A Thousand Splendid Suns

They "went our that day, the four of them, Rasheed leading them from
one bus to the next, to greet their new world, their new leaders. In every
battered neighborhood, Mariam found people materializing from the
rubble and moving into the streets. She saw an old woman wasting
handfuls of rice, tossing it at passersby, a drooping, toothless smile on
her face. Two men were hugging by the remains of a gutted building, in
the sky above them the whistle, hiss, and pop of a few firecrackers set
off by boys perched on rooftops. The national anthem played on cassette
decks, competing with the honking of cars.
"Look, Mayam!" Aziza pointed to a group of boys running down Jadeh
Maywand. They were pounding their fists into the air and dragging rusty
cans tied to strings. They were yelling that Massoud and Rabbani had
withdrawn from Kabul.
Everywhere, there were shouts: Ailah-u-akbar!
Mariam saw a bedsheet hanging from a window on Jadeh Maywand. On
it, someone had painted three words in big, black letters: zendabaad
taliban! Long live the Taliban!
As they walked the streets, Mariam spotted more signs-painted on
windows, nailed to doors, billowing from car antennas-that proclaimed
the same.
* * *
Mariam sawher first of the Taliban later that day, at Pashtunistan
Square, with Rasheed, Laila, and Aziza. A melee of people had gathered
there. Mariam saw people craning their necks, people crowded around
the blue fountain in the center of the square, people perched on its dry
bed. They were trying to get a view of the end of the square, near the