A thousand Splendid Suns

41. 
 
  Madam 
 
  In the summer of 2000, the drought reached its third and worst year. 
  In Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar, villages turned into herds of nomadic communities, al-
ways moving, searching for water and green pastures for their livestock. When they fo-
und neither, when their goats and sheep and cows died off, they came to Kabul They to-
ok to the Kareh-Ariana hillside, living in makeshift slums, packed in huts, fifteen or 
twenty at a time. 
  That was also the summer ofTitanic, the summer that Mariam and Aziza were a tangle 
of limbs, rolling and giggling, Aziza insistingshe get to be Jack. 
  "Quiet, Aziza jo." 
  "Jack! Say my name, Khala Mariam. Say it. Jack!" "Your father will be angry if you 
wake him." 
  "Jack! And you're Rose." 
  It would end with Mariam on her back, surrendering, agreeing again to be Rose. "Fine, 
you be Jack," she relented "You die young, and I get to live to a ripe old age." 
  "Yes, but I die a hero," said Aziza, "while you, Rose, you spend your entire, miserable 
life longing for me." Then, straddling Mariam's chest, she'd announce, "Now we must 
kiss!" Mariam whipped her head side to side, and Aziza, delighted with her own scanda-
lous behavior, cackled through puckered lips. 
  Sometimes Zalmai would saunter in and watch this game. What didhe get to be, he as-
ked 
  "You can be the iceberg," said Aziza. 
  That summer,Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film 
from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their do-
ors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose 
and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, 
and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from be-
hind the toolshed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. 
  At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's 
sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buyTitanic carpets, andTitanic cloth, from bolts ar-
ranged in wheelbarrows. There wasTitanic deodorant,Titanic toothpaste,Titanic perfu-

---

me,Titanicpakora, evenTitanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling 
himself "Titanic Beggar." 
  "Titanic City" was born. 
 
  It's the song,they said. 
  No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. 
  It's the sex,they whispered 
  Leo,said Aziza sheepishly.It's all about Leo. 
  "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants 
Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is 
dead." 
 
* * * 
 
  Then, late that summer, a fabric merchant fell asleep and forgot to put out his cigarette. 
He survived the fire, but his store did not. The fire took the adjacent fabric store as well, 
a secondhand clothing store, a small furniture shop, a bakery. 
  They told Rasheed later that if the winds had blown east instead of west, his shop, 
which was at the corner of the block, might have been spared.