Madam SEPTEMBER 1996Iwo and a half years later, Mariam awoke on the morning ofSeptember 27 to the sounds of shouting andwhistling, firecrackers and music. She ran to the living room,found Laila already at the window, Aziza mounted on hershoulders. Laila turned and smiled.
The Taliban are here, she said.
* * *Mariam had first heard of the Taliban two years before, inOctober 1994, when Rasheed had brought home news thatthey had overthrown the warlords in Kandahar and taken thecity. They were a guerrilla force, he said, made up of youngPashtun men whose families had fled to Pakistan during thewar against the Soviets. Most of them had been raised-someeven born-in refugee camps along the Pakistani border, and inPakistani madrasas, where they were schooled inShari'a bymullahs. Their leader was a mysterious, illiterate, one-eyedrecluse named Mullah Omar, who, Rasheed said with someamusement, called himselfAmeer-ul-Mumineeny Leader of theFaithful.
It's true that these boys have norisha, no roots, Rasheedsaid, addressing neither Mariam nor Laila. Ever since the failedescape, two and a half years ago, Mariam knew that she andLaila had become one and the same being to him, equallywretched, equally deserving of his distrust, his disdain anddisregard. When he spoke, Mariam had the sense that he washaving a conversation with himself, or with some invisiblepresence in the room, who, unlike her and Laila, was worthyof his opinions.
They may have no past, he said, smoking and looking up atthe ceiling. "They may know nothing of the world or thiscountry's history. Yes. And, compared to them, Mariam heremight as well be a university professor. Ha! Alltrue. But look around you. What do you see? Corrupt, greedyMujahideen commanders, armed to the teeth, rich off heroin,declaring jihad on one another and killing everyone inbetween-that's what. At least the Taliban are pure andincorruptible. At least they're decent Muslim boys.Wallah, whenthey come, they will clean up this place. They'll bring peaceand order. People won't get shot anymore going out for milk.
No more rockets! Think of it."For two years now, the Taliban had been making their waytoward Kabul, taking cities from the Mujahideen, endingfactional war wherever they'd settled. They had captured theHazara commander Abdul Ali Mazari and executed him. Formonths, they'd settled in the southern outskirts of Kabul, firingon the city, exchanging rockets with Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Earlier in that September of 1996, they had captured the citiesof Jalalabad and Sarobi.
The Taliban had one thing the Mujahideen did not, Rasheedsaid. They were united.
Let them come, he said. "I, for one, will shower them withrose petals."* * *They "went our that day, the four of them, Rasheed leadingthem from one bus to the next, to greet their new world, theirnew leaders. In every battered neighborhood, Mariam foundpeople materializing from the rubble and moving into thestreets. She saw an old woman wasting handfuls of rice, tossingit at passersby, a drooping, toothless smile on her face. Twomen were hugging by the remains of a gutted building, in thesky above them the whistle, hiss, and pop of a few firecrackersset off by boys perched on rooftops. The national anthemplayed on cassette decks, competing with the honking of cars.
Look, Mayam! Aziza pointed to a group of boys runningdown Jadeh Maywand. They were pounding their fists into theair and dragging rusty cans tied to strings. They were yellingthat Massoud and Rabbani had withdrawn from Kabul.
Everywhere, there were shouts:Ailah-u-akbar!
Mariam saw a bedsheet hanging from a window on JadehMaywand. On it, someone had painted three words in big,black letters: zendabaad taliban! Long live the Taliban!
As they walked the streets, Mariam spotted more signs-paintedon windows, nailed to doors, billowing from car antennas-thatproclaimed the same.
* * *Mariam sawher first of the Taliban later that day, atPashtunistan Square, with Rasheed, Laila, and Aziza. A melee ofpeople had gathered there. Mariam saw people craning theirnecks, people crowded around the blue fountain in the centerof the square, people perched on its dry bed. They were tryingto get a view of the end of the square, near the old KhyberRestaurant.
Rasheed used his size to push and shove past the onlookers,and led them to where someone was speaking through aloudspeaker.
When Aziza saw, she let out a shriek and buried her face inMariam's burqa.
The loudspeaker voice belonged to a slender, bearded youngman who wore a black turban. He was standing on some sortof makeshift scaffolding. In his free hand, he held a rocketlauncher. Beside him, two bloodied men hung from ropes tiedto traffic-light posts. Their clothes had been shredded. Theirbloated faces had turned purple-blue.
I know him, Mariam said, "the one on the left."A young woman in front of Mariam turned around and saidit was Najibullah. The other man was his brother. Mariamremembered Najibullah's plump, mustachioed face, beamingfrom billboards and storefront windows during the Soviet years.
She would later hear that the Taliban had dragged Najibullahfrom his sanctuary at the UN headquarters near DarulamanPalace. That they had tortured him for hours, then tied his legsto a truck and dragged his lifeless body through the streets.
He killed many, many Muslims! the young Talib wasshouting through the loudspeaker. He spoke Farsi with aPashto accent, then would switch to Pashto. He punctuated hiswords by pointing to the corpses with his weapon. "His crimesare known to everybody. He was a communist and akqfir Thisis what we do with infidels who commit crimes against Islam!"Rasheed was smirking.
In Mariam's arms, Aziza began to cry.
* * *The following day, Kabul was overrun by trucks. In Khairkhana, in Shar-e-Nau, in Karteh-Parwan, in Wazir Akbar Khanand Taimani, red Toyota trucks weaved through the streets.
Armed bearded men in black turbans sat in their beds. Fromeach truck, a loudspeaker blared announcements, first in Farsi,then Pashto. The same message played from loudspeakersperched atop mosques, and on the radio, which was nowknown as the Voice ofShort 'a. The message was also writtenin flyers, tossed into the streets. Mariam found one in the yard.
Ourwatanis now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
These are the laws that we will enforce and you will obey:
Ail citizens must pray five times a day. If it is prayer timeand you are caught doing something other, you will be beaten.
Ail men will grow their beards. The correct length is at leastone clenched fist beneath the chin. If you do not abide by this,you will be beaten.
Ml boys will wear turbans. Boys in grade one through six willwear black turbans, higher grades will wear white. Ail boys willwear Islamic clothes. Shirt collars will be buttoned.
Singing is forbidden.
Dancing is forbidden.
Playing cards, playing chess, gambling, and kiteflying areforbidden.
Writing books, watching films, and painting pictures areforbidden.
If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will bekilled.
If you steal, your hand will be cut off at the wrist. If yousteal again, your foot will be cut off.
If you are not Muslim, do not worship where you can beseen by Muslims. If you do, you will be beaten and imprisoned.
If you are caught trying to convert a Muslim to your faith, youwill be executed.
Attention women:
You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not properfor women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you gooutside, you must be accompanied by amahram,a male relative.
If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten andsent home.
You will not, under any circumstance, show your face. Youwill cover with burqa when outside. If you do not, you will beseverely beaten.
Cosmetics are forbidden.
Jewelry is forbidden.
You will not wear charming clothes.
You will not speak unless spoken to.
You will not make eye contact with men.
You will not laugh in public. If you do, you will be beaten.
You will not paint your nails. If you do, you will lose a finger.
Girls are forbidden from attending school All schools for girlswill be closed immediately.
Women are forbidden from working.
If you are found guilty of adultery, you will be stoned todeathListen. Listen well. Obey.Allah-u-akbar.
Rasheed turned off the radio. They were sitting on theliving-room floor, eating dinner less than a week after they'dseen Najibullah's corpse hanging by a rope.
They can't make half the population stay home and donothing, Laila said.
Why not? Rasheed said. For once, Mariam agreed with him.
He'd done the same to her and Laila, in effect, had he not?
Surely Laila saw that.
This isn't some village. This isKabul. Women here used topractice law and medicine; they held office in thegovernment-Rasheed grinned. "Spoken like the arrogant daughter of apoetry-reading university man that you are. How urbane, howTajik, of you. You think this is some new, radical idea theTaliban are bringing? Have you ever lived outside of yourprecious little shell in Kabul, mygull Ever cared to visit therealAfghanistan, the south, the east, along the tribal border withPakistan? No? I have. And I can tell you that there are manyplaces in this country that have always lived this way, or closeenough anyhow. Not that you would know.""I refuse to believe it," Laila said "They're not serious.""What the Taliban did to Najibullah looked serious to me,"Rasheed said. "Wouldn't you agree?""He was a communist! He was the head of the Secret Police."Rasheed laughed.
Mariam heard the answer in his laugh: that in the eyes of theTaliban, being a communist and the leader of the dreadedKHAD made Najibullah onlyslightly more contemptible than awoman.
LailaJLaila was glad, when the Taliban went to work, that Babiwasn't around to witness it. It would have crippled him.
