A Thousand Splendid Suns

"That's it, isn't it?"
"No."
" Wallah o billah, I'll go down and teach her a lesson. Who does she
think she is, that harami, treating you-"
"No!"
He was getting up already, and she had to grab him by the forearm,
pull him back down. "Don't! No! She's been decent to me. I need a
minute, that's all. I'll be fine."
He sat beside her, stroking her neck, murmuring- His hand slowly crept
down to her back, then up again. He leaned in, flashed his crowded
teeth.
"Let's see, then," he purred, "if I can't help you feel better."
* * *
First, the trees-those that hadn't been cut down for firewood-shed their
spotty yellow-and-copper leaves. Then came the winds, cold and raw,
ripping through the city. They tore off the last of the clinging leaves, and
left the trees looking ghostly against the muted brown of the hills. The
season's first snowfall was light, the flakes no sooner fallen than melted.
Then the roads froze, and snow gathered in heaps on the rooftops, piled
halfway up frost-caked windows. With snow came the kites, once the
rulers of Kabul's winter skies, now timid trespassers in territory claimed
by streaking rockets and fighter jets.
Rasheed kept bringing home news of the war, and Laila was baffled by
the allegiances that Rasheed tried to explain to her. Sayyaf was fighting
the Hazaras, he said. The Hazaras were fighting Massoud.
"And he's fighting Hekmatyar, of course, who has the support of the
Pakistanis. Mortal enemies, those two, Massoud and Hekmatyar. Sayyaf,