A Thousand Splendid Suns

their livestock. When they found neither, when their goats and sheep and
cows died off, they came to Kabul They took to the Kareh-Ariana hillside,
living in makeshift slums, packed in huts, fifteen or twenty at a time.
That was also the summer of Titanic, the summer that Mariam and Aziza
were a tangle of limbs, rolling and giggling, Aziza insisting she get to be
Jack.
"Quiet, Aziza jo."
"Jack! Say my name, Khala Mariam. Say it. Jack!" "Your father will be
angry if you wake him."
"Jack! And you're Rose."
It would end with Mariam on her back, surrendering, agreeing again to
be Rose. "Fine, you be Jack," she relented "You die young, and I get to
live to a ripe old age."
"Yes, but I die a hero," said Aziza, "while you, Rose, you spend your
entire, miserable life longing for me." Then, straddling Mariam's chest,
she'd announce, "Now we must kiss!" Mariam whipped her head side to
side, and Aziza, delighted with her own scandalous behavior, cackled
through puckered lips.
Sometimes Zalmai would saunter in and watch this game. What did he
get to be, he asked
"You can be the iceberg," said Aziza.
That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated
copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After
curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down
the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of
the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the
children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV
from behind the toolshed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts
pinned over the windows.