Men wielding pickaxes swarmed the dilapidated Kabul Museumand smashed pre-Islamic statues to rubble-that is, those thathadn't already been looted by the Mujahideen. The universitywas shut down and its students sent home. Paintings wereripped from walls, shredded with blades. Television screens werekicked in. Books, except the Koran, were burned in heaps, thestores that sold them closed down. The poems of Khalili,Pajwak, Ansari, Haji Dehqan, Ashraqi, Beytaab, Hafez, Jami,Nizami, Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, and more went up in smoke.
Laila heard of men being dragged from the streets, accused ofskippingnamaz, and shoved into mosques. She learned thatMarco Polo Restaurant, near Chicken Street, had been turnedinto an interrogation center. Sometimes screaming was heardfrom behind its black-painted windows. Everywhere, the BeardPatrol roamed the streets in Toyota trucks on the lookout forclean-shaven faces to bloody.
They shut down the cinemas too. Cinema Park. Ariana. Aryub.
Projection rooms were ransacked and reels of films set to fire.
Laila remembered all the times she and Tariq had sat in thosetheaters and watched Hindi films, all those melodramatic tales oflovers separated by some tragic turn of fate, one adrift in somefaraway land, the other forced into marriage, the weeping, thesinging in fields of marigolds, the longing for reunions. Sheremembered how Tariq would laugh at her for crying at thosefilms.
I wonder what they've done to my father's cinema, Mariamsaid to her one day. "If it's still there, that is. Or if he stillowns it."Kharabat, Kabul's ancient music ghetto, was silenced. Musicianswere beaten and imprisoned, theirrubab%?iamboura%? andharmoniums trampled upon. The Taliban went to the grave ofTariq's favorite singer, Ahmad Zahir, and fired bullets into it.
He's been dead for almost twenty years, Laila said toMariam. "Isn't dying once enough?"* * *Rasheed wasnt bothered much by the Taliban. All he had todo was grow a beard, which he did, and visit the mosque,which he also did. Rasheed regarded the Taliban with aforgiving, affectionate kind of bemusement, as one might regardan erratic cousin prone to unpredictable acts of hilarity andscandal.
Every Wednesday night, Rasheed listened to the VoiceofShari'a when the Taliban would announce the names of thosescheduled for punishment. Then, on Fridays, he went to GhaziStadium, bought a Pepsi, and watched the spectacle. In bed, hemade Laila listen as he described with a queer sort ofexhilaration the hands he'd seen severed, the lashings, thehangings, the beheadings.
I saw a man today slit the throat of his brother's murderer,he said one night, blowing halos of smoke.
They're savages, Laila said.
You think? he said "Compared to what? The Soviets killed amillion people. Do you know how many people the Mujahideenkilled in Kabul alone these last four years? Fifty thousandFiftythousand! Is it so insensible, by comparison, to chop the handsoff a few thieves? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It's in theKoran. Besides, tell me this: If someone killed Aziza, wouldn'tyou want the chance to avenge her?"Laila shot him a disgusted look.
I'm making a point, he said.
"You're just like them.""It's an interesting eye color she has, Aziza. Don't you think? It's neither yours nor mine.Rasheed rolled over to face her, gently scratched her thighwith the crooked nail of his index finger.
"Let me explain, he said. "If the fancy should strike me-andI'm not saying it will, but it could, it could-I would be withinmy rights to give Aziza away. How would you like that? Or Icould go to the Taliban one day, just walk in and say that Ihave my suspicions about you. That's all it would take. Whoseword do you think they would believe? What do you thinkthey'd do to you?"Laila pulled her thigh from him.
Not that I would, he said. "I wouldn't.Nay. Probably not.
You know me.""You're despicable," Laila said.
That's a big word, Rasheed said. "I've always disliked thatabout you. Even when you were little, when you were runningaround with that cripple, you thought you were so clever, withyour books and poems. What good are all your smarts to younow? What's keeping you off the streets, your smarts or me?
I'm despicable? Half the women in this city would kill to havea husband like me. They wouldkill for it."He rolled back and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
You like big words? I'll give you one: perspective. That's whatI'm doing here, Laila. Making sure you don't lose perspective.What turned Laila's stomach the rest of the night was thatevery word Rasheed had uttered, every last one, was true.
But, in the morning, and for several mornings after that, thequeasiness in her gut persisted, then worsened, becamesomething dismayingly familiar.
* * *One cold, overcast afternoon soon after, Laila lay on her backon the bedroom floor. Mariam was napping with Aziza in herroom.
In Laila's hands was a metal spoke she had snapped with apair of pliers from an abandoned bicycle wheel She'd found itin the same alley where she had kissed Tariq years back. Fora long time, Laila lay on the floor, sucking air through herteeth, legs partedShe'd adored Aziza from the moment when she'd firstsuspected her existence. There had been none of thisself-doubt, this uncertainty. What a terrible thing it was, Lailathought now, for a mother to fear that she could not summonlove for her own child. What an unnatural thing. And yet shehad to wonder, as she lay on the floor, her sweaty handspoised to guide the spoke, if indeed she could ever loveRasheed's child as she had Tariq's.
In the end, Laila couldn't do it.
It wasn't the fear of bleeding to death that made her dropthe spoke, or even the idea that the act was damnable- whichshe suspected it was. Laila dropped the spoke because shecould not accept what the Mujahideen readily had: thatsometimes in war innocent life had to be taken. Her war wasagainst Rasheed. The baby was blameless. And there had beenenough killing already. Laila had seen enough killing ofinnocents caught in the cross fire of enemies.
Madam September 1997Ihis hospital no longer treats women," the guard barked. Hewas standing at the top of the stairs, looking down icily on thecrowd gathered in front of Malalai Hospital.
A loud groan rose from the crowd.
But this is a women's hospital! a woman shouted behindMariam. Cries of approval followed this.
Mariam shifted Aziza from one arm to the other. With herfree arm, she supported Laila, who was moaning, and had herown arm flung around Rasheed's neck.
Not anymore, the Talib said.
My wife is having a baby! a heavyset man yelled. "Wouldyou have her give birth here on the street, brother?"Mariam had heard the announcement, in January of thatyear, that men and women would be seen in differenthospitals, that all female staff would be discharged from Kabul'shospitals and sent to work in one central facility. No one hadbelieved it, and the Taliban hadn't enforced the policy. Untilnow.
What about Ali Abaci Hospital? another man cried.
The guard shook his head.
WazirAkbarKhan?"Men only, he said.
What are we supposed to do?"Go to Rabia Balkhi, the guard said.
A young woman pushed forward, said she had already beenthere. They had no clean water, she said, no oxygen, nomedications, no electricity. "There is nothing there.""That's where you go," the guard said.
There were more groans and cries, an insult or two. Someonethrew a rock.
The Talib lifted his Kalashnikov and fired rounds into the air.
Another Talib behind him brandished a whip.
The crowd dispersed quickly.
* * *The waiting room at Rabia Balkhi was teeming with women inburqas and their children. The air stank of sweat andunwashed bodies, of feet, urine, cigarette smoke, and antiseptic.
Beneath the idle ceiling fan, children chased each other,hopping over the stretched-out legs of dozing fathers.
Mariam helped Laila sit against a wall from which patches ofplaster shaped like foreign countries had slid off Laila rockedback and forth, hands pressing against her belly.
I'll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise."Be quick, said Rasheed.
Before the registration window was a horde of women,shoving and pushing against each other. Some were still holdingtheir babies. Some broke from the mass and charged thedouble doors that led to the treatment rooms. An armed Talibguard blocked their way, sent them back.
Mariam waded in. She dug in her heels and burrowed againstthe elbows, hips, and shoulder blades of strangers. Someoneelbowed her in the ribs, and she elbowed back. A hand madea desperate grab at her face. She swatted it away. To propelherself forward, Mariam clawed at necks, at arms and elbows,at hair, and, when a woman nearby hissed, Mariam hissedback.
Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency wasbut one. She thought ruefully of Nana, of the sacrifices that shetoo had made. Nana, who could have given her away, ortossed her in a ditch somewhere and run. But she hadn't.
Instead, Nana had endured the shame of bearing aharami, hadshaped her life around the thankless task of raising Mariamand, in her own way, of loving her. And, in the end, Mariamhad chosen Jalil over her. As she fought her way withimpudent resolve to the front of the melee, Mariam wished shehad been a better daughter to Nana. She wished she'dunderstood then what she understood now aboutmotherhood-She found herself face-to-face with a nurse, whowas covered head to toe in a dirty gray burqa. The nurse wastalking to a young woman, whose burqa headpiece had soakedthrough with a patch of matted blood"My daughter's water broke and the baby won't come,"Mariam called.
I'mtalking to her! the bloodied young woman cried "Waityour turn!"The whole mass of them swayed side to side, like the tallgrass around thekolba when the breeze swept across theclearing. A woman behind Mariam was yelling that her girl hadbroken her elbow falling from a tree. Another woman criedthat she was passing bloody stools.
Does she have a fever? the nurse asked. It took Mariam amoment to realize she was being spoken to.
