madamback in akolba, it seemed, after all these years.
the walayat women's prison was a drab, square-shapedbuilding in shar-e-nau near chicken street. it sat in the centerof a larger complex that housed male inmates. a padlockeddoor separated mariam and the other women from thesurrounding men. mariam counted five working cells. they wereunfurnished rooms, with dirty, peeling walls, and small windowsthat looked into the courtyard. the windows were barred, eventhough the doors to the cells were unlocked and the womenwere free to come and go to the courtyard as they pleased.
the windows had no glass. there were no curtains either,which meant the talib guards who roamed the courtyard hadan eyeful of the interior of the cells. some of the womencomplained that the guards smoked outside the window andleered in, with their inflamed eyes and wolfish smiles, that theymuttered indecent jokes to each other about them. because ofthis, most of the women wore burqas all day and lifted themonly after sundown, after the main gate was locked and theguards had gone to their posts.
at night, the cell mariam shared with five women and fourchildren was dark. on those nights when there was electricalpower, they hoisted naghma, a short, flat-chested girl with blackfrizzy hair, up to the ceiling. there was a wire there fromwhich the coating had been stripped. naghma would hand-wrapthe live wire around the base of the lightbulb then to make acircuit.
the toilets were closet-sized, the cement floor cracked therewas a small, rectangular hole in the ground, at the bottom ofwhich was a heap of feces. flies buzzed in and out of thehole-in the middle of the prison was an open, rectangularcourtyard, and, in the middle of that, a well the well had nodrainage, meaning the courtyard was often a swamp and thewater tasted rotten. laundry lines, loaded with handwashedsocks and diapers, slashed across each other in the courtyard.
this was where inmates met visitors, where they boiled the ricetheir families brought them-the prison provided no food thecourtyard was also the children's playground-mariam hadlearned that many of the children had been born in walayat,had never seen the world outside these walls. mariam watchedthem chase each other around, watched their shoeless feet slingmud. all day, they ran around, making up lively games,unaware of the stench of feces and urine that permeatedwalayat and their own bodies, unmindful of the talib guardsuntil one smacked them.
mariam had no visitors. that was the first and only thing shehad asked the talib officials here. no visitors.
* * *none of the women in mariam's cell were serving time forviolent crime-they were all there for the common offense of"running away from home." as a result, mariam gained somenotoriety among them, became a kind of celebrity. the womeneyed her with a reverent, almost awestruck, expression. theyoffered her their blankets. they competed to share their foodwith her.
the most avid was naghma, who was always hugging herelbows and following mariam everywhere she went. naghmawas the sort of person who found it entertaining to dispensenews of misfortune, whether others' or her own. she said herfather had promised her to a tailor some thirty years olderthan her.
"he smellslike goh, and has fewer teeth than fingers," naghmasaid of the tailor.
she'd tried to elope to gardez with a young man she'd fallenin love with, the son of a local mullah. they'd barely made itout of kabul. when they were caught and sent back, themullah's son was flogged before he repented and said thatnaghma had seduced him with her feminine charms. she'd casta spell on him, he said. he promised he would rededicatehimself to the study of the koran. the mullah's son was freed.
naghma was sentenced to five years.
it was just as well, she said, her being here in prison. herfather had sworn that the day she was released he would takea knife to her throat.
listening to naghma, mariam remembered the dim glimmer ofcold stars and the stringy pink clouds streaking over thesafid-koh mountains that long-ago morning when nana hadsaid to her,like a compass needle that points north, a man'saccusing finger always finds a woman. always. you rememberthat, mariam.
* * *mamam's trial had taken place the week before. there wasno legal council, no public hearing, no cross-examining ofevidence, no appeals. mariam declined her right to witnesses.
the entire thing lasted less than fifteen minutes.
the middle judge, a brittle-looking talib, was the leader. hewas strikingly gaunt, with yellow, leathery skin and a curly redbeard. he wore eyeglasses that magnified his eyes and revealedhow yellow the whites were. his neck looked too thin tosupport the intricately wrapped turban on his head.
"you admit to this,hamshira?i he asked again in a tired voice.
"i do," mariam said.
the man nodded. or maybe he didn't. it was hard to tell; hehad a pronounced shaking of his hands and head thatreminded mariam of mullah faizullah's tremor. when he sippedtea, he did not reach for his cup. he motioned to thesquare-shouldered man to his left, who respectfully brought itto his lips. after, the talib closed his eyes gently, a muted andelegant gesture of gratitude.
mariam found a disarming quality about him. when he spoke,it was with a tinge of guile and tenderness. his smile waspatient. he did not look at mariam despisingly. he did notaddress her with spite or accusation but with a soft tone ofapology.
