A Sister to Honor (31 page)

His short, short life.

The woman in the blue burqa stood very still as Farishta approached. In her left hand she carried a small traveling bag. Her shuttlecock mask cast a grid of shadow onto the eyes and nose on the other side. But as she drew close, Farishta had no doubt. Fear and exhilaration grappled in her chest. “Afia,” she breathed.

“Moray,” came her daughter's voice from within the shroud. “Moray, I've come home.”

Farishta's shoulders pulled forward, to wrap her arms around her girl. But anyone could be watching—from the mulberry orchard, from one of the mud houses in the village, from the crowded road below. She kept her arms at her side. From her cheeks she wiped tears of joy. “My sparrow,” she said, always her pet name for her oldest daughter,
merghey
, “you've flown such a long way.”

“I had to, Moray, you don't know what happened, Shahid and Khalid, they—”

“Ssh. Softly.” She patted the air with her hand, tamping it down. “I know.”

“So you know it wasn't me. You know—”

“What's done is done.” Farishta shook her head. She could not allow this joy to compromise what she knew was right. “You set it in motion, Allah knows.”

“I did.” Afia took a step forward, Farishta a step back. She could feel the village women's eyes swinging her way from across the field. “That's why I've come, Moray. To set it right. To seek
nanawate
. To do what Shahid wanted me to do—and I was going to, Moray, if he hadn't tried to kill me, I—”

Farishta's blood went suddenly cold. “My son did not try to kill you.”

“No, no, Moray, I mean . . .” Afia's voice trailed off. Beneath the burqa she dug into her pants pocket, and Farishta watched her hands behind the shuttlecock mask as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

She meant Khalid. But they could not say his name, not like that, not here in Nasirabad. Farishta felt nothing but dismay. “You must be exhausted,” she said.

Afia's blue head bobbed. “I haven't slept in three days.”

“We must find somewhere for you to stay. While we think what to do.”

“I can't—”

“Stay at home? No, my little bird. You would bring shame on us all. I cannot have it.”

“But I am trying to do what—what Shahid wanted. He wanted me to come home. To marry Zardad. And I am ready now, Moray. To marry him. To do whatever he orders. I will marry him right away, if you want, and you will never have to lay eyes on me again.”

“Afia, Afia.” Farishta risked a glance back toward the mulberry orchard. Several women had come down from the trees and stood with their baskets, watching. Sobia and Muska could run up to the road at any moment. She turned and began walking, slowly, down toward the main road, as if she had met this traveler and was helping her on her way. “It is too late for that,” she said as Afia followed her. “Zardad's family will have withdrawn the offer. My son”—her voice cracked, she could not speak Shahid's name either—“my son died on account of your sin, and everyone knows it. Inshallah, our family will not lose the respect of the village. There has been no trial here, no proof. But it all depends on your disappearing, Afia. Disappearing from our world. Marriage”—she gave an involuntary, bitter chuckle—“is completely out of the question.”

“But, Moray, if I can't come home—” Afia stepped in front of her, then stopped. They were out of sight of the orchard, now. “Where will I go?”

“That is a question only you can answer, my sparrow.” Farishta risked a hand reaching out, gripping her daughter's for a moment. “Hide yourself somewhere until the sun is setting,” she said. “Then make your way to Tayyab's hut. We can trust him. He knows—he brought me the true story. If I ask, he will shelter you for the night.”

“And then?” Afia's voice was weak, pleading.

“I will find what I can to help you on your way. By this time tomorrow, you must be gone from Nasirabad.”

•   •   •

T
hat night Farishta lay awake, listening as if something in the darkness would call to her, would ask for her strong hands, her quick tongue to save the thin, sad-looking girl who was all that remained of her first brood. A strange seizure of desire for Tofan crept over her—desire she'd never felt before, when he first took her to his bed and did more slowly and gently what his brother had done with quick dispatch. She hungered for his hands parting her thighs, for his fennel-spiced breath on her neck, for him to fill up the space now left empty inside her. But he slept in the
hujra
. Once, long ago, after Muska was born and the rest of the family was sorrowing over the birth of yet another girl, Tofan had said, “Do you know, my wife, what is the greatest love on earth?”