No, Mariam said.
Bleeding?
No."Whereis she?Over the covered heads, Mariam pointed to where Laila wassitting with Rasheed.
We'll get to her, the nurse said"How long?" Mariam cried Someone had grabbed her by theshoulders and was pulling her back.
I don't know,the nurse said. She said they had only twodoctorsand both were operating at the moment.
She's in pain, Mariam said.
Me too! the woman with the bloodied scalp cried. "Waityour turn!"Mariam was being dragged back. Her view of the nurse wasblocked now by shoulders and the backs of heads. She smelleda baby's milky burp.
Take her for awalk, the nurse yelled. "And wait."* * *It was dark outside when a nurse finally called them in. Thedelivery room had eight beds, on which women moaned andtwisted tended to by fully covered nurses. Two of the womenwere in the act of delivering. There were no curtains betweenthe beds. Laila was given a bed at the far end, beneath awindow that someone had painted black. There was a sinknearby, cracked and dry, and a string over the sink fromwhich hung stained surgical gloves. In the middle of the roomMariam saw an aluminum table. The top shelf had asoot-colored blanket on it; the bottom shelf was empty.
One of the women saw Mariam looking.
They put the live ones on the top, she said tiredly.
The doctor, in a dark blue burqa, was a small, harriedwoman with birdlike movements. Everything she said came outsounding impatient, urgent.
First baby. She said it like that, not as a question but as astatement.
Second, Mariam said.
Laila let out a cry and rolled on her side. Her fingers closedagainst Mariam's.
Any problems with the first delivery?'No.
You're the mother?"Yes, Mariam said.
The doctor lifted the lower half of her burqa and produced ametallic, cone-shaped instrument- She raised Laila's burqa andplaced the wide end of the instrument on her belly, the narrowend to her own ear. She listened foralmost a minute, switched spots, listened again, switched spotsagain.
I have to feel the baby now,hamshira She put on one of the gloves hung by a clothespin over thesink. She pushed on Laila's belly with one hand and slid theother inside. Laila whimpered. When the doctor was done, shegave the glove to a nurse, who rinsed it andpinned it back on the string.
"Your daughter needs a caesarian. Do you know what that is? We have to open her womb and take the baby out, because itis in the breech position.""I don't understand, Mariam said.
"The doctor said the baby was positioned so it wouldn't comeout on its own. "And too much time has passed as is. Weneed to go to the operating room now."Laila gave a grimacing nod, and her head drooped to oneside.
Thereis something I have to tell you, the doctor said. Shemoved closer to Mariam, leaned in, and spoke in a lower,more confidential tone. There was a hint of embarrassment inher voice now.
What is she saying? Laila groaned. "Is something wrong withthe baby?""But how will she stand it?" Mariam said.
The doctor must have heard accusation in this question,judging by the defensive shift in her tone.
You think I want it this way? she said. "What do you wantme to do? They won't give me what I need. I have no X-rayeither, no suction, no oxygen, not even simple antibiotics. WhenNGOs offer money, the Taliban turn them away. Or they funnelthe money to the places that cater to men.""But, Doctor sahib, isn't there something you can give her?"Mariam asked.
What's going on? Laila moaned.
You can buy the medicine yourself, but-"Write the name, Mariam said. "You write it down and I'llget it."Beneath the burqa, the doctor shook her head curtly. "Thereis no time," she said. "For one thing, none of the nearbypharmacies have it. So you'd have to fight through traffic fromone place to the next, maybe all the way across town, withlittle likelihood that you'd ever find it. It's almost eight-thirtynow, so you'll probably get arrested for breaking curfew. Evenif you find the medicine, chances are you can't afford it. Oryou'll find yourself in a bidding war with someone just asdesperate. There is no time. This baby needs to come outnow.""Tell me what's going on!" Laila said She had propped herselfup on her elbows.
The doctor took a breath, then told Laila that the hospital hadno anesthetic.
But if we delay, you will lose your baby."Then cut me open, Laila said. She dropped back on thebed and drew up her knees. "Cut me open and give me mybaby."* * *Inside the old, dingy operating room, Laila lay on a gurneybed as the doctor scrubbed her hands in a basin. Laila wasshivering. She drew in air through her teeth every time thenurse wiped her belly with a cloth soaked in a yellow-brownliquid. Another nurse stood at the door. She kept cracking itopen to take a peek outside.
The doctor was out of her burqa now, and Mariam saw thatshe had a crest of silvery hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and littlepouches of fatigue at the corners of her mouth.
They want us to operate in burqa, the doctor explained,motioning with her head to the nurse at the door. "She keepswatch. She sees them coming; I cover."She said this in a pragmatic, almost indifferent, tone, andMariam understood that this was a woman far past outrage.
Here was a woman, she thought, who had understood thatshe was lucky to even be working, that there was alwayssomething, something else, that they could take away.
There were two vertical, metallic rods on either side of Laila'sshoulders. With clothespins, the nurse who'd cleansed Laila'sbelly pinned a sheet to them. It formed a curtain between Lailaand the doctor.
Mariam positioned herself behind the crown of Laila's headand lowered her face so their cheeks touched. She could feelLaila's teeth rattling. Their hands locked together.
Through the curtain, Mariam saw the doctor's shadow moveto Laila's left, the nurse to the right. Laila's lips had stretchedall the way back. Spit bubbles formed and popped on thesurface of her clenched teeth. She made quick, little hissingsounds.
The doctor said, "Take heart, little sister."She bent over Laila.
Laila's eyes snapped open. Then her mouth opened. She heldlike this, held, held, shivering, the cords in her neck stretched,sweat dripping from her face, her fingers crushing Mariam's.
Mariam would always admire Laila for how much time passedbefore she screamed.
Laila Fall 1999It was Mariam's idea to dig the hole. One morning, shepointed to a patch of soil behind the toolshed. "We can do ithere," she said. "This is a good spot"They took turns striking the ground with a spade, thenshoveling the loose dirt aside. They hadn't planned on a bighole, or a deep one, so the work of digging shouldn't havebeen as demanding as it turned out. It was the drought,started in 1998, in its second year now, that was wreakinghavoc everywhere. It had hardly snowed that past winter anddidn't rain at all that spring. All over the country, farmers wereleaving behind their parched lands, selling off their goods,roaming from village to village looking for water. They movedto Pakistan or Iran. They settled in Kabul. But water tableswere low in the city too, and the shallow wells had dried up.
The lines at the deep wells were so long, Laila and Mariamwould spend hours waiting their turn. The Kabul River, withoutits yearly spring floods, had turned bone-dry. It was a publictoilet now, nothing in it but human waste and rubble.
So they kept swinging the spade and striking, but thesun-blistered ground had hardened like a rock, the dirtunyielding, compressed, almost petrified.
Mariam was forty now. Her hair, rolled up above her face,had a few stripes of gray in it. Pouches sagged beneath hereyes, brown and crescent-shaped. She'd lost two front teeth.
One fell out, the other Rasheed knocked out when she'daccidentally dropped Zalmai. Her skin had coarsened, tannedfrom all the time they were spending in the yardsitting beneaththe brazen sun. They would sit and watch Zalmai chase Aziza.
When it was done, when the hole was dug, they stood over itand looked down.
It should do, Mariam said.
* * *Zalmai was twonow. He was a plump little boy with curlyhair. He had small brownisheyes, and a rosy tint tohis cheeks,like Rasheed, no matter the weather. He hadhis father'shairlinetoo, thick and half-moon-shaped,set low on his brow.
When Laila was alone with him, Zalmai was sweet,good-humored, and playful. He liked to climb Laila'sshoulders,play hide-and-seek in the yard with her and Aziza. Sometimes,inhis calmer moments, he liked tosit on Laila's lap and haveher sing tohim. His favorite song was "Mullah MohammadJan." He swung his meaty little feet as she sang into his curlyhair and joined in when she got to the chorus, singing whatwords he could make with his raspy voice:
Come and lei's go to Mazar, Mullah Mohammadjan, To seethe fields of tulips, o beloved companion.
Laila loved the moist kisses Zalmai planted on her cheeks,loved his dimpled elbows and stout little toes. She loved ticklinghim, building tunnels with cushions and pillows for him to crawlthrough, watching him fall asleep in her arms with one of hishands always clutching her ear. Her stomach turned when shethought of that afternoon, lying on the floor with the spoke ofa bicycle wheel between her legs. How close she'd come. Itwas unthinkable to her now that she could have evenentertained the idea. Her son was a blessing, and Laila wasrelieved to discover that her fears had proved baseless, thatshe loved Zalmai with the marrow of her bones, just as shedid Aziza.
But Zalmai worshipped his father, and, because he did, hewas transformed when his father was around to dote on him.
Zalmai was quick then with a defiant cackle or an impudentgrin. In his father's presence, he was easily offended. He heldgrudges. He persisted in mischief in spite of Laila's scolding,which he never did when Rasheed was away.
