A Thousand Splendid Suns

"It would make me feel better, I think."
"Thm you do it," he said sharply. "I've already buried one son. I won't
bury another.
Now, if you don't mind, I'm trying to listen."
He turned up the volume again, leaned his head back and closed his
eyes.
One sunny morning that week, Mariam picked a spot in the yard and
dug a hole.
"In the name of Allah and with Allah, and in the name of the messenger
of Allah upon whom be the blessings and peace of Allah," she said under
her breath as her shovel bit into the ground. She placed the suede coat
that Rasheed had bought for the baby in the hole and shoveled dirt over
it.
"You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass
into the night, and You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring
forth the dead from the living, and You give sustenance to whom You
please without measure."
She patted the dirt with the back of the shovel. She squatted by the
mound, closed her eyes.
Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me.
15.
April 1978