He told her about his day. A pair of loafers he had custom made for the deputy foreign
minister who, Rasheed said, bought shoes only from him. An order for sandals from a
Polish diplomat and his wife. He told her of the superstitions people had about shoes: that
putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put
on the left shoe first.
"Unless it was done unintentionally on a Friday," he said. "And did you know it's
supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together and hang them from a nail?"
Rasheed himself believed none of this. In his opinion, superstitions were largely a female
preoccupation.
He passed on to her things he had heard on the streets, like how the American president
Richard Nixon had resigned over a scandal.
Mariam, who had never heard of Nixon, or the scandal that had forced him to resign, did
not say anything back. She waited anxiously for Rasheed to finish talking, to crush his
cigarette, and take his leave. Only when she'd heard him cross the hallway, heard his door
open and close, only then would the metal fist gripping her belly let go Then one night he
crushed his cigarette and instead of saying good night leaned against the doorway.
"Are you ever going to unpack that thing?" he said, motioning with his head toward her
suitcase. He crossed his arms. "I figured you might need some time. But this is absurd. A
week's gone and...Well, then, as of tomorrow morning I expect you to start behaving like a
wife. Fahmidi? Is that understood?"
Mariam's teeth began to chatter.
"I need an answer."
"Yes."
"Good," he said. "What did you think? That this is a hotel? That I'm some kind of
hotelkeeper? Well, it...Oh. Oh.
La illah u ilillah. What did I say about the crying? Mariam. What did I say to you about
the crying?"
The next morning, after Rasheed left for work, Mariam unpacked her clothes and put them
in the dresser. She drew a pail of water from the well and, with a rag, washed the windows
of her room and the windows to the living room downstairs She swept the floors, beat the
cobwebs fluttering in the corners of the ceiling. She opened the windows to air the house.
She set three cups of lentils to soak in a pot, found a knife and cut some carrots and a pair