A thousand Splendid Suns

ved land. 
 
  And he was smoking, another new habit, which he'd picked up from the guys Laila 
spotted him hanging around with these days. Laila couldn't stand them, these new fri-
ends of Tariq's. They all dressed the same way, pleated trousers, and tight shirts that ac-
centuated their arms and chest. They all wore too much cologne, and they all smoked. 
They strutted around the neighborhood in groups, joking, laughing loudly, sometimes 
even calling after girls, with identical stupid, self-satisfied grins on their faces. One of 
Tariq's friends, on the basis of the most passing of resemblances to Sylvester Stallone, 
insisted he be called Rambo. 
  "Your mother would kill you if she knew about your smoking," Laila said, looking one 
way, then the other, before slipping into the alley. 
 
  "But she doesn't," he said. He moved aside to make room. 
 
  "That could change." 
 
  "Who is going to tell? You?" 
 
  Laila tapped her foot. "Tell your secret to the wind, but don't blame it for telling the 
trees." 
 
  Tariq smiled, the one eyebrow arched. "Who said that?" 
 
  "Khalil Gibran." 
 
  "You're a show-off." 
 
  "Give me a cigarette." 
 
  He shook his head no and crossed his arms. This was a new entry in his repertoire of 
poses: back to the wall, arms crossed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, 
his good leg casually bent. 
  "Why not?" 
 
  "Bad for you," he said. 
  "And it's not bad for you?" 
 
  "I do it for the girls." 
 
  "What girls?" 
 
  He smirked. "They think it's sexy." 
 
  "It's not." 
 
  "No?" 
 
  "I assure you." 

---

 
  "Not sexy?" 
 
  "You lookkhila, like a half-wit." 
 
  "That hurts," he said 
 
  "What girls anyway?" 
 
  "You're jealous." 
 
  "I'm indifferently curious." 
 
  "You can't be both." He took another drag and squinted through the smoke. "I'll bet 
they're talking about us now." 
 
  In Laila's head, Mammy's voice rang out.Like a mynah bird in your hands. Slacken yo-
ur grip and away it flies. Guilt bore its teeth into her. Then Laila shut off Mammy's vo-
ice. Instead, she savored the way Tariq had saidus. How thrilling, how conspiratorial, it 
sounded coming from him. And how reassuring to hear him say it like that-casually, na-
turally.Us. It acknowledged their connection, crystallized it. 
 
  "And what are they saying?" 
 
  "That we're canoeing down the River of Sin," he said. "Eating a slice of Impiety Ca-
ke." 
  "Riding the Rickshaw of Wickedness?" Laila chimed in. 
 
  "Making SacrilegeQurma." 
 
  They both laughed. Then Tariq remarked that her hair was getting longer. "It's nice," 
he said Laila hoped she wasn't blushing- "You changed the subject." 
  "From what?" 
 
  "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." 
 
  "You know." 
 
  "Know what?" 
 
  "That I only have eyes for you." 
 
  Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was inde-
cipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half-desperate look in 
his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery 
and sincerity. 
 
  Tariq crushed his cigarette with the heel of his good foot. "So what do you think about 
all this?" 
 

---

  "The party?" 
 
  "Who's the half-wit now?I meant the Mujahideen, Laila. Their coming to Kabul." 
 
  Oh. 
  She started to tell him something Babi had said, about the troublesome marriage of 
guns and ego, when she heard a commotion coming from the house. Loud voices. Scre-
aming. 
 
  Laila took off running. Tariq hobbled behind her. 
  There was a melee in the yard. In the middle of it were two snarling men, rolling on 
the ground, a knife between them. Laila recognized one of them as a man from the table 
who had been discussing politics earlier. The other was the man who had been fanning 
the kebab skewers. Several men were trying to pull them apart. Babi wasn't among 
them. He stood by the wall, at a safe distance from the fight, with Tariq's father, who 
was crying. 
  From the excited voices around her, Laila caught snippets that she put together: The 
fellow at the politics table, a Pashtun, had called Ahmad Shah Massoud a traitor for 
"making a deal" with the Soviets in the 1980s. The kebab man, a Tajik, had taken offen-
se and demanded a retraction. The Pashtun had refused. The Tajik had said that if not 
for Massoud, the other man's sister would still be "giving it" to Soviet soldiers. They 
had come to blows. One of them had then brandished a knife; there was disagreement as 
to who. 
 
  With horror, Laila saw that Tariq had thrown himself into the scuffle. She also saw 
that some of the peacemakers were now throwing punches of their own. She thought she 
spotted a second knife. 
 
  Later that evening, Laila thought of how the melee had toppled over, with men falling 
on top of one another, amid yelps and cries and shouts and flying punches, and, in the 
middle of it, a grimacing Tariq, his hair disheveled, his leg come undone, trying to 
crawl out.