17
After Aneesa’s departure, Marjan curled into herself like an autumn leaf. She shouldn’t have let herself get caught up in
someone else’s dreams. It was best to concentrate on preparing for a life outside of the halfway house, a life in which she
would be solely responsible for her daughter in every sense of the word.
She tried not to think about Aneesa. They had no way of communicating with each other and hadn’t even bothered to make flimsy
promises of doing so when they bid each other farewell. And Marjan wasn’t the only person in Afghanistan to endure perpetual
goodbyes. People who fled during the Soviet invasion might have thought they would return after the conflict, but then came
the civil war and the Taliban. Hope of reunions diminished. Bags packed, people held on to their parents and siblings longer
in that final hug before escape and touched each other’s faces. Parents kissed their grown children as if they were school
age again. Children pressed their lips to the palms of their grandparents’ hands. Life had never been guaranteed, but the
whistle of rockets signaled a tipping of the odds in mortality’s favor.
Marjan couldn’t work unless someone else cared for Hawa. She needed to rely on the other women in the halfway house, but she
kept her relationships transactional and flat. She was polite enough. Her aloofness was readily accepted in a community of
women who had been scarred by the people closest to them.
She found a restaurant willing to hire her, thanks to a good word from Samia.
The job was in the kitchen, julienning carrots and peeling garlic and chopping onions until her eyes felt like they had been set aflame.
She wasn’t trusted with the serious cooking, though they did allow her to blend the chutneys and to flip the eggplant as it fried in vegetable oil.
The grease splatter and heat caused her face to break out, but she dared not complain.
The work was reliable, paid decently, and kept her out of public view.
She saved every penny and took home with her any food that would otherwise have been discarded.
Often enough, the owner sent her home with enough food for two.
One month turned into three, three turned into six, and before she knew it, a year had gone by. Marjan was growing comfortable
in her new life, accustomed to the rhythm of her days and the weight of the struggle. Hawa was thriving, turning words into
sentences and becoming the darling of the home, since most of the other children were older.
Marjan was so busy during the day that she could hardly think an hour ahead. But at night, while the world slept, she tried
to envision her future. The halfway house was a stepping stone, but to what? And the restaurant was a job that barely covered
her expenses now. Could she go back to school? She watched girls her age dressed in school uniforms or carrying satchels heavy
with books and imagined a day when she might fall in step with them. She would be more than happy to stay up all night studying
if it meant she could hold a diploma in her hands and know that she would be able to support herself and her daughter for
the rest of her life.
Marjan’s brooding wasn’t the only reason she lost sleep. Hawa seemed to come down with a cold every few weeks. It would start
with a bit of fussing and pushing away food. Then her cheeks would flush with fever, her nose would start to run, and she’d
be racked with coughing fits. One Ramadan, in the dead of winter, a tenacious flu made its way around the halfway house, passed
from child to child.
Marjan knew it was only a matter of time.
When Hawa came down with the illness, the hacking cough was so persistent that she didn’t have the energy to play with her favorite toy, a red ball with blue stitching.
Marjan touched her daughter’s chest and felt the heat of her small body.
She gave her a spoonful of the red fever-reducing elixir one of the other mothers had recommended to her.
Hawa had pushed away her white rice, setting her head down on a pillow instead.
Marjan offered her water and juice, but Hawa pushed the cup away.
She changed Hawa’s clothes, opting for a lighter shirt so that Hawa wouldn’t feel so hot.
The coughs cut through the stillness of the night, sharp and relentless.
It was when Hawa’s breathing changed that Marjan became alarmed. Hawa’s breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, had once
been the rhythm that lulled Marjan to sleep. But on this night, she heard a strange whistling coming from her daughter.
She was immediately taken back to her son and the malady that had claimed him in her absence. What if this wasn’t just another
cold? What if Marjan was ignoring something more sinister, just as her mother-in-law had when Jahangir had fallen ill?
Marjan tried to stay calm. She checked the clock on the wall. It was two in the morning, if this devilish hour could be called
morning. Could this wait? All she could hear was the soft whistle in every exhalation of Hawa’s shallow breaths.
Marjan went down the hall to Husna’s room. Husna had three children and had been at the halfway house the longest. She made
it her business to know as much as she could about the other women, recording in her mind every sordid detail of their abusive
and dysfunctional family dynamics. Marjan avoided her for this very reason. In fairness, Husna was an open book about the
abuse that had forced her to pick up her three children and seek help at the shelter. She could not imagine why anyone wouldn’t
want to vent about their misfortunes. Husna was always available, deeply sympathetic, and rather shameless.
And this was your sister-in-law? Dear and pure Allah, what a scoundrel.
My husband slapped me for flirting with my son’s teacher at school. Imagine that? I saw the man once on the street. Was your
husband terribly envious too? Did he ever accuse you of sins he himself was committing?
Were you terribly constipated when you were pregnant? It took me nine months to have the baby but even longer to take a shit.
There were benefits to having a busybody in the house, a woman who inquired about every illness with more interest than a
medical student. On top of that, she was an experienced mother.
Marjan knocked on Husna’s door. Impatient, she opened it enough to make out four sleeping figures on floor mattresses—Husna
and her children.
“Husna-jan? I’m so sorry to disturb you,” Marjan whispered into the room.
Husna inhaled sharply, roused from sleep.
“Who’s there?” she whispered back.
“It’s me, Marjan. I’m worried about Hawa.”
