This time the new mother did not attempt to run away. She gave a wisp of sigh, burrowed her head into the pillow and turned toward the window, as if straining to hear fate's whisper in the wind. If she listened attentively, she thought, she might hear an answer from the skies. After all, there must have been a reason, an explanation unbeknown to her but obvious to Allah, as to why He had given them two more daughters when they already had six, and still not one son.  Thus the new mother clamped her lips shut, determined not to say a word until Allah had explained to her, fully and convincingly, the motive behind His actions. During the next forty days and nights she did not speak a word. Not when she was cooking chickpeas with sheep's tail fat, not when she was giving her six daughters a bath in a large round tin bucket, not when she was making cheese with wild garlic, not when her husband asked her what she would like to name the babies. She remained silent as the graveyard by the hills where all her ancestors were buried and some day so would she.  It was a small, secluded Kurdish village with no roads, no electricity, and no secrets under the sun. Whatever took place in one corner was heard, at once, by everyone else. Secrets were a luxury only the richest could afford and in this village no one was rich.  The village elders were three ageless men who spent their time in the only teahouse contemplating the mysteries of the universe and the stupidities of the politicians while they sipped tea out of glasses fragile as life. When they heard about the new mother's oath of silence, they decided to pay her a visit.  "We came to warn you that you are about to commit sacrilege," said the first man who was so old the slightest breeze knocked him down.
22 November, 1947; A Village Near the River EuphratesWhen Pembe was born, her mother was so sad she forgot about the pain she had suffered for twenty-six hours and the blood oozing between her legs,