A Thousand Splendid Suns

"You're not going to get on this bus. You might as well accept that. You
will follow me. Unless you want your little girl to see you dragged."
As they were led to a truck, Laila looked over her shoulder and spotted
Wakil's boy at the rear of the bus. The boy saw her too and waved
happily.
* * *
At the police station at Torabaz Khan Intersection, they were made to
sit apart, on opposite ends of a long, crowded corridor, between them a
desk, behind which a man smoked one cigarette after another and
clacked occasionally on a typewriter. Three hours passed this way. Aziza
tottered from Laila to Mariam, then back. She played with a paper clip
that the man at the desk gave her. She finished the crackers. Eventually,
she fell asleep in Mariam's lap.
At around three o'clock, Laila was taken to an interview room. Mariam
was made to wait with Aziza in the corridor.
The man sitting on the other side of the desk in the interview room was
in his thirties and wore civilian clothes- black suit, tie, black loafers. He
had a neatly trimmed beard, short hair, and eyebrows that met. He
stared at Laila, bouncing a pencil by the eraser end on the desk.
"We know," he began, clearing his throat and politely covering his
mouth with a fist, "that you have already told one lie today, kamshira
The young man at the station was not your cousin. He told us as much
himself. The question is whether you will tell more lies today. Personally,
I advise you against it."
"We were going to stay with my uncle," Laila said "That's the truth."
The policeman nodded. "The hamshira in the corridor, she's your
mother?"
"Yes."
"She has a Herati accent. You don't."
"She was raised in Herat, I was born here in Kabul."