A thousand Splendid Suns

* * * 
 
  They sold everything. 
 
  First to go were Mariam's things, then Laila's. Aziza's baby clothes, the few toys Laila 
had fought Rasheed to buy her. Aziza watched the proceedings with a docile look. Ras-
heed's watch too was sold, his old transistor radio, his pair of neckties, his shoes, and his 
wedding ring. The couch, the table, the rug, and the chairs went too. Zalmai threw a 
wicked tantrum when Rasheed sold the TV. 
  After the fire, Rasheed was home almost every day. He slapped Aziza. He kicked Ma-
riam. He threw things. He found fault with Laila, the way she smelled, the way she 
dressed, the way she combed her hair, her yellowing teeth. 
  "What's happened to you?" he said. "I marriedapart, and now I'm saddled with a hag. 
You're turning into Mariam." 
  He got fired from the kebab house near Haji Yaghoub Square because he and a custo-
mer got into a scuffle. The customer complained that Rasheed had rudely tossed the bre-
ad on his table. Harsh words had passed. Rasheed had called the customer a monkey-fa-
ced Uzbek. A gun had been brandished. A skewer pointed in return. In Rasheed's versi-
on, he held the skewer. Mariam had her doubts. 
  Fired from the restaurant in Taimani because customers complained about the long wa-
its, Rasheed said the cook was slow and lazy. 
 
  "You were probably out back napping," said Laila. 
 
  "Don't provoke him, Laila jo," Mariam said. 
 
  "I'm warning you, woman," he said. 
 
  "Either that or smoking." 
 

---

  "I swear to God." 
 
  "You can't help being what you are." 
 
  And then he was on Laila, pummeling her chest, her head, her belly with fists, tearing 
at her hair, throwing her to the wall. Aziza was shrieking, pulling at his shirt; Zalmai 
was screaming too, trying to get him off his mother. Rasheed shoved the children aside, 
pushed Laila to the ground, and began kicking her. Mariam threw herself on Laila. He 
went on kicking, kicking Mariam now, spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes glittering 
with murderous intent, kicking until he couldn't anymore. 
 
  "I swear you're going to make me kill you, Laila," he said, panting. Then he stormed 
out of the house. 
 
* * * 
 
  When the money ran out, hunger began to cast a pall over their lives. It was stunning 
to Mariam how quickly alleviating hunger became the crux of their existence. 
 
  Rice, boiled plain and white, with no meat or sauce, was a rare treat now. They skip-
ped meals with increasing and alarming regularity. Sometimes Rasheed brought home 
sardines in a can and brittle, dried bread that tasted like sawdust. Sometimes a stolen 
bag of apples, at the risk of getting his hand sawed off. In grocery stores, he carefully 
pocketed canned ravioli, which they split five ways, Zalmai getting the lion's share. 
They ate raw turnips sprinkled with salt. Limp leaves of lettuce and blackened bananas 
for dinner. 
  Death from starvation suddenly became a distinct possibility. Some chose not to wait 
for it. Mariam heard of a neighborhood widow who had ground some dried bread, laced 
it with rat poison, and fed it to all seven of her children. She had saved the biggest porti-
on for herself. 
 
  Aziza's ribs began to push through the skin, and the fat from her cheeks vanished. Her 
calves thinned, and her complexion turned the color of weak tea. When Mariam picked 
her up, she could feel her hip bone poking through the taut skin. Zalmai lay around the 
house, eyes dulled and half closed, or in his father's lap limp as a rag. He cried himself 
to sleep, when he could muster the energy, but his sleep was fitful and sporadic. White 
dots leaped before Mariam's eyes whenever she got up. Her head spun, and her ears 
rang all the time. She remembered something Mullah Faizullah used to say about hun-
ger when Ramadan started:Even the snakebiiien man finds sleep, but not the hungry. 
 
  "My children are going to die," Laila said. "Right before my eyes." 
 
  "They are not," Mariam said. "I won't let them. It's going to be all right, Laila jo. I 
know what to do." 
 
* * * 
 
  One blistering-hot day, Mariam put on her burqa, and she and Rasheed walked to the 
Intercontinental Hotel. Bus fare was an un-affordable luxury now, and Mariam was ex-

---

hausted by the time they reached the top of the steep hill. Climbing the slope, she was 
struck by bouts of dizziness, and twice she had to stop, wait for it to pass. 
  At the hotel entrance, Rasheed greeted and hugged one of the doormen, who was dres-
sed in a burgundy suit and visor cap. There was some friendly-looking talk between 
them. Rasheed spoke with his hand on the doorman's elbow. He motioned toward Mari-
am at one point, and they both looked her way briefly. Mariam thought there was so-
mething vaguely familiar about the doorman. 
 
  When the doorman went inside, Mariam and Rasheed waited. From this vantage point, 
Mariam had a view of the Polytechnic Institute, and, beyond that, the old Khair khana 
district and the road to Mazar. To the south, she could see the bread factory, Silo, long 
abandoned, its pale yellow fa9ade pocked with yawning holes from all the shelling it 
had endured. Farther south, she could make out the hollow ruins of Darulaman Palace, 
where, many years back, Rasheed had taken her for a picnic. The memory of that day 
was a relic from a past that no longer seemed like her own. 
 
  Mariam concentrated on these things, these landmarks. She feared she might lose her 
nerve if she let her mind wander. 
 
