A Thousand Splendid Suns (13 page)

O
ne cold, overcast day in January 1989, three months before Laila turned eleven, she, her parents, and Hasina went to watch one of the last Soviet convoys exit the city. Spectators had gathered on both sides of the thoroughfare outside the Military Club near Wazir Akbar Khan. They stood in muddy snow and watched the line of tanks, armored trucks, and jeeps as light snow flew across the glare of the passing headlights. There were heckles and jeers. Afghan soldiers kept people off the street. Every now and then, they had to fire a warning shot.

Mammy hoisted a photo of Ahmad and Noor high over her head. It was the one of them sitting back-to-back under the pear tree. There were others like her, women with pictures of their
shaheed
husbands, sons, brothers held high.

Someone tapped Laila and Hasina on the shoulder. It was Tariq.

“Where did you get that thing?” Hasina exclaimed.

“I thought I'd come dressed for the occasion.” Tariq said. He was wearing an enormous Russian fur hat, complete with earflaps, which he had pulled down. “How do I look?”

“Ridiculous,” Laila laughed.

“That's the idea.”

“Your parents came here with you dressed like this?”

“They're home, actually,” he said.

The previous fall, Tariq's uncle in Ghazni had died of a heart attack, and, a few weeks later, Tariq's father had suffered a heart attack of his own, leaving him frail and tired, prone to anxiety and bouts of depression that overtook him for weeks at a time. Laila was glad to see Tariq like this, like his old self again. For weeks after his father's illness, Laila had watched him moping around, heavy-faced and sullen.

The three of them stole away while Mammy and Babi stood watching the Soviets. From a street vendor, Tariq bought them each a plate of boiled beans topped with thick cilantro chutney. They ate beneath the awning of a closed rug shop, then Hasina went to find her family.

On the bus ride home, Tariq and Laila sat behind her parents. Mammy was by the window, staring out, clutching the picture against her chest. Beside her, Babi was impassively listening to a man who was arguing that the Soviets might be leaving but that they would send weapons to Najibullah in Kabul.

“He's their puppet. They'll keep the war going through him, you can bet on that.”

Someone in the next aisle voiced his agreement.

Mammy was muttering to herself, long-winded prayers that rolled on and on until she had no breath left and had to eke out the last few words in a tiny, high-pitched squeak.

 * * * 

T
HEY WENT TO
Cinema Park later that day, Laila and Tariq, and had to settle for a Soviet film that was dubbed, to unintentionally comic effect, in Farsi. There was a merchant ship, and a first mate in love with the captain's daughter. Her name was Alyona. Then came a fierce storm, lightning, rain, the heaving sea tossing the ship. One of the frantic sailors yelled something. An absurdly calm Afghan voice translated: “My dear sir, would you kindly pass the rope?”

At this, Tariq burst out cackling. And, soon, they both were in the grips of a hopeless attack of laughter. Just when one became fatigued, the other would snort, and off they would go on another round. A man sitting two rows up turned around and shushed them.

There was a wedding scene near the end. The captain had relented and let Alyona marry the first mate. The newlyweds were smiling at each other. Everyone was drinking vodka.

“I'm never getting married,” Tariq whispered.

“Me neither,” said Laila, but not before a moment of nervous hesitation. She worried that her voice had betrayed her disappointment at what he had said. Her heart galloping, she added, more forcefully this time, “Never.”

“Weddings are stupid.”

“All the fuss.”

“All the money spent.”

“For what?”

“For clothes you'll never wear again.”

“Ha!”

“If I ever
do
get married,” Tariq said, “they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head.”

The man in the front row gave them another admonishing look.

On the screen, Alyona and her new husband locked lips.

Watching the kiss, Laila felt strangely conspicuous all at once. She became intensely aware of her heart thumping, of the blood thudding in her ears, of the shape of Tariq beside her, tightening up, becoming still. The kiss dragged on. It seemed of utmost urgency to Laila, suddenly, that she not stir or make a noise. She sensed that Tariq was observing her—one eye on the kiss, the other on her—as she was observing
him.
Was he listening to the air whooshing in and out of her nose, she wondered, waiting for a subtle faltering, a revealing irregularity, that would betray her thoughts?

And what would it be like to kiss him, to feel the fuzzy hair above his lip tickling her own lips?

