laila remembered a gathering once, years before at thehouse, on one of mammy's good days. the women had beensitting in the garden, eating from a platter of fresh mulberriesthat wajma had picked from the tree in her yard. the plumpmulberries had been white and pink, and some the same darkpurple as the bursts of tiny veins on wajma's nose.
"you heard how his son died?" wajma had said, energeticallyshoveling another handful of mulberries into her sunken mouth.
"he drowned, didn't he?" nila, giti's mother, said. "atghargha lake, wasn't it?""but did you know, did you know that rasheed…" wajmaraised a finger, made a show of nodding and chewing andmaking them wait for her to swallow. "did you know that heused to drinksharab back then, that he was crying drunk thatday? it's true. crying drunk, is what i heard. and that wasmidmorning. by noon, he had passed out on a lounge chair.
you could have fired the noon cannon next to his ear and hewouldn't have batted an eyelash."laila remembered how wajma had covered her mouth,burped; how her tongue had gone exploring between her fewremaining teeth.
"you can imagine the rest. the boy went into the waterunnoticed. they spotted him a while later, floating facedown.
people rushed to help, half trying to wake up the boy, theother half the father. someone bent over the boy, did the…themouth-to-mouth thing you're supposed to do. it was pointless.
they could all see that. the boy was gone."laila remembered wajma raising a finger and her voicequivering with piety. "this is why the holy koran forbidssharab.
because it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of thedrunk. so it does."it was this story that was circling in laila's head after shegave rasheed the news about the baby. he had immediatelyhopped on his bicycle, ridden to a mosque, and prayed for aboy.
that night, all during the meal, laila watched mariam push acube of meat around her plate. laila was there when rasheedsprang the news on mariam in a high, dramatic voice-laila hadnever before witnessed such cheerful cruelty. mariam's lashesfluttered when she heard. a flush spread across her face. shesat sulking, looking desolate.
after, rasheed went upstairs to listen to his radio, and lailahelped mariam clear thesojrah.
"i can't imagine what you are now," mariam said, pickinggrains of rice and bread crumbs, "if you were a benz before."laila tried a more lightheaded tactic. "a train? maybe a bigjumbo jet."mariam straightened up. "i hope you don't think this excusesyou from chores."laila opened her mouth, thought better of it. she remindedherself that mariam was the only innocent party in thisarrangement. mariam and the baby-later, in bed, laila burstinto tears.
what was the matter? rasheed wanted to know, lifting herchin. was she ill? was it the baby, was something wrong withthe baby? no?
was mariam mistreating her?
"that's it, isn't it?""no.""wallah o billah, i'll go down and teach her a lesson. whodoes she think she is, thatharami, treating you-""no!"he was getting up already, and she had to grab him by theforearm, pull him back down. "don't! no! she's been decent tome. i need a minute, that's all. i'll be fine."he sat beside her, stroking her neck, murmuring- his handslowly crept down to her back, then up again. he leaned in,flashed his crowded teeth.
"let's see, then," he purred, "if i can't help you feel better."* * *first, the trees-those that hadn't been cut down forfirewood-shed their spotty yellow-and-copper leaves. then camethe winds, cold and raw, ripping through the city. they tore offthe last of the clinging leaves, and left the trees looking ghostlyagainst the muted brown of the hills. the season's first snowfallwas light, the flakes no sooner fallen than melted. then theroads froze, and snow gathered in heaps on the rooftops, piledhalfway up frost-caked windows. with snow came the kites,once the rulers of kabul's winter skies, now timid trespassers interritory claimed by streaking rockets and fighter jets.
rasheed kept bringing home news of the war, and laila wasbaffled by the allegiances that rasheed tried to explain to her.
sayyaf was fighting the hazaras, he said. the hazaras werefighting massoud.
"and he's fighting hekmatyar, of course, who has the supportof the pakistanis. mortal enemies, those two, massoud andhekmatyar. sayyaf, he's siding with massoud. and hekmatyarsupports the hazaras for now."as for the unpredictable uzbek commander dostum, rasheedsaid no one knew where he would stand. dostum had foughtthe soviets in the 1980s alongside the mujahideen but haddefected and joined najibullah's communist puppet regime afterthe soviets had left. he had even earned a medal, presentedby najibullah himself, before defecting once again and returningto the mujahideen's side. for the time being, rasheed said,dostum was supporting massoud.
in kabul, particularly in western kabul, fires raged, and blackpalls of smoke mushroomed over snow-clad buildings.
embassies closed down. schools collapsed in hospital waitingrooms, rasheed said, the wounded were bleeding to death. inoperating rooms, limbs were being amputated withoutanesthesia.
