A Thousand Splendid Suns

the one with the self-satisfied, scornful demeanor, was the leader. The
youngest was also the quietest, the one who seemed reluctant to
wholeheartedly embrace his friends' air of impunity. He had taken to
smiling and tipping his head salaam when Mariam passed by. When he
did, some of his surface smugness dropped away, and Mariam caught a
glint of humility as yet uncorrupted.
Then one morning rockets slammed into the house. They were rumored
later to have been fired by the Hazaras of Wahdat. For some time,
neighbors kept finding bits and pieces of the boys.
"They had it coming," said Rasheed.
* * *
The girl was extraordinarily lucky, Mariam thought, to escape with
relatively minor injuries, considering the rocket had turned her house
into smoking rubble. And so, slowly, the girl got better. She began to
eat more, began to brush her own hair. She took baths on her own. She
began taking her meals downstairs, with Mariam and Rasheed.
But then some memory would rise, unbidden, and there would be stony
silences or spells of churlishness. Withdrawals and collapses. Wan looks.
Nightmares and sudden attacks of grief. Retching.
And sometimes regrets.
"I shouldn't even be here," she said one day.
Mariam was changing the sheets. The girl watched from the floor, her
bruised knees drawn up against her chest.
"My father wanted to take out the boxes. The books. He said they were
too heavy for me. But I wouldn't let him. I was so eager. I should have
been the one inside the house when it happened."
Mariam snapped the clean sheet and let it settle on the bed She looked