Dancing in the Mosque

“You have a thousand feet, but you won’t be able to step outside of the four walls of this house,” he would say.

I remember when he was not quite a teenager, I said to him, “I would leave the house even if I didn’t have feet to walk on.”

He said, “Where would you go?”

I said, “To the other side of the world, far away from you.”

We loved each other even though my share of the meat never became the same size as his.

My reputation as a troublemaker lives on, even all these years and miles away. It was just the other day that Mushtaq messaged me: You always wanted to be on the other side of the planet. Now that you are there, are you happy? Is there anything else you are wishing for?

I sent him a message in return: I wish there was a magic gardonah that I could ride on and it would spin and spin until I am on your side of the world once again.

He wrote back immediately: Girl, you need to settle down in one place. One day, with all this spinning around and around, you will become so dizzy that you will lose yourself altogether.

My little Siawash,

As I am thousands of miles away from you, and your father doesn’t even let me talk to you on the phone or through a video call, I begged my mother to go to Kabul four months ago to see you and represent me in the courtroom. For going to such a place is taboo. She doesn’t like to walk in the hallways among people who condemn women, always, as guilty. If the ignominy of her daughter’s divorce wasn’t bad enough, she now has to endure further suffering in these courts of shame. But Madar entered this realm of injustice without hesitation, on my behalf, and on behalf of motherhood.

At two thirty in the morning in California, I heard the court verdict on the phone line with my own ears. The judge said in a commanding voice:

“This woman is no longer a mother. There is no need for the mother and child to know each other.”

I couldn’t cry any louder. My anger shredded my heart into pieces. Is it even possible for a mother to forget her child?

Siawash,

No scrap of paper will ever be able to forbid me to love you.

I told Madar to return to Herat. She did all she could—not just for her daughter, but for her daughter’s motherhood as well.

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