The Sparrow

There was a sparrow, seated on the tree branch above me, the morning I gave her away. It watched with its black, beady eyes, judging, never blinking, as I hung the laundry on the line. Strangely, its presence caressed me when I heard her quiet, stifled crying escaping from her bedroom window.

"I can’t do anything,” I said to the sparrow, the breeze blowing the fabrics softly against my hands. It did not answer, only continued to stare, daring me to argue. I knew better not to.

We, the sparrow, and I, were outside for a long while that morning, I ever working, a sorry distraction, and the sparrow never leaving the branch which was directly above me. In all my years of living at this house, I had never noticed this strange little creature, or it had never noticed me, and I wondered why it would come today.

The rumbling of a car puttering up our driveway woke me from a dazed state of leaning into the basket of wet clothes, reaching to grab the nearest pin, and placing it next to the already drying clothes on the line. What was I doing? I needed to get her ready, I scolded myself.

The sparrow did not move from where it sat above the clothesline even after I left it to join my husband inside. I moved around the group of men standing in my small kitchen and went to where she sat, unmoving, unspeaking, from the corner of the room, smaller than the first time I held her in my arms.

When I first came to my husband’s house, I was 14 years old, and a young, scared little thing. Shohare, bearded with large, calloused hands, was kind to me, but the thought of my mother at home, breaking open pomegranates that came from our orchard and spilling them into her favorite mulberry colored bowl, which we would spend the day eating from, made me lonely. It was not until the birth of my daughter, Berezira, that my life was fulfilled; being her mother became my identity.

I still could recall how her tiny little hands reached for me when she was a little girl with pigtails, when she was scared, happy, or just wanted me. Long, soft lashes used to brush my cheek when she was in the security of my arms, and I never wanted to let her go, afraid that if I did, I would never hold her again.

Now, I would have to watch my Berezira leave me, just as my mother watched me.

“Dokhtar,” I knelt by her, and put my hand on her back, careful to not let my burqa slip and reveal the flesh of my hand. She only shrugged me off and refused to look up at me.

Sighing, I looked at where Shohare stood, not far away, with my future son-in-law and his father. As the son of a wealthier Kabul merchant, Dokhtar would live in the most beautiful part of the city, but I would not see her often. It would only be permitted when Shohare walked with me, or my dokhtar’s walked with her.

Leaning, I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face to mine, “Berezira, you must be strong.” There was nothing more to say. Soon she would learn the realities of life, and they would not be easy to bear, so she must be strong.

I could still recall how my mother looked at me before I left her; it was a sad, desperate look in her eye when she hugged me one last time before my father walked me to Shohare, and I would never forget it. It was the same look I had when they took my Berezira from me.

I watched from our front window as they got into Asmann’s car, Dokhtar’s father-in-law, and drove away. Despite her evident terror, Berezira had stopped crying and now walked proudly, just as I had raised her to the car. She turned back to our home one last time, looked straight at me, and waved, slightly lifting her hand in departure. As they drove away, taking Dokhtar with them, I was briefly reminded of the chicken before slaughter when my father would kill them, and I shuddered watching the car go.

One week turned into two months, and I did not see Dokhtar. She was settling into her married life, Shohare told me, naturally and quite well, and when he had seen her, she had not run to him like a child but taken him to her favorite seat in her new home and spoken with him like a good wife. Proud of Dokhtar but lonely, I began finding solace in the friendly sparrow that I visited every morning while I hung our laundry. Its small head moved wherever I went in our little yard, eyes never losing contact with my body.

I began to feed the thing small handfuls of nuts, coaxing it over to me by singing old lullabies that Berezira had loved so much. I still could remember how she looked up at me when I sang her favorite songs when she was sick, coaxing her to sleep with my unbelievably bad voice, but an ancient sonnet. Like Berezira, the bird enjoyed the songs too, and began coming closer every day, reaching as close to my feet as I moved about, placing clothes on the lines.

Good news came when winter began rolling in. I was sitting on the small porch of our house, watching the small bird, which still had refused to leave, when Shohare came to me.

“Npamsar Hasan wishes to see you,” he said simply, referring to Berezira as “Wife of Hasan.” At times, hearing her new married name surprised me. I still remember when she was Berezira to Shohare. Filled with ecstasy, I spent many days poring over my doctor’s favorite dishes to take to her. When Berezira’s husband came to the house in his father’s car, together with kichiri quroot and firni, Shohare and I got in the car, I in the back and he taking the front.

