A Thousand Splendid Suns

shapes.
Then there was blood and she was screaming.
The sound of feet now, slapping against the wet cobblestones. Faces
peering at her through the steam. Tongues clucking.
Later that night, in bed, Fariba told her husband that when she'd heard
the cry and rushed over she'd found Rasheed's wife shriveled into a
corner, hugging her knees, a pool of blood at her feet.
"You could hear the poor girl's teeth rattling, Hakim, she was shivering
so hard."
When Mariam had seen her, Fariba said, she had asked in a high,
supplicating voice, It's normal, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn 'i it normal?
* * *
Another bus ride with Rasheed. Snowing again. Falling thick this time. It
was piling in heaps on sidewalks, on roofs, gathering in patches on the
bark of straggly trees. Mariam watched the merchants plowing snow from
their storefronts- A group of boys was chasing a black dog. They waved
sportively at the bus. Mariam looked over to Rasheed. His eyes were
closed He wasn't humming. Mariam reclined her head and closed her
eyes too. She wanted out of her cold socks, out of the damp wool
sweater that was prickly against her skin. She wanted away from this
bus.
At the house, Rasheed covered her with a quilt when she lay on the
couch, but there was a stiff, perfunctory air about this gesture.