A Sister to Honor (10 page)

The lights returned, along with the distant roar of a generator. In the room's center, Maryam had not moved a muscle. Now she wobbled forward on her heels, her mouth frozen in a half curl. Ahead of her, on his makeshift throne, the groom appeared pleased. He had perhaps seen a picture of her, but her real self was an improvement. She was not an ugly girl, far from it. But he did not look at her, really, nor she at him. Her brother sat Maryam on the couch, and she folded her hennaed hands in her lap, the hands they had all exclaimed over just yesterday, when the transformation of Maryam into a bride had begun.

However short her forehead, however clumsy her walk, Maryam was coming to her husband pure. Afia forced herself to study her cousin as she smiled for the cameras and nodded at the friends and relatives who approached the couch to give their blessings. Maryam's mouth, she thought, trembled a little. Her eyes, so prominent with the kohl and extra lashes, betrayed eagerness, hope, anxiety, excitement, and terror. Tonight, this girl who had not been kissed—who had not been touched—would go with her strange new husband to his parents' house, where he would undress her and make love to her, perhaps gently, perhaps roughly. The next day his family would celebrate the consummation while her own retreated home and adjusted to life without their daughter.

Afia had never dwelled on any of this before, not in such terms. Everyone knew what happened, but you didn't think about it, and she wouldn't think about it, not now. As she turned her gaze away from the new couple on the stage, she caught sight of a familiar figure, though wrapped tightly in her dupatta, her kameez shapeless as a tent. “Moray,” she said, turning back to the gossiping women at her table, “there's Lema.”

“Maryam's mother wants us to take a picture—”

“In a minute. I'm just going over to say hello. I'll be right back.”

“Afia, I don't want—”

But she was already weaving her way across the room. Impudent, to ignore her mother. But she had been trying to reach Lema for too many months; she wasn't going to pass up this chance.

From age nine, when Lema first moved to Nasirabad with her family from the tribal areas, the two girls had been inseparable. Together with Panra, Tayyab's daughter who was two weeks older than Afia, they had climbed mulberry trees and sneaked off to swim in the river. Dark-eyed and broad-cheeked, Lema was always the boldest of them. In school, she dared other girls to sneak over to the boys' side, or to chug a bottle of bright red Rooh Afza until they choked and spewed red over their kameez. While Afia was getting high marks and dreaming of test tubes, Lema dreamed of a snug house in Hayatabad, away from the stench of chicken dung. While Afia arranged her goals like a staircase, conquering each step, Lema talked people into pulling her up the ladder. Two years ago, she had persuaded her parents to let her try a secretarial school in Lahore.
IDK how I ever lived outside the city before!
she wrote Afia. Then last summer she had suddenly returned to be married, to a small farmer in the dry valley by Charsadda. Afia had learned of it only through her mother.

“Lema,” Afia said, touching her friend's sleeve.

Lema turned. There were her large, dark eyes, the high arch of her brows framed by the blue cloth over her hair and across her cheeks and nose. The eyes lit up when she recognized Afia. But across her left temple and running down into her cheek, the skin puckering by the eye, ran a deep scar, still purple with old scabbing.

“Why, look at the American, come home to Nasirabad!” Lema said. When she put her arms around Afia, the hard bulge of her belly met Afia's ribs. Afia embraced her friend, then stepped back. Carefully she lifted away the scarf. The scar ran down to Lema's chin, like the scratch of a giant's nail. She reached out a hand, but Lema flinched away.

“What did they do to you?” Afia gasped.

“I'm fine. Really.” Lema wrapped her face and neck again. Nervously she glanced left and right. A heavyset woman glowered at her from a table—her mother-in-law, Afia guessed. “I'm sorry I haven't written. I've been so busy. I'm due in May,” Lema said quickly, caressing her belly.

“That's . . . that's wonderful. But what did they—”

“I'm going to tell you while we admire Maryam. All right? Smile, will you? Let's turn and look at her.”

