tariq has headaches now.
some nights, laila awakens and finds him on the edge oftheir bed, rocking, his undershirt pulled over his head theheadaches began in nasir bagh, he says, then worsened inprison. sometimes they make him vomit, blind him in one eye.
he says it feels like a butcher's knife burrowing in one temple,twisting slowly through his brain, then poking out the otherside.
"i can taste the metal, even, when they begin."sometimes laila wets a cloth and lays it on his forehead andthat helps a little. the little round white pills sayeed's doctorgave tariq help too. but some nights, all tariq can do is holdhis head and moan, his eyes bloodshot, his nose dripping. lailasits with him when he's in the grip of it like that, rubs theback of his neck, takes his hand in hers, the metal of hiswedding band cold against her palm.
they married the day that they arrived in murree. sayeedlooked relieved when tariq told him they would. he would nothave to broach with tariq the delicate matter of an unmarriedcouple living in his hotel. sayeed is not at all as laila hadpictured him, ruddy-faced and pea-eyed. he has asalt-and-pepper mustache whose ends he rolls to a sharp tip,and a shock of long gray hair combed back from the brow.
he is a soft-spoken, mannerly man, with measured speech andgraceful movements.
it was sayeecl who summoned a friend and a mullah forthenikka that day, sayeed who pulled tariq aside and gave himmoney. tariq wouldn't take it, but sayeed insisted. tariq wentto the mall then and came back with two simple, thin weddingbands. they married later that night, after the children hadgone to bed.
in the mirror, beneath the green veil that the mullah drapedover their heads, laila's eyes met tariq's. there were no tears,no wedding-day smiles, no whispered oaths of long-lasting love.
in silence, laila looked at their reflection, at faces that hadaged beyond their years, at the pouches and lines and sagsthat now marked their once-scrubbed, youthful faces. tariqopened his mouth and began to say something, but, just as hedid, someone pulled the veil, and laila missed what it was thathe was going to say.
that night, they lay in bed as husband and wife, as thechildren snored below them on sleeping cots. laila rememberedthe ease with which they would crowd the air between themwith words, she and tariq, when they were younger, thehaywire, brisk flow of their speech, always interrupting eachother, tugging each other's collar to emphasize a point, thequickness to laugh, the eagerness to delight. so much hadhappened since those childhood days, so much that needed tobe said. but that first night the enormity of it all stole thewords from her. that night, it was blessing enough to bebeside him. it was blessing enough to know that he was here,to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him, theirheads touching, his right hand laced in her left.
in the middle of the night, when laila woke up thirsty, shefound their hands still clamped together, in the white-knuckle,anxious way of children clutching balloon strings.
* * *laila likes mukree's cool, foggy mornings and its dazzlingtwilights, the dark brilliance of the sky at night; the green ofthe pines and the soft brown of the squirrels darting up anddown the sturdy tree trunks; the sudden downpours that sendshoppers in the mall scrambling for awning cover. she likes thesouvenir shops, and the various hotels that house tourists, evenas the locals bemoan the constant construction, the expansionof infrastructure that they say is eating away at murree'snatural beauty. laila finds it odd that people should lamentthebuilding of buildings. in kabul, they would celebrate it.
she likes that they have a bathroom, not an outhouse but anactual bathroom, with a toilet that flushes, a shower, and asink too, with twin faucets from which she can draw, with aflick of her wrist, water, either hot or cold. she likes waking upto the sound of alyona bleating in the morning, and theharmlessly cantankerous cook, adiba, who works marvels in thekitchen.
sometimes, as laila watches tariq sleep, as her childrenmutter and stir in their own sleep, a great big lump ofgratitude catches in her throat, makes her eyes water.
in the mornings, laila follows tariq from room to room. keysjingle from a ring clipped to his waist and a spray bottle ofwindow cleaner dangles from the belt loops of his jeans. lailabrings a pail filled with rags, disinfectant, a toilet brush, andspray wax for the dressers. aziza tags along, a mop in onehand, the bean-stuffed doll mariam had made for her in theother. zalmai trails them reluctantly, sulkily, always a few stepsbehind.
laila vacuums, makes the bed, and dusts. tariq washes thebathroom sink and tub, scrubs the toilet and mops thelinoleum floor. he stocks the shelves with clean towels,miniature shampoo bottles, and bars of almond-scented soap.
aziza has laid claim to the task of spraying and wiping thewindows. the doll is never far from where she works.
laila told aziza about tariq a few days after thenikkait is strange, laila thinks, almost unsettling, the thing betweenaziza and tariq. already, aziza is finishing his sentences and hehers. she hands him things before he asks for them. privatesmiles shoot between them across the dinner table as if theyare not strangers at all but companions reunited after a lengthyseparation.
aziza looked down thoughtfully at her hands when laila toldher.
