A House Without Windows (6 page)

Kaka Siar nodded in approval. Khala Zainab smiled encouragingly. They were already imagining what their home would feel like without their youngest daughter, picturing her making her way to the United States and being welcomed by Yusuf's parents.

Yusuf attempted to help clear the dinner dishes and take them into the kitchen. He'd been hoping for a chance to interact with Meena in a more casual setting, but Kaka Siar raised a hand and shook his head.

“You are our guest,” he said with a gentle smile. “You've come all this way after all these years, and in a few days you'll be headed out of the city to do some good work. Let's not be worried about a few dishes.”

It was true. Yusuf had only four more days in Kabul before he would be reporting for duty. He was eager to start working.

Energetic as he wanted to feel, jet lag was creeping in, and Yusuf's eyelids were growing heavy. He bit his tongue to stifle the yawns and, not wanting to be impolite, waited until after the fruit and sweets had been served to excuse himself for the evening.

“How many days do you have here? You'll have to come back.” Khala Zainab rested a hand on his forearm as he stood at the door.

He hoped he did not imagine the look of disappointment on Meena's face to see him leave.

THREE POLICE OFFICERS HAD ASSISTED HAKIMI IN ARRESTING
Zeba. Those men had been gruff, shoving her into their vehicle for transport to the prison located in the capital of their province. They'd been sad to see her go, knowing true justice would have been served if everyone had simply let Fareed finish what he'd started. Instead, Hakimi had ordered the villagers to pry Kamal's cousin off Zeba, leaving her crumpled on the ground gasping for air. Her children had screamed and shouted, certain they were about to lose a second parent that day.

Once they'd arrived at Chil Mahtab, the officers had turned her over to the prison guards, spitting on the ground as she was led away. Zeba moved through the hallways, her elbow held by a female prison guard, Asma, whose henna-stained red hair was pulled tightly into a low ponytail that made her look stern and decidedly unfriendly. Still, she was a fairy godmother compared to the male officers who'd just left, and Zeba felt her breathing ease.

Asma's overgrown bangs half hid a lazy eye. Her other eye flitted from the open doors of the prison cells to the ugly ring of bruises around the new prisoner's neck. They moved through the wide, tiled corridor. Asma, like most of the guards, treated the incarcerated women decently. There were no smiles or pleasantries exchanged, but nor were there blows or menacing looks.

The guards were all women, dressed in olive-colored jackets belted over shapeless ankle-length skirts or pants. Some wore the uniform proudly, excited by the authority they felt putting it on, the knowledge that they were in control and above someone, anyone. Other guards were uncomfortable in it, which Zeba could better understand. They were friendly and decent for the most part. The female guards seemed to appreciate that even they were one accusing finger away from being thrown in jail alongside the prisoners.

Zeba shared a cell with three women who ogled her freely as she was led into their narrow quarters by a guard. Zeba had grown accustomed, in the last two days, to having all kinds of eyes on her.

“That's your bed. You get the bottom bunk.”

Zeba followed their collective gazes and took a seat on a mattress that was as firm as the concrete floor. The cell contained two bunk beds, a small television in the corner, and a United Nations calendar on the wall. The bunk bed opposite Zeba's had a dust ruffle of purple and yellow stripes. On the space of wall over it, her cellmate had hung a pink teddy bear in a protective plastic bag. The top bunk had pages from a magazine plastered on the wall—pictures of women in full makeup, Bollywood actors and actresses, and even one of a cartoon kitten, its eyes wide as saucers, its paws holding a bouquet of sunflowers.

The other women in the cell looked her over, taking stock of her mottled neck and skittish eyes.

“So tell us why you're here. What did you do?”

When the questions began, Zeba shook her head, closed her eyes, and lay down. Her roommates were left to conjure up their own theories. They had hoped a new cellmate would break the monotony of their days. But Zeba, a stone-faced tenant, offered them no reprieve.

They went back to their card game while Zeba lay motionless, listening to their chatter and learning who was who.

