Part Four
PART FOUR
Chapter 47
47. Mariam Back in a kolba, it seemed, after all these years. The Walayat women’s prison was a drab, square-shaped building in Shar-e-Nau near Chicken Street. It sat in the center of a larger complex that housed male inmates. A padlocked door separated Mariam and the other women from the surrounding men. Mariam counted five […]
Chapter 46
46. Laila Laila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and foreboding eyes. She was dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence beyond the face, of her fists raining down. Above them was the ceiling, and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark markings of mold spreading across […]
Chapter 45
45. Mariam I was upstairs, playing with Mariam,” Zalmai said. “And your mother?” “She was . . . She was downstairs, talking to that man.” “I see,” said Rasheed. “Teamwork.” Mariam watched his face relax, loosen. She watched the folds clear from his brow. Suspicion and misgiving winked out of his eyes. He sat up […]
Chapter 44
44. Laila Tariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had a cousin who’d been publicly flogged once for painting flamingos. He, the cousin, had a seemingly incurable thing for them. “Entire sketchbooks,” Tariq said. “Dozens of oil paintings of them, wading in lagoons, sunbathing in marshlands. Flying into sunsets too, I’m […]
Chapter 43
43. Mariam Upstairs, in Mariam’s room, Zalmai was wound up. He bounced his new rubber basketball around for a while, on the floor, against the walls. Mariam asked him not to, but he knew that she had no authority to exert over him and so he went on bouncing his ball, his eyes holding hers […]
Chapter 42
42. Laila In a paper bag, Aziza packed these things: her flowered shirt and her lone pair of socks, her mismatched wool gloves, an old, pumpkin-colored blanket dotted with stars and comets, a splintered plastic cup, a banana, her set of dice. It was a cool morning in April 2001, shortly before Laila’s twenty-third birthday. […]
Chapter 41
41. Mariam In the summer of 2000, the drought reached its third and worst year. In Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar, villages turned into herds of nomadic communities, always moving, searching for water and green pastures for their livestock. When they found neither, when their goats and sheep and cows died off, they came to Kabul. They […]
Chapter 40
40. Laila FALL 1999 It was Mariam’s idea to dig the hole. One morning, she pointed to a patch of soil behind the toolshed. “We can do it here,” she said. “This is a good spot.” They took turns striking the ground with a spade, then shoveling the loose dirt aside. They hadn’t planned on […]
Chapter 39
39. Mariam SEPTEMBER 1997 This hospital no longer treats women,” the guard barked. He was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down icily on the crowd gathered in front of Malalai Hospital. A loud groan rose from the crowd. “But this is a women’s hospital!” a woman shouted behind Mariam. Cries of approval […]