It had been a riddle, she thought then. The answer could not be the love of Allah, since that was not truly on earth. Nor could it be a woman's love for her man, since such love rubbed elbows with sin and so needed to be kept in check. She had looked into Muska's dark blue eyes and given the obvious answer, though under the disappointing circumstances it seemed weak and insufficient. “A mother's love for her children,” she had said.

“You are wrong.” He had reached forward a thick index finger, and the baby had latched her little mouth onto it and sucked hard. “A mother loves her children because it is in her nature. She cannot do otherwise. A father loves his sons because they will carry on his family; they will make him proud. But when a father loves a daughter, he loves what will only cost him, and what he is fated to lose. And yet he loves her without condition. That is the greatest love in the world.”

Now she lay restless in her anxiety and desire. Tofan had taken both Afia and Shahid as his own children, his own daughter and son. How he would thrill to lay eyes on Afia. But then, loving her, he would have no choice but to lay his hands on her, to wipe away her shame. As dawn crept over the valley, Farishta rose from her lonely bed. Reaching into the bottom of her mending basket, she pulled out the envelope of rupees she kept there, saved from her change at the markets and what the army had paid at her first husband's death. Tucking it inside a finely woven shawl, she slipped across the courtyard. In the covered area outside the stoop, embers still glowed from Tayyab's wife's cooking fire.

A
fia woke at first light in Panra's narrow bed. On the floor beside her, Panra slept on a straw mattress. Tayyab had insisted—the young memsahib had had a long journey, she needed her rest, he would not hear of her sleeping on the floor, what would her mother think of him? They had stuffed Afia with chicken and rice and lentils and bread and sent her off when her lids began to droop.

Afia had last been in Tayyab's hut seven years ago. She had gotten her menses and rushed to tell Panra about it. The very next day, her mother had informed her that from then on, as a woman, she was not to play on the dirt floor of the servants' quarters. Panra had understood even before Afia did. They still walked together with Lema to the corner shop for a treat of cherry-red Rooh Afza, but soon after that Panra left school and was sent to work at Uncle Omar's, in Peshawar.

Now Afia rolled over to find Panra with her hands clasped behind her head, staring up at the thatched ceiling. It was their only chance to speak. Nothing of what had happened in America could pass their lips while Tayyab's wife and younger daughters, even his slow-witted son, were gathered close. They had given Afia their condolences for Shahid's death, but as if a disease had carried him off, or a car accident. “Panra,” she whispered.

Panra shifted on her pallet. She had a big, plain face, with reddish hair that sprang from her high forehead. She was her parents' eldest daughter now, with the death of her two sisters. Last night, her mother had mentioned a possible husband, a soldier. “But we won't be hasty,” Tayyab had said, and Panra had looked relieved.

“Are you all right?” Panra whispered now. “Did you sleep?”

“Like an ox. I'm sure I snored,” said Afia, and they giggled. Afia glanced around the still-dark room. Tayyab and his wife slept behind one curtain, their son behind another, and the other girls on cots lining the walls. No one seemed to stir. “Will you go back to Peshawar today?” she asked. “To my uncle's?”

“I don't know. It depends on my father. What about you? If you cannot marry Zardad—”

“I can't give up yet,” Afia said. “I thought—maybe, if you go back to my uncle's house—I could go with you. Omar has seen more of the world than my mother has. If he will plead my case—” She stopped. Panra's eyes had gone wide.

“You must not go near him,” she said. “He will kill you. If he learned that I brought the truth to your mother, he would kill me.”

Slowly, in whispers, Panra told her how Khalid had been sent to America, who had funded him and to what purpose. Afia felt the matchstick house of her future crumble into a brittle pile. “I can go nowhere, then,” she said softly.

“Don't say that. You can go to the nuns, in Peshawar. They help women.”

The nuns. Afia had seen them, squatting among the polio-stricken at the central market in Peshawar, with their white robes and their earnest faces. “I'll figure something out,” she said. “You mustn't get more involved. You've been very brave already, bringing this news to my mother.”

“She didn't like hearing it.”

“But it answers so much. You do know . . . what happened? Over there?”

Panra picked at the straw sticking out of her mattress. “I can guess.”

“Why did you tell my mother? Why take such a risk?”

