A Thousand Splendid Suns

On April 17,1978, the year Mariam turned nineteen, a man named Mir
Akbar Khyber was found murdered Two days later, there was a large
demonstration in Kabul. Everyone in the neighborhood was in the streets
talking about it. Through the window, Mariam saw neighbors milling
about, chatting excitedly, transistor radios pressed to their ears. She saw
Fariba leaning against the wall of her house, talking with a woman who
was new to Deh-Mazang. Fariba was smiling, and her palms were pressed
against the swell of her pregnant belly. The other woman, whose name
escaped Mariam, looked older than Fariba, and her hair had an odd
purple tint to it. She was holding a little boy's hand. Mariam knew the
boy's name was Tariq, because she had heard this woman on the street
call after him by that name.
Mariam and Rasheed didn't join the neighbors. They listened in on the
radio as some ten thousand people poured into the streets and marched
up and down Kabul's government district. Rasheed said that Mir Akbar
Khyber had been a prominent communist, and that his supporters were
blaming the murder on President Daoud Khan's government. He didn't
look at her when he said this. These days, he never did anymore, and
Mariam wasn't ever sure if she was being spoken to.
"What's a communist?" she asked.
Rasheed snorted, and raised both eyebrows. "You don't know what a
communist is? Such a simple thing.
Everyone knows. It's common knowledge. You don't…Bah. I don't know
why I'm surprised." Then he crossed his ankles on the table and