Then Tariq shifted uncomfortably in his seat. In a strained voice, he said, “Did you know that if you fling snot in Siberia, it's a green icicle before it hits the ground?”

They both laughed, but briefly, nervously, this time. And when the film ended and they stepped outside, Laila was relieved to see that the sky had dimmed, that she wouldn't have to meet Tariq's eyes in the bright daylight.

T
hree years passed.

In that time, Tariq's father had a series of strokes. They left him with a clumsy left hand and a slight slur to his speech. When he was agitated, which happened frequently, the slurring got worse.

Tariq outgrew his leg again and was issued a new leg by the Red Cross, though he had to wait six months for it.

As Hasina had feared, her family took her to Lahore, where she was made to marry the cousin who owned the auto shop. The morning that they took her, Laila and Giti went to Hasina's house to say good-bye. Hasina told them that the cousin, her husband-to-be, had already started the process to move them to Germany, where his brothers lived. Within the year, she thought, they would be in Frankfurt. They cried then in a three-way embrace. Giti was inconsolable. The last time Laila ever saw Hasina, she was being helped by her father into the crowded backseat of a taxi.

The Soviet Union crumbled with astonishing swiftness. Every few weeks, it seemed to Laila, Babi was coming home with news of the latest republic to declare independence. Lithuania. Estonia. Ukraine. The Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin. The Republic of Russia was born.

In Kabul, Najibullah changed tactics and tried to portray himself as a devout Muslim. “Too little and far too late,” said Babi. “You can't be the chief of KHAD one day and the next day pray in a mosque with people whose relatives you tortured and killed.” Feeling the noose tightening around Kabul, Najibullah tried to reach a settlement with the Mujahideen but the Mujahideen balked.

From her bed, Mammy said, “Good for them.” She kept her vigils for the Mujahideen and waited for her parade. Waited for her sons' enemies to fall.

 * * * 

A
ND, EVENTUALLY,
they did. In April 1992, the year Laila turned fourteen.

Najibullah surrendered at last and was given sanctuary in the UN compound near Darulaman Palace, south of the city.

The jihad was over. The various communist regimes that had held power since the night Laila was born were all defeated. Mammy's heroes, Ahmad's and Noor's brothers-in-war, had won. And now, after more than a decade of sacrificing everything, of leaving behind their families to live in mountains and fight for Afghanistan's sovereignty, the Mujahideen were coming to Kabul, in flesh, blood, and battle-weary bone.

Mammy knew all of their names.

There was Dostum, the flamboyant Uzbek commander, leader of the Junbish-i-Milli faction, who had a reputation for shifting allegiances. The intense, surly Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hezb-e-Islami faction, a Pashtun who had studied engineering and once killed a Maoist student. Rabbani, Tajik leader of the Jamiat-e-Islami faction, who had taught Islam at Kabul University in the days of the monarchy. Sayyaf, a Pashtun from Paghman with Arab connections, a stout Muslim and leader of the Ittehad-i-Islami faction. Abdul Ali Mazari, leader of the Hizb-e-Wahdat faction, known as Baba Mazari among his fellow Hazaras, with strong Shi'a ties to Iran.

And, of course, there was Mammy's hero, Rabbani's ally, the brooding, charismatic Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir. Mammy had nailed up a poster of him in her room. Massoud's handsome, thoughtful face, eyebrow cocked and trademark
pakol
tilted, would become ubiquitous in Kabul. His soulful black eyes would gaze back from billboards, walls, storefront windows, from little flags mounted on the antennas of taxicabs.

For Mammy, this was the day she had longed for. This brought to fruition all those years of waiting.

At last, she could end her vigils, and her sons could rest in peace.

 * * * 

T
HE DAY AFTER
Najibullah surrendered, Mammy rose from bed a new woman. For the first time in the five years since Ahmad and Noor had become
shaheed,
she didn't wear black. She put on a cobalt blue linen dress with white polka dots. She washed the windows, swept the floor, aired the house, took a long bath. Her voice was shrill with merriment.

“A party is in order,” she declared.

She sent Laila to invite neighbors. “Tell them we're having a big lunch tomorrow!”

In the kitchen, Mammy stood looking around, hands on her hips, and said, with friendly reproach, “What have you done to my kitchen, Laila?
Wooy.
Everything is in a different place.”

