A Thousand Splendid Suns

mother, feeling nauseated and homesick.
It was with the sun's westward crawl that Mariam's anxiety really
ratcheted up. Her teeth rattled when she thought of the night, the time
when Rasheed might at last decide to do to her what husbands did to
their wives. She lay in bed, wracked with nerves, as he ate alone
downstairs.
He always stopped by her room and poked his head in.
"You can't be sleeping already. It's only seven. Are you awake? Answer
me. Come, now."
He pressed on until, from the dark, Mariam said, "I'm here."
He slid down and sat in her doorway. From her bed, she could see his
large-framed body, his long legs, the smoke swirling around his
hook-nosed profile, the amber tip of his cigarette brightening and
dimming.
He told her about his day. A pair of loafers he had custom-made for the
deputy foreign minister-who, Rasheed said, bought shoes only from him.
An order for sandals from a Polish diplomat and his wife. He told her of
the superstitions people had about shoes: that putting them on a bed
invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on
the left shoe first.
"Unless it was done unintentionally on a Friday," he said. "And did you
know it's supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together and hang
them from a nail?"