A Thousand Splendid Suns

screen door creak open and slam shut, she lowered Aziza to the ground
and peeked out the window. She saw Rasheed leading Mariam across the
yard by the nape of her neck. Mariam was barefoot and doubled over.
There was blood on his hands, blood on Mariam's face, her hair, down
her neck and back. Her shirt had been ripped down the front.
"I'm so sorry, Mariam," Laila cried into the glass.
She watched him shove Mariam into the toolshed. He went in, came out
with a hammer and several long planks of wood. He shut the double
doors to the shed, took a key from his pocket, worked the padlock. He
tested the doors, then went around the back of the shed and fetched a
ladder.
A few minutes later, his face was in Laila's window, nails tucked in the
comer of his mouth. His hair was disheveled. There was a swath of blood
on his brow. At the sight of him, Aziza shrieked and buried her face in
Laila's armpit.
Rasheed began nailing boards across the window.
* * *
The dark was total, impenetrable and constant, without layer or
texture. Rasheed had filled the cracks between the boards with
something, put a large and immovable object at the foot of the door so
no light came from under it. Something had been stuffed in the keyhole.
Laila found it impossible to tell the passage of time with her eyes, so
she did it with her good ear. Azan and crowing roosters signaled
morning. The sounds of plates clanking in the kitchen downstairs, the
radio playing, meant evening.
The first day, they groped and fumbled for each other in the dark. Laila
couldn't see Aziza when she cried, when she went crawling.
"Aishee," Aziza mewled. "Aishee."