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Laila examined Mariam’s drooping cheeks, the eyelids that sagged in tired folds, the deep lines that framed her mouth—she saw these things as though she too were looking at someone for the first time. And, for the first time, it was not an adversary’s face Laila saw but a face of grievances unspoken, burdens gone unprotested, a destiny submitted to and endured. If she stayed, would this be her own face, Laila wondered, twenty years from now?
“He’ll turn on you too, you know,” Mariam said, wiping her hands dry with a rag. “Soon enough. And you gave him a daughter. So, you see, your sin is even less forgivable than mine.”
“The Chinese say it’s better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.”
And in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew that they were not enemies any longer.
Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly. Aziza made Mariam want to weep. “Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?” Mariam would murmur into Aziza’s hair. “Huh? I am nobody, don’t you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?”
But when it came to fathers, Mariam had no assurances to give.
But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza—a harami like herself, as it turned out—had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable.
Laila felt watched. She looked no one in the face, but she felt as though every person in this place knew, that they were looking on with disapproval at what she and Mariam were doing.
Downstairs, the beating began. To Laila, the sounds she heard were those of a methodical, familiar proceeding. There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten, the thump, thump of something solid repeatedly striking flesh, something, someone, hitting a wall with a thud, cloth ripping.
Mariam understood that this was a woman far past outrage. Here was a woman, she thought, who had understood that she was lucky to even be working, that there was always something, something else, that they could take away.
Mariam would always admire Laila for how much time passed before she screamed.
His patience with Zalmai was a well that ran deep and never dried.
“Fine, you be Jack,” she relented. “You die young, and I get to live to a ripe old age.” “Yes, but I die a hero,” said Aziza, “while you, Rose, you spend your entire, miserable life longing for me.” Then, straddling Mariam’s chest, she’d announce, “Now we must kiss!” Mariam whipped her head side to side, and Aziza, delighted with her own scandalous behavior, cackled through puckered lips.
“Everybody wants Jack,” Laila said to Mariam. “That’s what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.”
And then he was on Laila, pummeling her chest, her head, her belly with fists, tearing at her hair, throwing her to the wall. Aziza was shrieking, pulling at his shirt; Zalmai was screaming too, trying to get him off his mother. Rasheed shoved the children aside, pushed Laila to the ground, and began kicking her. Mariam threw herself on Laila. He went on kicking, kicking Mariam now, spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes glittering with murderous intent, kicking until he couldn’t anymore.
Mariam heard of a neighborhood widow who had ground some dried bread, laced it with rat poison, and fed it to all seven of her children. She had saved the biggest portion for herself.
Mariam regretted her foolish, youthful pride now. She wished now that she had let him in. What would have been the harm to let him in, sit with him, let him say what he’d come to say? He was her father. He’d not been a good father, it was true, but how ordinary his faults seemed now, how forgivable, when compared to Rasheed’s malice, or to the brutality and violence that she had seen men inflict on one another.
Next to Laila, Aziza snorted. Zaman feigned a gasp. “Ah, there. I’ve made you laugh, little hamshira. That’s usually the hard part. I was worried, there, for a while. I thought I’d have to cluck like a chicken or bray like a donkey. But, there you are. And so lovely you are.”
Someone had pulled the hair back from Aziza’s face, braided it, and pinned it neatly on top of her head. Laila begrudged whoever had gotten to sit behind her daughter, to flip sections of her hair one over the other, had asked her to sit still.
Oh, Laila, I wish I’d never left you.”
He’d taken so much from her in twenty-seven years of marriage. She would not watch him take Laila too. Mariam steadied her feet and tightened her grip around the shovel’s handle. She raised it. She said his name. She wanted him to see. “Rasheed.” He looked up. Mariam swung.
“For me, it ends here. There’s nothing more I want. Everything I’d ever wished for as a little girl you’ve already given me. You and your children have made me so very happy. It’s all right, Laila jo. This is all right. Don’t be sad.”
“Kiss Aziza for me,” she said. “Tell her she is the noor of my eyes and the sultan of my heart. Will you do that for me?”
They turned the corner, and Laila never saw Mariam again.
As the three Taliban watched, Mariam wrote it out, her name—the meem, the reh, the yah, and the meem—remembering the last time she’d signed her name to a document, twenty-seven years before, at Jalil’s table, beneath the watchful gaze of another mullah.
Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.
She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother.
This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.
One last time, Mariam did as she was told.
“He will never leave. Look at me, Aziza. Your father will never hurt you, and he will never leave.” The relief on Aziza’s face broke Laila’s heart.
Laila has her own dreams. In them, she’s always back at the house in Kabul, walking the hall, climbing the stairs. She is alone, but behind the doors she hears the rhythmic hiss of an iron, bedsheets snapped, then folded. Sometimes she hears a woman’s low-pitched humming of an old Herati song. But when she walks in, the room is empty. There is no one there.
When they make love, Laila feels anchored, she feels sheltered. Her anxieties, that their life together is a temporary blessing, that soon it will come loose again in strips and tatters, are allayed. Her fears of separation vanish.
“I’ll follow you to the end of the world, Laila.”
She believes she has never loved him more than at this moment.
In Pakistan, it was difficult sometimes to remember the details of Mariam’s face. There were times when, like a word on the tip of her tongue, Mariam’s face eluded her. But now, here in this place, it’s easy to summon Mariam behind the lids of her eyes: the soft radiance of her gaze, the long chin, the coarsened skin of her neck, the tight-lipped smile. Here, Laila can lay her cheek on the softness of Mariam’s lap again, can feel Mariam swaying back and forth, reciting verses from the Koran, can feel the words vibrating down Mariam’s body, to her knees, and into her own ears.
Already Laila sees something behind this young girl’s eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila’s salvation.
The film playing on the screen is Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. Laila does not understand.
When it comes to you, Mariam jo, I have oceans of it.
But I will be waiting. I will be listening for your knock. I will be hoping.
Your undeserving father, Jalil
When they first came back to Kabul, it distressed Laila that she didn’t know where the Taliban had buried Mariam. She wished she could visit Mariam’s grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But Laila sees now that it doesn’t matter. Mariam is never very far. She is here, in these walls they’ve repainted, in the trees they’ve planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these pillows and books and pencils. She is in the children’s laughter. She is in the verses Aziza recites and in the prayers she mutters when she bows westward. But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own
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But the game involves only male names. Because, if it’s a girl, Laila has already named her.
