A Thousand Splendid Suns: Part 3

It had struck her as comically officious then, hearing his full name uttered.

For years, he had eaten without looking up, without speaking, his silence condemning, as though some judg­ment were being passed, then broken only by an accusatory grunt, a disapproving cluck of his tongue, a one-word command for more bread, more water.

It wasn’t so much what he said, the blatant lies, the contrived empathy, or even the fact that he had not raised a hand to her

People will talk. It looks dishonorable, an unmarried young woman living here.

“Look,” he said, sounding more conciliatory now, as a victor could afford to.

A part of Tariq still alive inside her, sprouting tiny arms, growing translucent hands.

She knew that what she was doing was dishonorable. Dishon­orable, disingenuous, and shameful.

But even though the baby inside her was no bigger than a mulberry, Laila already saw the sacrifices a mother had to make. Virtue was only the first.

Laila would remember the muted ceremony in bits and frag­ments.

He felt her belly, not through the shirt but under it, his fin­gertips cold and rough like bark on her distended skin.

Laila re­membered Tariq’s hands, soft but strong, the tortuous, full veins on the backs of them, which she had always found so appeal­ingly masculine.

Usually, she could will herself to absorb Mariam’s derision and finger-pointing.

Mariam smirked inwardly with perverse pleasure.

Mariam found it exhausting to watch the girl’s lolloping enthusiasm—and had to admit, if only privately, to a degree of admiration.

Outside, mockingbirds were singing blithely, and, once in a while, when the songsters took flight, Mariam could see their wings catching the phosphorescent blue of moonlight beaming through the clouds.

Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.

She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment.

A melee of people had gathered there. Mariam saw people craning their necks, people crowded around the blue fountain in the center of the square, people perched on its dry bed.

How urbane, how Tajik, of you. You think this is some new, radical idea the Taliban are bringing? Have you ever lived outside of your precious little shell in Kabul, my gul?

Rasheed regarded the Taliban with a forgiving, affectionate kind of bemusement, as one might regard an erratic cousin prone to unpredictable acts of hilarity and scandal.

It was stunning to Mariam how quickly alleviating hunger became the crux of their existence.

He cried himself to sleep, when he could muster the energy, but his sleep was fitful and sporadic.

He patted the heads of some, as he passed by, said a cordial word or two to them, tousled their hair, without condescension.

For herself, and for Mariam, who was disconsolate over Aziza’s absence, though, as always, Mariam chose to cradle her own suffering privately and quietly.

She lay on her stomach, feeling like a stupid, pitiable animal, and hissed as Mariam arranged damp cloths across her bloodied back and thighs.

More than once, Laila had wondered what the Taliban would do about Kaka Zaman’s clandestine lessons if they found out.

During visits, Aziza didn’t allow for much silence. She filled all the spaces with effusive speech, delivered in a high, ringing voice.

She was tangential with her topics, and her hands gesticulated wildly, flying up with a nervousness that wasn’t like her at all.

She was like a hostess embarrassed in front of her guests by the squalor of her home, the untidiness of her children.

A round of haggling ensued, at the end of which Rasheed said to Aziza contentiously, as if it were she who’d haggled him, “Give it back. I can’t afford both.”

Now all manner of questions raced through her mind: Had the sulfa pills too been part of the ruse?

Laila thought of Tariq’s mother, her unhurried manners, the clever smiles, the dull purple wig. And his father, with his squinty gaze, his wry humor.

Laila meant this less as a joke than as a surreptitious entry into another line of talk, such as who else was there with him worrying about wolves eating goats.

He watched little emaciated boys carrying water in their jerry cans, gathering dog droppings to make fire, carving toy AK-47s out of wood with dull knives, lugging the sacks of wheat flour that no one could make bread from that held together.

All around the refugee town, the wind made the tents flap. It hurled stubbles of weed everywhere, lifted kites flown from the roofs of mud hovels.

She read in his face that it had been a place of abasement, of degradation and despair.

He cast a despondent, contrite glance toward Mariam, then his mother.

They stood frozen, Mariam and Laila, eyes to the ground, as though looking at each other would give credence to the way Rasheed saw things, that while he was opening doors and lugging baggage for people who wouldn’t spare him a glance a lewd conspiracy was shaping behind his back, in his home, in his beloved son’s presence.

They listened to the footsteps in the hallway above, one heavy and foreboding, the other the pattering of a skittish little animal.

Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars exploding. Bizarre geometric forms in the light, worms, egg-shaped things, moving up and down, sideways, melting into each other, breaking apart, morphing into something else, then fading, giving way to blackness.

She willed herself not to look at Rasheed, at the rictus of his mouth, his open eyes, at the blood congealing in the hollow of his collarbone.

They would leave this despondent country altogether, Mariam said, running her hands through Laila’s hair, and go someplace remote and safe where no one would find them, where they could disown their past and find shelter.

It would be an existence rife with difficulties, she saw, but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heir­loom.

Mariam found a disarming quality about him. When he spoke, it was with a tinge of guile and tenderness.

She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky.