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Instead, behind closed doors, a face-saving deal had quickly been struck.
Nana said, “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
A few moments later, he pushed back the blanket and left the room, leaving her with the impression of his head on her pillow, leaving her to wait out the pain down below, to look at the frozen stars in the sky and a cloud that draped the face of the moon like a wedding veil.
I know you’re still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now, he said. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You’re a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.
Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
Laila had been to funerals before where she had seen women like this, women who relished all things that had to do with death, official consolers who let no one trespass on their self-appointed duties.
Ahmad and Noor had always been like lore to her. Like characters in a fable. Kings in a history book.
Back in Kabul, if not for the occasional bursts of gunfire, if not for the Soviet soldiers smoking on the sidewalks and the Soviet jeeps always bumping through the streets, war might as well have been a rumor.
Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she had married a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn’t understand. She didn’t understand that if she looked into a mirror, she would find the one unfailing conviction of his life looking right back at her.
Laila knew the book; he’d read it to her once. It told the story of an old fisherman named Santiago who catches an enormous fish. But by the time he sails his boat to safety, there is nothing left of his prize fish; the sharks have torn it to pieces.
By the time we’re twenty, Hasina used to say, Giti and I, we’ll have pushed out four, five kids each. But you, Laila, you’ll make us two dummies proud. You’re going to be somebody. I know one day I’ll pick up a newspaper and find your picture on the front page.
“You’re jealous.” “I’m indifferently curious.”
She also saw that some of the peacemakers were now throwing punches of their own.
Morning brought no relief. The muezzin’s call for namaz rang out, and the Mujahideen set down their guns, faced west, and prayed. Then the rugs were folded, the guns loaded, and the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched as helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish.
So I travel a lot, back and forth. Which, these days”—he shook his head and chuckled tiredly—“let’s just say that it’s an adventure.
Haven’t you noticed all the widows sleeping on the streets? They would kill for this chance. In fact, this is…Well, I’d say this is downright charitable of me.” He smiled. “The way I see it, I deserve a medal.”
Mariam heard the answer in his laugh: that in the eyes of the Taliban, being a communist and the leader of the dreaded KHAD made Najibullah only slightly more contemptible than a woman.
No matter how much she breathed in and out, it seemed to Laila that she couldn’t fill her lungs with enough air.
“JUST LIKE OLD TIMES, then,” Rasheed said. “The two of you. I suppose you let him see your face.” “She did,” said Zalmai. Then, to Laila, “You did, Mammy. I saw you.”
this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more.
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.
By the time we’re twenty, Giti and I, we’ll have pushed out four, five kids each. But you, Laila, you’ll make us two dummies proud. You’re going to be somebody. I know one day I’ll pick up a newspaper and find your picture on the front page.
On it, with a brush, Zaman has written four lines of poetry, his answer, Laila knows, to those who grumble that the promised aid money to Afghanistan isn’t coming, that the rebuilding is going too slowly, that there is corruption, that the Taliban are regrouping already and will come back with a vengeance, that the world will forget once again about Afghanistan.
But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.
