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Marjan spent almost four weeks in that hospital. She had stopped asking to be released once it hit her that she had nowhere
to go. If she showed up at the orphanage, where would she take Hawa? Would they sleep on the street?
The doctors and nurses would have sent Marjan out the door sooner, but word had gotten around that she had saved two other
students during the university attack and that she was a young, widowed mother. Marjan never complained. She asked very little
of the nurses and channeled her energies toward her recovery. She didn’t want assistance. She needed to be able to get around
on her own.
A wisp of a girl surviving such an attack? God truly is great.
I haven’t seen anyone so determined. I should complain less about my aching feet.
Marjan’s phone had been destroyed in the accident, and she wasn’t all that mobile yet, making it next to impossible to search
for a room and a job to go with it. She forced herself out of her shell and approached doctors, nurses, and other hospital
employees.
If you happen to know of a small room for rent or anyone hiring, I would appreciate it. I can do embroidery, I’ve worked in
a restaurant, and I’m a quick learner. Sorry to trouble you, but I really need to get back on my feet.
“It’s embarrassing,” she told Soraya. “I feel like the vegetable man, pushing my rickety cart down the road and shouting to the neighbors about onions and peppers. Up and down the hallways of the hospital, I’m announcing my problems. Needs a job!
Needs a room! Here’s a girl who needs a job and a room! ”
Soraya laughed.
“I didn’t know you had such a commanding voice! Maybe you just need a couple sacks of potatoes to get you started.”
“If I only had a pushcart,” Marjan mumbled.
“Well, let me show you something to brighten your day. I stopped by the orphanage on my way here to check on our little butterfly.
I took the best pictures!”
Marjan practically burst into tears as she took the phone into her hands. Hawa’s face filled the screen, her cheeks pink with
delight and her hair in two precious pigtails. She was looking at something out of view, a smile across her face.
“Keep swiping,” Soraya encouraged.
In the next picture, Hawa was sitting on a carpeted floor with two girls who looked to be slightly older than her. Between
them was a pile of crayons, coloring books, and a small stuffed animal. Marjan swiped again and came to a video. She hit play.
Show me what you’ve made, Soraya said, and Hawa was happy to oblige. She walked toward the camera with a piece of paper in her hands and held it up
for Soraya to see.
I made a moon and this is a girl.
Is this girl sitting on the moon? Soraya asked.
Hawa nodded.
What’s her name? Is her name Hawa?
Hawa turned away, hiding her bashful smile.
This is the most beautiful drawing! Do you want to say anything to your Madar-jan? You know she misses you so much!
At the mention of her mother, Hawa’s face grew solemn. She tried to take the phone from Soraya’s hand, tried to find her mother
on the screen.
Oh, no, I haven’t called her. I’m so sorry, I wish we could but . . . oh no. Come, come, sweet thing.
Soraya’s recording ended there. Marjan took in a long, slow breath.
“She just got a bit emotional. She’s very busy there, Marjan. She’s strong like her mother. But thankfully, way more talkative
than you.”
“I was talking to somebody yesterday and they mentioned . . . there might be a place you could stay,” said Zarmina, a nurse
who had a pleasantly round face and earnest eyes. She was chronically late and rushed so much that Marjan often heard a faint
whistle in her respirations.
Zarmina had Marjan’s full attention.
“Really?”
“Possibly. My father knows a businessman. Agha Rasuli. He travels between here and Dubai. His wife just had her first child
and they are looking for help. They have an extra room in their home.”
“Help them with one child?” Marjan asked, curious.
“I know,” Zarmina replied. “But wealthy people spend their money the way they want to. He’s actually a very nice man and just
wants to take good care of his wife and child.”
Zarmina tried to slip her pen into the pocket of her top, but instead it slipped out of her hand and dropped to the floor
with a clink. When she rose from retrieving it, her face had turned red. “Just think about it. I know it might not be the
best—”
“Can you call him now?” Marjan asked.
To Marjan’s relief, Agha Rasuli wasn’t bothered by her ongoing recovery.
You don’t exactly need to chase after a newborn, he’d joked. And he was pleased to hear that Marjan had a little girl of her own. The experience made her a qualified candidate.
On the day Marjan was discharged from the hospital, Agha Rasuli sent a taxi for her.
She was delivered to the Rasuli home, a two-story structure in an area of town reserved for the well-to-do.
Marjan stood on her crutches with one duffel bag in each hand.
