A thousand Splendid Suns

Come and let’s go to Mazar, Mullah Mohammad jan, To see the 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 tickling him, building tunnels with cushions and pillows for him to crawl through, watching him fall asleep in her arms with one of his hands always




clutching her ear. Her stomach turned when she thought of that afternoon, lying on the floor with the spoke of a bicycle wheel between her legs. How close she’d come. It was unthinkable to her now that she could have even entertained the idea. Her son was a blessing, and Laila was relieved to discover that her fears had proved baseless, that she loved Zalmai with the marrow of her bones, just as she did Aziza.
But Zalmai worshipped his father, and, because he did, he was transformed when his father was around to dote on him. Zalmai was quick then with a defiant cackle or an impudent grin. In his father’s presence, he was easily offended. He held grudges. 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 chewed on Rasheed’s cigarettes.
When Zalmai was born, Rasheed had moved him into the bed he shared with Laila. He had bought him a new crib and had lions and crouching leopards painted on the side panels. He’d paid for new clothes, new rattles, new bottles, new diapers, even though they could not afford them and Aziza’s old ones were still serviceable. One day, he came home with a battery-run mobile, which he hung over Zalmai’s crib. Little yellow-and-black bumblebees dangled from a sunflower, and they crinkled and squeaked when squeezed. A tune played when it was turned on.
“I thought you said business was slow,” Laila said.
“I have friends I can borrow from,” he said dismissively.
“How will you pay them back?”
“Things will turn around. They always do. Look, he likes it. See?”
Most days, Laila was deprived of her son. Rasheed took him to the shop, let him crawl around under his crowded workbench, play with old rubber soles and spare scraps of leather. Rasheed drove in his iron nails and turned the sandpaper wheel, and kept a watchful eye on him. If Zalmai toppled a rack of shoes, Rasheed scolded him gently, in a calm, half-smiling way. If he did it again, Rasheed put down his hammer, sat him up on his desk, and talked to him softly.
His patience with Zalmai was a well that ran deep and never dried.
They came home together in the evening, Zalmai’s head bouncing on Rasheed’s shoulder, both of them smelling of glue and leather. They grinned the way people who share a secret do, slyly, like they’d sat in that dim shoe shop all day not making shoes at all but devising secret plots. Zalmai liked to sit beside his father at dinner, where they played private games, as Mariam, Laila, and Aziza set plates on the sofrah. They took turns poking each other on the chest, giggling, pelting each other with bread crumbs, whispering things the others couldn’t hear. If Laila spoke to them, Rasheed looked up with displeasure at the unwelcome intrusion. If she asked to hold Zalmai—or, worse, if Zalmai 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 day had been warm, almost balmy, but the evening was cooler and already thickening into a starless, chilly night.
He set it down on the living-room table. He said he’d bought it on the black market.
“Another loan?” Laila asked.
“It’s a Magnavox.”
Aziza came into the room. When she saw the TV, she ran to it.
“Careful, Aziza jo,” said Mariam. “Don’t touch.”
Aziza’s hair had become as light as Laila’s. Laila could see her own dimples on her cheeks. Aziza had turned into a calm, pensive little girl, with a demeanor that to Laila seemed beyond her six years. Laila marveled at her daughter’s manner of speech, her cadence and rhythm, her thoughtful pauses and intonations, so adult, so at odds with the immature body that housed the voice. It was Aziza who with lighthearted authority had taken it upon herself to wake Zalmai every day, to dress him, feed him his breakfast, comb his hair. She was the one who put him down to nap, who played even-tempered peacemaker to her volatile sibling. Around him, Aziza had taken to 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 two of 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 of ikhlas, the surah of fatiha, and already knew how to perform the four ruqats of morning prayer.