Rasheed approved of all of it. "A sign of intelligence," he said.
He said the same of Zalmai's recklessness-when he swallowed,then pooped, marbles; when he lit matches; when he chewedon Rasheed's cigarettes.
When Zalmai was born, Rasheed had moved him into the bedhe shared with Laila. He had bought him a new crib and hadlions and crouching leopards painted on the side panels. He'dpaid for new clothes, new rattles, new bottles, new diapers,even though they could not afford them and Aziza's old oneswere still serviceable. One day, he came home with abattery-run mobile, which he hung over Zalmai's crib. Littleyellow-and-black bumblebees dangled from a sunflower, andthey crinkled and squeaked when squeezed. A tune playedwhen it was turned on.
I thought you said business was slow, Laila said.
I have friends I can borrowfrom, he saiddismissively.
"Howwill you pay them back?""Thingswill turn around. They always do. Look,he likes it. See?Mostdays, Laila was deprived ofher son. Rasheed took him tothe shop, let him crawl around under his crowded workbench,play with old rubber soles and spare scraps of leather. Rasheeddrove in his iron nails and turned the sandpaper wheel, andkept a watchful eye on him. If Zalmai toppled a rack of shoes,Rasheed scolded him gently, in a calm, half-smiling way. If hedid it again, Rasheed put downhis hammer, sat him up on hisdesk, and talked to him softly.
"Hispatience with Zalmaiwas a well that ran deep and neverdried.
They came home together in the evening, Zalmai's headbouncing on Rasheed's shoulder, both of them smelling of glueand leather. They grinned the way people who share a secretdo,slyly, like they'd satin thatdim shoe shop all day not makingshoes at all butdevising secret plots. Zalmai liked to sit besidehisfather at dinner, where they played private games, as Mariam,Laila, and Azizaset plates onthesojrah. They took turns pokingeach otheron the chest, giggling, pelting each other with breadcrumbs, whispering things the others couldn't hear. If Lailaspoke tothem, Rasheed looked up with displeasure at theunwelcome intrusion. If she asked to hold Zalmai-or, worse,ifZalmai reached for her-Rasheed glowered at her.
Laila walked away feeling stung.
* * *Then one night, a few weeks after Zalmai turned two,Rasheed came home with a television and a VCR. The dayhad been warm, almost balmy, but the evening was cooler andalready thickening into a starless, chilly night-He set it down onthe living-room table. He said he'd bought it on the blackmarket. "Another loan?" Laila asked. "It'saMagnavox."Aziza came into the room. When she saw the TV, she ran toit. "Careful, Aziza jo," saidMariam. "Don't touch."Aziza's hair had become as light as Laila's. Laila could see herown dimples on her cheeks. Aziza had turned into a calm,pensive little girl, with a demeanor that to Laila seemed beyondher six years. Laila marveled at her daughter's manner ofspeech, her cadence and rhythm, her thoughtful pauses andintonations, so adult, so at odds with the immature body thathoused the voice. It was Aziza who with lightheaded authorityhad taken it upon herself to wake Zalmai every day, to dresshim, feed him his breakfast, comb his hair. She was the onewho put him down to nap, who played even-temperedpeacemaker to her volatile sibling. Around him, Aziza had takento giving an exasperated, queerly adult headshake.
Aziza pushed the TV's power button. Rasheed scowled,snatched her wrist and set it on the table, not gently at all.
This is Zalmai's TV, he said.
Aziza went over to Mariam and climbed in her lap. The twoof them were inseparable now. Of late, with Laila's blessing,Mariam had started teaching Aziza verses from the Koran.
Aziza could already recite by heart the surah ofikhlas, the surahof'fatiha,and already knew how to perform the fourruqats ofmorning prayer.
It's oil I have to give her,Mariam had said to Laila,thisknowledge, these prayers. They're the only true possession I'veever had.
Zalmai came into the room now. As Rasheed watched withanticipation, the way people wait the simple tricks of streetmagicians, Zalmai pulled on the TV's wire, pushed the buttons,pressed his palms to the blank screen. When he lifted them,the condensed little palms faded from the glass. Rasheed smiledwith pride, watched as Zalmai kept pressing his palms andlifting them, over and over.
The Taliban had banned television. Videotapes had beengouged publicly, the tapes ripped out and strung on fenceposts. Satellite dishes had been hung from lampposts. ButRasheed said just because things were banned didn't mean youcouldn't find them.
I'll start looking for some cartoon videos tomorrow, he said.
It won't be hard. You can buy anything in undergroundbazaars."Then maybe you'll buy us a new well, Laila said, and thiswon her a scornful gaze from him.
It was later, after another dinner of plain white rice had beenconsumed and tea forgone again on account of the drought,after Rasheed had smoked a cigarette, that he told Laila abouthis decision.
No, Laila said.
He said he wasn't asking.
I don't care if you are or not."You would if you knew the full story.He said he had borrowed from more friends than he let on,that the money from the shop alone was no longer enough tosustain the five of them. "I didn't tell you earlier to spare youthe worrying.""Besides," he said, "you'd be surprised how much they canbring in."Laila said no again. They were in the living room. Mariamand the children were in the kitchen. Laila could hear theclatter of dishes, Zalmai's high-pitched laugh, Aziza sayingsomething to Mariam in her steady, reasonable voice.
There will be others like her, younger even, Rasheed said.
Everyone in Kabul is doing the same.Laila told him she didn't care what other people did with theirchildren.
I'll keep a close eye on her, Rasheed said, less patientlynow. "It's a safe corner. There's a mosque across the street.""I won't let you turn my daughter into a street beggar!" Lailasnapped.
The slap made a loud smacking sound, the palm of histhick-fingered hand connecting squarely with the meat of Laila'scheek. It made her head whip around. It silenced the noisesfrom the kitchen. For a moment, the house was perfectly quiet.
Then a flurry of hurried footsteps in the hallway before Mariamand the children were in the living room, their eyes shiftingfrom her to Rasheed and back.
Then Laila punched him.
It was the first time she'd struck anybody, discounting theplayful punches she and Tariq used to trade. But those hadbeen open-fisted, more pats than punches, self-consciouslyfriendly, comfortable expressions of anxieties that were bothperplexing and thrilling. They would aim for the muscle thatTariq, in a professorial voice, called thedeltoidLaila watched the arch of her closed fist, slicing through theair, felt the crinkle of Rasheed's stubbly, coarse skin under herknuckles. It made a sound like dropping a rice bag to thefloor. She hit him hard. The impact actually made him staggertwo steps backward.
From the other side of the room, a gasp, a yelp, and ascream. Laila didn't know who had made which noise. At themoment, she was too astounded to notice or care, waiting forher mind to catch up with what her hand had done. When itdid, she believed she might have smiled. She might havegrinnedwhen, to her astonishment, Rasheed calmly walked out of theroom.
Suddenly, it seemed to Laila that the collective hardships oftheir lives-hers, Aziza's, Mariam's-simply dropped away,vaporized like Zalmai's palms from the TV screen. It seemedworthwhile, if absurdly so, to have endured all they'd enduredfor this one crowning moment, for this act of defiance thatwould end the suffering of all indignities.
Laila did not notice that Rasheed was back in the room. Untilhis hand was around her throat. Until she was lifted off herfeet and slammed against the wall.
Up close, his sneering face seemed impossibly large. Lailanoticed how much puffier it was getting with age, how manymore broken vessels charted tiny paths on his nose. Rasheeddidn't say anything. And, really, what could be said, whatneeded saying, when you'd shoved the barrel of your gun intoyour wife's mouth?
* * *It was the raids, the reason they were in the yard digging.
Sometimes monthly raids, sometimes weekly. Of late, almostdaily. Mostly, the Taliban confiscated stuff, gave a kick tosomeone's rear, whacked the back of a head or two. Butsometimes there were public beatings, lashings of soles andpalms.
Gently, Mariam said now, her knees over the edge. Theylowered the TV into the hole by each clutching one end of theplastic sheet in which it was wrapped"That should do it," Mariam said.
They patted the dirt when they were done, filling the hole upagain. They tossed some of it around so it wouldn't lookconspicuous.
There, Mariam said, wiping her hands on her dress.
When it was safer, they'd agreed, when the Taliban cut downon their raids, in a month or two or six, or maybe longer,they would dig the TV up.
* * *In Laila'S dream, she and Mariam are out behind the toolsheddigging again. But, this time, it's Aziza they're lowering into theground. Aziza's breath fogs the sheet of plastic in which theyhave wrapped her. Laila sees her panicked eyes, the whitenessof her palms as they slap and push against the sheet. Azizapleads. Laila can't hear her screams.Only for a while, she callsdown,it's only for a while. It's the raids, don't you know, mylove? When the raids are over, Mammy and Khala Mariam willdig you out. I promise, my love. Then we can play. We canplay all you want. She fills the shovel. Laila woke up, out ofbreath, with a taste of soil in her mouth, when the firstgranular lumps of dirt hit the plastic.