There was Nafisa, a sharp-tongued woman in her midthirties whose defiant manner had won her no mercy from the judge. She'd
been accused by a relative for an improper relationship with a man, a widower who worked as a blacksmith. Specifically, they'd been seen eating together in a park one evening. Nafisa had never been married, which had not bothered her aging parents until the accusations reached their doorstep. Her three older brothers were furious with her for tarnishing their family's good name. While Nafisa swore it had been nothing more than a quick bite with a platonic friend, few believed her story. That she'd been an obedient and loving daughter and sister all her life did not change a thing. Nafisa's mother, fearing her sons would see no way to restore their honor except by spilling Nafisa's blood, decided to report the crime to the police herself.

With tears streaming down her face and her hands trembling, Nafisa's mother led her belligerent daughter to the police station and turned her in.

I've done nothing,
Nafisa had cried out.
I swear to God I've not sinned!

Take her,
her mother had whispered hoarsely.
She's acted dishonorably.

Nafisa had been convicted of attempted
zina,
or sex outside of marriage. She'd been sentenced to three years.

Her mother visited weekly. Nafisa never blamed her mother, knowing she might not be alive had it not been for her. All her hopes now rested on the slim chance that the widower, a man in his forties, would ask for her hand in marriage. It was true that the meal they'd shared had been the culmination of phone calls and other small flirtations. But it was unclear if the budding connection between them would amount to anything now that Nafisa had been cast as a wanton woman.

But if the man truly wanted her, if he could convince his family to see past this scandal, Nafisa could be released and, more important, her honor might just be recovered.

“I'm not a child. I should be able to eat in the park when I want. And anyway, we weren't doing anything wrong. We were just eating. My mother had made some
bulanee
and I wanted to share it with him,” she insisted, her voice unwavering.

“I bet that wasn't all you shared with him,” cackled Latifa.

Latifa, who had relinquished the bottom bunk to Zeba, was a brazen twenty-five-year-old with a deep voice and wide body. She looked as if she were snarling even when she was at her most cheerful. Latifa had never really looked like a child, nor had her family ever treated her like one. She'd been beaten and cursed at until the day she'd decided she could take no more. Without much fuss or planning, Latifa slipped a few of her father's cigarettes into her jacket pocket, took her fifteen-year-old sister by the hand, and walked calmly out the front door, never expecting they would be missed. She took the local bus to a larger city and from there she found another bus that would take her to Herat, where she hoped they could escape into Iran. Latifa ran out of money quickly. She was two days' travel from home and needed a place to stay, so she befriended a woman in the market, explaining that she was a widow and passing her sister off as her daughter. The woman reluctantly offered to shelter them for the night.

In the morning, Latifa and her sister returned to the bus station to continue their journey. At a checkpoint, the police questioned her and, seeing the way her sister shifted under their gaze, became suspicious. When they accused her of intending to prostitute her sister, she became indignant. She reported that she'd spent the night in the home of a decent woman, but by then they'd tracked down her family and decided she could be charged with kidnapping and with running away from home. Her sister had been returned to their home and, shortly thereafter, married off to a distant relative. Latifa had then refused an attorney, choosing instead to represent herself before the judge.

It was all my doing,
she'd said, tapping her hand over her breastbone and nodding affirmatively.
I decided to flee that miserable home. I wanted to save myself and my sister.

Latifa had no interest in leaving Chil Mahtab, a place where she was treated better than she'd ever been treated in her life. Had she known what prison would be like, Latifa often thought, she might have marched herself past the barbed-wire fence long ago, turning herself in for some kind of impropriety.

Now she was serving a seven-year sentence for running away from home, kidnapping, and attempted prostitution.

Mezhgan was a doe-eyed nineteen-year-old, half the size of her cellmates and nowhere near as bold. When she'd refused to marry her sister's brother-in-law, her suitor's family had become indignant. Soon, they became aware that she was in love with a boy in her neighborhood and, in retaliation, had pointed their angry fingers and had had her arrested. Two weeks after her arrest, Mezhgan had been taken to a health clinic for a virginity test. Watching her empty the contents of her stomach in the small exam room, the doctor had performed a pregnancy test that only proved Mezhgan's guilt.

She'd cried for days, unsure how those few stolen moments could have possibly led to a child and the undoing of her reputation.

“The worst part is that Haroon is in prison too,” she mourned. “I swear I did not do what they say I've done. It was nothing like that.”

Mezhgan's parents had pleaded with Haroon's family to allow the two to marry but Haroon's family wanted nothing to do with them.

“I'm sure Haroon is upset. I know he loves me and would do anything he could to get us both out of here. His parents must be refusing to listen to him.”