Afia tried to turn toward the stage, but she stole glances at her old friend. Her joy at finding Lema had shriveled. Lema had lost weight—she could tell despite the covering, despite the pregnancy—and her hands were chapped, the nails ragged. Keeping her voice light, Lema ran through her story. She had become pregnant in Lahore. It didn't matter who the man was—it was a man, she had liked him, she had thought herself free, she had not been forced but neither had she been in love. Not that it would have mattered, because he was a Sikh. He paid for the abortion, but by then it was too late. Word had got out. When she came home last spring for Ramadan, her mother held her down while her father and brother took the knife to her face. It was a warning, they told her.

“But I don't understand,” Afia managed to say. “If they wanted you married—”

“No one decent would marry me anyway. That's what they said.” Lema laughed, a strange yipping sound with no humor in it. “But when I healed, it turned out they had found someone.”

“And—and are you happy?”

Lema shrugged. “I live with my in-laws now,” she said. “They brought me here tonight.” Her eyes crinkled; she was smiling sheepishly. “I knew I'd see you,” she said.

“But you didn't come across the room. I don't even know how I recognized you, all covered up. Why—”

Lema shook her head. “You looked so happy, dancing,” she said. “I didn't want to spoil your evening.”

“Oh, Lema.” Afia reached to squeeze her friend's hand, but Lema flicked her away.

“Don't,” she said.

“But can't I do something?”

“I'm fine.” Lema pretended to wave at someone across the room. “He doesn't beat me. I get along with his brother's wife. Soon I'll have a child. But you.” She faced Afia. With the back of her dry hand, she stroked Afia's cheek. “You're so smart,” she said. “You'll fetch a fine husband. Maybe one who'll take you back to America!”

“I don't know, Lema. Things have happened.” Afia's eyes filled with tears. Lema was about to turn away, back to the crowlike mother-in-law; there wasn't time to tell her the truth.

“Don't let things happen.” Lema's scar deepened as she drew her hand away. “You're not stupid, like me. You'll be taken care of. You'll be wealthy. You'll be safe.”

“Aren't you safe?”

“I have to go.” Lema pulled her dupatta loose. She leaned forward. She planted a kiss, moist and slightly sour, on Afia's cheek. Then she turned away, back to the women at her table, who frowned as she joined them. She did not glance back.

•   •   •

A
fia burned for her friend. That night and the next she dreamed first of Gus and then of Lema. She woke both mornings dry-mouthed and achy.

Then, when her little sisters had left for school, she persuaded Tayyab to walk her down to Ali Bhai's Internet café, where she booted up her e-mail. And there, both mornings, was a new message from
[email protected]
.
M'Afia
, the messages began, Gus's little cleverness. He went on about missing her, tried to tease her into sending a photo of herself, complained of the wet snow and the sudden loneliness of Devon, with only his menagerie for company. For Christmas he'd gone about ten miles away, to his mom's house in Pittsfield.

She didn't answer the e-mails. She could not write anything to Gus, not here, not in this place where even thoughts of Gus were weeds to be plucked by the root and discarded. She read the blithe sentences—
M'Afia, I know you said Internet would be spotty but what I wouldn't give to get a word from you. I worry about you. Your country is one very scary place. Not to mention how scary the thought that you'll meet some cute guy with a Kalashnikov and that'll be the end of us
—and erased the e-mail, then went to the trash and deleted it there too. When she returned home, she fished in her purse for her mobile, and for a moment she panicked. Then she found it, in the back pocket where she didn't usually stash it. She opened the photo she had of her and Gus, where she was sitting on his shoulders in the apple orchard just west of Northampton. Patty had taken that photo on Columbus Day, before Gus's lips had even come close to hers, and still the sight of it flooded her with shame. Quickly she deleted it. Then she turned off the phone and tucked it deep in her drawer, where no one could get at the photos or text messages. Seeing Lema had brought on caution; she should have felt it before. Shahid was always with the men, no chance to discover if he'd said anything about that stupid shot of her on the Smith website.

Lema had drawn a poor hand with her family, she told herself as she woke next morning—a family that came from the hills, that understood nothing of life in a city or of what Lema wanted for herself. Afia's family wasn't like that. Afia's parents had been proud to send Shahid to Peshawar. They had faced down whatever rumors arose to let Afia study in America. Yesterday, drawing extra rupees from the stash in her mending basket, Moray had taken her to the shops in Mardan and bought an outfit in the latest style, Afia's favorite, an A-line kameez with a flare from the hips, and the new ruched pants underneath. And how many times, over the years, had she heard Baba argue with Khalid? A good Pashtun, he would declare, is not a primitive Pashtun. Your Taliban with their amputations and their stonings, they are like cavemen, they know nothing of Islam.