Husna snapped her comforter off and stood, as if she’d been summoned to an official duty. She followed Marjan back to her
room and touched Hawa’s damp forehead. She put a hand on her chest and felt the rise and fall, heard the soft whistle. Hawa
began to cough again, tight and hard.
“She is breathing hard, poor thing,” Husna said, clucking her tongue. “Has she been this way all day?”
“No, not like this,” Marjan said, though as soon as she uttered the words, she wondered if she was right. Maybe she had been
breathing hard, and Marjan hadn’t noticed. Guilt snaked around her chest and squeezed. Hawa groaned and rolled away, as if
she wanted these two makeshift nurses to allow her to sleep.
“My youngest coughed like this once. He had pneumonia. Nearly killed him,” Husna said. “You should take her to the hospital.”
Marjan threw herself into action. She packed up Hawa and began the moonlit trek to the hospital. Hawa was not so easy to carry
now that she wasn’t an infant. Marjan shifted her from one arm to the other and walked quickly but carefully, terrified that
she would trip on the rough streets and send them both crashing to the ground.
At the hospital, the nurse checked Hawa’s temperature and asked Marjan how long she’d been ill.
A doctor came in and asked a few more questions while he pressed a stethoscope to Hawa’s chest. With a lighted scope, he peered into her mouth and ears and pressed on her belly.
He watched Hawa’s chest and belly rise and fall with every heavy breath, then gave her back to Marjan.
“We’ll need to give her some medications to help her breathing. Are you familiar with asthma?”
Marjan shook her head.
“It’s a condition that makes it harder for children to breathe,” he explained, then asked the nurse to bring in two medications.
She nodded and left.
“Is it fatal?” Marjan asked.
“No, not if it’s treated.” He noticed that Marjan’s hands trembled slightly as she fussed with the buttons on Hawa’s sweater.
“Where is her father?”
Marjan’s hands tightened around her daughter. Why was he asking? She could only come up with sinister reasons.
“My husband dropped me off on his way to work,” she lied.
Marjan was ashamed to be a single mother. She was also ashamed that she felt that way. She felt slightly better telling people
she was a widow, but the word didn’t feel natural to her. Abdul Khaliq was too alive in her mind. She saw him coming around
every corner and heard his taunts in her sleep. He was a grenade with its pin pulled.
“Very well,” the doctor said. “I hope he’ll be free soon. He’ll need to pick up the medications she needs for her breathing
and her ear infection. Let me teach you about asthma because it is likely this will happen again.”
The pediatrician was right. The asthma returned every time Hawa caught a cold, which seemed to happen with the same frequency
as the appearance of a new moon. Marjan kept a pouch of Hawa’s medicines by her bed and learned the signs and symptoms of
her illness. Six months later, the pharmacist could almost guess what she needed before she said a word.
“Antibiotics again or steroids? Or are you out of the inhaler?” he asked.
The medications took a big bite out of her income, as did her absences from work.
Early winter was a particularly rough spell with a virus that had Hawa barely able to keep her food down.
When one child in the halfway house came down with a runny nose or stomach flu, it would inevitably pass to every other child.
Neither one of them slept much at all. Marjan was in a fog when she dragged her feet into the restaurant one afternoon, leaving Hawa with her very reluctant babysitter, Husna.
“You’re late,” Elyas announced as she walked in.
“I know and I’m so sorry,” Marjan said. She had grown to respect her boss. He had taken a chance on her at a time when she
couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone. He always respected her space and never made idle conversation. He was all business
with her, which she appreciated. As underwater as she felt, she still didn’t want to be coddled.
“You were late yesterday as well,” he reminded her.
She nodded, feeling a slight burn in the back of her throat. Was she coming down with something too? First chance she got,
she would steal a pinch of salt from the kitchen and gargle with salt water, as Husna had recommended.
“I know and I’m so very sorry,” she repeated. She hoped she sounded sincere. Sleepless nights had worn her out. One hour before
work today, she’d inadvertently dozed off while Hawa napped. She woke to the sound of Hawa coughing and realized she should
have been out the door ten minutes earlier.
She probably wouldn’t sleep much tonight either, even though Hawa was breathing easier today. The social worker had informed
all the residents of the halfway house that they had run out of funding. They had three weeks to find shelter for themselves.
Husna was planning on returning to her father’s home, two provinces away. Her family was less than thrilled at the prospect
of being the talk of the neighbors, but her father had suffered two heart attacks and didn’t resist as he might have just
a few years earlier. He’d decided he could use another caregiver in his senior years.
“Forgive me,” Marjan promised, her voice shaking. “It’s been a rough week. Hawa’s better, thank God, but I’ll have to find
a new place to live by the end of the month. This job means so much to me. I won’t let you down again.”
Elyas sighed heavily. He knew only that she was widowed and shared a home with several women. She hadn’t told him it was a halfway house, though he might have assumed as much. He started to walk away and then turned back.
“Maybe there’s a place you could stay,” he suggested. “There’s a room for rent with two young women. I’ll give you a number.
You make the call.”
The thought of leaving the halfway house both terrified and excited Marjan. She craved independence and would love to get
Hawa out of that cesspool of germs. But how was she to manage work and a daughter on her own?
Her manager scribbled a phone number on a napkin and handed it to her. Marjan tucked the paper into her pocket and vowed to
call immediately after work that night.
Hawa, I promise I’ll give you the home you deserve, Marjan thought to herself. It was the first of many promises to her daughter that she would not keep.