Chapter 11.

Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to helpher put it on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy onher skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a meshscreen. She practiced walking around her room in it and keptstepping on the hem and stumbling. The loss of peripheralvision was unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating waythe pleated cloth kept pressing against her mouth.
"You'll get used to it," Rasheed said. "With time, I bet you'lleven like it."They took a bus to a place Rasheed called the Shar-e-NauPark, where children pushed each other on swings and slappedvolleyballs over ragged nets tied to tree trunks. They strolledtogether and watched boys fly kites, Mariam walking besideRasheed, tripping now and then on the burqa's hem. Forlunch, Rasheed took her to eat in a small kebab house near amosque he called the Haji Yaghoub. The floor was sticky andthe air smoky. The walls smelled faintly of raw meat and themusic, which Rasheed described to her aslogari, was loud. Thecooks were thin boys who fanned skewers with one hand andswatted gnats with the other. Mariam, who had never beeninside a restaurant, found it odd at first to sit in a crowdedroom with so many strangers, to lift her burqa to put morselsof food into her mouth. A hint of the same anxiety as the dayat the tandoor stirred in her stomach, but Rasheed's presencewas of some comfort, and, after a while, she did not mind somuch the music, the smoke, even the people. And the burqa,she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like aone-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered fromthe scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried thatpeople knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets ofher past.
On the streets, Rasheed named various buildings withauthority; this is the American Embassy, he said, that theForeign Ministry. He pointed to cars, said their names andwhere they were made: Soviet Volgas, American Chevrolets,German Opels.
"Which is your favorite?" he askedMariam hesitated, pointed to a Volga, and Rasheed laughedKabul was far more crowded than the little that Mariam hadseen of Herat. There were fewer trees and fewergaris pulled byhorses, but more cars, taller buildings, more traffic lights andmore paved roads. And everywhere Mariam heard the city'speculiar dialect: "Dear" wasjon insteadof jo, "sister"becamehamshira instead ofhamshireh, and so on.
From a street vendor, Rasheed bought her ice cream. It wasthe first time she'd eaten ice cream and Mariam had neverimagined that such tricks could be played on a palate. Shedevoured the entire bowl, the crushed-pistachio topping, the tinyrice noodles at the bottom. She marveled at the bewitchingtexture, the lapping sweetness of it.
They walked on to a place called Kocheh-Morgha, ChickenStreet. It was a narrow, crowded bazaar in a neighborhoodthat Rasheed said was one of Kabul's wealthier ones.
"Around here is where foreign diplomats live, richbusinessmen, members of the royal family-that sort of people.
Not like you and me.""I don't see any chickens," Mariam said.
"That's the one thing you can't find on Chicken Street."Rasheed laughedThe street was lined with shops and little stalls that soldlambskin hats and rainbow-coloredchapans. Rasheed stopped tolook at an engraved silver dagger in one shop, and, in another,at an old rifle that the shopkeeper assured Rasheed was a relicfrom the first war against the British.
"And I'm Moshe Dayan," Rasheed muttered. He half smiled,and it seemed to Mariam that this was a smile meant only forher. A private, married smile.
They strolled past carpet shops, handicraft shops, pastryshops, flower shops, and shops that sold suits for men anddresses for women, and, in them, behind lace curtains, Mariamsaw young girls sewing buttons and ironing collars. From timeto time, Rasheed greeted a shopkeeper he knew, sometimes inFarsi, other times in Pashto. As they shook hands and kissedon the cheek, Mariam stood a few feet away. Rasheed did notwave her over, did not introduce her.
He asked her to wait outside an embroidery shop. "I knowthe owner," he said. "I'll just go in for a minute, saymysalaam. "Mariam waited outside on the crowded sidewalk. She watchedthe cars crawling up Chicken Street, threading through thehorde of hawkers and pedestrians, honking at children anddonkeys who wouldn't move. She watched the bored-lookingmerchants inside their tiny stalls, smoking, or spitting into brassspittoons, their faces emerging from the shadows now and thento peddle textiles and fur-collaredpoosiincoats to passersby.