Even in the dim light, she could see Panra's skin flush pink. She hesitated a long while before speaking. “I—I loved Shahid,” she whispered at last. “We all did, but . . . I really loved him. The way they do in movies. You know.”

Afia nodded. She did know.

“And I could not live with your mother thinking he would try to hurt you. I had to bring her the truth.”

“Ssh,” Afia said. Movement, from the other side of the curtain. “We'll talk later,” Afia said.

•   •   •

B
ut they never did. As soon as they were up, before Tayyab went to prepare breakfast at the house, Moray knocked softly and slipped inside the hut. Her face was drawn tight, her eyes bleary from lack of sleep. Tayyab's three younger daughters arranged their dupattas and greeted the memsahib. Tayyab's wife went to make tea, but Moray stopped her. Anâ was already awake, she said; she would have to get back quickly. Even yesterday, the village women had questioned her about the stranger she'd spoken with, on the road. Last night she had not been able to concentrate on her duties. Sweeping too vigorously, she had toppled a porcelain vase, one of Badrai's wedding gifts. She could not have suspicion fall on her; if the men of the family knew Afia was in Nasirabad, she could not account for what they might do.

“I didn't mean to bring you trouble, Moray,” Afia said. “I only hoped—”

“Hush, child.” Her mother had an embroidered shawl draped over her forearm. This she pressed against Afia's chest, bringing Afia's hand up to clutch it there. Afia felt the package, flat and hard, inside.

“Moray, you mustn't,” she said. “These are your savings.”

“For what else would I save them? Hide them well.” As Moray wrapped her arms around her, Afia felt the thickness of the envelope. There had to be fifty thousand rupees inside. “You're so thin,” Moray said.

Afia breathed her mother's scent, the tea rinse she used on her hair and the rose oil she liked to dab behind her ears. She felt her mother's plump breasts against the shawl, breasts that had pillowed her head when she'd had a fever or come home distraught from teasing at school. “I don't want to go,” she said, her voice muffled by Moray's dupatta.

“There's no choice.” Moray pulled away. She lifted Afia's glasses from her face and dabbed Afia's eyes with a corner of her dupatta. Seen without glasses, her familiar face looked blurry, already a face in a dream. “He will not stop,” she said. “You know that.”

“That's why I came home. If I could only—”

“You have to write down your address for me. So I can send news.”

“But I don't know where I'll be, Moray. I don't know where to go.”

“Write the university address. Tell them to keep my letters for you. But don't write me back. Do not call. If my words find you, Allah will be sure that I know it.”

•   •   •

L
eaving her home for the last time, Afia took a bowl of lentils and yogurt from Tayyab and walked slowly down the long hill in the morning light, her burqa enclosing her from the world. Panra stayed behind. Perhaps she would return tomorrow, to Uncle Omar's compound. Perhaps never. Passing Afia on the road, farmworkers glanced quickly at the screen that hid her face. Then they went on, complaining about the heat and the elections.

“Boy,” she said when she reached the main square of the village. A dark, sullen young man lounged against his brightly painted autorickshaw. “How much to Peshawar?”

“Two thousand rupees.” He must have thought her burqa looked expensive.

“A thousand.”

“Twelve hundred. Get in.”

She did as she was told. Strange, how fear seemed to thicken the air. She had traveled alone all the way from Northampton to Nasirabad. Had boarded the shuttle bus, negotiated the swarms of travelers at JFK, bought the burqa at the Qatar airport, made her way past thieves and porters at Peshawar to summon, in her bravest voice, a rickshaw to convey her home. All of it had seized her throat with nervous anticipation. But now that her plan had proved as fragile as a soap bubble, every move felt steep and slow. And to think that Omar, the name that had taken up space in her plans as a refuge, a safe retreat were she not able to marry Zardad—to think that he had been the one hurling death her way in the first place! She felt stupid, like a peasant who cannot read the message on a signboard clear as day.

•   •   •

I
n Peshawar she paid the rickshaw driver and asked at one street corner and another until she found the house run by the nuns. Even swathed in the blue burqa, she felt exposed, as if the crowds around her could view not just her flesh but her heart, her lungs.
Sisters of Loretto
, the sign outside the house read. But the heavyset nun who answered the door said she was sorry, they had no room for her. They had women there with children, women with burn scars over their bodies, women in danger of being buried alive. They gave her a meal of chickpeas and rice, and sent her on her way. As the afternoon wore on, the air pressed heavier. What if Omar learned why his servant Panra had returned to Nasirabad? What if he discovered Afia in Peshawar? She found the bus station and withdrew two of the bills from her mother's envelope to pay for the coach bus to Islamabad.

