A Thousand Splendid Suns

He has dark, shoulder-length hair-a common thumbing of the nose at
the departed Taliban, Laila has discovered-and some kind of scar
interrupting his mustache on the left side. There is a photo taped to the
windshield, on his side. It's of a young girl with pink cheeks and hair
parted down the middle into twin braids.
Laila tells him that she has been in Pakistan for the last year, that she
is returning to Kabul. "Deh-Mazang."
Through the windshield, she sees coppersmiths welding brass handles to
jugs, saddlemakers laying out cuts of rawhide to dry in the sun.
"Have you lived here long, brother?" she asks.
"Oh, my whole life. I was born here. I've seen everything. You
remember the uprising?"
Laila says she does, but he goes on.
"This was back in March 1979, about nine months before the Soviets
invaded. Some angry Heratis killed a few Soviet advisers, so the Soviets
sent in tanks and helicopters and pounded this place. For three days,
hamshira, they fired on the city. They collapsed buildings, destroyed one
of the minarets, killed thousands of people. Thousands. I lost two sisters
in those three days. One of them was twelve years old." He taps the
photo on his windshield. "That's her."
"I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked
by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find
a way to survive, to go on. Laila thinks of her own life and all that has
happened to her, and she is astonished that she too has survived, that