A Thousand Splendid Suns

On every page were women, beautiful women, who wore no shirts, no
trousers, no socks or underpants. They wore nothing at all. They lay in
beds amid tumbled sheets and gazed back at Mariam with half-lidded
eyes. In most of the pictures, their legs were apart, and Mariam had a
full view of the dark place between. In some, the women were prostrated
as if-God forbid this thought-in sujda for prayer. They looked back over
their shoulders with a look of bored contempt.
Mariam quickly put the magazine back where she'd found it. She felt
drugged. Who were these women? How could they allow themselves to
be photographed this way? Her stomach revolted with distaste. Was this
what he did then, those nights that he did not visit her room? Had she
been a disappointment to him in this particular regard? And what about
all his talk of honor and propriety, his disapproval of the female
customers, who, after all, were only showing him their feet to get fitted
for shoes? A woman's face, he'd said, is her husband's business only.
Surely the women on these pages had husbands, some of them must. At
the least, they had brothers. If so, why did Rasheed insist that she cover
when he thought nothing of looking at the private areas of other men's
wives and sisters?
Mariam sat on his bed, embarrassed and confused She cupped her face
with her hands and closed her eyes. She breathed and breathed until she
felt calmer.
Slowly, an explanation presented itself He was a man, after all, living
alone for years before she had moved in. His needs differed from hers.
For her, all these months later, their coupling was still an exercise in
tolerating pain. His appetite, on the other hand, was fierce, sometimes