A Thousand Splendid Suns

"I don't want to be a mozahem."
"Imposing?" Tariq's mother said. "We leave for a couple of weeks and
you turn polite on us?"
"All right, I'll stay," Laila said, blushing and smiling.
"It's settled, then."
The truth was, Laila loved eating meals at Tariq's house as much as she
disliked eating them at hers. At Tariq's, there was no eating alone; they
always ate as a family. Laila liked the violet plastic drinking glasses they
used and the quarter lemon that always floated in the water pitcher. She
liked how they started each meal with a bowl of fresh yogurt, how they
squeezed sour oranges on everything, even their yogurt, and how they
made small, harmless jokes at each other's expense.
Over meals, conversation always flowed. Though Tariq and his parents
were ethnic Pashtuns, they spoke Farsi when Laila was around for her
benefit, even though Laila more or less understood their native Pashto,
having learned it in school. Babi said that there were tensions between
their people-the Tajiks, who were a minority, and Tariq's people, the
Pashtuns, who were the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Tajiks have
always felt slighted, Babi had said. Pashiun kings ruled this country for
almost two hundred and'fifty years, Laila, and Tajiks for all of nine
months, back in 1929.
And you, Laila had asked, do you feel slighted, Babi?
Babi had wiped his eyeglasses clean with the hem of his shirt. To me,