And I know we share something special, just like her and my father with their parting glance.So I never speak of these moments, not even with Farshid, who rolls his eyes and groans over how much time women spend in the market.
One day, I want to be just like my maadar jan.I will never be as beautiful but maybe, just maybe, I can be as clever.
When I was a girl, I dreamed.
The whispers start when I turn twelve.
Always behind closed doors.First my father and my mother.Then my aunts and uncles flitting about.Everyone talking, talking, talking.But no one saying anything.
My brother, returning home from his university studies.Additional murmurs behind my parents’ bedroom doors, where my mother spends more and more of her days.
Pale when she comes out.Exhausted when she returns.
My auntie, Fahima, a hawkish older woman with a relentless attention to detail, starts meeting me each day after school.Stand taller.Don’t read that.Don’t look at him.Don’t touch that.Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.
Her fashion tastes run to flowing trousers and plain billowing blouses with a simple dark hijab covering her hair.
I want my mother.I miss her warm smile and outrageous outfits and fierce stare.But my madar appears only long enough to disappear.A sudden shadow of her former self, patting my cheek, stroking my hair, telling me I’m pretty today—which we both know is a lie—before retiring once again to rest.
Whispers.
In our house, the city, my country, where Blackhawk choppers now circle overhead and concrete barricades expand daily, along with checkpoint after checkpoint, until a walk to the local market feels as arduous as a border crossing.The American soldiers areleaving.Our own forces will now protect us, though safe doesn’t feel so safe anymore.
Within a matter of months, my father summons me to the hallway outside my parents’ room.My brother is present but doesn’t meet my eye.
“Your mother wants to speak to you,” my father states, his voice thick.He points to the cracked door, indicating I should go in.But my feet won’t move.For once in my life, I don’t want to know.Whatever awaits on the other side, there won’t be any books that will be able to fix this.
I gaze at my brother pleadingly, but he keeps his attention fixed on the floor.
“Two halves of one whole,” I try.
“Not this time, Sabera.Not this time.”
My father pushes the door open.Slowly, I force myself to step inside.
“Janem.”
My mother utters the term of endearment as half whisper, half sigh.I follow her hushed voice through the shadowed space till I’m just able to make out her face in a room where the drapes are tightly drawn and the bed piled high with blankets.
“Janem,” she murmurs again.The covers shift.She reaches out a hand so skeletal it’s painful to see.Her fingertips, light as feathers, dance across my forearm.She finds my wrist, clasps it lightly.
“Don’t,” I tell her.But I don’t mean for her to stop holding me.I mean for her not to say what she’s going to say.I mean for her not to leave me.
I drop to my knees, placing my forehead against the mattress, clasping her hand to my cheek.If I don’t let go, she will have to stay.The future will not happen.My madar will always be mine.
She speaks, a dry rustle of words spinning around me.That she loves me.That I’m beautiful and strong and she’s very proud.That I am her daughter in every way possible, and she will always be with me, that voice in the back of my head, that feeling of warmth in my chest.
I can’t answer.I bathe her fingers in my tears.I clasp her bony hand tighter, as if that will make a difference.
Then she says what I’ve always feared.She states the words that expose our little secret, a deathbed confession involving the one piece of our relationship I’ve always known is mine and mine alone.And I hate this, too.It makes what will happen next too real, this passing of the guard as secret keeper from her to me.
“You know.”Her words are soft.A statement of fact.“You have seen.”
I bite my lip, sullen and resentful.If I refuse to speak of the market, acknowledge everything that happens, then she will have to stay.I’m certain of it.
She seems to understand, stroking my cheek soothingly.
“Do you understand it all?”she asks me.“You’ve always been the cleverest girl.Watching from the sidelines.Your brother suspects, but you, janem, you peer beneath the surface, connecting what shouldn’t connect, identifying a whole where others see only parts.You remind me of me, when I was a child.”
