A Thousand Splendid Suns

* * *
On the third morning, Laila began moving the piles of things to the yard
and depositing them by the front door. They would fetch a taxi then and
take it all to a pawnshop.
Laila kept shuffling between the house and the yard, back and forth,
carrying stacks of clothes and dishes and box after box of Babi's books.
She should have been exhausted by noon, when the mound of belongings
by the front door had grown waist high. But, with each trip, she knew
that she was that much closer to seeing Tariq again, and, with each trip,
her legs became more sprightly, her arms more tireless.
"We're going to need a big taxi."
Laila looked up. It was Mammy calling down from her bedroom
upstairs. She was leaning out the window, resting her elbows on the sill.
The sun, bright and warm, caught in her graying hair, shone on her
drawn, thin face. Mammy was wearing the same cobalt blue dress she
had worn the day of the lunch party four months earlier, a youthful dress
meant for a young woman, but, for a moment, Mammy looked to Laila
like an old woman. An old woman with stringy arms and sunken temples
and slow eyes rimmed by darkened circles of weariness, an altogether
different creature from the plump, round-faced woman beaming radiantly
from those grainy wedding photos.
"Two big taxis," Laila said.
She could see Babi too, in the living room stacking boxes of books atop
each other.
"Come up when you're done with those," Mammy said. "We'll sit down
for lunch. Boiled eggs and leftover beans."
"My favorite," Laila said.