A Thousand Splendid Suns

chest with a flower vase on it. There were shelves along the walls, with
framed pictures of people Mariam did not recognize. On one of the
shelves, Mariam saw a collection of identical wooden dolls, arranged in a
line in order of decreasing size.
Jalil saw her looking. "Matryoshka dolls. I got them in Moscow. You can
play with them, if you want. No one will mind."
Mariam sat down on the bed.
"Is there anything you want?" Jalil said.
Mariam lay down. Closed her eyes. After a while, she heard him softly
shut the door.
* * *
Except for "when she had to use the bathroom down the hall, Mariam
stayed in the room. The girl with the tattoo, the one who had opened the
gates to her, brought her meals on a tray: lamb kebab, sabzi, aush soup.
Most of it went uneaten. Jalil came by several times a day, sat on the
bed beside her, asked her if she was all right.
"You could eat downstairs with the rest of us," he said, but without
much conviction. He understood a little too readily when Mariam said she
preferred to eat alone.
From the window, Mariam watched impassively what she had wondered
about and longed to see for most of her life: the comings and goings of
Jalil's daily life. Servants rushed in and out of the front gates. A gardener