‘Oh, we’d probably be a disaster,’ she said, crying and laughing at the same time.
‘Maybe.’ He pulled her chair in closer until she was sitting between his legs.
‘It probably wouldn’t work.’
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘You live nowhere in particular and I’ll be living back in Sydney.’
‘And there’s no way two intelligent, resourceful people who want the same thing could possibly find a way to make that work?’ he asked, making a point of looking at his watch before leaning in closer and putting his hands on her knees. ‘Do you think three hours and forty minutes, give or take, might be enough time for us to start again?’
49
BEHNAZ HAS FINISHED sweeping the dust out of the courtyard and is leaning on her broom, looking up at the balcony. It has been seven months since Dr Sofia left. Her nephew lives in the apartment now with the clear understanding that he must leave if Dr Sofia returns. He’s a good boy who has grown in her regard, especially after he retiled the bathroom pink at his own expense. Recently, he has been making noises about fixing the balcony, which he hasn’t been willing to use because he says it isn’t safe. The idea holds no traction with Behnaz. Dr Sofia sat there every morning and every afternoon for five years without complaining. If it was good enough for Dr Sofia it should be good enough for him. Still, if he wants to pay for it himself she would be a fool to say no.
It’s a strange thing but lately she has found herself thinking more about the past. ‘It’s the way of the old,’ she told Wasim that very morning, as she sat watching her husband eat his breakfast, thinking how quickly the years have passed and how dull and grey their lives have become. It’s not the life she had imagined all those years back in Jalalabad when she was told she would be marrying her cousin, the policeman from Kabul.
Behnaz knows Wasim doesn’t much like thinking about ‘the way of the old’. He says he has enough problems dealing with ‘the way of the present’, but what did he expect making his bed with criminals like Massoud? She will offer him no sympathy. Massoud is the reason Dr Jabril was shot and Dr Sofia is gone.
Behnaz curses Massoud when she wakes each morning and when she goes to bed at night. He took away her beloved Sofia and now the criminal is talking about running for president.
Opening the gate, Behnaz steps out into the square and looks, as she always does these mornings, to see if Omar is up. He isn’t. She leans again on her broom, letting her mind travel back to the first time she saw the handsome young apothecary with the green eyes. That night, as she lay with her new husband, she thought only of the apothecary. With the memory the old familiar sadness wells up in her heart until it feels as if it might burst. She gives the cobblestones a sweep, as if sweeping away the memory is sweeping away the pain. Behnaz looks up at Omar’s bedroom window again. The memories will not be chased away today. She is not sure whether she even cares.
It was Omar who had shown Behnaz what it truly meant to be a woman, and once that thing is known it can never be unknown.
Nor can it ever be undone.
The old woman she is today says she hates him, but she knows that the young woman she once was still loves him.
‘There is a path that leads from heart to heart,’ he had once said to her, as they lay in his bed. ‘That path will always lead me back to you, my sweet Behnaz.’ The young woman believed him all those years ago. The young woman still believes him.
Behnaz knows Omar will soon be gone. When she was young she cried countless tears because their time together had been so pitifully short, but now that she is old she knows it was a blessing. The love she had for Omar had burnt so fiercely under her skin that it would surely have eventually destroyed all their lives. To this day she doesn’t know whether Wasim knows about Omar. It’s a question she will never ask.
Like all the women of Afghanistan, Behnaz was forced back behind the walls of her home during the civil war and the rise of the Taliban. Their miniskirts, shorts and make-up, their knowing smiles and raucous laughter all disappeared; their voices no longer heard; their beauty no longer seen; their lives no longer worthy. It had been a time of great fear for women, but it had also been a time of great loss, especially for Behnaz. It was during those years, when she hid behind the walls of her home, that Behnaz discovered she would never bear a living child. And as she grieved her losses, she watched the young Omar take a wife, and then a second and a third, and all these dour wives knew how to produce children for Behnaz’s lover. Daughter after daughter after daughter had slipped seamlessly into the world, as if the magic of breath, and the gift of life, was their right, but not that of her own dead babies. And with each new girl child Behnaz found herself thinking, ‘This one should have been mine. This one should have been mine.’
Under the cover of the burqa, and through all the miscarriages and losses, Behnaz’s laughter had dried up and her heart had hardened, as if the young Behnaz had been picked up and thrown away to be replaced by
