‘She was,’ Sofia said, remembering the photo she’d seen of her and Chief Wasim on their wedding day.’
Iman grimaced. ‘Really? I’m sorry but I’m finding that too hard to imagine. I’ve heard my mother’s friends talking about Behnaz. They say there was some sort of scandal.’ Iman pouted. ‘She won’t tell me what it was. Do you know?’
‘No, I’ve never heard that before.’
The two women ate in silence for a while. ‘Are you frightened of growing old and being ugly, Dr Sofia?’
Sofia stopped eating and looked at Iman. She wondered how best to respond until she thought of the poem she loved.
‘How many years of beauty do I have left? she asks me.
‘How many more do you want?
‘Here. Here is thirty-four.
‘Here is fifty.’
‘Why do you quote me a poem?’
‘Because it says things better than I can.’
‘Mmmm,’ Iman said, twisting her mouth into a moue as she considered this. ‘So are you?’
Sofia began packing up the leftovers of the lunch, taking Iman’s empty food container and packing it into hers. How did she answer this?
‘My mother never got the chance to grow old, but I’m sure she would’ve given anything in the world to. I don’t think she would have given a damn about losing her beauty. In fact, I suspect she would have traded it in a millisecond just to have the opportunity to watch her children grow up and to grow old with the man she loved.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘It is. It’s always sad when someone dies young, but I think people should stop worrying about growing old and realise how privileged they are just to be able to do that. Besides, I don’t think you necessarily lose your beauty when you grow old. All the lines on our faces are a testament of our life with all its inherent joys and heartache. I like the idea that in the last years of my life, if I’m lucky enough to grow old, my face will bear testament to my life, hopefully a life well lived. I’m going to celebrate getting old. It’s a privilege.’
‘I never thought about it like that,’ Iman said, sitting back in her chair as she considered the idea. ‘On another note, have you seen Uzma around lately?’
It was only when Iman asked the question that she realised she hadn’t. Uzma had been married to a man who beat her. In the sanctuary of Sofia’s surgery, Uzma would cry about the horror of her marriage and the shame that forced her to stay.
‘Why is the shame on the woman?’ Sofia had asked Zahra the first time she had seen abuse in her surgery.
‘The reputation of the family rests on the woman. If the abuse remains hidden then she doesn’t bring shame to the family, but if she leaves her husband then there is shame.’
Every time Uzma arrived in her surgery Sofia would steel herself against what she might find beneath the burqa. Believing that one day the man would kill Uzma she had encouraged her to go to one of the women’s shelters in Kabul, but she had refused. Not only was there the shame but also three of her children were over seven years old, and under Afghan law she would lose custody to the father.
On one occasion Uzma’s injuries had been so horrifying that Sofia had taken her to hospital where an organisation helping abused women had convinced Uzma to lay charges. While the husband was serving his short jail sentence his parents had taken over the abuse of their daughter-in-law, whose ‘lies’ had sent their ‘innocent’ son to jail and brought shame on the family. When Uzma’s husband died a short time later of a stroke, Sofia had felt both relief and increased anxiety. The future for an uneducated, unskilled widow with no support other than in-laws who abused her, no prospect of work and no government handouts was bleak.
‘No, now that you mention it. I haven’t seen her. What’s happened?’
‘I heard the old woman kicked her out.’
‘And her children?’
‘The old woman kept them. See? That’s what I mean about women not supporting women.’
Sofia was more interested in what had happened to Uzma. ‘Do you have any idea where she is?’
‘Begging on the streets?’ Iman raised her arms in the air and stretched. ‘What else could she do?’
‘Oh, Iman, you sound so cold.’
‘I’m not cold. I’m angry,’ she said, jabbing her finger on the arm of the chair. ‘Things should not be like this.’
‘I know.’
‘How do I change this?’
‘Slowly.’
Iman stood up and held out her hand for the empty lunch boxes. ‘Do you want to give me those?’ With Iman taking the containers, Sofia began returning the patients’ chairs to their place in front of her desk until she realised Iman was standing in the doorway. ‘Something weird happened yesterday. When Hadi weighed the chickpeas for my mother he gave her an extra scoop. Have you ever heard of Hadi giving anyone extra?’
Sofia didn’t need to think about that. ‘It’s a bit strange, I agree.’
‘Do you think something’s wrong with him, like he’s dying maybe?’
Sofia frowned. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well, people do things like that when they’re dying, don’t they? They want to set things straight in this life before Jannah.’
Sofia walked around to her chair. ‘Maybe it’s as simple as he doesn’t want to cheat his friends anymore.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Imam said, one hand on her hip while the other held the empty lunch containers. ‘Are we even talking about the same man?’
‘Maybe he was just being kind to your mother.’
‘No, he did the same thing for miserable old Badria.’
Sofia thought about this. ‘I’m going there this afternoon. I’ll be interested to see if he’s still feeling so generous with me.’
‘Anyway, I’ve decided to take your advice and my mother is going to introduce me someone from the Afghan Women’s Network.’
This is progress, Sofia thought.
After leaving the surgery that afternoon, she and Rashid made their way past Ahmad’s shop
