A Thousand Splendid Suns

Laila
Iariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had a cousin who'd
been publicly flogged once for painting flamingos. He, the cousin, had a
seemingly incurable thing for them.
"Entire sketchbooks," Tariq said. "Dozens of oil paintings of them,
wading in lagoons, sunbathing in marshlands. Flying into sunsets too, I'm
afraid."
"Flamingos," Laila said. She looked at him sitting against the wall, his
good leg bent at the knee. She had an urge to touch him again, as she
had earlier by the front gate when she'd run to him. It embarrassed her
now to think of how she'd thrown her arms around his neck and wept into
his chest, how she'd said his name over and over in a slurring, thick
voice. Had she acted too eagerly, she wondered, too desperately? Maybe
so. But she hadn't been able to help it. And now she longed to touch him
again, to prove to herself again that he was really here, that he was not
a dream, an apparition.
"Indeed," he said. "Flamingos."
When the Taliban had found the paintings, Tariq said, they'd taken
offense at the birds' long, bare legs. After they'd tied the cousin's feet
and flogged his soles bloody, they had presented him with a choice:
Either destroy the paintings or make the flamingos decent. So the cousin
had picked up his brush and painted trousers on every last bird
"And there you have it. Islamic flamingos," Tariq said-Laughter came
up, but Laila pushed it back down. She was ashamed of her yellowing
teeth, the missing incisor-Ashamed of her withered looks and swollen lip.