"do you fully understand what you're saying?" the bony-facedtalib to the judge's right, not the tea giver, said. this one wasthe youngest of the three. he spoke quickly and with emphatic,arrogant confidence. he'd been irritated that mariam could notspeak pashto. he struck mariam as the sort of quarrelsomeyoung man who relished his authority, who saw offenseseverywhere, thought it his birthright to pass judgment.
"i do understand," mariam said.
"i wonder," the young talib said. "god has made usdifferently, you women and us men. our brains are different.
you are not able to think like we can. western doctors andtheir science have proven this. this is why we require only onemale witness but two female ones.""i admit to what i did, brother," mariam said. "but, if ihadn't, he would have killed her. he was strangling her.""so you say. but, then, women swear to all sorts of things allthe time.""it's the truth.""do you have witnesses? other than yourambagh?’'
"i do not," said mariam.
"well, then." he threw up his hands and snickered.
it was the sickly talib who spoke next.
"i have a doctor in peshawar," he said. "a fine, youngpakistani fellow. i saw him a month ago, and then again lastweek. i said, tell me the truth, friend, and he said to me, threemonths, mullah sahib, maybe six at most-all god's will, ofcourse."he nodded discreetly at the square-shouldered man on his leftand took another sip of the tea he was offered. he wiped hismouth with the back of his tremulous hand. "it does notfrighten me to leave this life that my only son left five yearsago, this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow longafter we can bear no more. no, i believe i shall gladly takemy leave when the time comes.
"what frightens me,hamshira, is the day god summons mebefore him and asks,why did you not do as i said, mullah?
why did you not obey my laws? how shall i explain myself tohim,hamshira1? what will be my defense for not heeding hiscommands? all i can do, all any of us can do, in the time weare granted, is to go on abiding by the laws he has set forus. the clearer i see my end,hamshira, the nearer i am to myday of reckoning, the more determined i grow to carry out hisword. however painful it may prove."he shifted on his cushion and winced.
"i believe you when you say that your husband was a manof disagreeable temperament," he resumed, fixing mariam withhis bespectacled eyes, his gaze both stern and compassionate.
"but i cannot help but be disturbed by the brutality of youraction,hamshira i am troubled by what you have done; i amtroubled that his little boy was crying for him upstairs whenyou did it.
"i am tired and dying, and i want to be merciful. i want toforgive you. but when god summons me and says,but itwasn't for you to forgive, mullah, what shall i say?"his companions nodded and looked at him with admiration.
"something tells me you are not a wicked woman,hamshirabut you have done a wicked thing. and you must pay for thisthing you have done.shari'a is not vague on this matter. it saysi must send you where i will soon join you myself.
"do you understand,hamshira?"mariam looked down at her hands. she said she did.
"may allah forgive you."before they led her out, mariam was given a document, toldto sign beneath her statement and the mullah's sentence. asthe three taliban watched, mariam wrote it out, hername-themeem, thereh, theyah, and themeem -remembering thelast time she'd signed her name to a document, twenty-sevenyears before, at jalil's table, beneath the watchful gaze ofanother mullah.
* * *mahiam spent ten days in prison. she sat by the window ofthe cell, watched the prison life in the courtyard. when thesummer winds blew, she watched bits of scrap paper ride thecurrents in a frenzied, corkscrew motion, as they were hurledthis way and that, high above the prison walls. she watchedthe winds stir mutiny in the dust, whipping it into violent spiralsthat ripped through the courtyard. everyone-the guards, theinmates, the children, mariam-burrowed their faces in the hookof their elbows, but the dust would not be denied. it madehomes of ear canals and nostrils, of eyelashes and skin folds,of the space between molars. only at dusk did the winds diedown. and then if a night breeze blew, it did so timidly, as ifto atone for the excesses of its daytime sibling.
on mariam's last day at walayat, naghma gave her atangerine. she put it in mariam's palm and closed her fingersaround it. then she burst into tears.
