A Thousand Splendid Suns

country that will hold me accountable for what I will do. To Mariam first,
then to her, and you last. I'll make you watch. You understand me? I'll
make you watch."
And, with that, he left the room. But not before delivering a kick to the
flank that would have Laila pissing blood for days.
37.
Madam SEPTEMBER 1996
Iwo and a half years later, Mariam awoke on the morning of September
27 to the sounds of shouting and
whistling, firecrackers and music. She ran to the living room, found
Laila already at the window, Aziza mounted on her shoulders. Laila
turned and smiled.
"The Taliban are here," she said.
* * *
Mariam had first heard of the Taliban two years before, in October
1994, when Rasheed had brought home news that they had overthrown
the warlords in Kandahar and taken the city. They were a guerrilla force,
he said, made up of young Pashtun men whose families had fled to
Pakistan during the war against the Soviets. Most of them had been
raised-some even born-in refugee camps along the Pakistani border, and
in Pakistani madrasas, where they were schooled in Shari'a by mullahs.
Their leader was a mysterious, illiterate, one-eyed recluse named Mullah
Omar, who, Rasheed said with some amusement, called himself
Ameer-ul-Mumineen y
Leader of the Faithful.
"It's true that these boys have no risha, no roots," Rasheed said,
addressing neither Mariam nor Laila. Ever since the failed escape, two