A Thousand Splendid Suns

to the north of the city, Char-suq Bazaar and the ruins of Alexander the
Great's old citadel to the south. She could make out the minarets in the
distance, like the dusty fingers of giants, and the streets that she
imagined were milling with people, carts, mules. She saw swallows
swooping and circling overhead. She was envious of these birds. They
had been to Herat. They had flown over its mosques, its bazaars. Maybe
they had landed on the walls of Jalil's home, on the front steps of his
cinema.
She picked up ten pebbles and arranged them vertically, in three
columns. This was a game that she played privately from time to time
when Nana wasn't looking. She put four pebbles in the first column, for
Khadija's children, three for Afsoon's, and three in the third column for
Nargis's children. Then she added a fourth column. A solitary, eleventh
pebble.
* * *
The next morning, Mariam wore a cream-colored dress that fell to her
knees, cotton trousers, and a green hijab over her hair. She agonized a
bit over the hijab, its being green and not matching the dress, but it
would have to do-moths had eaten holes into her white one.
She checked the clock. It was an old hand-wound clock with black
numbers on a mint green face, a present from Mullah Faizullah. It was
nine o'clock. She wondered where Nana was. She thought about going
outside and looking for her, but she dreaded the confrontation, the
aggrieved looks. Nana would accuse her of betrayal. She would mock her
for her mistaken ambitions.