Latifa let out a deep, throaty laugh.

“Ah yes. There could be no other explanation for why he's not asked for your hand in marriage yet.”

Mezhgan sighed sharply.

“He has, I'm sure. But his mother, she's impossible. She doesn't like me very much. She said I chased after her son, but that's not true at all. Haroon used to follow me home from school. He really and truly loves me. Did I ever tell you that he even called Radio Sabaa once and talked about how the world was trying to keep us apart?”

“You've told me once a week since you've been here. But no one gives their names on Radio Sabaa. You can't be sure he called. Maybe it was someone else.”

“I heard the call, Latifa. He said his beloved was elegant as the
letter
alif,
with eyebrows as graceful as the letter
sheen
. Isn't that beautiful?” She sighed, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to regain control of her emotions. “That's just the kind of thing he would say and, besides, I know my love's voice.”

“You know a lot more than his voice, little mother,” Latifa laughed. “If you ask me, the producers and hosts of Radio Sabaa should be in jail instead of all these women. They're letting people talk about romance and love as if there's a place for it. Some poor girl is going to fall in love because she hears an idiot boy on the radio talk about how he can't live without her. Guess where she's going to wind up? She'll be taking up the last empty bed in Chil Mahtab, that's where.”

“People don't fall in love because of something they hear on the radio,” Mezhgan contested, her tone steeped in frustration. Her lips pulled into a thoughtful pout. She was early enough in her pregnancy that it had barely changed her figure. She'd also stopped vomiting about a week before Zeba's arrival, which she knew meant she was about three months along. She'd seen her mother through the last two of her pregnancies and knew just what to expect. She put her hands on her flat belly, and her expression turned wistful. “It's about feeling a connection. It's about not being able to sleep without talking to them every day and holding your breath until you can be together again.”

“He was that hard to resist, this boy?”

“Oh, Latifa. I'm not a poet. I don't have the words for this. All I know is that from the second I set eyes on him, his dark hair, his handsome eyes . . . I could be dead and buried and I'd still be hot for him!”

Nafisa smiled brightly. Mezhgan spoke for her, too, though she would never dare confess her passions. How could she ever hope to be found innocent if she acted that way?

The words escaped her lips before Zeba could think twice about speaking them:

“Men love for a moment because they are clever

Women are fools because they love forever.”

“What did you say?” Nafisa demanded.

“She called you both fools!” Latifa chortled. “Didn't take her long to get to know you!”

Zeba broke her silence, her voice airy and distant. She spoke to the windowless walls and the plastic chairs, the metal frame of the bunk bed, and the rough green carpet under her feet. She had yet to look directly at her cellmates, maybe because it would redefine her as one of them, a prisoner of Chil Mahtab.

“It's just something I do out of habit, something I learned long ago from a woman who had lived in the south. Women would get together in secret, in a house or by the river, and share these short poems, just words. Just ways to empty a heavy chest.”

Mezhgan shrugged her shoulders.

“I like it. I suppose that makes you something of a poet.”

“Anyone with a heavy chest can be a poet,” Zeba said before closing her eyes.

IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, ZEBA REMAINED DETACHED. THE
women gave up interest in her and went about their business. She was with them but not one of them. Listening to their conversations, she learned the spectrum of criminals housed in Chil Mahtab: petty thieves, drug smugglers, and murderers. Zeba's cellmates, however, were some of the many women imprisoned for crimes of morality—falling in love or running away from home.

The women forgave Zeba's aloofness because of something they saw in her bloodshot eyes, the way she stared off into space. They shared their stories, waiting for the day when they would learn hers.

The prison was a small world. The cells were unlocked for the most part, and women walked through the hallways, gathering in open rooms or in the yard. There was a dark kitchen full of pots deep enough to hold a watermelon, a classroom that consisted of a blackboard and slivers of chalk, and a playroom for the many chil
dren who lived in the prison with their mothers. The classroom was a shared space, used sometimes for the women and other times for the children. There was even a beauty salon, a lopsided chair set up in front of a lighted mirror. In front of the mirror were eyeshadow palettes of varied shades, lipsticks in bold hues, and tweezers. Some were purchased through the guards. Some were brought by family members or even the legal aid attorneys to keep up the women's spirits. Crayon graffiti covered the hallways, the canvas for the children of Chil Mahtab.