15
The days were growing shorter, and evening winds danced through the courtyard carrying whispers of winter. Marjan had nearly
forgotten about Hawa’s laundry drying on the clothesline. She’d come out to retrieve her still-damp pieces in case it rained
overnight. Marjan paused to scratch at her ankle. The mosquitoes found their way to the tiniest sliver of exposed flesh.
The door to the halfway house creaked open. Marjan looked up from her basket to see Aneesa’s figure illuminated by the porch
light. She stood on the step with her arms folded across her chest and her head lowered.
When Marjan approached her, the gathered laundry in her arms, Aneesa still didn’t look up. A crown of white moths flitted
above her head, mistaking the glow of a cheap bulb for the moon. Gauzy wings orbited the brightness then fell away, disoriented.
“Are the girls okay?” Marjan asked.
Aneesa sniffled. She pressed her fingers over her eyes and shook her head. The girls had both come down with a cold two days
back. Maybe Aneesa had caught it too.
“Yes, they’re both still asleep.”
“Then what’s happened?” Marjan asked.
Aneesa shifted her weight uncomfortably.
“He wants me to come back,” she said.
Marjan stood in stunned silence. She knew right away who Aneesa was talking about, even if she hadn’t mentioned any names.
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Yes. He went looking for me at my family’s home,” Aneesa said. She fished a crumpled tissue out of her pocket and dried her
nose.
“After all this time? But he divorced you!”
“He’s denying he ever said it.”
A heavy silence hung between them, for the truth was that Aneesa’s word was no match for her husband’s.
“I thought I was free. Marjan, I can’t go back to him. Every other day he finds some reason to . . . to . . . I just can’t
go back.”
Marjan put a hand on Aneesa’s arm.
“What did your family say?”
A bitter laugh escaped Aneesa’s lips.
“That I should be grateful for a chance to go home. That I’ve brought too much shame on them being in this place. He’s convinced
them that these shelters take women in and then turn them into prostitutes. I told my mother a thousand times it wasn’t true,
and she reminded me that it doesn’t matter if it’s not true. It only matters that it was said.”
Marjan’s heart sank. It was too easy to sully a woman’s character. There was no need for evidence. An accusation became a
conviction as soon as the words were uttered, and there was nothing a woman could do to prove herself innocent. There was
no path to redemption.
“But what he did to you that night . . .” Marjan’s words drifted away, meaningless.
“He told them I was very sharp with him and laughed when he asked what time I was coming home. And that it’s normal for husbands
and wives to argue sometimes, which of course my father was not going to dispute,” Aneesa said bitterly. “My husband doesn’t
love me. He just doesn’t like that I’ve not gone crawling back to him.”
Aneesa wasn’t the first woman to face the prospect of returning to an abusive home.
Far from it. The staff at the shelter worked with families with the goal of reconciling.
It would be ideal to restore a woman to her home so long as it was a safe situation.
And many women felt compelled to return home, either because of their children or because being on their own in a world of men was too overwhelming.
“What did you tell them?”
“That they can all go to hell. And that I refuse to go back to him,” Aneesa declared, wiping her tears away.
As if she had uttered her final word on the matter, over the next few days she did not bring it up again and refused to speak
about it when Marjan inquired if she had heard anything more.
Marjan was relieved. She did not want to think of her best friend returning to a husband who had left her nearly lifeless
on the floor. And she was more relieved to see that the staff of the halfway house did not push Aneesa to reconcile with her
husband. They respected her decision and believed her when she said there was no safe return for her.
One evening, late into the night, Marjan heard Aneesa’s sheets rustling. Neither one of them was getting much sleep.
“Aneesa?”
“Mm?”
“Did you really tell your family that they can all go to hell?”
“No,” she whispered. “But I most certainly thought it.”
Aneesa continued in her daily routines as usual. The other women in the halfway house did not detect any changes, but Marjan
noticed that Aneesa’s eyes would glaze over when she watched her daughter playing or flipping through pages of a storybook,
pretending to read. She would poke at her food, and her steps were slower, laborious.
