"True that it would be preferable that you marry a local, a Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy,
and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That's all that really matters, isn't it? And
Kabul is a beautiful and exciting city. You may not get another opportunity this good."
Mariam turned her attention to the wives.
"I'll live with Mullah Faizullah," she said. "He'll take me in. I know he will."
"That's no good," Khadija said. "He's old and so..." She searched for the right word, and
Mariam knew then that what she really wanted to say was He is so close. She understood
what they meant to do. You may not get another opportunity this good And neither would
they. They had been disgraced by her birth, and this was their chance to erase, once and for
all, the last trace of their husband's scandalous mistake. She was being sent away because
she was the walking, breathing embodiment of their shame.
"He's so old and weak," Khadija eventually said. "And what will you do when he's gone?
You'd be a burden to his family."
As you are now to us. Mariam almost saw the unspoken words exit Khadija's mouth, like
foggy breath on a cold day.
Mariam pictured herself in Kabul, a big, strange, crowded city that, Jalil had once told her,
was some six hundred and fifty kilometers to the east of Herat. Six hundred and fifty
kilometers. The farthest she'd ever been from the kolba was the two kilometer walk she'd
made to Jalil's house. She pictured herself living there, in Kabul, at the other end of that
unimaginable distance, living in a stranger's house where she would have to concede to his
moods and his issued demands. She would have to clean after this man, Rasheed, cook for
him, wash his clothes. And there would be other chores as well Nana had told her what
husbands did to their wives. It was the thought of these intimacies in particular, which she
imagined as painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a
sweat.
She turned to Jalil again. "Tell them. Tell them you won't let them do this."
"Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer," Afsoon said. "Rasheed is
here, in Herat; he has come all the way from Kabul. The nikka will be tomorrow morning,
and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon."
"Tell them!" Mariam cried
The women grew quiet now. Mariam sensed that they were watching him too. Waiting. A
silence fell over the room. Jalil kept twirling his wedding band, with a bruised, helpless
look on his face. From inside the cabinet, the clock ticked on and on.
"Jalil jo?" one of the women said at last.
Mil's eyes lifted slowly, met Mariam's, lingered for a moment, then dropped. He opened