A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini [7]
“Is that what you want?” Mullah Faizullah said, looking at her with his soft, watery eyes, his hands behind his stooping back, the shadow of his turban falling on a patch of bristling buttercups.
“Yes.”
“And you want me to ask your mother for permission.”
Mariam smiled. Other than Jalil, she thought there was no one in the world who understood her better than her old tutor.
“Then what can I do? God, in His wisdom, has given us each weaknesses, and foremost among my many is that I am powerless to refuse you, Mariam jo,” he said, tapping her cheek with one arthritic finger.
But later, when he broached Nana, she dropped the knife with which she was slicing onions. “What for?”
“If the girl wants to learn, let her, my dear. Let the girl have an education.”
“Learn? Learn what, Mullah sahib?” Nana said sharply. “What is there to learn?” She snapped her eyes toward Mariam.
Mariam looked down at her hands.
“What’s the sense schooling a girl like you? It’s like shining a spittoon. And you’ll learn nothing of value in those schools. There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school. Look at me.”
“You should not speak like this to her, my child,”
Mullah Faizullah said.
“Look at me.”
Mariam did.
“Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure.”
“Endure what, Nana?”
“Oh, don’t you fret about that,” Nana said. “There won’t be any shortage of things.”
She went on to say how Jalil’s wives had called her an ugly, lowly stone carver’s daughter. How they’d made her wash laundry outside in the cold until her face went numb and her fingertips burned.
“It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have. Do you understand? Besides, they’ll laugh at you in school. They will. They’ll call you harami. They’ll say the most terrible things about you. I won’t have it.”
Mariam nodded.
“And no more talk about school. You’re all I have. I won’t lose you to them. Look at me. No more talk about school.”
“Be reasonable. Come now. If the girl wants—” Mullah Faizullah began.
“And you, akhund sahib, with all due respect, you should know better than to encourage these foolish ideas of hers. If you really care about her, then you make her see that she belongs here at home with her mother. There is nothing out there for her. Nothing but rejection and heartache. I know, akhund sahib. I know. ”
4.
Mariam loved having visitors at the kolba. The village arbab and his gifts, Bibi jo and her aching hip and endless gossiping, and, of course, Mullah Faizullah. But there was no one, no one, that Mariam longed to see more than Jalil.
The anxiety set in on Tuesday nights. Mariam would sleep poorly, fretting that some business entanglement would prevent Jalil from coming on Thursday, that she would have to wait a whole other week to see him. On Wednesdays, she paced outside, around the kolba, tossed chicken feed absentmindedly into the coop. She went for aimless walks, picking petals from flowers and batting at the mosquitoes nibbling on her arms. Finally, on Thursdays, all she could do was sit against a wall, eyes glued to the stream, and wait. If Jalil was running late, a terrible dread filled her bit by bit. Her knees would weaken, and she would have to go somewhere and lie down.
Then Nana would call, “And there he is, your father. In all his glory.”
Mariam would leap to her feet when she spotted him hopping stones across the stream, all smiles and hearty waves. Mariam knew that Nana was watching her, gauging her reaction, and it always took effort to stay in the doorway, to wait, to watch him slowly make his way to her, to not run to him. She restrained herself, patiently watched him walk through the tall grass, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, the breeze lifting his red necktie.
When Jalil entered the clearing, he would throw his jacket on the tandoor and open his arms. Mariam would walk, then finally run, to him, and he would catch her under the arms and toss her up high. Mariam would squeal.
Suspended in the air, Mariam would see Jalil’s upturned