crown of her head over her shoulders, leaving her face exposed. From the top hung a diadem of ruby and gold in the center of her forehead, echoed by the heavy necklace that lay across her collarbone, above the tight embroidered bodice of her ruby-red gown. Her face looked, not beautiful, but majestic, with the deep kohl around her eyes and several pairs of false lashes; her cheeks both whitened and rouged at the bones, her small mouth stained red, almost in the shape of a heart. Holding fast to her brother, she took a step forward. Then the lights went out.

The women groaned. “Load shedding,” said Moray. “What a moment for it.”

“Poor girl,” said one of the aunts.

Afia sat in the dark. She had forgotten how it was always like this, the electricity going out at a moment's notice, the air dark and still and hot. She felt the anticipation in the room like that uncanny moment when the airplane leaves the tarmac, defying gravity.
This
was the journey, all the women were saying together. These heavy, glittering garments, this gold against the throat, this man waiting on a white couch. As soon as the lights came back on, they would have liftoff. What had Afia been thinking, off in that strange land, America? Had her brain gone upside down, that she should think of men and women like stray planets drawn to each other and not like stars in a constellation of family? Around her, the women buzzed. Sobia and Muska, holding hands, went scuttling in the dark between tables, headed for the trays of tiny cakes.

Zardad, that was the name. Whose parents would come to call, in a few days. She would need to look rested, healthful, humble, helpful. Zardad. She tried saying the name, silently, with her teeth and tongue. Back toward her throat, another name lingered.
Gus.