The privacy walls and home itself were painted a salmon color, the metal door black with ornate gold accents.
“Come in, come in,” Agha Rasuli said, stepping back so Marjan could enter the yard. She prayed she wouldn’t drop a bag. A
narrow staircase led to an upstairs balcony attached to the house. Agha Rasuli led Marjan through a ground-floor door and
into a spacious room with floor cushions on three sides of the room. The fourth wall had built-in shelves surrounding a large-screen
television backlit by the sapphire glow of strip lights. The shelves were empty save for a copper vase and a couple of framed
photographs.
“Zargul! Come here, would you?” Agha Rasuli called up the stairs. Marjan tried to plan how she might climb those stairs. Luckily,
her cast started below her knee. “You can leave those bags there for now,” he said to her.
Relieved, Marjan balanced herself on one foot and leaned over to set her bags down instead of dropping them.
“Zargul? Where are you?” he called again. He spoke and moved fast, Marjan observed. She understood he would expect the same
of her.
A woman appeared at the top of the stairs with a baby in her arms, impervious to the urgency her husband seemed to feel. The
stairway received no daylight, and the overhead bulb flickered for a second, but only Marjan seemed to notice.
“She’s sleeping,” Khanum Zargul whispered over the baby’s head, shooting her husband a pointed look.
“Why didn’t you set Leeda down, then?” her husband muttered. “Anyway. Zargul, this is Marjan. We’ll need to show her around
here and then take her to the room behind the house. She’s quite capable, I hear, and will be even more so when she is finally
out of that cast.”
“Very well. Come on up,” Zargul said.
Marjan managed to climb up with one hand on the railing and one crutch under her other arm.
Zargul showed her to their sprawling bedroom with gray lacquered furniture and a tufted headboard in gray velvet.
In the corner stood a white wooden crib with a satiny pink bumper tied to the railings and a plush fitted sheet on the mattress.
She pulled open the drawers of a dresser to show Marjan where they stored Leeda’s diapers and clothing.
“And in the kitchen . . .” she said, exiting the room. She stood in the hallway and looked at Marjan. “Let me know if you
need to sit down.”
“No, please go ahead. I’ll follow you,” Marjan said.
The kitchen was three times the size of the galley kitchen she had shared with Wana and Farrah. It hadn’t occurred to her
that a home kitchen could or should be larger. Honey-colored cabinets were set against a creamy backsplash with a horizontal
strip of gold metal. Two glass milk bottles sat on the gray granite counter.
“Here is the baby’s formula, but she prefers when I breastfeed her,” she said. As if stirred by the mention of a feeding,
Leeda started to fuss. “Why don’t you go back downstairs and my husband can show you to your space? I’m going to change and
nurse her.”
“I could help if you—” Marjan started to offer, but Zargul was already gone.
Marjan was terribly thirsty. She would have loved a sip of water but didn’t want to overstep on her first day. She went back
downstairs and found Agha Rasuli standing outside, bidding someone a jovial goodbye on his cell phone.
“Back already?”
“Yes, Leeda-jan needed a feeding,” Marjan explained.
“It would have been nice if you could have done that feeding. But let me show you to your room,” he said, before Marjan could
explain that she had offered to help but had been turned away. She was reminded of her first days at the restaurant, before
Elyas understood just how hard she was willing to work.
Behind the two-story house was a separate structure, a single room with a floor cushion, a coffee table, and a box fan. There
was a simple bathroom but nothing else. It was more than enough for Marjan. “I’ll let you get yourself situated, then come
back into the house. You can wait in the living room upstairs for instructions from Zargul.”
Marjan wanted to ask Agha Rasuli right then and there when she could bring Hawa to live with her, but she didn’t want to appear too needy.
She was here to help them, not the other way around.
While the baby slept, Marjan folded and ironed clothes.
Only when she had finished that task did she work up the courage to ask if she could have a glass of water.
“The cups are in that second cabinet,” Khanum Zargul said. “Will you be able to manage?”
Marjan thanked her, then drained an entire glass standing over the sink. When she finished, she refilled the glass and took
another look at the kitchen. There were crumbs and sticky patches on the counter that she had noticed earlier. The sink was
half full with dishes and two baby bottles. With a bit of balancing, Marjan washed and dried the dishes. As quietly as she
could, she opened cabinets and drawers until she figured out where everything went. She wiped down the counters, then hung
the damp cloth on the edge of the sink.