She began moving pots and pans around, theatrically, as though she were laying claim to them anew, restaking her territory, now that she was back. Laila stayed out of her way. It was best. Mammy could be as indomitable in her fits of euphoria as in her attacks of rage. With unsettling energy, Mammy set about cooking:
aush
soup with kidney beans and dried dill,
kofta
, steaming hot
mantu
drenched with fresh yogurt and topped with mint.

“You're plucking your eyebrows,” Mammy said, as she was opening a large burlap sack of rice by the kitchen counter.

“Only a little.”

Mammy poured rice from the sack into a large black pot of water. She rolled up her sleeves and began stirring.

“How is Tariq?”

“His father's been ill,” Laila said.

“How old is he now anyway?”

“I don't know. Sixties, I guess.”

“I meant Tariq.”

“Oh. Sixteen.”

“He's a nice boy. Don't you think?”

Laila shrugged.

“Not really a boy anymore, though, is he? Sixteen. Almost a man. Don't you think?”

“What are you getting at, Mammy?”

“Nothing,” Mammy said, smiling innocently. “Nothing. It's just that you…Ah, nothing. I'd better not say anyway.”

“I see you want to,” Laila said, irritated by this circuitous, playful accusation.

“Well.” Mammy folded her hands on the rim of the pot. Laila spotted an unnatural, almost rehearsed, quality to the way she said “Well” and to this folding of hands. She feared a speech was coming.

“It was one thing when you were little kids running around. No harm in that. It was charming. But now. Now. I notice you're wearing a bra, Laila.”

Laila was caught off guard.

“And you could have told me, by the way, about the bra. I didn't know. I'm disappointed you didn't tell me.” Sensing her advantage, Mammy pressed on. “Anyway, this isn't about me or the bra. It's about you and Tariq. He's a boy, you see, and, as such, what does he care about reputation? But you? The reputation of a girl, especially one as pretty as you, is a delicate thing, Laila. Like a mynah bird in your hands. Slacken your grip and away it flies.”

“And what about all your wall climbing, the sneaking around with Babi in the orchards?” Laila said, pleased with her quick recovery.

“We were cousins. And we married. Has this boy asked for your hand?”

“He's a friend. A
rafiq.
It's not like that between us,” Laila said, sounding defensive, and not very convincing. “He's like a brother to me,” she added, misguidedly. And she knew, even before a cloud passed over Mammy's face and her features darkened, that she'd made a mistake.

“
That
he is not,” Mammy said flatly. “You will not liken that one-legged carpenter's boy to your brothers. There is
no one
like your brothers.”

“I didn't say he…That's not how I meant it.”

Mammy sighed through the nose and clenched her teeth.

“Anyway,” she resumed, but without the coy lightheartedness of a few moments ago, “what I'm trying to say is that if you're not careful, people will talk.”

Laila opened her mouth to say something. It wasn't that Mammy didn't have a point. Laila knew that the days of innocent, unhindered frolicking in the streets with Tariq had passed. For some time now, Laila had begun to sense a new strangeness when the two of them were out in public. An awareness of being looked at, scrutinized, whispered about, that Laila had never felt before. And
wouldn't
have felt even now but for one fundamental fact: She had fallen for Tariq. Hopelessly and desperately. When he was near, she couldn't help but be consumed with the most scandalous thoughts, of his lean, bare body entangled with hers. Lying in bed at night, she pictured him kissing her belly, wondered at the softness of his lips, at the feel of his hands on her neck, her chest, her back, and lower still. When she thought of him this way, she was overtaken with guilt, but also with a peculiar, warm sensation that spread upward from her belly until it felt as if her face were glowing pink.

No. Mammy had a point. More than she knew, in fact. Laila suspected that some, if not most, of the neighbors were already gossiping about her and Tariq. Laila had noticed the sly grins, was aware of the whispers in the neighborhood that the two of them were a couple. The other day, for instance, she and Tariq were walking up the street together when they'd passed Rasheed, the shoemaker, with his burqa-clad wife, Mariam, in tow. As he'd passed by them, Rasheed had playfully said, “If it isn't Laili and Majnoon,” referring to the star-crossed lovers of Nezami's popular twelfth-century romantic poem—a Farsi version of
Romeo and Juliet,
Babi said, though he added that Nezami had written his tale of ill-fated lovers four centuries before Shakespeare.