"you're the best friend i ever had," she said.
mariam spent the rest of the day by the barred windowwatching the inmates below. someone was cooking a meal, anda stream of cumin-scented smoke and warm air waftedthrough the window. mariam could see the children playing ablindfolded game. two little girls were singing a rhyme, andmariam remembered it from her childhood, remembered jalilsinging it to her as they'd sat on a rock, fishing in the stream:
lili mi birdbath, sitting on a dirt path, minnow sat on the rimand drank, slipped, and in the water she sankmariam had disjointed dreams that last night. she dreamed ofpebbles, eleven of them, arranged vertically. jalil, young again,all winning smiles and dimpled chins and sweat patches, coatflung over his shoulder, come at last to take his daughter awayfor a ride in his shiny black buick roadmaster. mullah faizullahtwirling his rosary beads, walking with her along the stream,their twin shadows gliding on the water and on the grassybanks sprinkled with a blue-lavender wild iris that, in thisdream, smelled like cloves. she dreamed of nana in thedoorway of thekolba, her voice dim and distant, calling her todinner, as mariam played in cool, tangled grass where antscrawled and beetles scurried and grasshoppers skipped amid allthe different shades of green. the squeak of a wheelbarrowlaboring up a dusty path. cowbells clanging. sheep baaing on ahill.
* * *on the way to ghazi stadium, mariam bounced in the bed ofthe truck as it skidded around potholes andits wheels spatpebbles. the bouncing hurt her tailbone. a young, armed talibsat across from her looking at her.
mariam wondered if he would be the one, this amiable-lookingyoung man with the deep-set bright eyes and slightly pointedface, with the black-nailed index finger drumming the side ofthe truck.
"are you hungry, mother?" he said.
mariam shook her head.
"i have a biscuit. it's good. you can have it if you're hungry.
i don't mind.""no.tashakor, brother."he nodded, looked at her benignly. "are you afraid, mother?"a lump closed off her throat. in a quivering voice, mariamtold him the truth.
"yes. i'm very afraid.""i have a picture of my father," he said. "i don't rememberhim. he was a bicycle repairman once, i know that much. buti don't remember how he moved, you know, how he laughedor the sound of his voice." he looked away, then back atmariam. "my mother used to say that he was the bravest manshe knew. like a lion, she'd say.
but she told me he was crying like a child the morning thecommunists took him. i'm telling you so you know that it'snormal to be scared. it's nothing to be ashamed of, mother."for the first time that day, mariam cried a little.
* * *thousands of eyes bore down on her. in the crowdedbleachers, necks were craned for the benefit of a better view.
tongues clucked. a murmuring sound rippled through thestadium when mariam was helped down from the truck.
mariam imagined heads shaking when the loudspeakerannounced her crime. but she did not look up to see whetherthey were shaking with disapproval or charity, with reproach orpity. mariam blinded herself to them all.
earlier that morning, she had been afraid that she wouldmake a fool of herself, that she would turn into a pleading,weeping spectacle. she had feared that she might scream orvomit or even wet herself, that, in her last moments, she wouldbe betrayed by animal instinct or bodily disgrace. but when shewas made to descend from the truck, mariam's legs did notbuckle. her arms did not flail. she did not have to be dragged.
and when she did feel herself faltering, she thought of zalmai,from whom she had taken the love of his life, whose daysnow would be shaped by the sorrow of his father'sdisappearance. and then mariam's stride steadied and shecould walk without protest.
an armed man approached her and told her to walk towardthe southern goalpost. mariam could sense the crowd tighteningup with anticipation. she did not look up. she kept her eyes tothe ground, on her shadow, on her executioner's shadowtrailing hers.
though there had been moments of beauty in it, mariamknew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. butas she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help butwish for more of it. she wished she could see laila again,wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her oncemore for a pot ofchai and leftoverhalwa under a starlit sky.
she mourned that she would never see aziza grow up, wouldnot see the beautiful young woman that she would one daybecome, would not get to paint her hands with henna andtossnoqul candy at her wedding. she would never play withaziza's children. she would have liked that very much, to beold and play with aziza's children.
near the goalpost, the man behind her asked her to stop.
mariam did. through the crisscrossing grid of the burqa, shesaw his shadow arms lift his shadow kalashnikov.
mariam wished for so much in those final moments. yet asshe closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but asensation of abundant peace that washed over her. shethought of her entry into this world, theharami child of a lowlyvillager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. aweed. and yet she was leaving the world as a woman whohad loved and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend,a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequenceat last. no. it was not so bad, mariam thought, that sheshould die this way. not so bad. this was a legitimate end toa life of illegitimate beginnings.
mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the koran,which she muttered under her breath.
he has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; hemakes the night cover the day and makes the day overtakethe night, and he has made the sun and the moonsubservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surelyhe is the mighty, the great forgiver.
"kneel," the talib saido my lord! forgive and have mercy, for you are the best ofthe merciful ones.
"kneel here,hamshira and look down."one last time, mariam did as she was told.
