A Thousand Splendid Suns

azan rang out, and then the morning sun was falling flat on the rooftops
and the roosters were crowing and nothing out of the ordinary happened
She could hear him now in the bathroom, the tapping of his razor
against the edge of the basin. Then downstairs, moving about, heating
tea. The keys jingled. Now he was crossing the yard, walking his bicycle.
Laila peered through a crack in the living-room curtains. She watched
him pedal away, a big man on a small bicycle, the morning sun glaring
off the handlebars.
"Laila?"
Mariam was in the doorway. Laila could tell that she hadn't slept either.
She wondered if Mariam too had been seized all night by bouts of
euphoria and attacks of mouth-drying anxiety.
"We'll leave in half an hour," Laila said.
* * *
In the backseat of the taxi, they did not speak. Aziza sat on Mariam's
lap, clutching her doll, looking with wide-eyed puzzlement at the city
speeding by.
"Ona!" she cried, pointing to a group of little girls skipping rope.
"Mayam! Ona"
Everywhere she looked, Laila saw Rasheed. She spotted him coming
out of barbershops with windows the color of coal dust, from tiny booths
that sold partridges, from battered, open-fronted stores packed with old
tires piled from floor to ceiling.
She sank lower in her seat.
Beside her, Mariam was muttering a prayer. Laila wished she could see
her face, but Mariam was in burqa-they both were-and all she could see
was the glitter of her eyes through the grid.
This was Laila's first time out of the house in weeks, discounting the