Read Online A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi - Free Book Online

attorneys to keep up the women’s spirits. Crayon graffiti covered the hallways, the canvas for the children of Chil Mahtab.
    There was only one good way to battle the ennui of their days. The women sat in their rooms and shared stories, dazzling cellmates with their tales, even as they accused one another of pilfering hair oil or laundry detergent. Some of their stories were as embellished as the women leaving the beauty salon. It was in these halls of gossip, from a woman with brass-colored hair and a crown of treasonous dark roots, that Latifa came to learn Zeba’s story.
    She whispered the news to the others in the fenced-in yard one afternoon.
    â€œSo it’s true, what we heard when she first came. They found her husband with a hatchet in his head,” she said with deliberate cool. Latifa took a long drag on her cigarette, her eyes narrowed and her head cocked to the side. “I’m surprised she made it here. Where I come from, they would have killed her and made sure the whole village showed up to watch.”
    â€œWow,” Nafisa marveled without looking up from her contraband mobile phone. She had just texted a message to her beloved widower and was waiting for a response. “I wouldn’t think that just looking at her. Wonder what he did to make her so crazy.”
    â€œMaybe he beat her once too often,” Latifa offered. “Maybe she caught him with another woman. There’s a lot a man can do to deserve something like that.”
    Mezhgan and Nafisa sighed, thinking dreamily of their lovers, the kind of gallant men who would never deserve a hatchet to the head.
    The young women had settled on Latifa’s theory that Zeba’s husband had somehow deserved his fate, but there were times when they wondered if maybe Zeba was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer. Those thoughts made it difficult to sleep some nights, especially since their mysterious cellmate barely said a word. They shifted uncomfortably when Zeba looked their way. If they dared to return her stare, Zeba’s eyes slinked away.
    When they did sleep, Zeba stayed awake. The flickering bulbs of Chil Mahtab’s hallways cast grotesque shadows across the cell, and the rise and fall of her sleeping cellmates’ silhouettes seemed ghostly and strange.
    They shared communal meals in their cell. When the others would finish, Zeba would make her way to the cloth spread on the green carpet and pick at the food. She ate enough that her belly did not growl but not so much that she ever felt sated. The food was always cold by the time she got to it, which suited her just fine. She was not here to feast.
    She had been told she would meet with her lawyer in a few days. From what the other women in prison said about their attorneys, she had no reason to expect much. But when her thoughts turned to her children, she prayed that God would give her a decent lawyer, for she knew she was in serious trouble.
    Her girls. Kareema and Shabnam.
    What did he do? She had begged them to answer. You would have told me, wouldn’t you?
    Madar, what has happened? they’d sobbed in bewilderment. Zeba was a gruesome sight, her head scarf crumpled in her hands—hands that looked, at first glance, like they’d been dipped in raw henna. Rima, the baby, was perched on Shabnam’s hip. Shabnam bounced her instinctively and kissed her sister’s cheek as she’d seen her mother do a thousand times. Rima’s petulant cheeks were still flushed from being left alone in the house. Her hands were balled into fists and she had shot her mother alternating looks of resentment and longing.
    Basir—how commanding he’d sounded when he spoke with the neighbors. And yet, he’d cringed when she’d touched him. Her chest tightened to remember it, the muscles of his forearm, every fiber hardening into a knot to repel her, his own mother. She’d never seen that look before, at least not on her son’s