MadamIn the summer of 2000, the drought reached its third andworst year.
In Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar, villages turned into herds ofnomadic communities, always moving, searching for water andgreen pastures for their livestock. When they found neither,when their goats and sheep and cows died off, they came toKabul They took to the Kareh-Ariana hillside, living in makeshiftslums, packed in huts, fifteen or twenty at a time.
That was also the summer ofTitanic, the summer that Mariamand Aziza were a tangle of limbs, rolling and giggling, Azizainsistingshe get to be Jack.
Quiet, Aziza jo."Jack! Say my name, Khala Mariam. Say it. Jack! "Yourfather will be angry if you wake him.""Jack! And you're Rose."It would end with Mariam on her back, surrendering, agreeingagain to be Rose. "Fine, you be Jack," she relented "You dieyoung, and I get to live to a ripe old age.""Yes, but I die a hero," said Aziza, "while you, Rose, youspend your entire, miserable life longing for me." Then,straddling Mariam's chest, she'd announce, "Now we mustkiss!" Mariam whipped her head side to side, and Aziza,delighted with her own scandalous behavior, cackled throughpuckered lips.
Sometimes Zalmai would saunter in and watch this game.
What didhe get to be, he asked"You can be the iceberg," said Aziza.
That summer,Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggledpirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in theirunderwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turnedout the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears forJack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. Ifthere was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the childrenwatched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TVfrom behind the toolshed, late at night, with the lights out andquilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed.
Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible tobuyTitanic carpets, andTitanic cloth, from bolts arranged inwheelbarrows. There wasTitanic deodorant,Titanictoothpaste,Titanic perfume,Titanicpakora, evenTitanic burqas. Aparticularly persistent beggar began calling himself "TitanicBeggar.""Titanic City" was born.
It's the song,they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex,they whisperedLeo,said Aziza sheepishly.It's all about Leo.
Everybody wants Jack, Laila said to Mariam. "That's what itis. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. Butthere is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead."* * *Then, late that summer, a fabric merchant fell asleep andforgot to put out his cigarette. He survived the fire, but hisstore did not. The fire took the adjacent fabric store as well, asecondhand clothing store, a small furniture shop, a bakery.
They told Rasheed later that if the winds had blown eastinstead of west, his shop, which was at the corner of the block,might have been spared.
* * *They sold everything.
First to go were Mariam's things, then Laila's. Aziza's babyclothes, the few toys Laila had fought Rasheed to buy her.
Aziza watched the proceedings with a docile look. Rasheed'swatch too was sold, his old transistor radio, his pair of neckties,his shoes, and his wedding ring. The couch, the table, the rug,and the chairs went too. Zalmai threw a wicked tantrum whenRasheed sold the TV.
After the fire, Rasheed was home almost every day. Heslapped Aziza. He kicked Mariam. He threw things. He foundfault with Laila, the way she smelled, the way she dressed, theway she combed her hair, her yellowing teeth.
What's happened to you? he said. "I marriedapart, and nowI'm saddled with a hag. You're turning into Mariam."He got fired from the kebab house near Haji Yaghoub Squarebecause he and a customer got into a scuffle. The customercomplained that Rasheed had rudely tossed the bread on histable. Harsh words had passed. Rasheed had called thecustomer a monkey-faced Uzbek. A gun had been brandished.
A skewer pointed in return. In Rasheed's version, he held theskewer. Mariam had her doubts.
Fired from the restaurant in Taimani because customerscomplained about the long waits, Rasheed said the cook wasslow and lazy.
You were probably out back napping, said Laila.
Don't provoke him, Laila jo, Mariam said.
I'm warning you, woman, he said.
Either that or smoking."I swear to God."You can't help being what you are.And then he was on Laila, pummeling her chest, her head,her belly with fists, tearing at her hair, throwing her to thewall. Aziza was shrieking, pulling at his shirt; Zalmai wasscreaming too, trying to get him off his mother. Rasheedshoved the children aside, pushed Laila to the ground, andbegan kicking her. Mariam threw herself on Laila. He went onkicking, kicking Mariam now, spittle flying from his mouth, hiseyes glittering with murderous intent, kicking until he couldn'tanymore.
I swear you're going to make me kill you, Laila, he said,panting. Then he stormed out of the house.
* * *When the money ran out, hunger began to cast a pall overtheir lives. It was stunning to Mariam how quickly alleviatinghunger became the crux of their existence.
Rice, boiled plain and white, with no meat or sauce, was arare treat now. They skipped meals with increasing andalarming regularity. Sometimes Rasheed brought home sardinesin a can and brittle, dried bread that tasted like sawdust.
Sometimes a stolen bag of apples, at the risk of getting hishand sawed off. In grocery stores, he carefully pocketed cannedravioli, which they split five ways, Zalmai getting the lion'sshare. They ate raw turnips sprinkled with salt. Limp leaves oflettuce and blackened bananas for dinner.
Death from starvation suddenly became a distinct possibility.
Some chose not to wait for it. Mariam heard of aneighborhood widow who had ground some dried bread, lacedit with rat poison, and fed it to all seven of her children. Shehad saved the biggest portion for herself.
Aziza's ribs began to push through the skin, and the fat fromher cheeks vanished. Her calves thinned, and her complexionturned the color of weak tea. When Mariam picked her up,she could feel her hip bone poking through the taut skin.
Zalmai lay around the house, eyes dulled and half closed, or inhis father's lap limp as a rag. He cried himself to sleep, whenhe could muster the energy, but his sleep was fitful andsporadic. White dots leaped before Mariam's eyes whenever shegot up. Her head spun, and her ears rang all the time. Sheremembered something Mullah Faizullah used to say abouthunger when Ramadan started:Even the snakebiiien man findssleep, but not the hungry.
My children are going to die, Laila said. "Right before myeyes.""They are not," Mariam said. "I won't let them. It's going tobe all right, Laila jo. I know what to do."* * *One blistering-hot day, Mariam put on her burqa, and sheand Rasheed walked to the Intercontinental Hotel. Bus fare wasan un-affordable luxury now, and Mariam was exhausted bythe time they reached the top of the steep hill. Climbing theslope, she was struck by bouts of dizziness, and twice she hadto stop, wait for it to pass.
At the hotel entrance, Rasheed greeted and hugged one ofthe doormen, who was dressed in a burgundy suit and visorcap. There was some friendly-looking talk between them.
Rasheed spoke with his hand on the doorman's elbow. Hemotioned toward Mariam at one point, and they both lookedher way briefly. Mariam thought there was something vaguelyfamiliar about the doorman.
When the doorman went inside, Mariam and Rasheed waited.
From this vantage point, Mariam had a view of the PolytechnicInstitute, and, beyond that, the old Khair khana district and theroad to Mazar. To the south, she could see the bread factory,Silo, long abandoned, its pale yellow fa9ade pocked withyawning holes from all the shelling it had endured. Farthersouth, she could make out the hollow ruins of DarulamanPalace, where, many years back, Rasheed had taken her for apicnic. The memory of that day was a relic from a past thatno longer seemed like her own.
Mariam concentrated on these things, these landmarks. Shefeared she might lose her nerve if she let her mind wander.
Every few minutes, jeeps and taxis drove up to the hotelentrance. Doormen rushed to greet the passengers, who wereall men, armed, bearded, wearing turbans, all of them steppingout with the same self-assured, casual air of menace. Mariamheard bits of their chatter as they vanished through the hotel'sdoors. She heard Pashto and Farsi, but Urdu and Arabic too.
Meet ourreal masters, Rasheed said in a low-pitched voice.
Pakistani and Arab Islamists. The Taliban are puppets.Theseare the big players and Afghanistan is their playground.Rasheed said he'd heard rumors that the Taliban wereallowing these people to set up secret camps all over thecountry, where young men were being trained to becomesuicide bombers and jihadi fighters.
What's taking him so long? Mariam said.
Rasheed spat, and kicked dirt on the spit.
An hour later, they were inside, Mariam and Rasheed,following the doorman. Their heels clicked on the tiled floor asthey were led across the pleasantly cool lobby. Mariam saw twomen sitting on leather chairs, rifles and a coffee table betweenthem, sipping black tea and eating from a plate ofsyrup-coatedjelabi, rings sprinkled with powdered sugar. Shethought of Aziza, who lovedjelabi, and tore her gaze away.
The doorman led them outside to a balcony. From his pocket,he produced a small black cordless phone and a scrap ofpaper with a number scribbled on it. He told Rasheed it washis supervisor's satellite phone.
I got you five minutes, he said. "No more.""Tashakor,"Rasheed said. "I won't forget this."The doorman nodded and walked away. Rasheed dialed. Hegave Mariam the phone.
