Mimi looked up as if no one had ever asked her that question. Something about the darkness made their conversation even more pleasantly anonymous than it already was.
“I do not know.” The rain started to come down heavier, pelting at the roof of the car with a tin, staccato rhythm. Lulled by the dark and the rain, Mimi began to tell Saleem her story in a fragmented English that did not do it justice.
Mimi came from a poor family in Albania. She’d been the third daughter, and two more followed after her. When she was fifteen, her parents arranged for her to be married to a man nearly twice her age. She protested but it made no difference. She lived with her husband for nearly three months, picking up the empty bottles and suffering the rage of his alcoholic fits. After three months, she returned to her parents, but they refused to take her in again. Mimi went to live with her aunt.
She fell in love with a local boy who asked her to move to Italy with him where they would marry and start a new life. He arranged for them to travel by speedboat from Albania to Italy’s coast. Mimi did not tell her aunt or anyone else about her decision to leave. When they got to Italy, they lived in a small apartment, and for a week or two, Mimi believed she was beginning the gilded life he’d promised her. But before long, the boy began to complain that they needed money. He could not find work, he’d said, and told his fiancée that her beauty could earn enough to support them both. He promised it would not be for long and that things would not change between them.
Saleem did not interrupt.
The boy took all the money Mimi brought home. He spent her earnings on drugs and went out with friends while she worked. One day, he took her to an apartment and unceremoniously traded her to another man. She’d pleaded with him, reminding him of the promises he’d made and all that she’d done for him, but he turned his back and never returned. The new man wanted her to work. When she refused, he beat her and locked her in a room with two other girls until they had no choice but to submit. That was seven months ago. He was not the kind of man to chance running from, she’d learned from some other girls.
“I have nowhere to go. I have no papers. My family do not want me. And if I leave, he find me.”
Saleem had no words of comfort or encouragement. He was thankful the darkness hid the expression on his face. She was a used girl, the kind of shame people could not speak of in polite company in Kabul.
He had only one question, which Mimi answered without his having to ask.
“I do not know why I tell you. You say you need help. But you are boy. You are free. You do not need help.”
Her assumptions angered Saleem. He wanted to hate her. Part of him did. He hated her for telling him things so horrible that his own troubles paled. He hated her for making him feel sorry for someone other than himself. He hated her for making him feel all the more helpless—useless to himself and useless to others.
Saleem took another sidelong glance at her. It was not hard to imagine that a family would turn her away. A girl who left her husband and then ran off with another boy, only to end up as a prostitute. In Afghanistan, she would have been put out of her misery long ago for the dishonor she had brought upon her family.
Saleem looked out the window. Out of the many, he watched one raindrop, followed it as it ran down the glass and disappeared into the night. He could not hate her. Despite her brusque tone and lurid exterior, she was just a girl. The best he could do was to say nothing.
“You do not have papers?” she asked.
“No.”
“Hm.”
Saleem toyed with his watch. He wondered if it was safe to be here with her, but it was raining harder now and he had no desire to seek other cover.
“Your watch . . . it is nice.”
Saleem stopped playing with the wristband and sat straight up in the seat. After a few moments, he heard his voice break the silence.