The Best Women's Travel Writing by Lavinia Spalding

“I don’t have a list.”
    â€œO.K., Nazo and I will help you write your list,” Nafisa said. “Number one: name begins with ‘A.’ Ends with ‘D.’ Do we know anyone like this?”
    Nazo giggled.
    â€œNafisa!” I said, face growing hotter. Asad. After the roadtrip, he had been ducking into the kitchen now and then to ask me about English vocabulary, just like his sister had. I laughed a little too loudly at his jokes and tried to wipe the grin off my face after he left, all the while wondering when his next visit would be. Each time, I felt Nafisa and Nazo’s eyes boring into me as they pretended to be absorbed with the cooking.
    â€œYou like my brother?” Nazo said. Her green eyes danced cartoonishly.
    â€œHe is very nice,” I said carefully.
    â€œShe says he’s very nice,” Nazo said to Nafisa, as if she were an interpreter.
    â€œYou like him,” Nafisa said, leaning close to me. “You like us. You should marry him.”
    Nafisa’s face could look so serious, with those big eyes, that naturally downturned mouth.
But surely she’s joking.
Nazo nodded, looking earnest herself. I turned to Laila for a hint, but she was keeping a close-lipped smile on her face.
    â€œWhat? Marry?” I said, my voice sounding strained. “You’re kidding.”
    â€œNo,” Nafisa said, her uncovered black ponytail flipping emphatically over her shoulder. “You marry him. You will be our sister.”
    â€œI can’t marry him. I hardly know him!” I protested.
    â€œYou have known him for twelve days,” Nafisa said. She had counted the days since our road trip to the village? “That is more time than I knew my husband before I decided to marry him. And look, we are happy.”
    They were. After her husband left again, Nafisa had moped the entire day. On the one hand, it was hard for me to imagine how this kind of attraction—and yes, love—had developed after they had married barely knowing each other. It was ludicrous to discuss Asad and marriage with his sister and sister-in-law when he and I had only had a handful of conversations, never alone. Could they be that naïve?
    But then I remembered her biting down on her pinky knuckle in the kitchen. I looked at the slight swell of her pregnant belly under her
shalwar kameez
. All this, with a man she had only known from a few hours’ worth of supervised meetings.
    â€œWell?” Nafisa said.
    I had no answer for her.
    â€œWe just want you to be our sister.”
    Nafisa had said “sister” once already, but now I began to understand. Nafisa and Nazo, their rapport so easy, like a married couple, even when they bickered. How they moved in the kitchen, never bumping into each other. Nazo told me once that she and Nafisa would have a say in whomever their remaining single brothers married, because they would be taking on a new sister as well.
    â€œYou already feel like sisters to me,” I said, meaning it. I had never become so close to women in such a short time. In a culture that separated men and women, women developed an instant, easy intimacy within their inner sanctums. It had been so natural to fall into that uncomplicated closeness. But with this talk of marriage, why hadn’t they brought up the obvious? “I just can’t marry your brother, because I’m not Afghan and I’m not Muslim. I wouldn’t be acceptable.”
    â€œIt is no problem,” Nafisa said. “You will not have to become Muslim right away. You can take your time. I will show you how to pray. Then you convert, and it will be O.K.”
    I hadn’t grown up religious, nor been particularly drawn to religion, but Nafisa made it sound so simple, so essential—a foregone conclusion—and I couldn’t help but feel a bit charmed by it. Learn to pray, the rest would come.
    I rolled my head back on the pillow, making a playful gesture