The Pearl that Broke Its Shell (55 page)

Badriya had grown accustomed to my help. With me, the parliamentary sessions were easier to follow. I read all the briefs to her. I filled out and submitted all her documents. She listened as I went through the newspaper headlines to give her some background for the
jirga
discussions. She finally felt like she was participating in the process, like she was a woman our province should admire for her role in government. As if she were actually serving her constituency.

She was ignoring the fact that it was another man who decided if she should raise the red or green paddle when voting time came. She believed the lie of Badriya the female parliamentarian, and that was all that mattered to her.

As much as I wanted her to shut up and walk away, I knew I had to make a decision.

An escape. I need to find an escape.

I’d been to the cemetery where Jahangir was buried only once, two months after I’d come home from Kabul to find my son cold and gray. Abdul Khaliq finally gave me permission to go with Bibi Gulalai and his driver. The dead can see people naked, superstition said, so he didn’t think it was proper for his wife to step foot in the cemetery. I didn’t believe it to be true and even if it were, I didn’t care. I wanted to see where my son was buried. I asked Jameela to bring it up with him and she did. I knew I was playing on her sympathy when I asked her the favor but I was desperate. I don’t know what magical words she used but our husband relented.

My mother-in-law and I stood over Jahangir’s grave marker. Her wailing echoed across the emptiness, the same mournful cries that she’d made two months ago. I was quiet for a time. I didn’t think I had tears left to shed.

“You sweet innocent child! I can’t believe this was your time, your
naseeb
. Dear God, my poor grandson was so young to be taken from us!”

I stood there in disbelief. How could this mound of earth be my little boy? How could this be all that remained of my grinning, curious child?

But it was. And the more I thought of it, the more Bibi Gulalai’s wailing tore at my heart. I wanted to dig into the dirt, to plunge my hands into the earth and touch my son’s hand, to feel his fingers close around mine again. I wanted to curl up beside him, keep him warm and whisper to him that he wasn’t alone, that he shouldn’t be afraid.

“What is our family to do? Why did we deserve such tragedy? His smiling face, oh, it dances before my eyes and rips at my heart!”

I started to cry. Silently at first, then louder and louder until I was loud enough that Bibi Gulalai noticed over the sound of her own lamenting.

She turned around and shot me an icy glare.

“Haven’t I told you a hundred times to watch how you act? Are you trying to shame our family?”

I sucked in my sobs, feeling my chest tense as I tried to contain it all.

“It’s a sin! It’s a sin for you to try to draw so much attention. Don’t make such a scene here. It’s disrespectful to the dead and people are watching!”

No one was watching. We were all alone. Maroof stood back, leaning against the SUV and waiting for us to return to the car. I swallowed my sorrow and looked to the sky. Three gray-brown red-breasted finches flew overhead. They circled three times, swooped down toward us, then floated back to a tree about forty feet away. They cooed and clucked and cocked their heads so purposefully that I almost thought they were talking to me.

Bibi Gulalai pulled a handful of bread crumbs from her dress pocket and scattered them over Jahangir’s grave. She tossed another palmful on a grave to the left, skipped one and tossed some more on a grave to the right.

“Shehr-Agha-
jan,
” she said with a sigh. “May the heavens be your place for eternity.”

I recognized the name as belonging to Abdul Khaliq’s grandfather. Stories about him, the great warrior, were recounted so often that I had to remind myself I’d never seen him. He’d been gone over a decade.

The finches noticed the sprinkle of food and took flight again, swooping in gracefully and pecking here and there at the newly found bounty. Bibi Gulalai spread what was left on the graves that fell further away. Still she skipped the one to the immediate right of Jahangir.

“Eat, eat,” she said mournfully. “Eat and pray for my grandson. And for my beloved father-in-law. God rest his soul and may Allah keep him close and peaceful always.”

I watched. The finches bobbed their heads, picking at the crumbs and chirping their gratitude. It did look like they were praying, their little heads going up and down as if in supplication. It gave me some solace.

I looked at the grave marker beside Abdul Khaliq’s grandfather, Shehr-Agha. This area was where everyone from my husband’s family was buried. I wondered why Bibi Gulalai chose to ignore this one grave.

“Who is buried here?” I asked. I usually didn’t invite any conversation with my mother-in-law but at this moment I didn’t want to feel so alone. At least she had brought the praying finches to my son. Jahangir would have loved to see the birds, their tiny beaks. I could picture him imitating their delicate walk, their flapping wings and their red chests puffed out proudly.

“There?” She pointed hatefully. “That’s where Abdul Khaliq’s grandmother is buried, Shehr-Agha’s wife. My mother-in-law.”

Her lips drew tightly together.

“You didn’t toss any seeds there.”

Bibi Gulalai stared at the earth angrily. She spoke after a moment of thought.

“Abdul Khaliq’s grandmother and I did not see eye to eye. She was an awful woman. No one liked her,” she explained without looking at me. “I was respectful to her while she was alive but I’ve no interest in wasting my time praying for her soul now.”

This was the first time I’d heard Bibi Gulalai talk about her mother-in-law. And it was the first time I heard her speak ill of anyone from her in-laws’ side of the family. I was surprised at how spiteful she was. I shouldn’t have been.

“When did she die?”

“Ten years ago,” she said, and signaled to Maroof that we were ready to leave. He opened the rear door and turned back to the front to get behind the wheel. “She was an evil woman if there ever was one. She told my husband terrible things about me. None of them true, mind you, just poisoning his mind against me.”

I closed my eyes, knelt at my son’s grave and said one more prayer, rushing through the verse so fast I slurred the Arabic words in my head, afraid that I would get pulled into the car before I could finish. But Bibi Gulalai paused—as if she were waiting for me.

