A thousand Splendid Suns

* * * 
 
  Later, in the dark, Mariam told the girl. 
  Fora long time, the girl said nothing. 
  "He wants an answer by this morning," Mariam said. 
  "He can have it now," the girl said. "My answeris yes." 
 
30. 
 
  Laila 

---

  Thenext day,Laila stayed in bed. She was under the blanket in the morning when Ras-
heed poked his head in and said he was going to the barber. She was still in bed when 
he came home late in the afternoon, when he showed her his new haircut, his new used 
suit, blue with cream pinstripes, and the wedding band he'd bought her. 
  Rasheed sat on the bed beside her, made a great show of slowly undoing the ribbon, of 
opening the box and plucking out the ring delicately. He let on that he'd traded in Mari-
am's old wedding ring for it. 
  "She doesn't care. Believe me. She won't even notice." 
  Laila pulled away to the far end of the bed. She could hear Mariam downstairs, the his-
sing of her iron. 
  "She never wore it anyway," Rasheed said. 
  "I don't want it," Laila said, weakly. "Not like this. You have to take it back." 
  "Take it back?" An impatient look flashed across his face and was gone. He smiled. "I 
had to add some cash too-quite a lot, in fact. This is a better ring, twenty-two-karat gold. 
Feel how heavy? Go on, feel it. No?" He closed the box. "How about flowers? That wo-
uld be nice. You like flowers? Do you have a favorite? Daisies? 
 
  Tulips? Lilacs? No flowers? Good! I don't see the point myself. I just thought…Now, I 
know a tailor here in Deh-Mazang. I was thinking we could take you there tomorrow, 
get you fitted for a proper dress." 
  Laila shook her head. 
  Rasheed raised his eyebrows. 
  "I'd just as soon-" Laila began. 
  He put a hand on her neck. Laila couldn't help wincing and recoiling. His touch felt li-
ke wearing a prickly old wet wool sweater with no undershirt. 
  "Yes?" 
  "I'd just as soon we get it done." 
  Rasheed's mouth opened, then spread in a yellow, toothy grin. "Eager," he said. 
 
* * * 
 
  Before Abdul Sharif's visit, Laila had decided to leave for Pakistan. Even after Abdul 
Sharif came bearing his news, Laila thought now, she might have left. Gone somewhere 
far from here. Detached herself from this city where every street corner was a trap, whe-
re every alley hid a ghost that sprang at her like a jack-in-the-box. She might have taken 
the risk. 
  But, suddenly, leaving was no longer an option. 
  Not with this daily retching. 
  This new fullness in her breasts. 
  And the awareness, somehow, amid all of this turmoil, that she had missed a cycle. 
  Laila pictured herself in a refugee camp, a stark field with thousands of sheets of plas-
tic strung to makeshift poles flapping in the cold, stinging wind. Beneath one of these 
makeshift tents, she saw her baby, Tariq's baby, its temples wasted, its jaws slack, its 
skin mottled, bluish gray. She pictured its tiny body washed by strangers, wrapped in a 
tawny shroud, lowered into a hole dug in a patch of windswept land under the disappo-
inted gaze of vultures. 
  How could she run now? 
  Laila took grim inventory of the people in her life. Ahmad and Noor, dead. Hasina, go-
ne. Giti, dead. Mammy, dead. Babi, dead. Now Tariq… 

---

  But, miraculously, something of her former life remained, her last link to the person 
that she had been before she had become so utterly alone. A part of Tariq still alive insi-
de her, sprouting tiny arms, growing translucent hands. 
 
  How could she jeopardize the only thing she had left of him, of her old life? 
  She made her decision quickly. Six weeks had passed since her time with Tariq. Any 
longer and Rasheed would grow suspicious. 
  She knew that what she was doing was dishonorable. Dishonorable, disingenuous, and 
shameful. And spectacularly unfair to Mariam. But even though the baby inside her was 
no bigger than a mulberry, Laila already saw the sacrifices a mother had to make. Virtue 
was only the first. 
  She put a hand on her belly. Closed her eyes. 
 