"but don't worry," he said. "you're safe with me, my flower,mygul. anyone tries to harm you, i'll rip out their liver andmake them eat it."that winter, everywhere laila turned, walls blocked her way.
she thought longingly of the wide-open skies of her childhood,of her days of going tobuzkashi tournaments with babi andshopping at mandaii with mammy, of her days of running freein the streets and gossiping about boys with giti and hasina.
her days of sitting with tariq in a bed of clover on the banksof a stream somewhere, trading riddles and candy, watchingthe sun go down.
but thinking of tariq was treacherous because, before shecould stop, she saw him lying on a bed, far from home, tubespiercing his burned body. like the bile that kept burning herthroat these days, a deep, paralyzing grief would come risingup laila's chest. her legs would turn to water. she would haveto hold on to something.
laila passed that winter of 1992 sweeping the house,scrubbing the pumpkin-colored walls of the bedroom sheshared with rasheed, washing clothes outside in a bigcopperlagoon. sometimes she saw herself as if hovering aboveher own body, saw herself squatting over the rim of thelogoon,sleeves rolled up to the elbows, pink hands wringing soapywater from one of rasheed's undershirts. she felt lost then,casting about, like a shipwreck survivor, no shore in sight, onlymiles and miles of water.
when it was too cold to go outside, laila ambled around thehouse. she walked, dragging a fingernail along the wall, downthe hallway, then back, down the steps, then up, her faceunwashed, hair uncombed. she walked until she ran intomariam, who shot her a cheerless glance and went back toslicing the stem off a bell pepper and trimming strips of fatfrom meat. a hurtful silence would fill the room, and lailacould almost see the wordless hostility radiating from mariamlike waves of heat rising from asphalt. she would retreat backto her room, sit on the bed, and watch the snow falling.
* * *rasheed took her to his shoe shop one day.
when they were out together, he walked alongside her, onehand gripping her by the elbow. for laila, being out in thestreets had become an exercise in avoiding injury. her eyeswere still adjusting to the limited, gridlike visibility of the burqa,her feet still stumbling over the hem. she walked in perpetualfear of tripping and falling, of breaking an ankle stepping into apothole. still, she found some comfort in the anonymity thatthe burqa provided. she wouldn't be recognized this way if sheran into an old acquaintance of hers. she wouldn't have towatch the surprise in their eyes, or the pity or the glee, athow far she had fallen, at how her lofty aspirations had beendashed.
rasheed's shop was bigger and more brightly lit than lailahad imagined. he had her sit behind his crowded workbench,the top of which was littered with old soles and scraps ofleftover leather. he showed her his hammers, demonstratedhow the sandpaper wheel worked, hisvoice ringing high andproud-he felt her belly, not through the shirt but under it, hisfingertips cold and rough like bark on her distended skin. lailarememberedtariq's hands, soft but strong, the tortuous, fullveins on the backs of them, which she had always foundsoappealingly masculine.
"swelling so quickly," rasheed said."it's going to be a big boy.
my sonwill beapahlawanl like his father."laila pulled down her shirt. it filled her with fear when hespoke likethis.
"howare things with mariam?"she said they were fine.
"good. good."she didn't tell him that they'd had their first true fight.
it had happened a few days earlier. laila had gone to thekitchen and found mariam yanking drawers and slammingthemshut. she was looking, mariam said, forthe long woodenspoon she used to stir rice.
"where did you put it?" she said, wheeling around to facelaila.
"me?" laila said "i didn't take it. i hardly come in here.""i've noticed.""is that an accusation? it's how you wanted it, remember.
you said you would make the meals. but if you want toswitch-""so you're saying it grew little legs and walked out.teep, teep,teep, teep. is that what happened,degeh?'
"i'm saying…" laila said, trying to maintain control. usually,she could will herself to absorb mariam's derision andfinger-pointing. but her ankles had swollen, her head hurt, andthe heartburn was vicious that day. "i am saying that maybeyou've misplaced it.""misplaced it?" mariam pulled a drawer. the spatulas andknives inside it clanked. "how long have you been here, a fewmonths? i've lived in this house for nineteen years,dokhiarjo. ihave keptthat spoon inthis drawer since you were shitting yourdiapers.""still," laila said, on the brink now, teeth clenched, "it'spossible you put it somewhere and forgot.""and it'spossible you hid it somewhere, to aggravate me.""you're a sad, miserable woman," laila said.
mariam flinched, then recovered, pursed her lips. "and you'rea whore. a whore and adozd. a thieving whore, that's whatyou are!"then there was shouting- pots raised though not hurled.
they'd called each other names, names that made laila blushnow. they hadn't spoken since. laila was still shocked at howeasily she'd come unhinged, but, the truth was, part of her hadliked it, had liked how it felt to scream at mariam, to curse ather, to have a target at which to focus all her simmeringanger, her grief.
laila wondered, with something like insight, if it wasn't thesame for mariam.
after, she had run upstairs and thrown herself on rasheed'sbed. downstairs, mariam was still yelling, "dirt onyour head! dirt on your head!" laila had lain on the bed,groaning into the pillow, missing her parents suddenly and withan overpowering intensity she hadn't felt since those terribledays just after the attack. she lay there, clutching handfuls ofthe bedsheet, until, suddenly, her breath caught. she sat up,hands shooting down to her belly.
the baby had just kicked for the first time.
