A Thousand Splendid Suns

going to wait for him."
"Look at me," he said. "Jalil Khan says that I need to take you back
now. Right now. Do you understand? Jalil Khan says so."
He opened the rear passenger door to the car. "Bia Come on," he said
softly.
"I want to see him," Mariam said. Her eyes were tearing over.
The driver sighed. "Let me take you home. Come on, dokhtarjo."
Mariam stood up and walked toward him. But then, at the last moment,
she changed direction and ran to the front gates. She felt the driver's
fingers fumbling for a grip at her shoulder. She shed him and burst
through the open gates.
In the handful of seconds that she was in Jalil's garden, Mariam's eyes
registered seeing a gleaming glass structure with plants inside it, grape
vines clinging to wooden trellises, a fishpond built with gray blocks of
stone, fruit
trees, and bushes of brightly colored flowers everywhere. Her gaze
skimmed over all of these things before they found a face, across the
garden, in an upstairs window. The face was there for only an instant, a
flash, but long enough. Long enough for Mariam to see the eyes widen,
the mouth open. Then it snapped away from view. A hand appeared and
frantically pulled at a cord. The curtains fell shut.
Then a pair of hands buried into her armpits and she was lifted off the
ground. Mariam kicked. The pebbles spilled from her pocket. Mariam
kept kicking and crying as she was carried to the car and lowered onto