A Thousand Splendid Suns

he's siding with Massoud. And Hekmatyar supports the Hazaras for now."
As for the unpredictable Uzbek commander Dostum, Rasheed said no
one knew where he would stand. Dostum had fought the Soviets in the
1980s alongside the Mujahideen but had defected and joined Najibullah's
communist puppet regime after the Soviets had left. He had even earned
a medal, presented by Najibullah himself, before defecting once again
and returning to the Mujahideen's side. For the time being, Rasheed said,
Dostum was supporting Massoud.
In Kabul, particularly in western Kabul, fires raged, and black palls of
smoke mushroomed over snow-clad buildings. Embassies closed down.
Schools collapsed In hospital waiting rooms, Rasheed said, the wounded
were bleeding to death. In operating rooms, limbs were being amputated
without anesthesia.
"But don't worry," he said. "You're safe with me, my flower, my gul.
Anyone tries to harm you, I'll rip out their liver and make them eat it."
That winter, everywhere Laila turned, walls blocked her way. She
thought longingly of the wide-open skies of her childhood, of her days of
going to buzkashi tournaments with Babi and shopping at Mandaii with
Mammy, of her days of running free in the streets and gossiping about
boys with Giti and Hasina. Her days of sitting with Tariq in a bed of
clover on the banks of a stream somewhere, trading riddles and candy,
watching the sun go down.
But thinking of Tariq was treacherous because, before she could stop,
she saw him lying on a bed, far from home, tubes piercing his burned
body. Like the bile that kept burning her throat these days, a deep,
paralyzing grief would come rising up Laila's chest. Her legs would turn
to water. She would have to hold on to something.
Laila passed that winter of 1992 sweeping the house, scrubbing the
pumpkin-colored walls of the bedroom she shared with Rasheed, washing