•   •   •

R
eturning to America was not a conscious decision. When she rose the next morning, sleepless but safe in a hotel by the Islamabad airport, it seemed she was already halfway through the only open door. To be in Nasirabad, to be in Peshawar, to be anywhere in Pakistan and yet not be among her family felt like a living death. A woman without a family was nothing. She had no voice, no face.

With Shahid's bank card, she was able to buy a one-way ticket. Less than seventy-two hours after she had landed in Pakistan yearning for home, she was flying away. In the airport she stood in line with the workers headed for the Gulf states to work on oil rigs. Clad in the burqa, she was invisible. They spat on the floor around her; they joked about the
houris
in Qatar. It had been different when she'd flown with Shahid—but Shahid was dead, and she was drifting like pollen back across the oceans. When she'd buckled into her seat on the plane, the tribesman next to her spread himself out, his elbows wide and his bare foot with its dirt-black toenails crossed over his knee. Falling asleep, she heard a loud hissing sound, like someone chasing away chickens. She opened her eyes to the tribesman, eyes wide, hissing and clucking at her. He needed to use the toilet, but he would not touch her with his hands or speak to her. She was only a body to him, a thing to be gotten out of the way.

In Qatar, she chucked the burqa into a bin. She wrapped her mother's shawl around her shoulders, the money nestled at the bottom of her bag.

Twenty hours later, America—where no one had a family, and no one knew where she was. But as soon as she exited the plane, she began glancing around. She stepped off the bus onto the familiar streets of Northampton. She spent another sleepless night in the Melville Motel. She presented herself to Dean Myers. Not once did she stop sweeping her gaze left and right. She kept whirling about, like a snake catching its own tail, to see what made the odd sound or the threatening silence. Her thinking had gone crooked. She was not herself. Her body was in one piece, but her spirit was like a body after a bombing, scattered and unrecognizable.

In this way, three days passed. “You've got to go to classes, Afia,” Patty said. “You'll flunk out if you don't. I'm really sorry about your brother. But you have to get a grip. You want to see a shrink? I know a good one.”

“No,” Afia said.

Her mobile still worked. They would cut it off eventually, she supposed, unless she used Shahid's computer to pay the bill. But there was no one she wanted to talk to. Thirty missed calls, most of them from Coach Hayes. One from Gus. A handful from Afran, who also left text messages. He'd gotten her number from Coach, he wrote. He was worried because no one had seen her. He had a set of wheels now; he thought he'd come by.

Not possible, she thought. And Afran would give up soon. He didn't need her; no one needed her, not anymore. Not her family, none of whom she'd ever see again, and not the poor women of the tribal areas, for she would never survive long enough to earn her medical degree. Not the other students at Smith. After she'd forced herself to rise from bed and attend a day of classes, Patty and Taylor sat her down and advised her to “lose the hijab.” By the weekend Taylor was saying that Afia was creeping her out, and on Tuesday Taylor moved to another suite, leaving Patty and Afia to share a space that felt strangely smaller with just the two of them. That same day, she got a call to meet again with Dean Myers. Dean Myers was a plump woman with a menacing smile and cropped African hair that looked flecked with cotton. Given her situation, Dean Myers said, they had bent all the rules. They had made allowances. Then she had not only disappeared for more than a week, but reappeared insisting that no one but the authorities needed to know of her safe arrival. She was not inspiring trust, Dean Myers said. Was she afraid of something? Dean Myers wanted to help. If Afia would not be forthcoming, she could not help.

She wanted only to focus, Afia said, on her work. So much to make up.

Khalid, she knew, would never give up. He lurked somewhere nearby, his focus unwavering. What was that old story, about Death? How a man journeys far to escape him, only to arrive at the very place where Death patiently waits. Afia had returned to America because Shahid's wishes for her had died with him, because Pakistan would have blotted her out. She had not returned in order to seek out Khalid. But in the end, ten days after she landed, she did exactly that.