A Thousand Splendid Suns

beside him. "No. Must be new."
"That's what I told Fariba." He looked shaken, reduced, as he always
did after Mammy was through with him. "She says it's been letting in
bees."
Laila's heart went out to him. Babi was a small man, with narrow
shoulders and slim, delicate hands, almost like a woman's. At night,
when Laila walked into Babi's room, she always found the downward
profile of his face burrowing into a book, his glasses perched on the tip of
his nose. Sometimes he didn't even notice that she was there. When he
did, he marked his page, smiled a close-lipped, companionable smile.
Babi knew most of Rumi's and Hafez's ghazals by heart. He could speak
at length about the struggle between Britain and czarist Russia over
Afghanistan. He knew the difference between a stalactite and a
stalagmite, and could tell you that the distance between the earth and
the sun was the same as going from Kabul to Ghazni one and a half
million times. But if Laila needed the lid of a candy jar forced open, she
had to go to Mammy, which felt like a betrayal. Ordinary tools befuddled
Babi. On his watch, squeaky door hinges never got oiled. Ceilings went
on leaking after he plugged them. Mold thrived defiantly in kitchen
cabinets. Mammy said that before he left with Noor to join the jihad
against the Soviets, back in 1980, it was Ahmad who had dutifully and
competently minded these things.
"But if you have a book that needs urgent reading," she said, "then
Hakim is your man."
Still, Laila could not shake the feeling that at one time, before Ahmad
and Noor had gone to war against the Soviets-before Babi had let them