As Mariam listened to the scratchy ringing, her mindwandered. It wandered to the last time she'd seen Jalil, thirteenyears earlier, back in the spring of 1987. He'd stood on thestreet outside her house, leaning on a cane, beside the blueBenz with the Herat license plates and the white stripe bisectingthe roof, the hood, and trunk. He'd stood there for hours,waiting for her, now and then calling her name, just as shehad once calledhis name outsidehis house. Mariam had partedthe curtain once, just a bit, and caught a glimpse of him. Onlya glimpse, but long enough to see that his hair had turnedfluffy white, and that he'd started to stoop. He wore glasses, ared tie, as always, and the usual white handkerchief triangle inhis breast pocket. Most striking, he was thinner, much thinner,than she remembered, the coat of his dark brown suitdrooping over his shoulders, the trousers pooling at his ankles.
Jalil had seen her too, if only for a moment. Their eyes hadmet briefly through a part in the curtains, as they had metmany years earlier through a part in another pair of curtains.
But then Mariam had quickly closed the curtains. She had saton the bed, waited for him to leave.
She thought now of the letter Jalil had finally left at her door.
She had kept it for days, beneath her pillow, picking it up nowand then, turning it over in her hands. In the end, she hadshredded it unopened.
And now here she was, after all these years, calling him.
Mariam regretted her foolish, youthful pride now. She wishednow that she had let him in. What would have been the harmto 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, whencompared to Rasheed's malice, or to the brutality and violencethat she had seen men inflict on one another.
She wished she hadn't destroyed his letter.
A man's deep voice spoke in her ear and informed her thatshe'd reached the mayor's office in Herat.
Mariam cleared her throat."Salaam, brother, I am looking forsomeone who lives in Herat. Or he did, many years ago. Hisname is Jalil Khan. He lived in Shar-e-Nau and owned thecinema. Do you have any information as to his whereabouts?"The irritation was audible in the man's voice. "This is whyyoucall the mayor's office?"Mariam said she didn't know who else to call. "Forgive me,brother. I know you have important things to tend to, but it islife and death, a question of life and death I am calling about.""I don't know him. The cinema's been closed for many years.""Maybe there's someone there who might know him,someone-""There is no one."Mariam closed her eyes. "Please, brother. There are childreninvolved. Small children."A long sigh.
Maybe someone there-"There's a groundskeeper here. I think he's lived here all ofhis life."Yes, ask him, please."Call back tomorrow.Mariam said she couldn't. "I have this phone for five minutesonly. I don't-"There was a click at the other end, and Mariam thought hehad hung up. But she could hear footsteps, and voices, adistant car horn, and some mechanical humming punctuated byclicks, maybe an electric fan. She switched the phone to herother ear, closed her eyes.
She pictured Jalil smiling, reaching into his pocket.
Ah. Of course. Well Here then. Without Juriher ado…A leaf-shaped pendant, tiny coins etched with moons and starshanging from it.
Try it on, Mariam jo.
What do you think?
Ithink you look like a queen.
A few minutes passed. Then footsteps, a creaking sound, anda click. "He does know him.""He does?""It's what he says.""Where is he?" Mariam said. "Does this man know where JalilKhan is?"There was a pause. "He says he died years ago, back in1987."Mariam's stomach fell. She'd considered the possibility, ofcourse. Jalil would have been in his mid-to late seventies bynow, but…1987.
He was dying then. He had driven all the way from Herat tosay good-bye.
She moved to the edge of the balcony. From up here, shecould see the hotel's once-famous swimming pool, empty andgrubby now, scarred by bullet holes and decaying tiles. Andthere was the battered tennis court, the ragged net lying limplyin the middle of it like dead skin shed by a snake.
I have to go now, the voice at the other end said"I'm sorry to have bothered you," Mariam said, weepingsoundlessly into the phone. She saw Jalil waving to her,skipping from stone to stone as he crossed the stream, hispockets swollen with gifts. All the times she had held herbreath for him, for God to grant her more time with him.
Thank you, Mariam began to say, but the man at the otherend had already hung up.
Rasheed was looking at her. Mariam shook her head.
Useless, he said, snatching the phone from her. "Likedaughter, like father."On their way out of the lobby, Rasheed walked briskly to thecoffee table, which was now abandoned, and pocketed the lastringof jelabi. He took it home and gave it to Zalmai.
LailaIn a paper bag, Aziza packed these things: her flowered shirtand her lone pair of socks, her mismatched wool gloves, anold, pumpkin-colored blanket dotted with stars and comets, asplintered plastic cup, a banana, her set of dice-It was a coolmorning in April 2001, shortly before Laila's twenty-thirdbirthday. The sky was a translucent gray, and gusts of aclammy, cold wind kept rattling the screen door.
This was a few days after Laila heard that Ahmad ShahMassoud had gone to France and spoken to the EuropeanParliament. Massoud was now in his native North, and leadingthe Northern Alliance, the sole opposition group still fighting theTaliban. In Europe, Massoud had warned the West aboutterrorist camps in Afghanistan, and pleaded with the U.S. tohelp him fight the Taliban.
If President Bush doesn't help us, he had said, "theseterrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon."A month before that, Laila had learned that the Taliban hadplanted TNT in the crevices of the giant Buddhas in Bamiyanand blown them apart, calling them objects of idolatry and sin.
There was an outcry around the world, from the U.S. toChina. Governments, historians, and archaeologists from all overthe globe had written letters, pleaded with the Taliban not todemolish the two greatest historical artifacts in Afghanistan. Butthe Taliban had gone ahead and detonated their explosivesinside the two-thousand-year-old Buddhas. They hadchantedAllah-u-akbar with each blast, cheered each time thestatues lost an arm or a leg in a crumbling cloud of dust. Lailaremembered standing atop the bigger of the two Buddhas withBabi and Tariq, back in 1987, a breeze blowing in their sunlitfaces, watching a hawk gliding in circles over the sprawlingvalley below. But when she heard the news of the statues'
demise, Laila was numb to it. It hardly seemed to matter. Howcould she care about statues when her own life was crumblingdust?
Until Rasheed told her it was time to go, Laila sat on thefloor in a comer of the living room, not speaking andstone-faced, her hair hanging around her face in straggly curls.
No matter how much she breathed in and out, it seemed toLaila that she couldn't fill her lungs with enough air.
* * *On the way to Karteh-Seh, Zalmai bounced in Rasheed's arms,and Aziza held Mariam's hand as she walked quickly besideher. The wind blew the dirty scarf tied under Aziza's chin andrippled the hem of her dress. Aziza was more grim now, asthough she'd begun to sense, with each step, that she wasbeing duped. Laila had not found the strength to tell Aziza thetruth. She had told her that she was going to a school, aspecial school where the children ate and slept and didn't comehome after class. Now Aziza kept pelting Laila with the samequestions she had been asking for days. Did the students sleepin different rooms or all in one great big room? Would shemake friends? Was she, Laila, sure that the teachers would benice?
And, more than once,How long do I have to stay?
They stopped two blocks from the squat, barracks-stylebuilding.
Zalmai and I will wait here, Rasheed said. "Oh, before Iforget…"He fished a stick of gum from his pocket, a parting gift, andheld it out to Aziza with a stiff, magnanimous air. Aziza took itand muttered a thank-you. Laila marveled at Aziza's grace,Aziza's vast capacity for forgiveness, and her eyes filled. Herheart squeezed, and she was faint with sorrow at the thoughtthat this afternoon Aziza would not nap beside her, that shewould not feel the flimsy weight of Aziza's arm on her chest,the curve of Aziza's head pressing into her ribs, Aziza's breathwarming her neck, Aziza's heels poking her belly.
When Aziza was led away, Zalmai began wailing, crying, Ziza!
Ziza! He squirmed and kicked in his father's arms, called forhis sister, until his attention was diverted by an organ-grinder'smonkey across the street.
They walked the last two blocks alone, Mariam, Laila, andAziza. As they approached the building, Laila could see itssplintered fa9ade, the sagging roof, the planks of wood nailedacross frames with missing windows, the top of a swing setover a decaying wall.
They stopped by the door, and Laila repeated to Aziza whatshe had told her earlier.
And if they ask about your father, what do you say?"The Mujahideen killed him, Aziza said, her mouth set withwariness.
That's good. Aziza, do you understand?"Because this is a special school, Aziza said Now that theywere here, and the building was a reality, she looked shaken.
Her lower lip was quivering and her eyes threatened to wellup, and Laila saw how hard she was struggling to be brave.