But it was the women who drew Mariam's eyes the most.
The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed fromthe women in the poorer neighborhoods-like the one where sheand Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully.
These women were-what was the word Rasheed hadused?-"modern." Yes, modern Afghan women married tomodern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walkedamong strangers with makeup on their faces and nothing ontheir heads. Mariam watched them cantering uninhibited downthe street, sometimes with a man, sometimes alone, sometimeswith rosy-cheeked children who wore shiny shoes and watcheswith leather bands, who walked bicycles with high-risehandlebars and gold-colored spokes-unlike the children inDeh-Mazang, who bore sand-fly scars on their cheeks androlled old bicycle tires with sticks.
These women were all swinging handbags and rustling skirts.
Mariam even spotted one smoking behind the wheel of a car.
Their nails were long, polished pink or orange, their lips red astulips. They walked in high heels, and quickly, as if onperpetually urgent business. They wore dark sunglasses, and,when they breezed by, Mariam caught a whiff of their perfume.
She imagined that they all had university degrees, that theyworked in office buildings, behind desks of their own, wherethey typed and smoked and made important telephone calls toimportant people. These women mystified Mariam. They madeher aware of her own lowliness, her plain looks, her lack ofaspirations, her ignorance of so many things.
Then Rasheed was tapping her on the shoulder and handingher something here.
It was a dark maroon silk shawl with beaded fringes andedges embroidered with gold thread"Do you like it?"Mariam looked up. Rasheed did a touching thing then. Heblinked and averted her gaze.
Mariam thought of Jalil, of the emphatic, jovial way in whichhe'd pushed his jewelry at her, the overpowering cheerfulnessthat left room for no response but meek gratitude. Nana hadbeen right about Mil's gifts. They had been halfhearted tokensof penance, insincere, corrupt gestures meant more for his ownappeasement than hers. This shawl, Mariam saw, was a truegift.
"It's beautiful," she said.
* * *That night, Rasheed visited her room again. But instead ofsmoking in the doorway, he crossed the room and sat besideher where she lay on the bed. The springs creaked as the bedtilted to his side.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then his hand was onher neck, his thick fingers slowly pressing the knobs in theback of it. His thumb slid down, and now it was stroking thehollow above her collarbone, then the flesh beneath it. Mariambegan shivering. His hand crept lower still, lower, his fingernailscatching in the cotton of her blouse.
"I can't," she croaked, looking at his moonlit profile, his thickshoulders and broad chest, the tufts of gray hair protrudingfrom his open collar.
His hand was on her right breast now, squeezing it hardthrough the blouse, and she could hear him breathing deeplythrough the nose.
He slid under the blanket beside her. She could feel his handworking at his belt, at the drawstring of her trousers. Her ownhands clenched the sheets in fistfuls. He rolled on top of her,wriggled and shifted, and she let out a whimper. Mariam closedher eyes, gritted her teeth.
The pain was sudden and astonishing. Her eyes sprang open.
She sucked air through her teeth and bit on the knuckle ofher thumb. She slung her free arm over Rasheed's back andher fingers dug at his shirt.
Rasheed buried his face into her pillow, and Mariam stared,wide-eyed, at the ceiling above his shoulder, shivering, lipspursed, feeling the heat of his quick breaths on her shoulder.
The air between them smelled of tobacco, of the onions andgrilled lamb they had eaten earlier. Now and then, his earrubbed against her cheek, and she knew from the scratchy feelthat he had shaved it.
When it was done, he rolled off her, panting. He dropped hisforearm over his brow. In the dark, she could see the bluehands of his watch. They lay that way for a while, on theirbacks, not looking at each other.
"There is no shame in this, Mariam," he said, slurring a little.
"It's what married people do. It's what the Prophet himself andhis wives did There is no shame."A few moments later, he pushed back the blanket and left theroom, leaving her with the impression of his head on herpillow, leaving her to wait out the pain down below, to look atthe frozen stars in the sky and a cloud that draped the face ofthe moon like a wedding veil.