The streets where Berezira lived were clean and free of beggars, with beautiful houses lining the streets and many cars parked outside the driveway. Here, Kabul’s wealthiest men lived, driving to work in their newest cars and coming home to their wives and mistresses. I was proud that my own dokhtar had been beautiful enough to catch the eye of the son of such a man and could be the first wife of a future homeowner on this street.

Her husband’s family’s home was beautiful, with two large trees standing tall outside their home, the yard pristine and shining with white snow. Shohare grabbed my arm and helped me up the icy path, and we laughed a little when our son-in-law slipped on the slick ice. Jaw ticking, he led us through the front door, where a small baby sat just in front of the open door, little hands reaching up when he saw us. Fleetingly reminded of my own baby when she was that tiny, I looked around at Dokhtar’s new living quarters and felt pleased indeed.

In the center of the room, with a tea tray waiting in front of her, was Dokhtar. Like Shohare said, she did not run or jump, secretly to my dismay, but stood proudly, her blue burqa swishing against the floor, and came to hug me.

Smelling the familiar scent of Dokhtar brought tears to my eyes, and when we pulled back, I could see there were tears of her own, under the small holes that covered her eyes. I wanted the men in the room to leave, so I could see Dokhtar's beautiful, long black hair, her matching thick eyelashes that covered the most beautiful hazel eyes. I wanted to see her nose that matched my own, and the small scar just above her cheek where her older brother had accidentally hit her with a stick when they were playing as children.

In the company of her mother-in-law, husband, and Shohare, Berezira and I did not talk much, but we sat next to each other, as close as permissible, until I had to leave. It was not until I was walking outside that she told me the news.

“Madar,” she said, as I hugged her one last time, “I am expecting.”

I spent the car ride home hiding my sniffling. For the first time since the ruling on covering our faces, I was thankful that no one could see me under my veil.

Throughout the winter months, the bird could be heard chirping outside our bedroom window. When laundry was hung, it was placed on the small porch. The sparrow would perch on a nearby branch that tapped against the window in the wind, observing me. It little head would cock in observation, and when I met its dark eyes, I was always the first to break eye contact. It was as if it was daring me to do something stupid.

“That thing is creepy,” Shohare said one night when we were sitting by the fire. He was reading the Quran aloud, and I was sewing something for our new nawasa. Outside the window, even in the dark of the night, the bird sat on its favorite branch, looking in on our happy, warm life.

“It’s just a sparrow,” I answered, sipping my water.

Shohare only grunted and went back to reading.

When the first signs of spring began to appear, like the small buds sprouting from the wet ground, or the weak yellow sun slowly getting stronger, and the smell of grass beginning to grow, I took my laundry back outside. Smelling the freshly cleaned clothing mixed with the spring breeze, and listening to my friend chirp, as it often did now, made me hum a quick tune from my childhood that my older sister taught me.

Berezira was beginning to pop; she was waddling from room to room, hand on her large stomach. With the expectancy of her baby on the way, I spent every Monday morning with my daughter, helping her prepare for her birth and motherhood. Together we sat in the small study off the dining room, sewing and talking about her hopes for her child, whom she would name Asmann after his grandfather, she said.

On one such morning, after a large breakfast that made me feel as large as Dokhtar, we decided to take a stroll around the small yard, feeling the sun through our coverings and enjoying the fresh flowers beginning to bloom, Berezira turned to me and asked, “Madar, did you ever wish for a different outcome?”

Stunned to silence, I stopped walking and faced her, where her eyes bore into mine under her dotted veil, “What does that mean?”

“Well, I mean, isn’t there ever a day that you wish your life had gone differently?” She was so blunt, so honest, I spun on my heel and turned back to walking, this time, fast.

“No, because to dwell on past mistakes and dead hopes is a fool’s mistake.”

We walked in tense silence, the birds that were once singing a symphony had stopped, as if holding their breath, the breeze was suddenly too strong, the air too hot.

Honestly, her bluntness scared me. She had always been too honest since her earliest childhood. I still remember when she had argued with a little neighbor boy over school, “I might be a girl, but I can still go to school.” She had come home with a welt swelling on the side of her face, but she had no tears. The boy’s father had overheard her and hit her with a snappy twig; I had cleaned her up quietly, and she would eventually have to learn the rules of society. If she did not, she would be a danger to herself.

