fact that he had not raised a hand to her, Mariam, since he had dug the girl out from under
those bricks.
It was the staged delivery. Like a performance. An attempt on his part, both sly and
pathetic, to impress. To charm.
And suddenly Mariam knew that her suspicions were right. She understood with a dread
that was like a blinding whack to the side of her head that what she was witnessing was
nothing less than a courtship.
When shed at last worked up the nerve, Mariam went to his room.
Rasheed lit a cigarette, and said, "Why not?"
Mariam knew right then that she was defeated. She'd half expected, half hoped, that he
would deny everything, feign surprise, maybe even outrage, at what she was implying. She
might have had the upper hand then. She might have succeeded in shaming him. But it stole
her grit, his calm acknowledgment, his matter of fact tone.
"Sit down," he said. He was lying on his bed, back to the wall, his thick, long legs splayed
on the mattress. "Sit down before you faint and cut your head open."
Mariam felt herself drop onto the folding chair beside his bed.
"Hand me that ashtray, would you?" he said.
Obediently, she did.
Rasheed had to be sixty or more now though Mariam, and in fact Rasheed himself did not
know his exact age. His hair had gone white, but it was as thick and coarse as ever. There
was a sag now to his eyelids and the skin of his neck, which was wrinkled and leathery. His
cheeks hung a bit more than they used to. In the mornings, he stooped just a tad. But he still
had the stout shoulders, the thick torso, the strong hands, the swollen belly that entered the
room before any other part of him did.
On the whole, Mariam thought that he had weathered the years considerably better than
she.
"We need to legitimize this situation," he said now, balancing the ashtray on his belly. His
lips scrunched up in a playful pucker. "People will talk. It looks dishonorable, an unmarried
young woman living here. It's bad for my reputation. And hers. And yours, I might add."
"Eighteen years," Mariam said. "And I never asked you for a thing. Not one thing. I'm
asking now."
He inhaled smoke and let it out slowly. "She can't just stay here, if that's what you're
suggesting. I can't go on feeding her and clothing her and giving her a place to sleep. I'm
not the Red Cross, Mariam."
"But this?"
"What of it? What? She's too young, you think? She's fourteen. Hardly a child. You were
fifteen, remember? My mother was fourteen when she had me. Thirteen when she married."
"I...I don't want this," Mariam said, numb with contempt and helplessness.
"It's not your decision. It's hers and mine."
"I'm too old."
"She's too young, you're too old. This is nonsense."
"I am too old. Too old for you to do this to me," Mariam said, balling up fistfuls of her
dress so tightly her hands shook."For you, after all these years, to make me an ambagh"