A thousand Splendid Suns

44. 
 
  Laila 
 
  Iariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had a cousin who'd been publicly 
flogged once for painting flamingos. He, the cousin, had a seemingly incurable thing for 
them. 
 
  "Entire sketchbooks," Tariq said. "Dozens of oil paintings of them, wading in lagoons, 
sunbathing in marshlands. Flying into sunsets too, I'm afraid." 
  "Flamingos," Laila said. She looked at him sitting against the wall, his good leg bent at 
the knee. She had an urge to touch him again, as she had earlier by the front gate when 
she'd run to him. It embarrassed her now to think of how she'd thrown her arms around 
his neck and wept into his chest, how she'd said his name over and over in a slurring, 
thick voice. Had she acted too eagerly, she wondered, too desperately? Maybe so. But 
she hadn't been able to help it. And now she longed to touch him again, to prove to her-
self again that he was really here, that he was not a dream, an apparition. 
 
  "Indeed," he said. "Flamingos." 
 
  When the Taliban had found the paintings, Tariq said, they'd taken offense at the birds' 
long, bare legs. After they'd tied the cousin's feet and flogged his soles bloody, they had 
presented him with a choice: Either destroy the paintings or make the flamingos decent. 
So the cousin had picked up his brush and painted trousers on every last bird 
 

---

  "And there you have it. Islamic flamingos," Tariq said-Laughter came up, but Laila 
pushed it back down. She was ashamed of her yellowing teeth, the missing incisor-
Ashamed of her withered looks and swollen lip. She wished she'd had the chance to 
wash her face, at least comb her hair. 
  "But he'll have the last laugh, the cousin," Tariq said- "He painted those trousers with 
watercolor. When the Taliban are gone, he'll just wash them off" He smiled-Laila noti-
ced that he had a missing tooth of his own-and looked down at his hands. "Indeed" 
 
  He was wearingapakol on his head, hiking boots, and a black wool sweater tucked into 
thewaist of khaki pants. He was half smiling, nodding slowly. Laila didn't remember 
him saying this before, this wordindeed, and this pensive gesture,the fingers making a 
tent in his lap, the nodding, it was new too. Such an adult word, such an adult gesture, 
and why should it be so startling? Hewas an adult now, Tariq, a twenty-five-year-old 
man with slow movements and a tiredness to his smile. Tall, bearded, slimmer than in 
her dreams of him, but with strong-looking hands, workman's hands, with tortuous, full 
veins. His face was still lean and handsome but not fair-skinned any longer; his brow 
had a weathered look to it, sunburned, like his neck, the brow of a traveler at the end of 
a long and wearying journey. Hispakol was pushed back on his head, and she could see 
that he'd started to lose his hair. The hazel of his eyes was duller than she remembered, 
paler, or perhaps it was merely the light in the room. 
 
  Laila thought of Tariq's mother, her unhurried manners, the clever smiles, the dull 
purple wig. And his father, with his squinty gaze, his wry humor. Earlier, at the door, 
with a voice full of tears, tripping over her own words, she'd told Tariq what she tho-
ught had happened to him and his parents, and he had shaken his head. So now she as-
ked him how they were doing, his parents. But she regretted the question when Tariq lo-
oked down and said, a bit distractedly, "Passed on." 
 
  "I'm so sorry." 
 
  "Well. Yes. Me too. Here." He fished a small paper bag from his pocket and passed it 
to her. "Compliments of Alyona." Inside was a block of cheese in plastic wrap. 
 
  "Alyona. It's a pretty name." Laila tried to say this next without wavering. "Your wi-
fe?" 
 
  "My goat." He was smiling at her expectantly, as though waiting for her to retrieve a 
memory. 
 
  Then Laila remembered. The Soviet film. Alyona had been the captain's daughter, the 
girl in love with the first mate. That was the day that she, Tariq, and Hasina had watc-
hed Soviet tanks and jeeps leave Kabul, the day Tariq had worn that ridiculous Russian 
fur hat. 
 
  "I had to tie her to a stake in the ground," Tariq was saying. "And build a fence. Beca-
use of the wolves. In the foothills where I live, there's a wooded area nearby, maybe a 
quarter of a mile away, pine trees mostly, some fir, deodars. They mostly stick to the 
woods, the wolves do, but a bleating goat, one that likes to go wandering, that can draw 
them out. So the fence. The stake." 
 

---

  Laila asked him which foothills. 
  "Pir PanjaL Pakistan," he said "Where I live is called Murree; it's a summer retreat, an 
hour from Islamabad. It's hilly and green, lots of trees, high above sea level So it's cool 
in the summer. Perfect for tourists." 
 
  The British had built it as a hill station near their military headquarters in Rawalpindi, 
he said, for the Victorians to escape the heat. You could still spot a few relics of the co-
lonial times, Tariq said, the occasional tearoom, tin-roofed bungalows, called cottages, 
that sort of thing. The town itself was small and pleasant. The main street was called the 
Mall, where there was a post office, a bazaar, a few restaurants, shops that overcharged 
tourists for painted glass and handknotted carpets. Curiously, the Mall's one-way traffic 
flowed in one direction one week, the opposite direction the next week. 
 
  "The locals say that Ireland's traffic is like that too in places," Tariq said. "I wouldn't 
know. Anyway, it's nice. It's a 
  plain life, but I like it. I like living there." 
 
  "With your goat. With Alyona." 
 
  Laila meant this less as a joke than as a surreptitious entry into another line of talk, 
such as who else was there with him worrying about wolves eating goats. But Tariq 
only went on nodding. 
 
  "I'm sorry about your parents too," he said. 
 
  "You heard." 
 
  "I spoke to some neighbors earlier," he said. A pause, during which Laila wondered 
what else the neighbors had told him. "I don't recognize anybody. From the old days, I 
mean." 
  "They're all gone. There's no one left you'd know." 
 
  "I don't recognize Kabul." 
 
  "Neither do I," Laila said. "And I never left." 
 
* * * 
 
  "Mammy has a new friend," Zalmai said after dinner later that same night, after Tariq 
had left. "A man." 
 
  Rasheed looked up."Does she, now?"