A Thousand Splendid Suns

* * *
Later, after they'd eaten a lunch of boiled eggs and potatoes with
bread, Tariq napped beneath a tree on the banks of a gurgling stream.
He slept with his coat neatly folded into a pillow, his hands crossed on his
chest. The driver went to the village to buy almonds. Babi sat at the foot
of a thick-trunked acacia tree reading a paperback. Laila knew the book;
he'd read it to her once. It told the story of an old fisherman named
Santiago who catches an enormous fish. But by the time he sails his boat
to safety, there is nothing left of his prize fish; the sharks have torn it to
pieces.
Laila sat on the edge of the stream, dipping her feet into the cool
water. Overhead, mosquitoes hummed and cottonwood seeds danced. A
dragonfly whirred nearby. Laila watched its wings catch glints of sunlight
as it buzzed from one blade of grass to another. They flashed purple,
then green, orange. Across the stream, a group of local Hazara boys
were picking patties of dried cow dung from the ground and stowing
them into burlap sacks tethered to their backs. Somewhere, a donkey
brayed. A generator sputtered to life.
Laila thought again about Babi's little dream. Somewhere near the sea
There was something she hadn't told Babi up there atop the Buddha:
that, in one important way, she was glad they couldn't go. She would
miss Giti and her pinch-faced earnestness, yes, and Hasina too, with her
wicked laugh and reckless clowning around But, mostly, Laila
remembered all too well the inescapable drudgery of those four weeks
without Tariq when he had gone to Ghazni. She remembered all too well