50 #2
“So you’re marrying him?” Zargul asked incredulously. She would have sounded less shocked if Marjan had announced she’d been
hiding a third leg. Marjan balled her hands into tight fists as she tried to hold on to herself.
“No. No, that’s not what’s happened,” she said, her voice steeled.
“Are you pregnant?” Zargul asked.
“No! It was nothing like that!” Marjan cried.
“This is so shameful,” Zargul declared. She turned her attention to her husband then. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea
but you insisted.”
“Don’t you dare blame me for her actions. I brought her to help you, since you’re too spoiled to live without help,” Agha
Rasuli shouted at her. “God, do women know how to ruin a man!”
Zargul gasped at this accusation. She blinked rapidly, her eyes wide.
“I can’t believe you would say such a thing to the mother of your child. We’re talking about what she’s done to our household right now. I can’t have people thinking this is the kind of home we have.”
“We gave you shelter, food, and on top of all of that, we even gave you a salary,” he said to Marjan. “This is how you repay
our charity? You need to leave.”
“It was not charity. I worked for that salary.”
“Yes, yes. You did all kinds of work here, didn’t you? Marjan, we won’t have you here another moment. Get your things and
leave.”
“I did nothing wrong. I did all the work you asked of me and then some. I cared for your daughter as if she were my own.”
Zargul scoffed at this.
“Your own? She’s lucky she’s not your daughter. And your daughter is lucky she’s at the orphanage,” she said. Every word was
a blade. The lights flickered again, the circuit overloaded somewhere behind the painted walls.
“I pray your daughter never knows how cruel her parents are,” Marjan fired back.
Agha Rasuli was suddenly inches from her face, close enough that she could smell the liquor on his breath and see the flecks
of gray in his stubble.
“Get out!” he roared, pointing at the door. Marjan wanted nothing more than to oblige. She walked underneath his raised arm
and slammed the door on her way out.
“Why did the lights go out? Did she do that?” Zargul yelled at her husband on the other side of the door.
Marjan went to gather her belongings. She shoved her clothing back into the bags her roommates had brought to her in the hospital.
The entirety of her life fit into two bags, and this was fine because she could not carry any more.
Stepping into the night with a bag on each arm, she understood just how precarious her situation was. She walked to the park,
the path familiar at every turn, and still she felt unsure of each step. As if the city might have rearranged itself. As if
the streets and buildings were conspiring to disorient her.
She stood across the street from the corner of the park.
People walked around her on the sidewalk, men mostly.
The smell of kebabs smoking on a charcoal grill competed with the bitter exhaust of a generator.
Storefronts glowed with pink or green lights.
Headlights of passing cars took turns illuminating the modest curbside trees. The city was alive.
She recognized the shape of him, standing beneath a pine tree. His eyes on his phone.
Marjan took two steps into the street. She considered turning around. She took one more step toward Saboor, when a hatchback
came around the bend and nearly clipped her.
She stumbled backward, caught her breath.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you? Watch where you’re going!” someone shouted.
Where was she going? There was no floating haven between love and war for her. It was time to choose a side.
Marjan crossed the street.
His face melted into a smile, boyish and sweet, at the sight of her. She couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at her in that
way. She hadn’t thought it possible.
“And then she appeared,” he said, and Marjan let out a soft whimper. He reached for her hand, his eyes going soft with concern
when she did not take his.
“Janem, you’re upset. Tell me what’s happened. Talk to me,” he coaxed.
She had fallen for him, stumbled headfirst, and in the tumble she’d lost her direction.
“They fired me. And kicked me out of the home. All because of you!”
She was close enough to feel his body heat, to remember the tingle she felt when he caressed her face.
“What spiteful people! Let me think,” Saboor said. “My love, I have some money. We can find a room for you somewhere. You
are bright and hardworking. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”
He took her hand. Marjan needed to be held.
“They accused me of . . . of . . .” Marjan couldn’t bring herself to repeat the accusations.
“Remember, fate has always tested the patience of the most lovestruck hearts,” he whispered.
A gust of wind tumbled down the Hindu Kush, swept into the valley, and brushed against Marjan’s cheek like an ancestral whisper.
Saboor was a man who believed himself a poet, but the poems he’d shown her had been years old. He was adamantly against sharing
his work with others, so he’d never published a thing. And when Saboor’s family called her a used and polluted woman, he’d
made pitiful excuses for them. How would they treat Hawa, if they spoke of her in such a way? Saboor wasn’t simply private,
or a dreamer. He was afraid. Saboor had not an ounce of fight in him and love demanded great courage.
“Marjan, we can figure this out,” he said. “Marjan!”
But Marjan was already gone.