"i like him," she said, after a long pause.
"he lovesyou.""he said that?""he doesn't have to, aziza.""tell me the rest, mammy. tell me so i know."and laila did.
"your father is a good man. he is the best man i've everknown.""what if he leaves?" aziza said"he will never leave. look at me, aziza. your father will neverhurt you, and he will never leave."the relief on aziza's face broke laila's heart.
* * *tariq has bought zalmai a rocking horse, built him a wagon.
from a prison inmate, he learned to make paper animals, andso he has folded, cut, and tucked countless sheets of paperinto lions and kangaroos for zalmai, into horses and brightlyplumed birds. but these overtures are dismissed by zalmaiunceremoniously, sometimes venomously.
"you're a donkey!" he cries. "i don't want your toys!""zalmai!" laila gasps.
"it's all right," tariq says. "laila, it's all right. let him.""you're not my baba jan! my real baba jan is away on atrip, and when he gets back he's going to beat you up! andyou won't be able to run away, because he has two legs andyou only have one!"at night, laila holds zalmai against her chest andrecitesbabaloo prayers with him. when he asks, she tells himthe lie again, tells him his baba jan has gone away and shedoesn't know when he would come back. she abhors this task,abhors herself for lying like this to a childlaila knows that this shameful lie will have to be told againand again. it will have to because zalmai will ask, hoppingdown from a swing, waking from an afternoon nap, and, later,when he's old enough to tie his own shoes, to walk to schoolby himself, the lie will have to be delivered again.
at some point, laila knows, the questions will dry up. slowly,zalmai will cease wondering why his father has abandoned him.
he will not spot his father any longer at traffic lights, instooping old men shuffling down the street or sipping tea inopen-fronted samovar houses. and one day it will hit him,walking along some meandering river, or gazing out at anuntracked snowfield, that his father's disappearance is no longeran open, raw wound. that it has become something elsealtogether, something more soft-edged and indolent. like a lore.
something to be revered, mystified by.
laila is happy here in murree. but it is not an easyhappiness. it is not a happiness without cost.
* * *on his days off, tariq takes laila and the children to themall, along which are shops that sell trinkets and next to whichis an anglican church built in the mid-nineteenth century. tariqbuys them spicychapli kebabs from street vendors. they strollamid the crowds of locals, the europeans and their cellularphones and digital cameras, the punjabis who come here toescape the heat of the plains.
occasionally, they board a bus to kashmir point. from there,tariq shows them the valley of the jhelum river, thepine-carpeted slopes, and the lush, densely wooded hills, wherehe says monkeys can still be spotted hopping from branch tobranch. they go to the mapleclad nathia gali too, some thirtykilometers from murree, where tariq holds laila's hand as theywalk the tree-shaded road to the governor's house. they stopby the old british cemetery, or take a taxi up a mountain peakfor a view of the verdant, fog-shrouded valley below.
sometimes on these outings, when they pass by a storewindow, laila catches their reflections in it. man, wife, daughter,son. to strangers, she knows, they must appear like the mostordinary of families, free of secrets, lies, and regrets.
* * *azizahas nightmares from which she wakes up shrieking. lailahas to lie beside her on the cot, dry her cheeks with hersleeve, soothe her back to sleep.
laila has her own dreams. in them, she's always back at thehouse in kabul, walking the hall, climbing the stairs.
she is alone, but behind the doors she hears the rhythmichiss of an iron, bedsheets snapped, then folded. sometimes shehears a woman's low-pitched humming of an old herati song.
but when she walks in, the room is empty. there is no onethere.
the dreams leave laila shaken. she wakes from them coatedin sweat, her eyes prickling with tears. it is devastating. everytime, it is devastating.