Mammy had a point.

What rankled Laila was that Mammy hadn't earned the right to make it. It would have been one thing if Babi had raised this issue. But Mammy? All those years of aloofness, of cooping herself up and not caring where Laila went and whom she saw and what she thought…It was unfair. Laila felt like she was no better than these pots and pans, something that could go neglected, then laid claim to, at will, whenever the mood struck.

But this was a big day, an important day, for all of them. It would be petty to spoil it over this. In the spirit of things, Laila let it pass.

“I get your point,” she said.

“Good!” Mammy said. “That's resolved, then. Now, where is Hakim? Where, oh where, is that sweet little husband of mine?”

 * * * 

I
T WAS A
dazzling, cloudless day, perfect for a party. The men sat on rickety folding chairs in the yard. They drank tea and smoked and talked in loud bantering voices about the Mujahideen's plan. From Babi, Laila had learned the outline of it: Afghanistan was now called the Islamic State of Afghanistan. An Islamic Jihad Council, formed in Peshawar by several of the Mujahideen factions, would oversee things for two months, led by Sibghatullah Mojadidi. This would be followed then by a leadership council led by Rabbani, who would take over for four months. During those six months, a
loya jirga
would be held, a grand council of leaders and elders, who would form an interim government to hold power for two years, leading up to democratic elections.

One of the men was fanning skewers of lamb sizzling over a makeshift grill. Babi and Tariq's father were playing a game of chess in the shade of the old pear tree. Their faces were scrunched up in concentration. Tariq was sitting at the board too, in turns watching the match, then listening in on the political chat at the adjacent table.

The women gathered in the living room, the hallway, and the kitchen. They chatted as they hoisted their babies and expertly dodged, with minute shifts of their hips, the children tearing after each other around the house. An Ustad Sarahang
ghazal
blared from a cassette player.

Laila was in the kitchen, making carafes of
dogh
with Giti. Giti was no longer as shy, or as serious, as before. For several months now, the perpetual severe scowl had cleared from her brow. She laughed openly these days, more frequently, and—it struck Laila—a bit flirtatiously. She had done away with the drab ponytails, let her hair grow, and streaked it with red highlights. Laila learned eventually that the impetus for this transformation was an eighteen-year-old boy whose attention Giti had caught. His name was Sabir, and he was a goalkeeper on Giti's older brother's soccer team.

“Oh, he has the most handsome smile, and this thick, thick black hair!” Giti had told Laila. No one knew about their attraction, of course. Giti had secretly met him twice for tea, fifteen minutes each time, at a small teahouse on the other side of town, in Taimani.

“He's going to ask for my hand, Laila! Maybe as early as this summer. Can you believe it? I swear I can't stop thinking about him.”

“What about school?” Laila had asked. Giti had tilted her head and given her a
We both know better
look.

By the time we're twenty,
Hasina used to say,
Giti and I, we'll have pushed out four, five kids each. But you, Laila, you'll make us two dummies proud. You're going to be somebody. I know one day I'll pick up a newspaper and find your picture on the front page
.

Giti was beside Laila now, chopping cucumbers, with a dreamy, far-off look on her face.

Mammy was nearby, in her brilliant summer dress, peeling boiled eggs with Wajma, the midwife, and Tariq's mother.

“I'm going to present Commander Massoud with a picture of Ahmad and Noor,” Mammy was saying to Wajma as Wajma nodded and tried to look interested and sincere.

“He personally oversaw the burial. He said a prayer at their grave. It'll be a token of thanks for his decency.” Mammy cracked another boiled egg. “I hear he's a reflective, honorable man. I think he would appreciate it.”

All around them, women bolted in and out of the kitchen, carried out bowls of
qurma,
platters of
mastawa,
loaves of bread, and arranged it all on the
sofrah
spread on the living-room floor.

Every once in a while, Tariq sauntered in. He picked at this, nibbled on that.

“No men allowed,” said Giti.

“Out, out, out,” cried Wajma.

Tariq smiled at the women's good-humored shooing. He seemed to take pleasure in not being welcome here, in infecting this female atmosphere with his half-grinning, masculine irreverence.