A Thousand Splendid Suns

Abdul Sharif set his glass on the table.
"That's where I met your friend, Mohammad Tariq Walizai."
Laila's heart sped up. Tariq in a hospital? A special unit? For really sick
people?
She swallowed dry spit. Shifted on her chair. She had to steel herself. If
she didn't, she feared she would come unhinged. She diverted her
thoughts from hospitals and special units and thought instead about the
fact that she hadn't heard Tariq called by his full name since the two of
them had enrolled in a Farsi winter course years back. The teacher would
call roll after the bell and say his name like that-Mohammad Tariq
Walizai. It had struck her as comically officious then, hearing his full
name uttered.
"What happened to him I heard from one of the nurses," Abdul Sharif
resumed, tapping his chest with a fist as if to ease the passage of the
pill. "With all the time I've spent in Peshawar, I've become pretty
proficient in Urdu. Anyway, what I gathered was that your friend was in a
lorry full of refugees, twenty-three of them, all headed for Peshawar.
Near the border, they were caught in cross fire. A rocket hit the lorry.
Probably a stray, but you never know with these people, you never
know. There were only six survivors, all of them admitted to the same
unit. Three died within twenty-four hours. Two of them lived-sisters, as I
understood it-and had been discharged.
Your friend Mr. Walizai was the last. He'd been there for almost three
weeks by the time I arrived."
So he was alive. But how badly had they hurt him? Laila wondered
frantically. How badly? Badly enough to be put in a special unit,
evidently. Laila was aware that she had started sweating, that her face
felt hot. She tried to think of something else, something pleasant, like
the trip to Bamiyan to see the Buddhas with Tariq and Babi. But instead