Idris was stunned. ‘Akbar Khan wanted you to kill his grandson?’ he said.

‘No! My brother wanted me to help him save him! I had seen her try once but had thought it the madness of post-partum women. I had spoken to her and called her mother to keep watch and feed the child. But Akbar Khan, he told me he had caught her a second time, the child on her lap, and the pillow over the baby’s face…’

‘Who, Baba jaan?’ said Idris.

‘The child’s mother. Jia Khan.’ Bazigh Khan stopped. ‘She told me it was the Pukhtun way. That in times of war such things were necessary. That she had far to travel, that the child would bind her and be used by her father against her.’

Idris pressed his foot on the brake hard. His car screeched to a halt inches away from a crash. Engrossed in his father’s words, he hadn’t noticed the lights change or the car in front stop. His understanding of the situation had always been that Jia hadn’t wanted the baby, and had sent him to live with his father. That the truth was much darker made his blood run cold.

‘You are worried, my son,’ said his father. ‘I would be too. She bided her time for fifteen long years. The night of his death Akbar Khan gave me a letter with instructions not to read it until the following day. In it, he told me to forgive Jia Khan and to stand by her. He knew she was coming for him, and he was in submission to the will of the Almighty. She has long planned the demise of the Jirga. Surprising, then, that she has bound it tighter and herself in it. Surprising but fortuitous. It is a cold woman indeed who would not spare her own offspring. And this cold woman will make a great Khan for our people.’

EPILOGUE

Jia sat on the bed, the baby in her arms, wrapped in the pretty pale green blanket that Maria had crocheted. Maria was due next month. Her legs swollen, her blood pressure high, she was on bedrest. She’d taken up the craft to stay busy.

Jia looked at the newborn, who had been safe inside her until a few hours ago. Closed eyelids, perfect pink lips, tiny fingers wrapped around hers, now out in the cold, mean world. Skin to skin, she pressed the baby against her breast. She protected those she loved, but one’s own children were a different matter. They didn’t listen, they pushed boundaries, they scattered tacks under their parents’ Achilles heels. Last time, the burden of parenthood had outweighed the love. She wondered how it would be this time. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the bed. She was exhausted.