She was snapping her fingers, loud in the quiet garden, something she had always done since childhood when she was angry, “I don’t mean any offense.” She told me when she caught up, her sleeve brushing mine, I did not answer. What else was there to say?

For too long after that conversation, I replayed Berezira’s words in my head. They were like a broken record, one that I could not stop, one that both scared me and made me feel deep guilt. I wish I could have given my Dokhtar whatever she had hoped for as a child, but it was impossible.

“It wasn’t my choice,” I admitted to the bird one sunny afternoon when I was unclipping the clothes from the line, the smell of the jasmine soap in the clothes sticking to my hands. I did not know what I was speaking of, my own marriage or my daughters, a part of me knew it was both.

The bird did not say anything, only looked at me beadily, black eyes boring into my own hazel ones, as if reaching into my soul to say, “As if.”

I saw Berezira only a few days before. The bird had not come by in a few days; its silence scared me. Since I had uttered the words into the air, as if in punishment, they had not come back. She was lying in her bed, red cotton sheets hardly covering her enormous stomach, despite this, she was glowing with the look that any new expecting mother wears before they give birth. I held her hand and listened as she told me about her plans for her son. He would be a son, she told me; her mother-in-law had said that she had experienced the same symptoms with her own son, therefore, the child must be a boy.

“Npamsar Hasan,” a tall woman appeared in the doorway, a pink hijab covering her hair, her beautiful, slender hands gripping the door handle. My daughter’s mother-in-law was one of the most beautiful in the city, even into her middle age, and was known for her grace with her family and strangers.

“Yes?” Berezira asked, lifting her head to look at the woman.

“Suami Anda is home,” was all she said. With the news, I changed out of my blue hijab and put on my burqa, kissed Dokhtar on the cheek, and said goodbye. I looked back once before I left, at the room holding Dokhtar, the place where I would see her holding her new baby. She was smiling up at me, waving goodbye as I walked away.

*********

A storm was rolling in. The once white clouds of childhood turned grey, and the warm breeze became heavy wind with stifling humidity. Beside myself with excitement, I took my warm water to the porch to watch the clouds roll in and the big fat raindrops begin dropping. I loved storms. As the daughter of a fruit farmer, it was in my blood to appreciate the rain, whenever it did come. As the rain began dropping onto the roof, I knitted the almost finished baby blanket for my nawa. Red, with blue flowers on the edge, I could not wait to give it to the child.

A bright crack of lightning erupted in my peace, and screaming, I picked up my tools and ran into the house, hiding from the storm. A large thump shook the house, and I looked from the kitchen window into the backyard. The sparrow’s tree was smoking slightly, with a deep gash in the middle of the beautiful trunk, and a large branch the size of a small car had fallen next to it. Our neighbor’s deck was completely splintered under the mass of the branch.

I wondered about my little friend, worried. What would he do now? Find a new tree in a different yard? Discover a lonely new woman to provide company? Watch over its new family rather than my own? Selfish tears ran down my face as I leaned over the kitchen sink to peer out at the window at the storm that would not stop coming.

Shohare found me sleeping hours later in the old rocking chair, where I used to rock the babies to sleep. I had stumbled here in the deepest part of the storm, wanting to live in the memories for a little while.

“Fatima,” he shook me awake, and I jolted with surprise to hear my name. Shohare never spoke my name; it was always, “Madar” or “Hamsar,” never the name my mother had given me when I was just a babe. I peered at him and was even further surprised by the tears rolling down his cheeks as he looked at me.

“Shohare?” I sat up quickly, “What is wrong?”

“It is Berezira.”

The sound of rain never gave me peace again.

I never heard my Nawa’s cries.

Berezira never held her.

I never said goodbye.

The morning after, Shohare and I inspected the damage done in our little yard. There was not much, only the tree would have to go. As I was lifting my leg to step over the branch, a small feather caught my eye. I lifted a leaf from over the object and gasped. Under the branch, in a small house made of leaves and sticks, was my sparrow.

Its small body was bent, with black eyes unseeing. Its throat did not sing a song; its beak would never pick up another worm to eat. Shohare joined me over the small body, and together we buried it, both crying too much over a sparrow.

“It’s nothing but a sparrow,” I said, as we walked into the house together, to get ready for a day of mourning with our Dokhtar’s family.

“It’s much more than that,” Shohare whispered. I grabbed his hand, feeling his rough calluses under my own. Yes, yes, it was.