A thousand Splendid Suns

PART THREE 
 
27. 
 
  Madam 
  Do you know who I am?" 
  The girl's eyes fluttered 
  "Do you know what has happened?" 
  The girl's mouth quivered. She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Her hand grazed her left 
cheek. She mouthed something. 
  Mariam leaned in closer. 
  "This ear," the girl breathed. "I can't hear." 
 

---

* * * 
 
  For the first "week, the girl did little but sleep, with help from the pink pills Rasheed 
paid for at the hospital. She murmured in her sleep. Sometimes she spoke gibberish, cri-
ed out, called out names Mariam did not recognize. She wept in her sleep, grew agita-
ted, kicked the blankets off, and then Mariam had to hold her down. Sometimes she 
retched and retched, threw up everything Mariam fed her. 
  When she wasn't agitated, the girl was a sullen pair of eyes staring from under the 
blanket, breathing out short little answers to Mariam and Rasheed's questions. Some 
days she was childlike, whipped her head side to side, when Mariam, then Rasheed, tri-
ed to feed her. She went rigid when Mariam came at her with a spoon. But she tired 
easily and submitted eventually to their persistent badgering. Long bouts of weeping 
followed surrender. 
  Rasheed had Mariam rub antibiotic ointment on the cuts on the girl's face and neck, 
and on the sutured gashes on her shoulder, across her forearms and lower legs. Mariam 
dressed them with bandages, which she washed and recycled. She held the girl's hair 
back, out of her face, when she had to retch. 
  "How long is she staying?" she asked Rasheed. 
  "Until she's better. Look at her. She's in no shape to go. Poor thing." 
 
* * * 
 
  It was Rasheed who found the girl, who dug her out from beneath the rubble. 
  "Lucky I was home," he said to the girl. He was sitting on a folding chair beside Mari-
am's bed, where the girl lay. "Lucky for you, I mean. I dug you out with my own hands. 
There was a scrap of metal this big-" Here, he spread his thumb and index finger apart 
to show her, at least doubling, in Mariam's estimation, the actual size of it. "This big. 
Sticking right out of your shoulder. It was really embedded in there. I thought I'd have 
to use a pair of pliers. 
 
  But you're all right. In no time, you'll benau socha. Good as new." 
  It was Rasheed who salvaged a handful of Hakim's books. 
  "Most of them were ash. The rest were looted, I'm afraid." 
  He helped Mariam watch over the girl that first week. One day, he came home from 
work with a new blanket and pillow. Another day, a bottle of pills. 
  "Vitamins," he said. 
  It was Rasheed who gave Laila the news that her friend Tariq's house was occupied 
now. 
  "A gift," he said. "From one of Sayyaf s commanders to three of his men. A gift. Ha!" 
  The  threemen were actually boys with suntanned, youthful faces. Mariam would see 
them when she passed by, always dressed in their fatigues, squatting by the front door 
of Tariq's house, playing cards and smoking, their Kalashnikovs leaning against the 
wall. The brawny one, the one with the self-satisfied, scornful demeanor, was the leader. 
The youngest was also the quietest, the one who seemed reluctant to wholeheartedly 
embrace his friends' air of impunity. He had taken to smiling and tipping his headsala-
am when Mariam passed by. When he did, some of his surface smugness dropped away, 
and Mariam caught a glint of humility as yet uncorrupted. 
  Then one morning rockets slammed into the house. They were rumored later to have 
been fired by the Hazaras of Wahdat. For some time, neighbors kept finding bits and pi-
eces of the boys. 

---

  "They had it coming," said Rasheed. 
 
* * * 
 
  The girl was extraordinarily lucky, Mariam thought, to escape with relatively minor 
injuries, considering the rocket had turned her house into smoking rubble. And 
so,slowly, the girl got better. She began to eat more, began to brush her own hair. She 
took baths on her own. She began taking her meals downstairs, with Mariam and Rashe-
ed. 
  But then some memory would rise, unbidden, and there would be stony silences or 
spells of churlishness. Withdrawals and collapses. Wan looks. Nightmares and sudden 
attacks of grief. Retching. 
  And sometimes regrets. 
  "I shouldn't even be here,"she said one day. 
  Mariam was changing the sheets. The girl watchedfrom thefloor, herbruised knees 
drawn up against her chest. 
  "My father wanted to take out the boxes. The books. He said they were too heavyfor 
me. But I wouldn't let him. I was so eager. I should have been the one inside the house 
when it happened." 
 
  Mariam snapped the clean sheet and let it settle on the bed She looked at the girl, at her 
blond curls, her slender neck and green eyes, her high cheekbones and plump lips. Mari-
am remembered seeing her on the streets when she was little, tottering after her mother 
on the way to the tandoor, riding on the shoulders of her brother, the younger one, with 
the patch of hair on his ear. Shooting marbles with the carpenter's boy. 
  The girl was looking back as if waiting for Mariam to pass on some morsel of wisdom, 
to say something encouraging- But what wisdom did Mariam have to offer? What enco-
uragement? Mariam remembered the day they'd buried Nana and how little comfort she 
had found when Mullah Faizullah had quoted the Koran for her.Blessed is He in Whose