  Every few minutes, jeeps and taxis drove up to the hotel entrance. Doormen rushed to 
greet the passengers, who were all men, armed, bearded, wearing turbans, all of them 
stepping out with the same self-assured, casual air of menace. Mariam heard bits of their 
chatter as they vanished through the hotel's doors. She heard Pashto and Farsi, but Urdu 
and Arabic too. 
 
  "Meet ourreal masters," Rasheed said in a low-pitched voice. "Pakistani and Arab Isla-
mists. The Taliban are puppets.These are the big players and Afghanistan is their playg-
round." 
 
  Rasheed said he'd heard rumors that the Taliban were allowing these people to set up 
secret camps all over the country, where young men were being trained to become suici-
de bombers and jihadi fighters. 
 
  "What's taking him so long?" Mariam said. 
 
  Rasheed spat, and kicked dirt on the spit. 
  An hour later, they were inside, Mariam and Rasheed, following the doorman. Their 
heels clicked on the tiled floor as they were led across the pleasantly cool lobby. Mari-
am saw two men sitting on leather chairs, rifles and a coffee table between them, sip-
ping black tea and eating from a plate of syrup-coatedjelabi, rings sprinkled with pow-
dered sugar. She thought of Aziza, who lovedjelabi, and tore her gaze away. 
 
  The doorman led them outside to a balcony. From his pocket, he produced a small 
black cordless phone and a scrap of paper with a number scribbled on it. He told Rashe-
ed it was his supervisor's satellite phone. 
 
  "I got you five minutes," he said. "No more." 
  "Tashakor,"Rasheed said. "I won't forget this." 
 
  The doorman nodded and walked away. Rasheed dialed. He gave Mariam the phone. 

---

 
  As Mariam listened to the scratchy ringing, her mind wandered. It wandered to the last 
time she'd seen Jalil, thirteen years earlier, back in the spring of 1987. He'd stood on the 
street outside her house, leaning on a cane, beside the blue Benz with the Herat license 
plates and the white stripe bisecting the roof, the hood, and trunk. He'd stood there for 
hours, waiting for her, now and then calling her name, just as she had once calledhis na-
me outsidehis house. Mariam had parted the curtain once, just a bit, and caught a glimp-
se of him. Only a glimpse, but long enough to see that his hair had turned fluffy white, 
and that he'd started to stoop. He wore glasses, a red tie, as always, and the usual white 
handkerchief triangle in his breast pocket. Most striking, he was thinner, much thinner, 
than she remembered, the coat of his dark brown suit drooping over his shoulders, the 
trousers pooling at his ankles. 
 
  Jalil had seen her too, if only for a moment. Their eyes had met briefly through a part 
in the curtains, as they had met many years earlier through a part in another pair of cur-
tains. But then Mariam had quickly closed the curtains. She had sat on the bed, waited 
for him to leave. 
 
  She thought now of the letter Jalil had finally left at her door. She had kept it for days, 
beneath her pillow, picking it up now and then, turning it over in her hands. In the end, 
she had shredded it unopened. 
 
  And now here she was, after all these years, calling him. 
  Mariam regretted her foolish, youthful pride now. She wished now that she had let him 
in. What would have been the harm to let him in, sit with him, let him say what he'd co-
me to say? He was her father. He'd not been a good father, it was true, but how ordinary 
his faults seemed now, how forgivable, when compared to Rasheed's malice, or to the 
brutality and violence that she had seen men inflict on one another. 
 
  She wished she hadn't destroyed his letter. 
  A man's deep voice spoke in her ear and informed her that she'd reached the mayor's 
office in Herat. 
 
  Mariam cleared her throat."Salaam, brother, I am looking for someone who lives in 
Herat. Or he did, many years ago. His name is Jalil Khan. He lived in Shar-e-Nau and 
owned the cinema. Do you have any information as to his whereabouts?" 
  The irritation was audible in the man's voice. "This is whyyou call the mayor's office?" 
  Mariam said she didn't know who else to call. "Forgive me, brother. I know you have 
important things to tend to, but it is life and death, a question of life and death I am cal-
ling about." 
 
  "I don't know him. The cinema's been closed for many years." 
  "Maybe there's someone there who might know him, someone-" 
  "There is no one." 
 
  Mariam closed her eyes. "Please, brother. There are children involved. Small child-
ren." 
 
  A long sigh. 
 

---

  "Maybe someone there-" 
 
  "There's a groundskeeper here. I think he's lived here all of his life." 
 
  "Yes, ask him, please." 
 
  "Call back tomorrow." 
 
  Mariam said she couldn't. "I have this phone for five minutes only. I don't-" 
  There was a click at the other end, and Mariam thought he had hung up. But she could 
hear footsteps, and voices, a distant car horn, and some mechanical humming punctu-
ated by clicks, maybe an electric fan. She switched the phone to her other ear, closed 
her eyes. 
 
  She pictured Jalil smiling, reaching into his pocket. 
 
  Ah. Of course. Well Here then. Without Juriher ado… 
 
  A leaf-shaped pendant, tiny coins etched with moons and stars hanging from it. 
 
  Try it on, Mariam jo. 
 
  What do you think? 
 
  Ithink you look like a queen. 
 
  A few minutes passed. Then footsteps, a creaking sound, and a click. "He does know 
him." 
 
  "He does?" 
 
  "It's what he says." 
 
  "Where is he?" Mariam said. "Does this man know where Jalil Khan is?" 
 
  There was a pause. "He says he died years ago, back in 1987." 
  Mariam's stomach fell. She'd considered the possibility, of course. Jalil would have be-
en in his mid-to late seventies by now, but…