When the Moon Is Low(26)

Khanum Zeba became Khala Zeba to me, once KokoGul placed my shirnee before her and agreed to give my hand in marriage. I’d never before seen her son, Mahmood. In a way, it was Khanum Zeba I had fallen for. Her son was merely her outstretched hand. But going through the motions of life together, Mahmood and I slowly became husband and wife.

When I told Khanum Zeba that I wanted to be a teacher, she insisted I pursue it. She’d been a teacher as well. I enrolled in a teaching program and worked my way through the courses with the support of a family I was barely a part of. My father and KokoGul were content to see me attend the classes.

“School, school, school. Your husband is going to buy you chalk and notebooks for gifts if you don’t make it clear you like things besides a classroom,” KokoGul teased.

MAHMOOD AND I WERE MARRIED IN 1979, A YEAR AFTER OUR ENGAGEMENT and just as the Soviet Union’s first baby-faced soldiers landed their heavy boots on Afghan soil. Having proudly earned a teaching degree in two years, I woke with fresh energy every day and took my place at the head of an elementary school classroom. The students were as eager as flightless, freshly hatched birds in a nest. It was for me to nurture their open minds, to teach them the words and numbers and ideas that would spread their wings.

Just two months after our wedding, Mahmood received word that his uncle’s family, including four children, had been killed by Soviet rockets in the Panjshir Valley. We spent the next few months as newlyweds in mourning. I could hear Mahmood’s aunts and cousins cluck their tongues at the incongruous sight of a new bride in a somber fateha, where the visitors came to pay their respects to the family of the deceased.

It’s just as they warned, came the whispers. She carries the curse of bad fortune with her . . . and now she’s among us. Her own family cautioned . . .

Word of the rumors got back to us. My mother-in-law, Khala Zeba, scoffed at them. She said nothing when Mahmood made the painful decision to distance himself from the gossips in the family. He sheltered me from relatives with suspicious eyes and those who kept their children away out of fear.

Idle women are dangerous. Better you stick with your colleagues, women who busy themselves with home and work, like yourself. Don’t mind the noise from the henhouse, Mahmood would caution.

I was relieved and surprised to have my husband reject such slander. My shoulders straightened to hear him defend me, especially to his own family. Mahmood and Khala Zeba reminded me of my grandfather, whose moral strength and unrelenting love often deflected KokoGul’s hurtful words. Mahmood made the ground beneath me stop quaking. He gave me room and reason to love him.

I busied myself as he suggested. I spent an occasional afternoon with another teacher I’d befriended and immersed myself in teaching. I expected a lot from my students and they worked hard. I knew I wasn’t as stern as the other teachers, but I vied for their affection as much as they did for mine.

I cared about what I wore then and did my best to dress smartly. In my father’s home, I’d dressed more like a girl—jeans, calf-length skirts, and collared T-shirts. In my new home, I dressed more like a woman—pencil skirts, ruffled blouses, buckled pumps, and always a shoulder bag. With Mahmood, I had my own household and was free to decide how my salary would be spent. I wasn’t extravagant, just stylish enough to make my husband beam when we left the house for a gathering or to visit relatives. He looked at me as if I, too, gave him room and reason to love.

He believed in romance. He went on a trip once across the country. He was gone for two weeks and returned with fourteen letters he’d written me, a thick stack of his thoughts on our first meeting, the future of his job, and his favorite Hindi movie.

Your poor ears, Ferei. If I had this much to write to you, imagine how much I must talk!

At least we had each other to smile about in those days. The country suffered immeasurable losses in the tug of war between the Soviet Union and the mujahideen, Afghanistan’s freedom fighters. More mothers buried their sons. More children limped to school, their limbs amputated by explosives disguised as dolls or toy cars. Mahmood and I listened to the news together on our sofa—his arm around my shoulder or my back leaned against his chest. He would shake his head in sadness as Afghans fled the bloodied countryside and sought refuge in the capital.

WE LIVED CONTENTEDLY FOR SIX YEARS AS HUSBAND AND WIFE, but were quietly dismayed that my belly never swelled with child. We didn’t speak of it directly but when I suggested that I wanted to be a mother, Mahmood agreed I should see a doctor. I went to see Kabul’s most lauded women’s doctors and took whatever pills they confidently prescribed. I swallowed the vilest concoctions of herbs blended by the elderly woman down the road. Month after month, my bleeding returned, until I finally crumpled as I dressed for school one morning and sobbed to Mahmood that he should not be deprived of fatherhood because of my barren womb. He held me as tightly and gently as I imagine only my mother could have and whispered in my ear that I should not speak such words again. I learned something very important that day.

Love grows wildest in the gardens of hardship.

Not long after, Saleem came along—a happy surprise that reignited the gossips. See what they’ve married into, they’d said in the years we were without a child. This quickly turned into whispers that I’d enlisted some black magic to lift my curse. My fellow teachers, on the other hand, rejoiced with me, and though most families were struggling in Kabul at that turbulent time, they scraped together what they could to bring gifts for the new baby. Hand-knitted, impossibly small sweaters, plush blankets, and a plate of sweet rosewater biscuits. Khala Zeba celebrated with us, bringing her best cooking and caring for her grandchild as I recovered from a difficult childbirth.