I wanted to but I couldn’t. It was not my home. Uncle Qadir, like an old doorman, was always watching with his half-open eyes. He smoked a water pipe day and night and stopped only when he wanted to confirm what Aunt Mahboub had said or to give me an unfatherly wink. As if he couldn’t wink without removing the hookah from his mouth.

It wasn’t only Uncle Qadir who obeyed Aunt Mahboub like a devoted servant. There were a lot of people who smiled at Aunt Mahboub’s remarks sheepishly and nodded their head for no reason.

Aunt Mahboub knew how to do a lot of things, from concocting remedies and medication to telling fortunes, praying, magic, and sorcery. At the right time, she even knew how to sing and dance. Neighbors would come to visit her. Even Maman turned off her weeping machine for a few hours and looked young and happy when she visited. Aunt Mahboub would torment Uncle Qadir to the point that he’d quickly turn purple. She made him keep the hookah’s tube in his mouth and not even raise his head to acknowledge her comments.

Aunt Mahboub could go anywhere, something Maman couldn’t do and was always envious of. Aunt Mahboub’s return from her trips was different from Father’s. Father always brought all the road dust with him. He would collapse in the middle of the room asking us to spray water on his chest and to massage his arms and legs. The smell of his sweat filled the house. Maman had to wash the rags from the car and his dishes that looked like they had been used by a dog.

Aunt Mahboub brought with her the kinds of things that smelled like perfumes from unknown lands. Aunt Mahboub was generous and brave.

“Mahboub has a big heart,” Maman said. “Mahboub could climb up a straight wall. Boys in the neighborhood were terrorized by her. She was never drab like me.”

The first time I went to the movies with Aunt Mahboub, I watched two films at the same time; one with my entire face and the other with half my face. I didn’t understand much of either. When I described the movies for Maman and Shahla, Shahla understood the one that I had watched with my entire face and Maman the one that I had seen with half my face. That evening, Aunt Mahboub sent me back home for the first time.

“I don’t like tattletales.” She pressed her hand on my bony chest. “A woman should learn to keep everything here. Do you understand?”

I understood.

Chapter 12

12

I tell Amir, “I am not leaving this place.”

“When I leave, you will be leaving with me, and when you come, you’ll be thankful because I have saved you from this place.”

His voice is gradually growing louder. As if he is addressing ten people. “Nothing improves by staying.”