In these last days before Omar goes, she is allowing herself to remember, but she knows it will soon be time to pack all the memories away again.
Behnaz begins to sweep in earnest now, sweeping away the dust and the memories until she stops and looks up. But what if she doesn’t want the memories to disappear? What if they are all she has? Are they not the precious gifts the young woman she once was has given to the old woman she is today? Without those gifts, what joy would there have been in her life? Behnaz looks up at Omar’s window again, wondering whether he ever thinks of those days as she does, or whether the memory of her has been erased by the young wives and the beautiful babies that followed.
Very soon Behnaz knows she will have to ask Wasim to climb the stairs to Omar’s bedroom and carry his body out. She has no doubt she will know when the time has come. There is a path that leads from heart to heart.
‘As-salaam alaikum,’ Ahmad calls to her, releasing Behnaz from her thoughts.
‘Wa alaikum as-salaam,’ she responds as she rests her broom against the wall near the gate and wanders out into the square to pick up the papers that have gathered around the fig and pistachio trees. She will not be able to do this much longer. The pain in her joints is getting worse.
Behnaz has noticed that Ahmad is not going to morning prayers again. She also thinks he is not taking such good care of his shop either. He seems to prefer to spend his time sitting on his green stool smoking cigarettes to chasing customers. She watches Ahmad come back out of his shop with a box he adds to the already growing display before stopping to glance up at Dr Sofia’s balcony. She knows what he is looking for.
Ahmad’s wife, Badria, recently produced twins. As if she is a baby-making machine, thinks Behnaz, stuffing the papers into the pocket of her coat as she walks back to retrieve her broom. It annoys her when Ahmad complains about how much six children cost, for it is another reminder of her great loss, mirrored back to her in other people’s joys. Sometimes she imagines that if she cleans hard enough she might clean away the pain of her barren womb.
A couple of months ago Dr Jabril emerged from his hospital bed, a pale imitation of his former self. Thin and gaunt, with a useless arm hanging by his side, he came back to the surgery only to forget the names of his old friends. With the birth of Dr Jabril and Zahra’s first grandchild in Amreekaw, Zahra has taken Jabril away to see him. The gossips of the square have counted the months since the wedding and purse their lips in disapproval, but Behnaz refuses to join them. A baby is a baby. Who cares when it was made?
While the new male doctor seems acceptable to the men of the square, the female doctor, who took over from Dr Suraya and only bothers coming three days a week, has not been so well received. ‘She only thinks about the ache in your body. She doesn’t care about the ache in your heart,’ Behnaz likes to say to her friends, her words reminding the women of the square of the babies she lost. ‘That is the real pain that steals your heart.’ The women agree, for most know of Behnaz’s miscarriages and have felt the pain of their own.
Rashid, who disliked this new female doctor more than even the women did, has gone to Iran to be with his family, although he told Tawfiq, who is living back in Mazar-i Sharif with his wife, that he will return when Dr Sofia returns. Tawfiq says he will too.
Iqbal recently moved his cobbler business from next to Dr Sofia’s surgery steps to the pavement between the mosque and Babur’s chaikhana. While he is not one of the new doctor’s greatest fans, the move has more to do with the fact that she is not one of his. With the loss of Rashid and Dr Sofia, Iqbal says he is happier sitting between his two friends, Imam Mustafa and Babur. ‘It is where I can do more good,’ he told Behnaz the other day.
Babur, who has moved into the back rooms of his chaikhana, still sets up the table and chairs out the front for Dr Jabril and Imam Mustafa, although since Dr Jabril has gone and Mustafa no longer comes, they are only ever used by strangers who wander into the square. It upsets Behnaz to see the chairs and the strangers sitting in them because they are a daily reminder of the loss they all have suffered. She would like to ask Babur to stop putting them out but she knows that he’s been badly affected by the loss of his friend and she will not cause him any more pain.
Behnaz must still wake her snoring husband with a jab in the ribs to get him out of bed in time for mosque, but these days he’s not gone for so long. When she questioned Wasim about it this morning he told her Mustafa’s sermons were becoming shorter every week, ‘as if he’s running out of things to say.’
‘Perhaps he’s running out of life, like the rest of us,’ Behnaz offered, knowing this wouldn’t please Wasim. For a man who deals with death every day she is always surprised by her husband’s fear of his own. It’s not a fear she shares. What more can Allah take from her?
Because Mustafa has not been himself since
