He asked the question two more times. When Mariam didn't answer, he asked it once
more, this time more
forcefully Mariam could feel Jalil beside her shifting on his seat, could sense feet
crossing and uncrossing beneath the table. There was more throat clearing. A small, white
hand reached out and flicked a bit of dust off the table.
"Mariam," Jalil whispered.
"Yes," she said shakily.
A mirror was passed beneath the veil. In it, Mariam saw her own face first, the archless,
unshapely eyebrows, the flat hair, the eyes, mirthless green and set so closely together that
one might mistake her for being cross eyed. Her skin was coarse and had a dull, spotty
appearance. She thought her brow too wide, the chin too narrow, the lips too thin. The
overall impression was of a long face, a triangular face, a bit houndlike. And yet Mariam
saw that, oddly enough, the whole of these unmemorable parts made for a face that was not
pretty but, somehow, not unpleasant to look at either.
In the mirror, Mariam had her first glimpse of Rasheed: the big, square, ruddy face; the
hooked nose; the flushed cheeks that gave the impression of sly cheerfulness; the watery,
bloodshot eyes; the crowded teeth, the front two pushed together like a gabled roof; the
impossibly low hairline, barely two finger widths above the bushy eyebrows; the wall of
thick, coarse, salt and pepper hair.
Their gazes met briefly in the glass and slid away.
This is the face of my husband, Mariam thought.
They exchanged the thin gold bands that Rasheed fished from his coat pocket. His nails
were yellow brown, like the inside of a rotting apple, and some of the tips were curling,
lifting. Mariam's hands shook when she tried to slip the band onto his finger, and Rasheed
had to help her. Her own band was a little tight, but Rasheed had no trouble forcing it over
her knuckles.
"There," he said.
"It's a pretty ring," one of the wives said. "It's lovely, Mariam."
"All that remains now is the signing of the contract," the mullah said.
Mariam signed her name-the meem, the reh, the the ya and the meem again-conscious of
all the eyes on her hand. The next time Mariam signed her name to a document, twenty
seven years later, a mullah would again be present.