A Thousand Splendid Suns

crying for him upstairs when you did it.
"I am tired and dying, and I want to be merciful. I want to forgive you.
But when God summons me and says, But it wasn't for you to forgive,
Mullah, what shall I say?"
His companions nodded and looked at him with admiration.
"Something tells me you are not a wicked woman, hamshira But you
have done a wicked thing. And you must pay for this thing you have
done. Shari'a is not vague on this matter. It says I must send you where
I will soon join you myself.
"Do you understand, hamshira?"
Mariam looked down at her hands. She said she did.
"May Allah forgive you."
Before they led her out, Mariam was given a document, told to sign
beneath her statement and the mullah's sentence. As the three Taliban
watched, Mariam wrote it out, her name-the meem, the reh, theyah, and
the meem-remembering the last time she'd signed her name to a
document, twenty-seven years before, at Jalil's table, beneath the
watchful gaze of another mullah.
* * *
Mahiam spent ten days in prison. She sat by the window of the cell,
watched the prison life in the courtyard. When the summer winds blew,
she watched bits of scrap paper ride the currents in a frenzied, corkscrew
motion, as they were hurled this way and that, high above the prison