I lowered my head and kissed the earth, the finches chirping sympathetically and watching me from the safety of their perch.

“I’m sorry, Jahangir,” I whispered, my cheek cooled by the feet of dirt between my son and me. “I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you. May Allah watch over you always.”

I stood and took a deep breath, my eyes blurred with tears. We got into the car and I realized Bibi Gulalai was still thinking, unaffectionately, about her mother-in-law.

“She made my life miserable,” she finally said. “I did everything for that woman. Cooked and cleaned and took care of her son like no other wife would have. I cooked for their whole family, any time she had guests, when she was struck with a craving. But nothing was ever to her liking. She bad-mouthed me every chance she got.”

I listened, seeing a different side of my mother-in-law. And feeling, for the first time, that she and I had something in common. Ironically.

“What happened to her?”

“What happened to her? What happens to everyone! She died.” Her tone was sarcastic and annoyed. “She wasn’t feeling well one night. Asked me to rub her legs for her, so I did. Greased her dry feet and massaged them so long I thought my hands would never open again. The next morning, she came to check on the soup I was making. Shehr-Agha-
jan,
God rest his soul, he had invited thirty people over for lunch. She stood there, looming over my shoulder like a jailer watches his inmates, complaining that I was taking too long or something like that. She didn’t look right though. I remember like it was yesterday. She was a pale yellow color and her forehead was sweaty. I thought it was odd because it was the middle of winter. Before I could say anything, she grabbed my arm and her neck twisted to the side. She fell to the ground and knocked over a bowl of onions I’d just finished peeling for the stew.”

I watched her recount the story. She was looking out the window, the cars’ tires spinning up clouds of dust that obscured the view. It was as if she wasn’t talking to me, just reliving the memory.

“I had to get everyone, let everyone know. What a day. But that’s how she died—unappreciative of what I was doing up until her very last breath. That’s the kind of hard-hearted woman she was.”

In other circumstances, I might have told Bibi Gulalai that I understood, that I could sympathize with her.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” she said, suddenly remembering I was sitting beside her.

That was my only visit to my son’s grave. I knew Abdul Khaliq opposed my going there. Truthfully, I wasn’t even sure I was strong enough to go back. It wasn’t easy. I lay awake all that night and the next wondering if Jahangir felt like he was suffocating in there. Shahnaz heard my crying through the thin walls and groaned in frustration. I couldn’t get my mind off my little boy.

When Badriya came to me again to ask if I wanted to go back to Kabul, I thought about it and made a decision that I thought Khala Shaima would approve of. I packed my bag, my heart heavy with guilt for leaving my son behind again.

I thought of the cemetery, the rows of headstones, simple and hand carved. Some old, some new. The finches had watched us until we left. I saw them chirping to one another as we drove off and then, one by one, the birds had flown away.

CHAPTER 63

I
t wasn’t easy to stay focused on the work this time. Halfway into a parliamentarian’s speech, I would realize I had no idea what he was talking about. My mind had drifted, remembering the last time I’d bathed my son. Or fed him
halva,
his favorite food.

Badriya noticed but her exasperation was tempered by sympathy. Most of the time. She was hardly paying attention herself. She spent most of the session pretending to look at papers in front of her when I could see she was watching the people in the room. For a woman who had spent the greater part of her life confined by the walls of her husband’s house, every session was a spectacle.

She was even more lax with me than before, which didn’t mean much except that I spent more time with Hamida and Sufia and less time with her or our security guard and driver. The ladies were kind to me. When Badriya had returned to Kabul without me, they’d asked about me several times. She’d made vague excuses until she finally told them about Jahangir.

Sufia’s arms around me were more comforting than I could have imagined. Hamida shook her head and told me of the three-year-old son she’d lost to some infection. She and her husband hadn’t had the money at the time to pay for medications.

I forced a smile and nodded, appreciative of their warmth but not wanting to talk about what had happened. There was too much there and I still felt a fresh guilt for leaving my dead son behind.

The home Abdul Khaliq was fixing had not yet been finished, so we continued to stay at the hotel. I floated through my daily routine in a perpetual state of misery, wondering from time to time why I bothered to do any of it at all. I think I was driven by fear of my husband. And because I didn’t know what else to do.

Badriya was dropping hints here and there about our husband’s new prospect. As much as she didn’t want to talk to me, there was no one else around and there were things that she could not bottle up.

“I’m not supposed to say anything. I only know because, of course, he thought it was right to share this information with me since I’m the first wife,” she said with one hand over her chest as she spoke of her own importance. “The girl’s name is Khatol. She’s very beautiful, they say. And Abdul Khaliq has known her brother for a long time. Her brother is a well-respected man. He fought alongside Abdul Khaliq but now he owes a lot of money to our husband. He showed him and his family much kindness. Even sent them food when he heard they didn’t even have bread.”

“But what will happen to… to the rest of us?” I didn’t want Badriya to know that I’d heard her conversation with Bibi Gulalai.

“The rest of us? Nothing! Why should anything happen to the rest of us?” she said, and busied herself cleaning a grease spot from her dress. “Aren’t you going to that silly class with your friends?”

She wouldn’t say anything more than that, nothing about my husband’s plans to keep in line with the
hadith
. It wasn’t in her interests to alert me.

I didn’t understand why my husband suddenly found it so important that he follow the
hadith
. He wasn’t a man who let rules dictate his decisions. If he wanted to have five wives, or twenty-five for that matter, he would.

Thick, industrial smoke from a million exhaust pipes blackened Kabul’s air. Badriya coughed violently. I would ask, only because she would bring it up later if I didn’t, if she wanted to join the ladies and me at the resource center. Each time she would wave me off.