A Thousand Splendid Suns

old Khyber Restaurant.
Rasheed used his size to push and shove past the onlookers, and led
them to where someone was speaking through a loudspeaker.
When Aziza saw, she let out a shriek and buried her face in Mariam's
burqa.
The loudspeaker voice belonged to a slender, bearded young man who
wore a black turban. He was standing on some sort of makeshift
scaffolding. In his free hand, he held a rocket launcher. Beside him, two
bloodied men hung from ropes tied to traffic-light posts. Their clothes
had been shredded. Their bloated faces had turned purple-blue.
"I know him," Mariam said, "the one on the left."
A young woman in front of Mariam turned around and said it was
Najibullah. The other man was his brother. Mariam remembered
Najibullah's plump, mustachioed face, beaming from billboards and
storefront windows during the Soviet years.
She would later hear that the Taliban had dragged Najibullah from his
sanctuary at the UN headquarters near Darulaman Palace. That they had
tortured him for hours, then tied his legs to a truck and dragged his
lifeless body through the streets.
"He killed many, many Muslims!" the young Talib was shouting through
the loudspeaker. He spoke Farsi with a Pashto accent, then would switch
to Pashto. He punctuated his words by pointing to the corpses with his
weapon. "His crimes are known to everybody. He was a communist and a
kqfir This is what we do with infidels who commit crimes against Islam!"
Rasheed was smirking.
In Mariam's arms, Aziza began to cry.
* * *
The following day, Kabul was overrun by trucks. In Khair khana, in