Again, Marjan was awakened in the night by the sound of Aneesa’s restless movements.
“Are you all right?” she whispered in the dark.
Though Marjan was sure she was awake, Aneesa didn’t respond.
In the morning, Aneesa put on a smile and helped her daughter dress.
She kissed the top of Roqia’s head. Marjan wondered if she really had been asleep and was putting her husband’s nonsense behind her.
In the afternoon, they brought the girls back to the room, hopeful that they would take a nap and give their mothers a few moments to themselves.
While they played, Aneesa mended the torn knee on a pair of Roqia’s leggings.
Marjan was working her way through a chapter of Pride and Prejudice, which she was stunned to discover was about five unmarried sisters, their vexed parents, and the finicky suitors circling
their lives. The Bennet girls weren’t children, of course. And they weren’t being forced into brutal marriages. Still, Marjan
was stirred by Elizabeth’s spirit, her self-assuredness.
What are men to rocks and mountains?
Marjan was about to share the line with Aneesa when someone knocked on the door of their room, then entered.
“Aneesa?”
Marjan and Aneesa both looked up.
The woman standing in the doorway was a social worker who checked on the halfway house residents from time to time. She beckoned
Aneesa, but Aneesa shook her head. Marjan watched with confusion.
“It’s important that I speak with you.” The woman’s tone was gentle but firm.
“I’m busy,” Aneesa said. Her hands trembled as she pierced the patch with her needle.
“Aneesa.”
Aneesa set her work down with an exaggerated huff. She rose and walked to the hallway to have a private word with the woman.
She returned a few moments later, her expression darkened.
“Is everything all right?” Marjan asked, though it was evident nothing was all right.
“He wants to take her,” Aneesa muttered.
Every woman in the halfway house, every woman in Kabul, every mother in Afghanistan knew that in the rare case of a dissolved
marriage, the law sided with men on the issue of custody. It didn’t matter that Aneesa’s husband had knocked her unconscious
or that he’d nearly killed her in front of their daughter. If he wanted Roqia, the courts would give him Roqia.
“This is too cruel,” Aneesa moaned.
That night, Marjan wondered what she would do if Abdul Khaliq were to show up at the halfway house tomorrow demanding his
child. Would she hand Hawa over? Would she go back to Abdul Khaliq so that she wouldn’t be separated from her child?
Aneesa refused to lose Roqia.
She packed her bag and became one of the countless women who chose the lesser of two evils. Marjan and Hawa followed Aneesa
and Roqia to the halfway house’s front gate. Marjan hugged her friend tightly.
“If things are bad, just come back. Don’t be afraid to leave,” Marjan reminded her, though she knew it would be nearly impossible
to gather the courage to leave a second time. “We’ll be praying for you and Roqia-jan.”
Aneesa nodded, her eyes glistening. She did not want to break down, especially with Hawa and Roqia watching.
“Yes, pray for us. And I’ll be praying for you and Hawa-jan. Don’t give up. I want to hear that you’ve gotten yourself an
apartment with your own bathroom and kitchen, something in a tall building. You’ll tell me about your job working somewhere . . .
somewhere important. Not a dress shop, for sure, but somewhere important. You’re so clever and young.”
Marjan laughed bitterly.
“Promise me,” she repeated, blinking back tears. “Promise me you’ll come back if things get bad.”
Aneesa pointed to the sky above, where dithering clouds occupied most of the slate-colored sky. Winter was drawing near.
“God as my witness, I will do my best.”
Marjan kissed Roqia’s face.
“Be a good girl,” she whispered. Roqia nodded. Her five years of life had already taught her how vital it was that she behave.
She knew, in her still-growing bones, that this world did not tolerate a disobedient girl.
Marjan, with Hawa on her hip, stood on the concrete steps of the halfway house, watching her friend walk out the gate as the
first drops of rain landed on her head.