Celestial Bodies

At first, Zayid returns regularly to his village. Dressed in his military uniform, he hands out fruit. When Zayd dies, and he must pour his own coffee, he knows that the villagers will never “see him as a real officer” (113). Years after Zayid’s father’s murder, Abdallah remembers, the news arrived that Zayid had married. His bride was Hafiza’s daughter; Hafiza had a reputation similar to “her father’s sister, the slut” (113). Hafiza’s first baby was born with skin “several shades darker than her mother’s or grandmother’s” (113). Hafiza said the father is Zaatar, Marhun, or Habib. She sustained 40 lashes for adultery; Abdallah snuck in to watch the punishment. Less than two years later, Hafiza had another baby, this time with “very pale skin” (113) and so “the sentence changed” (113). Again, Hafiza is not sure of the father and earns the nickname “Everyone’s Bus” (114). Three years later, she had a third daughter and then began to take birth control pills.

Abdallah remembers how his father tied him up and hung him upside down in the well after he took his father’s rifle to shoot magpies.