She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and quickly wiped her face as her mother entered the room.

‘My child,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Nothing, Mama,’ replied Jia, turning away. ‘I was just looking for something. I’ll be down in a moment.’

Sanam Khan took her daughter by the shoulders and turned her towards herself. ‘You can’t hide your pain from me,’ she said.

Jia smiled wearily. ‘I’m tired of fighting,’ she said. ‘I don’t sleep any more, not since I left this house. They make you weak…children, don’t they?’

‘Is that why you did what you did?’ said Sanam Khan. Jia flinched. The question had taken fifteen years to reach Sanam Khan’s lips. ‘You were wrong then and you are wrong now, my child.’ She paused. ‘You gave me reasons to be strong. Reasons to fight for a better life, to fight my fears, to fight your father.’ She smiled at the memories of her husband, Akbar Khan, gentle at the birth of his daughters, proud at the birth of his sons, watching with concern the day Jia learnt to walk, quietly bereft at Zan’s funeral. Then the smile left her. ‘It is fear of our children suffering that makes us weak, but the desire to protect them that makes us strong.’

‘I don’t know how to be his mother,’ said Jia.

Sanam Khan brushed the words away as if they were flecks of dust on her shirt. ‘Of course you do. You are my daughter. I know what you are capable of.’

‘But this pain inside me,’ Jia said. ‘I am ashamed.’

Sanam Khan took her daughter by the shoulders again. ‘You should be ashamed, but only because you are stronger than this. Listen to me. Tears are considered a sign of weakness in the world of men but they are not. They are the water that feeds our soul and keeps our roots strong.’ She wiped her daughter’s eyes with her chador. ‘This fear and these tears,’ she said, ‘will keep you human, keep you close to Allah, His people and His mercy. Shed them, wipe them and begin again. But remember this: show them to no one but your mother, because no one will understand, and people will try and use them against you. “Inna lillaahi wa inna ilayhi raaji’oon,”’ she said, and with that declaration of submission to the will of the Lord, she closed the matter, taking her daughter by the hand and leading her out of the room of memories and regret.

At the bottom of the stairs, though, she stopped. ‘Trust your blood, Jia. Tell him the truth,’ she said. ‘And make peace with your husband. You will need him.’ And with that, she left to prepare to bury her husband.

CHAPTER 27