A Thousand Splendid Suns

Ever cared to visit the real Afghanistan, the south, the east, along the
tribal border with Pakistan? No? I have. And I can tell you that there are
many places in this country that have always lived this way, or close
enough anyhow. Not that you would know."
"I refuse to believe it," Laila said "They're not serious."
"What the Taliban did to Najibullah looked serious to me," Rasheed
said. "Wouldn't you agree?"
"He was a communist! He was the head of the Secret Police."
Rasheed laughed.
Mariam heard the answer in his laugh: that in the eyes of the Taliban,
being a communist and the leader of the dreaded KHAD made Najibullah
only slightly more contemptible than a woman.
38.
Laila
JLaila was glad, when the Taliban went to work, that Babi wasn't around
to witness it. It would have crippled him.
Men wielding pickaxes swarmed the dilapidated Kabul Museum and
smashed pre-Islamic statues to rubble-that is, those that hadn't already
been looted by the Mujahideen. The university was shut down and its
students sent home. Paintings were ripped from walls, shredded with
blades. Television screens were kicked in. Books, except the Koran, were
burned in heaps, the stores that sold them closed down. The poems of
Khalili, Pajwak, Ansari, Haji Dehqan, Ashraqi, Beytaab, Hafez, Jami,
Nizami, Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, and more went up in smoke.
Laila heard of men being dragged from the streets, accused of skipping
namaz, and shoved into mosques. She learned that Marco Polo
Restaurant, near Chicken Street, had been turned into an interrogation
center. Sometimes screaming was heard from behind its black-painted