* * * 
 
  Laila would remember the muted ceremony in bits and fragments. The cream-colored 
stripes of Rasheed's suit. The sharp smell of his hair spray. The small shaving nick just 
above his Adam's apple. The rough pads of his tobacco-stained fingers when he slid the 
ring on her. The pen. Its not working. The search for a new pen. The contract. The sig-
ning, his sure-handed, hers quavering. The prayers. Noticing, in the mirror, that Rashe-
ed had trimmed his eyebrows. 
  And, somewhere in the room, Mariam watching. The air choking with her disapproval. 
  Laila could not bring herself to meet the older woman's gaze. 
 
* * * 
 
  Lying beneath his cold sheets that night, she watched him pull the curtains shut. She 
was shaking even before his fingers worked her shirt buttons, tugged at the drawstring 
of her trousers. He was agitated. His fingers fumbled endlessly with his own shirt, with 
undoing his belt. Laila had a full view of his sagging breasts, his protruding belly but-
ton, the small blue vein in the center of it, the tufts of thick white hair on his chest, his 
shoulders, and upper arms. She felt his eyes crawling all over her. 
  "God help me, I think I love you," he said-Through chattering teeth, she asked him to 
turn out the lights. 
  Later, when she was sure that he was asleep, Laila quietly reached beneath the mattress 
for the knife she had hidden there earlier. With it, she punctured the pad of her index 
finger. Then she lifted the blanket and let her finger bleed on the sheets where they had 
lain together. 
 
31. 
 
  Madam 
  In the daytime, the girl was no more than a creaking bedspring, a patter of footsteps 
overhead. She was water splashing in the bathroom, or a teaspoon clinking against glass 
in the bedroom upstairs. Occasionally, there were sightings: a blur of billowing dress in 
the periphery of Madam's vision, scurrying up the steps, arms folded across the chest, 
sandals slapping the heels. 
  But it was inevitable that they would run into each other. Madam passed the girl on the 
stairs, in the narrow hallway, in the kitchen, or by the door as she was coming in from 
the yard. When they met like this, an awkward tension rushed into the space between 

---

them. The girl gathered her skirt and breathed out a word or two of apology, and, as she 
hurried past, Madam would chance a sidelong glance and catch a blush. Sometimes she 
could smell Rasheed on her. She could smell his sweat on the girl's skin, his tobacco, his 
appetite. Sex, mercifully, was a closed chapter in her own life. It had been for some ti-
me, and now even the thought of those laborious sessions of lying beneath Rasheed ma-
de Madam queasy in the gut. 
  At night, however, this mutually orchestrated dance of avoidance between her and the 
girl was not possible. Rasheed said they were a family. He insisted they were, and fami-
lies had to eat together, he said. 
  "What is this?" he said, his fingers working the meat off a bone-the spoon-and-fork 
charade was abandoned a week after he married the girl. "Have I married a pair of statu-
es? Go on, Madam,gap bezan, say something to her. Where are your manners?" 
  Sucking marrow from a bone, he said to the girl, "But you mustn't blame her. She is 
quiet. A blessing, really, because,wallah, if a person hasn't got much to say she might as 
well be stingy with words. We are city people, you and I, but she isdehati. A village 
girl. Not even a village girl. No. She grew up in akolba made of mudoutside the village. 
Her father put her there. Have you told her, Mariam, have you told her that you are aha-
rami1? Well, she is. But she is not without qualities, all things considered. You will see 
for yourself, Laila jan. She is sturdy, for one thing, a good worker, and without pretensi-
ons. I'll say it this way: If she were a car, she would be a Volga." 
  Mariam was a thirty-three-year-old woman now, but that word,harami, still had sting. 
Hearing it still made her feel like she was a pest, a cockroach. She remembered Nana 
pulling her wrists.You are a clumsy Utile harami.This is my reward for everything I've