If we tell the truth, Aziza said in a thin, breathless voice,"they won't take me. It's a special school. I want to go home.""I'll visit all the time," Laila managed to say. "I promise.""Me too," said Mariam. "We'll come to see you, Aziza jo, andwe'll play together, just like always. It's only for a while, untilyour father finds work.""They have food here," Laila said shakily. She was glad forthe burqa, glad that Aziza couldn't see how she was fallingapart inside it. "Here, you won't go hungry. They have riceand bread and water, and maybe even fruit.""Butyouwon't be here. And Khala Mariam won't be with me.""I'll come and see you," Laila said. "All the time. Look at me,Aziza. I'll come and see you. I'm your mother. If it kills me, I'llcome and see you."* * *The orphanage director was a stooping, narrow-chested manwith a pleasantly lined face. He was balding, had a shaggybeard, eyes like peas. His name was Zaman. He wore askullcap. The left lens of his eyeglasses was chipped.
As he led them to his office, he asked Laila and Mariam theirnames, asked for Aziza's name too, her age. They passedthrough poorly lit hallways where barefoot children steppedaside and watched They had disheveled hair or shaved scalps.
They wore sweaters with frayed sleeves, ragged jeans whoseknees had worn down to strings, coats patched with duct tape.
Laila smelled soap and talcum, ammonia and urine, and risingapprehension in Aziza, who had begun whimpering.
Laila had a glimpse of the yard: weedy lot, rickety swing set,old tires, a deflated basketball. The rooms they passed werebare, the windows covered with sheets of plastic. A boy dartedfrom one of the rooms and grabbed Laila's elbow, and tried toclimb up into her arms. An attendant, who was cleaning upwhat looked like a puddle of urine, put down his mop andpried the boy off.
Zaman seemed gently proprietary with the orphans. He pattedthe heads of some, as he passed by, said a cordial word ortwo to them, tousled their hair, without condescension. Thechildren welcomed his touch. They all looked at him, Lailathought, in hope of approval.
He showed them into his office, a room with only threefolding chairs, and a disorderly desk with piles of paperscattered atop it.
You're from Herat, Zaman said to Mariam. "I can tell fromyour accent."He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands over hisbelly, and said he had a brother-in-law who used to live there.
Even in these ordinary gestures, Laila noted a laborious qualityto his movements. And though he was smiling faintly, Lailasensed something troubled and wounded beneath,disappointment and defeat glossed over with a veneer of goodhumor.
He was a glassmaker, Zaman said. "He made thesebeautiful, jade green swans. You held them up to sunlight andthey glittered inside, like the glass was filled with tiny jewels.
Have you been back?"Mariam said she hadn't.
I'm from Kandahar myself. Have you ever been toKandahar,hamshira1? No? It's lovely. What gardens! And thegrapes! Oh, the grapes. They bewitch the palate.A few children had gathered by the door and were peekingin. Zaman gently shooed them away, in Pashto.
Of course I love Herat too. City of artists and writers, Sufisand mystics. You know the old joke, that you can't stretch aleg in Herat without poking a poet in the rear.Next to Laila, Aziza snorted.
Zaman feigned a gasp. "Ah, there. I've made you laugh,littlehamshira. That's usually the hard part. I was worried, there,for a while. I thought I'd have to cluck like a chicken or braylike a donkey. But, there you are. And so lovely you are."He called in an attendant to look after Aziza for a fewmoments. Aziza leaped onto Mariam's lap and clung to her.
We're just going to talk, my love,Laila said. "I'll be righthere. All right? Right here.""Why don't we go outside for a minute, Aziza jo?" Mariamsaid. "Your mother needs to talk to Kaka Zaman here.Just fora minute. Now, come on."When they were alone, Zaman asked for Aziza's date of birth,history of illnesses, allergies. He asked about Aziza's father, andLaila had the strange experience of telling a lie that was reallythe truth. Zaman listened, his expression revealing neither beliefnor skepticism. He ran the orphanage on the honor system, hesaid. If ahamshira said her husband was dead and she couldn'tcare for her children, he didn't question it.
Laila began to cry.
Zaman put down his pen.
I'm ashamed, Laila croaked, her palm pressed to her mouth.
Look at me,hamshira "What kind of mother abandons her own child?"Look at me.Laila raised her gaze.
It isn't your fault. Do you hear me? Not you. It'sthosesavages, thosewahshis, who are to blame. They bringshame on me as a Pashtun. They've disgraced the name ofmy people. And you're not alone,hamshira We get mothers likeyou all the time-all the time-mothers who come here who can'tfeed their children because the Taliban won't let them go outand make a living. So you don't blame yourself. No one hereblames you. I understand. He leaned forward."Hamshira Iunderstand."Laila wiped her eyes with the cloth of her burqa.
As for this place, Zaman sighed, motioning with his hand,"you can see that it's in dire state. We're always underfunded,always scrambling, improvising. We get little or no support fromthe Taliban. But we manage. Like you, we do what we have todo. Allah is good and kind, and Allah provides, and, as longHe provides, I will see to it that Aziza is fed and clothed. Thatmuch I promise you."Laila nodded.
All right?He was smiling companionably. "But don't cry,hamshira Don'tlet her see you cry."Laila wiped her eyes again. "God bless you," she said thickly.
God bless you, brother.***But "when the time for good-byes came, the scene eruptedprecisely as Laila had dreaded.
Aziza panicked.
All the way home, leaning on Mariam, Laila heard Aziza'sshrill cries. In her head, she saw Zaman's thick, callousedhands close around Aziza's arms; she saw them pull, gently atfirst, then harder, then with force to pry Aziza loose from her.
She saw Aziza kicking in Zaman's arms as he hurriedly turnedthe corner, heard Aziza screaming as though she were aboutto vanish from the face of the earth. And Laila saw herselfrunning down the hallway, head down, a howl rising up herthroat.
I smell her, she told Mariam at home. Her eyes swamunseeingly past Mariam's shoulder, past the yard, the walls, tothe mountains, brown as smoker's spit. "I smell her sleep smell.
Do you? Do you smell it?""Oh, Laila jo," said Mariam. "Don't. What good is this? Whatgood?"* * *At first, Rasheed humored Laila, and accompanied them-her,Mariam, and Zalmai-to the orphanage, though he made sure,as they walked, that she had an eyeful of his grievous looks,an earful of his rants over what a hardship she was puttinghim through, how badly his legs and back and feet achedwalking to and from the orphanage. He made sure she knewhow awfully put out he was.
I'm not a young man anymore, he said. "Not that you care.
You'd run me to the ground, if you had your way. But youdon't, Laila. You don't have your way."They parted ways two blocks from the orphanage, and henever spared them more than fifteen minutes. "A minute late,"he said, "and I start walking. I mean it."Laila had to pester him, plead with him, in order to spin outthe allotted minutes with Aziza a bit longer. For herself, and forMariam, who was disconsolate over Aziza's absence, though, asalways, Mariam chose to cradle her own suffering privately andquietly. And for Zalmai too, who asked for his sister every day,and threw tantrums that sometimes dissolved into inconsolablefits of crying.
Sometimes, on the way to the orphanage, Rasheed stoppedand complained that his leg was sore. Then he turned aroundand started walking home in long, steady strides, without somuch as a limp. Or he clucked his tongue and said, "It's mylungs, Laila. I'm short of breath. Maybe tomorrow I'll feelbetter, or the day after. We'll see." He never bothered to feigna single raspy breath. Often, as he turned back and marchedhome, he lit a cigarette. Laila would have to tail him home,helpless, trembling with resentment and impotent rage.
Then one day he told Laila he wouldn't take her anymore.
I'm too tired from walking the streets all day, he said,"looking for work.""Then I'll go by myself," Laila said. "You can't stop me,Rasheed. Do you hear me? You can hit me all you want, butI'll keep going there.""Do as you wish. But you won't get past the Taliban. Don'tsay I didn't warn you.""I'm coming with you," Mariam said.
Laila wouldn't allow it. "You have to stay home with Zalmai. Ifwe get stopped…Idon't want him to see."And so Laila's life suddenly revolved around finding ways tosee Aziza. Half the time, she never made it to the orphanage.
Crossing the street, she was spotted by the Taliban and riddledwith questions-What is your name? Where are you going? Whyare you alone? Where is yourmahram? -before she was senthome. If she was lucky, she was given a tongue-lashing or asingle kick to the rear, a shove in the back. Other times, shemet with assortments of wooden clubs, fresh tree branches,short whips, slaps, often fists.
One day, a young Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna.
When he was done, he gave a final whack to the back of herneck and said, "I see you again, I'll beat you until yourmother's milk leaks out of your bones."That time, Laila went home. She lay on her stomach, feelinglike a stupid, pitiable animal, and hissed as Mariam arrangeddamp cloths across her bloodied back and thighs. But, usually,Laila refused to cave in. She made as if she were going home,then took a different route down side streets. Sometimes shewas caught, questioned, scolded-two, three, even four times in asingle day. Then the whips came down and the antennas slicedthrough the air, and she trudged home, bloodied, without somuch as a glimpse of Aziza. Soon Laila took to wearing extralayers, even in the heat, two, three sweaters beneath the burqa,for padding against the beatings.
