A Thousand Splendid Suns

Laila
Laila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and
foreboding eyes. She was dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence
beyond the face, of her fists raining down. Above them was the ceiling,
and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark markings of mold
spreading across it like ink on a dress, the crack in the plaster that was a
stolid smile or a frown, depending on which end of the room you looked
at it from. Laila thought of all the times she had tied a rag around the
end of a broom and cleaned cobwebs from this ceiling. The three times
she and Mariam had put coats of white paint on it. The crack wasn't a
smile any longer now but a mocking leer. And it was receding. The
ceiling was shrinking, lifting, rising away from her and toward some hazy
dimness beyond. It rose until it shrank to the size of a postage stamp,
white and bright, everything around it blotted out by the shuttered
darkness. In the dark, Rasheed's face was like a sunspot.
Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars
exploding. Bizarre geometric forms in the light, worms, egg-shaped
things, moving up and down, sideways, melting into each other, breaking
apart, morphing into something else, then fading, giving way to
blackness.
Voices muffled and distant.
Behind the lids of her eyes, her children's faces flared and fizzled.
Aziza, alert and burdened, knowing, secretive. Zalmai, looking up at his
father with quivering eagerness.