A Thousand Splendid Suns

Taliban are regrouping already and will come back with a vengeance,
that the world will forget once again about Afghanistan. The lines are
from his favorite of Hafez's ghazals:
Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose
gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that's alive,
Noah is your guide in the typhoon's eye, grieve not
Laila passes beneath the sign and enters the classroom. The children
are taking their seats, flipping notebooks open, chattering- Aziza is
talking to a girl in the adjacent row. A paper airplane floats across the
room in a high arc. Someone tosses it back.
"Open your Farsi books, children," Laila says, dropping her own books
on her desk.
To a chorus of flipping pages, Laila makes her way to the curtainless
window. Through the glass, she can see the boys in the playground lining
up to practice their free throws. Above them, over the mountains, the
morning sun is rising. It catches the metallic rim of the basketball hoop,
the chain link of the tire swings, the whistle hanging around Zaman's
neck, his new, unchipped spectacles. Laila flattens her palms against the
warm glass panes. Closes her eyes. She lets the sunlight fall on her
cheeks, her eyelids, her brow.
When they first came back to Kabul, it distressed Laila that she didn't
know where the Taliban had buried Mariam. She wished she could visit
Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But Laila
sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far. She is here, in
these walls they've repainted, in the trees they've planted, in the