But for Laila, the reward, if she made it past the Taliban, wasworth it. She could spend as much time as she likedthen-hours,even-with Aziza. They sat in the courtyard, near theswing set, among other children and visiting mothers, andtalked about what Aziza had learned that week.
Aziza said Kaka Zaman made it a point to teach themsomething every day, reading and writing most days, sometimesgeography, a bit of history or science, something about plants,animals.
But we have to pull the curtains, Aziza said, "so the Talibandon't see us." Kaka Zaman had knitting needles and balls ofyarn ready, she said, in case of a Taliban inspection. "We putthe books away and pretend to knit."One day, during a visit with Aziza, Laila saw a middle-agedwoman, her burqa pushed back, visiting with three boys and agirl. Laila recognized the sharp face, the heavy eyebrows, if notthe sunken mouth and gray hair. She remembered the shawls,the black skirts, the curt voice, how she used to wear herjet-black hair tied in a bun so that you could see the darkbristles on the back of her neck. Laila remembered this womanonce forbidding the female students from covering, sayingwomen and men were equal, that there was no reason womenshould cover if men didn't.
At one point, Khala Rangmaal looked up and caught her gaze,but Laila saw no lingering, no light of recognition, in her oldteacher's eyes.
* * *"They're fractures along the earth's crust," said Aziza. 'They'recalled faults."It was a warm afternoon, a Friday, in June of 2001. Theywere sitting in the orphanage's back lot, the four of them,Laila, Zalmai, Mariam, and Aziza. Rasheed had relented thistime-as he infrequently did-and accompanied the four of them.
He was waiting down the street, by the bus stop.
Barefoot kids scampered about around them. A flat soccer ballwas kicked around, chased after listlessly.
And, on either side of the faults, there are these sheets ofrock that make up the earth's crust, Aziza was saying.
Someone had pulled the hair back from Aziza's face, braidedit, and pinned it neatly on top of her head. Laila begrudgedwhoever had gotten to sit behind her daughter, to flip sectionsof her hair one over the other, had asked her to sit still.
Aziza was demonstrating by opening her hands, palms up,and rubbing them against each other. Zalmai watched this withintense interest.
Kectonic plates, they're called?"Tectonic,Laila said. It hurt to talk. Her jaw was still sore,her back and neck ached. Her lip was swollen, and her tonguekept poking the empty pocket of the lower incisor Rasheed hadknocked loose two days before. Before Mammy and Babi haddied and her life turned upside down, Laila never would havebelieved that a human body could withstand this much beating,this viciously, this regularly, and keep functioning.
Right. And when they slide past each other, they catch andslip-see, Mammy?-and it releases energy, whichtravels to the earth's surface and makes it shake."You're getting so smart, Mariam said "So much smarterthan your dumbkhala"Aziza's face glowed, broadened. "You're not dumb, KhalaMariam. And Kaka Zaman says that, sometimes, the shifting ofrocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary downthere, but all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only aslight tremor."The visit before this one, it was oxygen atoms in theatmosphere scattering the blue light from the sun.If the earthhad no atmosphere, Aziza had said a little breathlessly,the skywouldn ‘t be blue at all but a pitch-black sea and the sun abig bright star in the dark"Is Aziza coming home with us this time?" Zalmai said.
Soon, my love, Laila said. "Soon."Laila watched him wander away, walking like his father,stooping forward, toes turned in. He walked to the swing set,pushed an empty seat, ended up sitting on the concrete,ripping weeds from a crack.
Water evaporates from the leaves-Mammy, did you know?-theway it does from laundry hanging from a line. And that drivesthe flow of water up the tree. From the ground and throughthe roots, then all the way up the tree trunk, through thebranches and into the leaves. It's called transpiration.
More than once, Laila had wondered what the Taliban woulddo about Kaka Zaman's clandestine lessons if they found out.
During visits, Aziza didn't allow for much silence. She filled allthe spaces with effusive speech, delivered in a high, ringingvoice. She was tangential with her topics, and her handsgesticulated wildly, flying up with a nervousness that wasn't likeher at all. She had a new laugh, Aziza did. Not so much alaugh, really, as nervous punctuation, meant, Laila suspected, toreassure.
And there were other changes. Laila would notice the dirtunder Aziza's fingernails, and Aziza would notice her noticingand bury her hands under her thighs. Whenever a kid cried intheir vicinity, snot oozing from his nose, or if a kid walked bybare-assed, hair clumped with dirt, Aziza's eyelids fluttered andshe was quick to explain it away. She was like a hostessembarrassed in front of her guests by the squalor of herhome, the untidiness of her children.
Questions of how she was coping were met with vague butcheerful replies.
Doing Jim, Khala I'm fine.
Do kids pick on you?
They dont Mammy. Everyone is nice.
Are you eating? Sleeping all right?
Eating. Sleeping too. Yes. We had lamb last night Maybe itwas last week.
When Aziza spoke like this, Laila saw more than a little ofMariam in her.
Aziza stammered now. Mariam noticed it first. It was subtlebut perceptible, and more pronounced with words that beganwith /. Laila asked Zaman about it. He frowned and said, "Ithought she'd always done that."They left the orphanage with Aziza that Friday afternoon for ashort outing and met Rasheed, who was waiting for them bythe bus stop. When Zalmai spotted his father, he uttered anexcited squeak and impatiently wriggled from Laila's arms.
Aziza's greeting to Rasheed was rigid but not hostile.
Rasheed said they should hurry, he had only two hoursbefore he had to report back to work. This was his first weekas a doorman for the Intercontinental. From noon to eight, sixdays a week, Rasheed opened car doors, carried luggage,mopped up the occasional spill. Sometimes, at day's end, thecook at the buffet-style restaurant let Rasheed bring home afew leftovers-as long as he was discreet about it-cold meatballssloshing in oil; fried chicken wings, the crust gone hard anddry; stuffed pasta shells turned chewy; stiff, gravelly rice.
Rasheed had promised Laila that once he had some moneysaved up, Aziza could move back home.
Rasheed was wearing his uniform, a burgundy red polyestersuit, white shirt, clip-on tie, visor cap pressing down on hiswhite hair. In this uniform, Rasheed was transformed. Helooked vulnerable, pitiably bewildered, almost harmless. Likesomeone who had accepted without a sigh of protest theindignities life had doled out to him. Someone both patheticand admirable in his docility.
They rode the bus to Titanic City. They walked into theriverbed, flanked on either side by makeshift stalls clinging tothe dry banks. Near the bridge, as they were descending thesteps, a barefoot man dangled dead from a crane, his ears cutoff, his neck bent at the end of a rope. In the river, theymelted into the horde of shoppers milling about, the moneychangers and bored-looking NGO workers, the cigarettevendors, the covered women who thrust fake antibioticprescriptions at people and begged for money to fill them.
Whip-toting,naswar-chew'mg Talibs patrolled Titanic City on thelookout for the indiscreet laugh, the unveiled face.
From a toy kiosk, betweenapoosieen coat vendor and afake-flower stand, Zalmai picked out a rubber basketball withyellow and blue swirls.
Pick something, Rasheed said to Aziza.
Aziza hedged, stiffened with embarrassment.
Hurry. I have to be at work in an hour.Aziza chose a gum-ball machine-the same coin could beinserted to get candy, then retrieved from the flap-door coinreturn below.
Rasheed's eyebrows shot up when the seller quoted him theprice. A round of haggling ensued, at the end of whichRasheed said to Aziza contentiously, as if itwere she who'dhaggled him, "Give it back. I can't afford both."On the way back, Aziza's high-spirited fa9ade waned thecloser they got to the orphanage. The hands stopped flyingup. Her face turned heavy. It happened every time. It wasLaila's turn now, with Mariam pitching in, to take up thechattering, to laugh nervously, to fill the melancholy quiet withbreathless, aimless banter-Later, after Rasheed had droppedthem off and taken a bus to work, Laila watched Aziza wavegood-bye and scuff along the wall in the orphanage back lot.
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had saidearlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down andhow sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
* * *"Getaway, you!" Zalmai cried.
Hush, Mariam said "Who are you yelling at?"He pointed. "There. That man."Laila followed his finger. Therewas a man at the front door ofthe house, leaning against it. His head turned when he sawthem approaching. He uncrossed his arms. Limped a few stepstoward them.
Laila stopped.
A choking noise came up her throat. Her knees weakened.
Laila suddenly wanted,needed, to grope for Mariam's arm, hershoulder, her wrist, something, anything, to lean on. But shedidn't. She didn't dare. She didn't dare move a muscle. Shedidn't dare breathe, or blink even, for fear that he was nothingbut a mirage shimmering in the distance, a brittle illusion thatwould vanish at the slightest provocation. Laila stood perfectlystill and looked at Tariq until her chest screamed for air andher eyes burned to blink. And, somehow, miraculously, aftershe took a breath, closed and opened her eyes, he was stillstanding there. Tariq was still standing there.
Laila allowed herself to take a step toward him. Then another.
And another. And then she was running.