A thousand Splendid Suns

ne? Where is yourmahram? -before she was sent home. If she was lucky, she was given 
a tongue-lashing or a single kick to the rear, a shove in the back. Other times, she met 
with assortments of wooden clubs, fresh tree branches, short whips, slaps, often fists. 
 
  One day, a young Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna. When he was done, he gave a 
final whack to the back of her neck and said, "I see you again, I'll beat you until your 
mother's milk leaks out of your bones." 
 
  That time, Laila went home. She lay on her stomach, feeling like a stupid, pitiable ani-
mal, and hissed as Mariam arranged damp cloths across her bloodied back and thighs. 
But, usually, Laila refused to cave in. She made as if she were going home, then took a 
different route down side streets. Sometimes she was caught, questioned, scolded-two, 
three, even four times in a single day. Then the whips came down and the antennas sli-
ced through the air, and she trudged home, bloodied, without so much as a glimpse of 
Aziza. Soon Laila took to wearing extra layers, even in the heat, two, three sweaters be-
neath the burqa, for padding against the beatings. 
 
  But for Laila, the reward, if she made it past the Taliban, was worth it. She could 
spend as much time as she liked then-hours,even-with Aziza. They sat in the courtyard, 
near the swing set, among other children and visiting mothers, and talked about what 
Aziza had learned that week. 
  Aziza said Kaka Zaman made it a point to teach them something every day, reading 
and writing most days, sometimes geography, a bit of history or science, something 
about plants, animals. 
 
  "But we have to pull the curtains," Aziza said, "so the Taliban don't see us." Kaka Za-
man had knitting needles and balls of yarn ready, she said, in case of a Taliban inspecti-
on. "We put the books away and pretend to knit." 
 
  One day, during a visit with Aziza, Laila saw a middle-aged woman, her burqa pushed 
back, visiting with three boys and a girl. Laila recognized the sharp face, the heavy 

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eyebrows, if not the sunken mouth and gray hair. She remembered the shawls, the black 
skirts, the curt voice, how she used to wear her jet-black hair tied in a bun so that you 
could see the dark bristles on the back of her neck. Laila remembered this woman once 
forbidding the female students from covering, saying women and men were equal, that 
there was no reason women should cover if men didn't. 
 
  At one point, Khala Rangmaal looked up and caught her gaze, but Laila saw no linge-
ring, no light of recognition, in her old teacher's eyes. 
 
* * * 
 
  "They're fractures along the earth's crust," said Aziza. 'They're called faults." 
 
  It was a warm afternoon, a Friday, in June of 2001. They were sitting in the orphana-
ge's back lot, the four of them, Laila, Zalmai, Mariam, and Aziza. Rasheed had relented 
this time-as he infrequently did-and accompanied the four of them. He was waiting 
down the street, by the bus stop. 
 
  Barefoot kids scampered about around them. A flat soccer ball was kicked around, 
chased after listlessly. 
  "And, on either side of the faults, there are these sheets of rock that make up the earth's 
crust," Aziza was saying. 
 
  Someone had pulled the hair back from Aziza's face, braided it, and pinned it neatly on 
top of her head. Laila begrudged whoever had gotten to sit behind her daughter, to flip 
sections of her hair one over the other, had asked her to sit still. 
  Aziza was demonstrating by opening her hands, palms up, and rubbing them against 
each other. Zalmai watched this with intense interest. 
 
  "Kectonic plates, they're called?" 
 
  "Tectonic,"Laila said. It hurt to talk. Her jaw was still sore, her back and neck ached. 
Her lip was swollen, and her tongue kept poking the empty pocket of the lower incisor 
Rasheed had knocked loose two days before. Before Mammy and Babi had died and her 
life turned upside down, Laila never would have believed that a human body could 
withstand this much beating, this viciously, this regularly, and keep functioning. 
 
  "Right. And when they slide past each other, they catch and slip-see, Mammy?-and it 
releases energy, which 
 
  travels to the earth's surface and makes it shake." 
 
  "You're getting so smart," Mariam said "So much smarter than your dumbkhala" 
  Aziza's face glowed, broadened. "You're not dumb, Khala Mariam. And Kaka Zaman 
says that, sometimes, the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and 
scary down there, but all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor." 
 
  The visit before this one, it was oxygen atoms in the atmosphere scattering the blue 
light from the sun.If the earth had no atmosphere, Aziza had said a little breathlessly,the 

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