Thus far, this visit, Khalid had been nice. When she was little he'd given her rides on his broad shoulders. But she remembered teasing him once, for the way his left foot dragged a little as he ran across the pitch in cricket. After that he'd treated her with contempt, guffawing when she first got glasses and reaching with a smirk to pull her dupatta over her chest. Since she left for America he'd ignored her. But yesterday he had asked about her studies, about whether she kept halal. He hadn't asked about the Smith website. Her family, she reminded herself, trusted her. With that thought she curled herself into a ball, as if to shield her body from its own memories. She couldn't let the wall between that distant world and this familiar one become porous; it had to stay solid, each side opaque to the other.

It was her fifth morning at home. Sounds of commotion penetrated the bedroom door. She heard her father's voice; Moray's; Khalid's, with a shrill edge. Then her mother pushed open the door, no knock.

“Afia,” she said, “you've slept enough. Get dressed and help your
anâ
and me in the kitchen.”

Moray was dressed in a dark kameez. Her eyes were puffy, her mouth turned down as if she held a bitter pill on her tongue.

Afia affected a yawn. “What time is it? Can we have puri breakfast?” Rich and delicious, the breakfast of fried bread and sliced fruits was one they used to share as a family, though more and more her father took most meals with her uncles while she and her sisters took stools at the kitchen counter across from her mother and Anâ.

“Too late for breakfast. Get dressed and come. None of your American jeans, either.”

Afia felt slapped. She hadn't even packed her jeans. She knew better. She pulled open her closet and chose her brightest kameez, red with gold threads making little curlicue designs. Pulling her dupatta tight, she stepped from the room and down the short hallway to the kitchen.

“Anâ,” she greeted her grandmother, who was knitting furiously in the corner. Not long after her husband, Afia's
niko
, had died, Anâ had stopped talking. Shock, Afia's mother called it, but Afia suspected a stroke. Anâ's eyes, though, spoke paragraphs. This was her home, and she never let her daughter-in-law forget that. All through her childhood Afia had listened to the quarrels between her mother and Anâ. Gradually she had come to understand that the bickering was not so much hostile as gregarious. Anâ and Moray, she had explained to her sister when Sobia began staring wide-eyed at the raised voices and shaken fists, were like two birds who chattered the same things over and over at each other.
My house, my house, my house
, Anâ chattered, while Moray sang back,
But I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, but I'm here.
Indeed, Moray seemed less sprightly, her voice harsher, now that she could not quarrel with Anâ but only endured her icy, darting eyes. Afia kissed her grandmother's lifted hand.

“Peel the cardamom,” Moray said, setting a bag of the dusty pods in front of her. “They'll be here at two o'clock. I want the cakes to be fresh.”

“Who will be here?”

Her mother frowned, as if Afia had meant to annoy her. “I told you. Maryam's people.” She studied her daughter's hair. “You'll cover your head,” she said, “but that new dupatta is sheer, your hair will show. You should curl the ends.”

“I thought they were coming tomorrow.”

Moray shrugged. “They are eager. Not a trait to discourage.”

Dread hollowed Afia's stomach. She shook a bowlful of green pods from the bag and pulled a tiny knife from the set her mother kept always sharp.

“Inshallah,” Moray said, shaking blanched almonds into the grinder, “they have not heard about the photo.”

Afia dug the point of the knife into the first pod and twisted. Her breath stuttered. “What photo?”

“You know the one. They will say it was my fault, taking such a risk.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Afia dug her thumbnails into the crack made by the knife and pulled the husk away, spilling the black seeds. “I haven't taken any—”

“Don't lie to me, child!” Her mother slapped the bag of almonds onto the counter. The face she turned to Afia was the same color as the blanched nuts. “I have to find a husband for you, do you not realize that?” she said. Her voice rasped. In the corner behind her, Anâ's eyes blinked and glinted like the blades of a fan. “With an engagement, you have a chance. Without it, someone could do us evil. There would be no more school, no more medicine. All I have invested in you, wasted. Is that what you want?”