‘This is Behnaz,’ Jabril had said on that first day as a short, dour woman, covered from head to toe in black, opened the gate. With a large round face and thick red hands, cracked and dry from a lifetime of scrubbing, there was no smile of welcome to tempt the corners of her downturned mouth.
‘I’m happy to meet you,’ Sofia said with her hand on her heart, only to see the woman look nervously toward Jabril before looking back at her.
‘Welcome,’ she said in heavily accented English.
‘Behnaz is learning English,’ Jabril had offered, picking up Sofia’s suitcase and following Behnaz through the courtyard to the house. ‘That was also an important consideration in Zahra’s choice of lodging for you.’
‘Room up, Mrs Doctor,’ Behnaz had said, pointing up the stairs. Sofia noted that a little clarification might be in order further down the track, but at that moment she didn’t think her schoolbook Dari, or Behnaz’s English, would be up to the challenge of correcting this misperception.
With a great deal of effort, Behnaz, who was nearly as wide as she was high, had ascended the stairs using the walls as leverage. Puffing by the time she reached the landing, she searched in a hidden pocket of her coat for a set of keys. After opening the door Behnaz had stood back, motioning for Sofia and Jabril to enter. ‘Please, you see.’
They entered a space that Sofia had guessed might have once been a large bedroom but had been divided into small rooms. Off the tiny sitting room was the sagging balcony she had seen from the square. To the right was a bedroom and on the left a small kitchenette and bathroom.
‘Behnaz is very modern and proud that her place is furnished like a Western house,’ Jabril had said, before translating his words into Dari for Behnaz’s benefit as he waved Sofia forward, encouraging her to inspect further. ‘I think it would probably be best if you looked around. I believe you are her first tenant and she needs to see that you approve.’
The walls were painted a dull green, the floor wooden, while thick exposed timber beams splattered with white plaster held up the roof. The little sitting room had two cane chairs, a table with a vase of plastic roses as its centrepiece and a standard lamp. On the wall Sofia recognised a photo of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. The little closed-in balcony reminded her of the verandah at the front of the old red brick house where she had grown up in Leichhardt, only that verandah looked out onto a busy arterial road.
Walking over to the balcony, Sofia had pulled back a pair of fresh lace curtains to look over the courtyard and its pomegranate tree out to the square. From this vantage point she understood that, apart from the tiny access road through which they had arrived, the other three corners of the square were pedestrian access only. When she heard a canary singing she found the cage hidden in the pomegranate tree in the courtyard.
‘When you here you open window,’ her landlady had said slowly in English. ‘Not here, lock window. Bedroom.’ With that she had turned and led them back inside.
‘Your English is very good,’ Sofia offered. Her landlady had looked to Jabril for clarification, but when he’d translated all Sofia got was a ‘humph’.
The bedroom had an overly large single bed with a nylon floral bedspread, a bedside table in dark timber, a small desk, a chair and an old wooden wardrobe. A naked light hung from the exposed wiring in the ceiling, while a beautiful, ancient and threadbare Afghan rug lay on the floor by the side of the bed.
‘As I said, Behnaz is very proud that she has this modern furniture for you.’
‘From police station,’ Behnaz had said, pointing to an overly large and decidedly ugly desk.
‘Tashakur,’ Sofia said, practising her new language. She wondered if the police knew the table was no longer in their possession.
‘I show you where wash. Not clothes. I wash clothes,’ Behnaz had said as she headed off to the bathroom with Sofia and Jabril following close behind.
‘There’s no need for that. I can wash my own clothes.’
Behnaz had turned to Jabril, looking a little distressed, and spoke so quickly in Dari that Sofia had no idea what she was saying.
‘She says it is what was agreed with Zahra.’
‘Fine,’ said Sofia. ‘Thank you.’
Behnaz had pushed open the door to a tiny room with a toilet, rust-marked mirror and miniature handbasin. With a dramatic flourish she pulled back what looked like a new pink floral shower curtain revealing an ancient shower rose halfway up the wall and a small water heater above it. Most of the tiles were off-white, but a few were green. Being the same size as those that had fallen out, the new green tiles looked like they had probably been chosen for their utility rather than their aesthetic appeal.
‘We were lucky that the tanks were too big to enter the square,’ Jabril had offered, as he too leaned in to inspect the bathroom, ‘but as you can see there was some damage during the wars. But it’s safe and serviceable, which is what you need.’
Leading them out to the archway that led into the kitchen, Behnaz stood back so they might inspect. ‘Mrs Doctor, see.’ She stood with her hands clasped worriedly in front of her, waiting for Sofia’s reaction.
Jabril had cleared his throat. ‘Dr Sofia is not married,’ he said in Dari. ‘So you don’t need to call her Mrs Doctor.’
‘Why?’
Jabril sighed.
Sofia had been inspecting the kitchen as they spoke. It looked like prefab timber laminate that had been popular in the seventies, but this kitchen was clearly new. It had a little two-ring camping stove fed by a gas bottle that took up precious bench space, while a tiny circular table had been pushed against a wall, together with a pair of mismatched chairs. Another vase of plastic flowers sat on a doily in the centre of the table. Sofia could see that her landlady, who was now twisting her apron between rough, work-stained hands, had gone to a great deal of trouble for her first tenant.
‘The kitchen’s perfect and the flowers are especially lovely.’
‘You like?’ asked Behnaz in English.
Jabril had leaned over and whispered in Sofia’s ear. ‘You must be careful. If you show interest or compliment something an Afghan owns, they may think you want it and might feel they have to give it to you. On the other hand, the reverse is also true. If they compliment you on something you own, they may want it.’
Sofia had heard this from her refugee tutor and was only now beginning to see how it might be a problem. ‘Everything is perfect,’ she had offered. ‘Thank you so much and thank you, Dr Aziz, for recommending Mrs …’ Sofia stopped, unsure what to call her landlady.
‘Behnaz. We usually only use first names here in Afghanistan.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. Behnaz.’
Sofia had suspected she was not the tenant the dour-looking woman had been expecting. She later learned from Zahra that when Behnaz, who didn’t much like foreigners, had understood that her first tenant would be a young Australian doctor she had nearly reneged on the deal. With a great appreciation of Behnaz’s interest in money, Zahra had politely reminded her of the promise she had made to help her nieces and nephews back in the village and how Sofia’s afghanis would contribute handsomely to that cause.
When Behnaz stopped torturing the apron she had spoken in English again. ‘Is good?’