A Thousand Splendid Suns

* * *
Laila would remember the muted ceremony in bits and fragments. The
cream-colored stripes of Rasheed's suit. The sharp smell of his hair
spray. The small shaving nick just above his Adam's apple. The rough
pads of his tobacco-stained fingers when he slid the ring on her. The pen.
Its not working. The search for a new pen. The contract. The signing, his
sure-handed, hers quavering. The prayers. Noticing, in the mirror, that
Rasheed had trimmed his eyebrows.
And, somewhere in the room, Mariam watching. The air choking with
her disapproval.
Laila could not bring herself to meet the older woman's gaze.
* * *
Lying beneath his cold sheets that night, she watched him pull the
curtains shut. She was shaking even before his fingers worked her shirt
buttons, tugged at the drawstring of her trousers. He was agitated. His
fingers fumbled endlessly with his own shirt, with undoing his belt. Laila
had a full view of his sagging breasts, his protruding belly button, the
small blue vein in the center of it, the tufts of thick white hair on his
chest, his shoulders, and upper arms. She felt his eyes crawling all over
her.
"God help me, I think I love you," he said-Through chattering teeth, she
asked him to turn out the lights.
Later, when she was sure that he was asleep, Laila quietly reached
beneath the mattress for the knife she had hidden there earlier. With it,
she punctured the pad of her index finger. Then she lifted the blanket
and let her finger bleed on the sheets where they had lain together.