A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Nadia Hashimi
- Publish Date: May 16, 2017
- Language: English
- Genre: Family Life Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Pages: 432
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 9780062449658
IF ZEBA HAD BEEN A WOMAN LESS ORDINARY, KAMAL MIGHT HAVE seen it coming
—a gnawing feeling or at least a few hairs standing on end. But she gave him
no warning, no reason to believe that she would be anything more than she
had been for the last two decades. She was a loving wife, a patient mother, a
peaceful villager. She did nothing to draw attention to herself.
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On that day, the day that changed an unchangeable village, Zeba’s
afternoon was a bland repetition of the many afternoons before it. The clothes
hung on the line outside their home. Stewed okra simmered in an aluminum
pot. Rima, the puffy tops of her feet blackened from crawling around the
house, slept a few feet away, a dark, wet circle where her innocent mouth met
the bedsheet. Zeba watched her daughter’s back rise and fall and smiled to see
the soft pout of her lips. She traced her finger through a mound of freshly
ground cardamom. The scent lingered on her fingertip, sweet and soothing.
Zeba sighed and flicked the end of her white head scarf over her shoulder.
She tried not to wonder where Kamal was because that inevitably led to
wondering what he was doing, and Zeba was in no mood to entertain such
thoughts today. She wanted today to stay an ordinary day.
Basir and the girls were on their way home from school. Basir, Zeba’s
eldest son, was only sixteen years old but more hardened than other boys his
age. Adolescence had gifted him with the unfortunate insight to see his
parents for what they were. Home had not been a refuge. Home had been, for
as long as Basir could remember, a broken place—broken dishes, broken ribs,
broken spirits.
At the heart of the problem was Kamal, Zeba’s husband, a man who had
disintegrated over the years. Now he survived only by believing that the man
he was for minutes at a time could make up for the man he was the rest of the
hours.
Zeba watched the embers flicker beneath the pot. Maybe Kamal would
bring home a cut of meat today. They hadn’t had any in half a month. Last
week, he’d brought a bag of onions, so fresh and sweet Zeba’s eyes had
watered just looking at them. She’d cried tears of gratitude into everything
she cooked for days.
Rima shifted languidly, her pale leg twisted back under the knit blanket
and her arm pulled back to her side. She would be waking soon. Zeba brushed
the cardamom grinds into a small empty jar. She took one deep breath before
sealing the lid, letting its scent tingle her lungs.
Some days were difficult. Food was often scarce and the children
sometimes ill. Zeba had already lost two little ones and knew just how easily
God could take away. Kamal had moods she didn’t understand, but she’d
learned to weather them, like an experienced pilot navigating through stormy
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