A thousand Splendid Suns

46. 
 
  Laila 
 
  Laila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and foreboding eyes. She 
was dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence beyond the face, of her fists raining down. 
Above them was the ceiling, and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark mar-
kings of mold spreading across it like ink on a dress, the crack in the plaster that was a 
stolid smile or a frown, depending on which end of the room you looked at it from. La-
ila thought of all the times she had tied a rag around the end of a broom and cleaned 
cobwebs from this ceiling. The three times she and Mariam had put coats of white paint 
on it. The crack wasn't a smile any longer now but a mocking leer. And it was receding. 
The ceiling was shrinking, lifting, rising away from her and toward some hazy dimness 
beyond. It rose until it shrank to the size of a postage stamp, white and bright, everyt-
hing around it blotted out by the shuttered darkness. In the dark, Rasheed's face was like 
a sunspot. 
 
  Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars exploding. Bi-
zarre geometric forms in the light, worms, egg-shaped things, moving up and down, si-
deways, melting into each other, breaking apart, morphing into something else, then fa-
ding, giving way to blackness. 
 
  Voices muffled and distant. 
 
  Behind the lids of her eyes, her children's faces flared and fizzled. Aziza, alert and bur-
dened, knowing, secretive. Zalmai, looking up at his father with quivering eagerness. 
 
  It would end like this, then, Laila thought. What a pitiable end-But then the darkness 
began to lift. She had a sensation of rising up, of being hoisted up. The ceiling slowly 
came back, expanded, and now Laila could make out the crack again, and it was the sa-
me old dull smile. 

---

 
  She was being shaken.Are you all right? Answer me, are you all right? Mariam's face, 
engraved with scratches, heavy with worry, hovered over Laila. 
 
  Laila tried a breath. It burned her throat. She tried another. It burned even more this ti-
me, and not just her throat but her chest too. And then she was coughing, and wheezing. 
Gasping. But breathing. Her good ear rang. 
 
* * * 
 
  The first thing she saw when she sat up was Rasheed. He was lying on his back, sta-
ring at nothing with an unblinking, fish-mouthed expression. A bit of foam, lightly pink, 
had dribbled from his mouth down his cheek. The front of his pants was wet. She saw 
his forehead. 
 
  Then she saw the shovel. 
 
  A groan came out of her. "Oh," she said, tremulously, barely able to make a voice, 
"Oh, Mariam." 
 
* * * 
 
  Laila paced, moaning and banging her hands together, as Mariam sat near Rasheed, her 
hands in her lap, calm and motionless. Mariam didn't say anything for a long time. 
 
  Laila's mouth was dry, and she was stammering her words, trembling all over. She wil-
led herself not to look at Rasheed, at the rictus of his mouth, his open eyes, at the blood 
congealing in the hollow of his collarbone. 
 
  Outside, the light was fading, the shadows deepening. Mariam's face looked thin and 
drawn in this light, but she did not appear agitated or frightened, merely preoccupied, 
thoughtful, so self-possessed that when a fly landed on her chin she paid it no attention. 
She just sat there with her bottom lip stuck out, the way she did when she was absorbed 
in thought. 
 
  At last, she said, "Sit down, Laila jo." 
  Laila did, obediently. 
 
  "We have to move him. Zalmai can't see this." 
 
* * * 
 
  Mariam fished the bedroom key from Rasheed's pocket before they wrapped him in a 
bedsheet. Laila took him by the legs, behind the knees, and Mariam grabbed him under 
the arms. They tried lifting him, but he was too heavy, and they ended up dragging him. 
As they were passing through the front door and into the yard, Rasheed's foot caught 
against the doorframe and his leg bent sideways. They had to back up and try again, and 
then something thumped upstairs and Laila's legs gave out. She dropped Rasheed. She 
slumped to the ground, sobbing and shaking, and Mariam had to stand over her, hands 
on hips, and say that she had to get herself together. That what was done was done-

---

After a time, Laila got up and wiped her face, and they carried Rasheed to the yard wit-
hout further incident. They took him into the toolshed. They left him behind the work-
bench, on which sat his saw, some nails, a chisel, a hammer, and a cylindrical block of 
wood that Rasheed had been meaning to carve into something for Zalmai but had never 
gotten around to doing-Then they went back inside. Mariam washed her hands, ran 
them through her hair, took a deep breath and let it out. "Let me tend to your wounds 
now. You're all cut up, Laila jo." 
 
* * * 
 
  Mahiam said she needed the night to think things over. To get her thoughts together 
and devise a plan. 
 
  "There is a way," she said, "and I just have to find it." 
 
  "We have to leave! We can't stay here," Laila said in a broken, husky voice. She tho-
ught suddenly of the sound the shovel must have made striking Rasheed's head, and her 
body pitched forward. Bile surged up her chest. 
 
  Mariam  waited  patiently  until Laila felt better. Then she had Laila lie down, and, as 
she stroked Laila's hair in her lap, Mariam said not to worry, that everything would be 
fine. She said that they would leave-she, Laila, the children, and Tariq too. They would 
leave this house, and this unforgiving city. They would leave this despondent country 
altogether, Mariam said, running her hands through Laila's hair, and go someplace re-
mote and safe where no one would find them, where they could disown their past and 
find shelter. 
  "Somewhere with trees," she said. "Yes. Lots of trees." 
 
  They would live in a small house on the edge of some town they'd never heard of, Ma-
riam said, or in a remote village where the road was narrow and unpaved but lined with 
all manner of plants and shrubs. Maybe there would be a path to take, a path that led to 
a grass field where the children could play, or maybe a graveled road that would take 
them to a clear blue lake where trout swam and reeds poked through the surface. They 
would raise sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together and teach the 
children to read. They would make new lives for themselves-peaceful, solitary lives-and 
there the weight of all that they'd endured would lift from them, and they would be de-
serving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find. 
 
  Laila murmured encouragingly. It would be an existence rife with difficulties, she saw, 
but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one wo-
uld a family heirloom. Mariam's soft maternal voice went on, brought a degree of com-
fort to her.There is a way, she'd said, and, in the morning, Mariam would tell her what 
needed to be done and they would do it, and maybe by tomorrow this time they would 
be on their way to this new life, a life luxuriant with possibility and joy and welcomed 
difficulties. Laila was grateful that Mariam was in charge, unclouded and sober, able to 
think this through for both of them. Her own mind was a jittery, muddled mess. 
 
  Mariam got up. "You should tend to your son now." On her was the most stricken exp-
ression Laila had ever seen on a human face. 
 

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