I stifled the cry in my throat.
“Najiba is my dear daughter, a wonderful student and a giving sister. I’ve prayed for her, as I’ve prayed for all my children, that in her naseeb is a good person, a life partner who will honor her and our family.”
“You are a loving mother, KokoGul. Your children are fortunate to have you and Agha-sahib as parents.”
It was Najiba they wanted, not me.
CHAPTER 10
Fereiba
KOKOGUL HAD BEEN RIGHT. OUR NEIGHBORS WERE COURTING MY sister Najiba. When they’d left, I’d returned to my room. Najiba found me sitting on the floor wearing nothing but a slip. Scraps of fabric lay scattered on my lap, at my feet, behind me; I’d cut my shift dress into a thousand pieces. My sister wrenched the scissors from my hands and yelled for KokoGul. KokoGul suspiciously surveyed the scene from the doorway, conjuring her own theories as to what had caused my unraveling.
“Take the scissors and leave her be. I don’t know what the meaning of this is, Fereiba, but we’ve no room for madness or destruction in this house.”
Najiba looked concerned. I waited for them to leave. I could hear KokoGul whispering to Najiba in the hallway.
“She had a suitor and look what happened to him. Jealousy curdles the soul like a drop of vinegar in milk. Bibi Shireen knows Fereiba’s story as well as the other neighbors do. People want their sons to marry respectable girls. Fereiba is your father’s daughter and I mean no ill when I say this, but people see her as an orphan, as a girl without a family. She lost the only chance she had to marry into an esteemed family.”
“But she has a family, Madar-jan,” Najiba whispered in soft protest.
“It’s not the same, my darling,” KokoGul clucked. “I’ve tried to make her feel as much my daughter as you and your sisters, but she’s kept herself apart. She’s more comfortable doing the housework than being with us.”
Throughout my life, KokoGul had given me just enough to believe this could be true. There were days she hugged me as she hugged my sisters, stroked my hair as if I were one of her own. There were days we sat together doing housework and laughing at something Mauriya had done. There were just enough of those moments to make me wonder if it was I who had kept myself at arm’s length from the rest of the family.
I knew my beloved must have been devastated. I wondered if he even knew what his mother had done. It was not unheard of for mothers to make decisions on behalf of their reckless sons. Boys thought only of today. Mothers considered tomorrows. But my beloved was not most boys. He was an intellectual. He was my patient confidante, my keeper of secrets. He and I would have to fight to be together. I realized I should have expected nothing less.
Bibi Shireen had taken from us our budding affair. She’d denied the universe its chance to redeem itself for stripping me of a loving mother and father and of a childhood equal to that of my siblings. She had smiled demurely, allowed me to wait on her, and then pulled the world out from under my feet. Fueled by the flame of adolescent emotion, I fell deeper in love with the man yet unseen.
I SAT UNDER THE MULBERRY TREE FOR DAYS, BUT HE DID NOT come. I stayed there for hours at a time, the coils of the bark imprinted on my back, proof of my devotion. Bibi Shireen returned to the house for a second and third visit. She was persistent and rushed, wanting KokoGul to agree to give Najiba’s hand as if a clock were ticking. Her doggedness told me that my beloved knew nothing of her doings. Bibi Shireen had tasted the rumors about me and was hoping to save her son from marriage to Kabul’s black maiden, the orphaned daughter-servant next door.