last time she had done that, she reached no higher than Ahmad’s chest; now she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Who is it?” Mr. Zia’s voice came down the stairwell. Ahmad took Leyla’s hand and went up. In his pajama bottoms and undershirt, Mr. Zia froze in place like a tree as the father and daughter stepped up. He was not sure if he should be ready to defend himself, to plead, or to run away.
“Father, he’s been very nice to me,” Leyla said, turning to Ahmad and grabbing his arm, anxiety in her voice. Her voice had changed, too, almost imperceptibly deeper. She was a young woman now.
Ahmad turned his menacingly calm face to Leyla and mouthed, Are you married? She nodded, holding up her ringed left hand. While Leyla packed her suitcase, Mr. Zia dressed himself and found nothing to say to Ahmad beyond repeated apology. He had grown bald but he was still good-looking. It was only when Ahmad and Leyla were leaving that he asked, “Will I see her again?”
Ahmad eyed him for a few seconds, but turned his back to him without saying anything. He walked out of the door, holding his daughter’s hand in one hand and her suitcase in the other.
On their way home, Ahmad and Leyla sat in the back, while two of the men shared the passenger seat. The driver broke into song. Snapping their fingers to the rhythm of the tune, the two-man chorus sang the refrain along the slippery roads.
Ahmad turned to Leyla and mouthed, You’re not pregnant, are you?
In the yellow lights that flashed into the car from the streetlamps, Ahmad saw her cast down her eyes. He held her face in his hand and turned it toward himself.
When?
Holding her hand down so the driver would not see in the rearview mirror, Leyla showed Ahmad two fingers. In the front, the driver rolled down the window and screamed his song into the cold.
The next day, when Homa stepped out of the hospital at the end of her shift, she saw Ahmad, Lalah, and Leyla standing side by side on the sidewalk with smiles. The girls had red roses in their hands which Homa knew had been Ahmad’s idea. If they had not been in public, she would have hugged them all, planted kisses on Ahmad’s face. Instead, she ran down the steps and held her long-lost daughter tight in her arms, oblivious of the gazes of the passersby. Feeling elated and supported by the obstinacy and determination of her husband, which she had seen as steel coldness, she celebrated the reunion of her family. But contrary to Ahmad’s expectation, when he asked her at night to unite as a family, she said, “I need more time on my own, Ahmad.” Stubbornness of that sort was not something Ahmad had known in Homa. He had thought that if he could find Leyla, Homa would have no reason not to mend the family back into its previous completeness. He felt indignant.
“Give her some time,” Pooran told Ahmad.
Until the baby is born, Ahmad mouthed.
26
NTIL THE BABY WAS BORN, Ahmad decreed that Leyla had to be in Khan’s house where Pooran and Lalah could tend to her. Any talk about what had happened in the past and what would come about in the future was postponed. Leyla’s husband could come and see her anytime he wanted, and Homa was welcome to visit her daughters as often as she wished. Zeeba opened Leyla’s room, swept the rugs, and dusted the furniture. Life came to the house once again. Khan brought in a mason to plan a new room for the baby. The two men stood on the snow-covered roof and looked at the three rooms already crowning the building. The mason rubbed his chin. He was not sure if it was a good idea to add any more weight on top of a house that had seen so many years. Khan said, “Some mason’s making me a room. It’s either you or someone else,” and so it was that before the baby was born, the fourth room was ready, on top of Zeeba’s. Its travertine facade, cemented over the brick walls, was visible from both ends of the alley. The first two rooms stood side by side, with a space between them wide enough only for two people to pass, but the ones on top faced one another. Each was accessed by a metal staircase. Of the previous three, only two rooms had