I knock on another door, one through which I can't hear the radio. I know it leads to the very small hall where, during the last visit, the women ran, scampering in bare feet on the terrazzo floor from the sitting room when they thought a stranger, a man, was about to venture inside. I wear my dupatta like an aunt taught me to do when I was 13, so not a strand of hair tumbles out. It's pulled back a little farther than regulation; the top of my hair at my forehead peeks out. My cousin impresses me; she's a practicing Muslim but wraps her dupatta lightly over her head. I bind mine tightly, to keep it from falling off. Or, perhaps, out of fear that it might come off.
I can't remember the name of the second wife, even though I can describe her porcelain face to the slightest detail, from the black liner that frames the inside of her eyes to the faint pink lipstick that brought a gentle color to her face. Shaheen politely asked ("It is my wish. It is our culture") that I not publish her name for the traditional reasons of privacy that keep her inside the house, so I let it slip from my mind, and I suddenly feel terrible about that.
I peek inside and see a little girl on the stairs beside the window. She sees me. She wails in fear and runs away. Whoops.
We stand long enough for me to notice the screen bent from the doorframe like a dog-eared worn novel. The door creaks open. It's the second wife, her dupatta draped gently over her head, like my cousin's. She greets me with a long hug. I introduce my cousin, and we enter.
My cousin crosses her legs to sit on the floor upon one of the thin, deep purple cushions that line the edge of the small sitting room. I spot her through the frame of the door. She looks more than a slight bit uncomfortable in this room of only men. I slip off my scruffy black rubber sandals that look perpetually dirty and step into the sitting room, relieved that Shaheen, talking on the phone, greets me with a broad smile. I move to sit down, but then remember the pen I want to give the wife, so I step into the kitchen where she stands at the stove and give it to her.
She smiles and takes the NYPD pen and postcard, with the Empire State Building and World Trade Center sparkling in the night skyline.
I slip back into the sitting room. There are two kind-of scary looking men opposite my cousin and me. Big, burly, bearded. The blades of the ceiling fan cast dark shadows spinning above them. Shaheen gets off the phone and I apologize for arriving unannounced. "No problem," he says.
Shaheen is a young-looking 45, given to smiles and wistful thoughts. I give him one of the postcards of the New York night skyline and a key chain. Perhaps it seems odd that I'm giving this man, a Taliban leader, a picture of the World Trade Center. The postcards, unfortunately, were among the only cheap gifts I stocked up with in New York before I left. Though they're cheap gifts, I knew that, even over here amidst anti-American slogans, there is an intrigue about the West, transforming these otherwise tacky souvenirs into sentimental treasures. And the towers were also the topic of a previous conversation I had with Shaheen two days earlier. He had once lived in Flushing, N.Y., as the Taliban's representative to the United Nations, he said, and had even visited Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of World Trade Center Tower No. 1. He smiles when I hand him a postcard.
I put my finger over the image of the World Trade Center.
"Now it's gone," I say, stating the obvious.
"Yes," he says, "very sad."
He says that he, like many from this part of the world, would like to return to America. "We are not against America or Americans," he says. "We are against the arrogance of intimidation.
"We are also human beings. We have not sprouted in the soil, not come down from the skies. We have families, fathers, mothers, like other human beings.
"I like America. I like Americans," he says. "I just don't like American foreign policy."
What is it that he likes about America, I ask. The spirit of rigorous research in all fields, he says. The professional work ethic. The strength of technology. Freedom of speech.
"I like that they can freely criticize," he says.