Behnaz spots Iman, who took Dr Sofia’s departure especially hard, making her way across the square to her. Last month, Iman and a lot of other women rode their bikes in the street in Kabul, causing a serious traffic jam. Behnaz shakes her head with the memory. Sooner or later someone who isn’t so forgiving of the girl’s crazy schemes, like the Taliban, who are gaining more power each day now, is going to take offence. Only last week Iman, who doesn’t like working for this new doctor, told Behnaz she was thinking of applying for a scholarship to a foreign university. This didn’t sit well with Behnaz. ‘You should stay at home and have babies,’ she told her. When Iman said she didn’t want babies Behnaz had felt mortally wounded and had avoided Iman, but now the girl is standing in front of her.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, Behnaz,’ Iman says as she flicks her hair over her shoulder. ‘Of course I’ll have babies someday, but first I need to get a good education so I can help my country, and then I can find a handsome man who I love and then,’ she says beaming, ‘when I have my babies, perhaps you can take care of them so I can work?’
Behnaz takes a few seconds to absorb the magnitude of Iman’s offer. No one understands what it is like to be old without children. There’s no one to look up at you, no grandchildren to pull at your skirt and ask you to kiss the scrape on their knee. The offer is more than she could ever have imagined.
‘Humph,’ Behnaz says, wanting but not wanting to embrace this new idea, in case it is snatched away from her. ‘What about your own mother?’
‘Oh, you know my mother. She has her work.’
‘We will see, but you mustn’t leave the babies too late or your body will get old and dry up,’ Behnaz says. She feels the unfamiliar sting of tears in her eyes and shooes Iman away.
For years she had secretly hoped that Dr Sofia would have babies and she would look after them, but now she knows this will never happen. Yesterday she overheard Mustafa, who couldn’t see her, telling Babur, who could see her, that Dr Sofia is going to work with Dr Daniel in Syria. She wonders how long this secret has been known to everyone but her. Do they all think she is a speck of dust so light that she can be blown away with a puff of wind? Has she not weathered more storms than most? Behnaz is a rock. She is a sentinel of resistance. A mountain. She sweeps outside the gate, drinking in this thought.
Behnaz wonders whether she will ever see Dr Daniel again. Since Sofia left he has returned twice to the square, and each time he has brought messages and small gifts from her for Behnaz, who now possesses a furry kangaroo with a baby in its front pocket that you can take out, and a fluffy koala with a hard black plastic nose. She also has a beautiful box of soaps made from Australian eucalypts that she keeps in its cellophane wrapper, and a cup that says I love Sydney, where the ‘love’ is a red heart. She has seen these cups in Ahmad’s shop only they say I love Kabul. Who loves Kabul? She doesn’t see any tourists coming into the square asking for one of Ahmad’s ‘I love Kabul’ cups. Her favourite present of all is the miniature Sydney Opera House in its plastic dome that snows when you shake it. Behnaz knows it doesn’t snow in Sydney but she loves it anyway. This most precious of all gifts is sitting on her bedside table, along with the fake yellow canary Sofia sent to keep the canary in the courtyard company. Unfortunately, the bird is dead. Such a waste of good afghani it turned out to be.
Everyone in the square now knows that Omar stole her letter, which they all still think was a shabnamah, but Behnaz knows who really wrote them. And everyone knows Babur bought alcohol and Hadi was free with his scales, although everyone knew that already. She recently overheard Hadi grumbling that his new-found generosity could not last, but she thinks it has already not lasted.
The day before Dr Jabril was shot, she overheard a conversation between Wasim and Tawfiq, who was enquiring on behalf of a ‘friend’ if someone could be arrested for looking at photos of naked women on the internet. Wasim had reassured him that his friend would not be arrested for such a thing. After returning to his family in Mazar-i Sharif, Tawfiq rang Wasim to say that his friend had successfully kicked his night-time addiction. Behnaz suspected it had more to do with the fact that he was back with his wife.
Behnaz stops sweeping and leans on her broom again. After all these years of living in fear that the square might discover her secret, the idea of Omar taking it with him to the grave brings her only sadness. Surely a secret has to be a shared thing? It really isn’t much of a secret if you’re the only one left who knows it. Behnaz wonders what will happen if, as she grows older, her mind misplaces their secret? Will that mean it never happened, or has it been folding into the fabric of time for someone to uncover long after they are both gone? Behnaz feels the
