Forty days. What was so magical about forty? I wondered. Was I to feel differently today than I did yesterday? Was I to forget what happened just six weeks ago? We Afghans marked both life and death with a forty-day period, as if we needed that much time to confirm either had truly happened. We had celebrated Jahangir’s birth forty days after he’d left my womb, unsure if this child was here with us to stay. And now his death. Forty days of praying, alone, with others and everything in between.
