As daylight steadily bleached darkness from the sky that spring morning of 1994, Laila became certain that Rasheed knew. That, any moment now, he would drag her out of bed and ask whether she'd really taken him for such a khar, such a donkey, that he wouldn't find out. But azan rang out, and then the morning sun was falling flat on the rooftops and the roosters were crowing and nothing out of the ordinary happened.
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Mariam was in the doorway. Laila could tell that she hadn't slept either. She wondered if Mariam too had been seized all night by bouts of euphoria and attacks of mouth-drying anxiety.
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She could hear him now in the bathroom, the tapping of his razor against the edge of the basin. Then downstairs, moving about, heating tea. The keys jingled. Now he was crossing the yard, walking his bicycle.
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Laila peered through a crack in the living-room curtains. She watched him pedal away, a big man on a small bicycle, the morning sun glaring off the handlebars.
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"We'll leave in half an hour," Laila said.
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"Laila?"
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Everywhere she looked, Laila saw Rasheed. She spotted him coming out of barbershops with windows the color of coal dust, from tiny booths that sold partridges, from battered, open-fronted stores packed with old tires piled from floor to ceiling.
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She sank lower in her seat.
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IN THE BACKSEAT of the taxi, they did not speak. Aziza sat on Mariam's lap, clutching her doll, looking with wide-eyed puzzlement at the city speeding by.
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"Ona!" she cried, pointing to a group of little girls skipping rope. "Mayam! Ona."
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Beside her, Mariam was muttering a prayer. Laila wished she could see her face, but Mariam was in burqa -- they both were -- and all she could see was the glitter of her eyes through the grid.
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All around her now, Laila saw the consequences of the recent fighting whose sounds she'd heard from the house. Homes that lay in roofless ruins of brick and jagged stone, gouged buildings with fallen beams poking through the holes, the charred, mangled husks of cars, upended, sometimes stacked on top of each other, walls pocked by holes of every conceivable caliber, shattered glass everywhere. She saw a funeral procession marching toward a mosque, a black-clad old woman at the rear tearing at her hair. They passed a cemetery littered with rock-piled graves and ragged shaheed flags fluttering in the breeze.
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This was Laila's first time out of the house in weeks, discounting the short trip to the pawnshop the day before -- where she had pushed her wedding ring across a glass counter, where she'd walked out thrilled by the finality of it, knowing there was no going back.
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AT THE Lahore Gate bus station, near Pol Mahmood Khan in East Kabul, a row of buses sat idling along the curbside. Men in turbans were busy heaving bundles and crates onto bus tops, securing suitcases down with ropes. Inside the station, men stood in a long line at the ticket booth. Burqa-clad women stood in groups and chatted, their belongings piled at their feet. Babies were bounced, children scolded for straying too far.
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Laila reached across the suitcase, wrapped her fingers around the softness of her daughter's arm.
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Mujahideen militiamen patrolled the station and the curbside, barking curt orders here and there. They wore boots, pakols, dusty green fatigues. They all carried Kalashnikovs.
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Laila felt watched. She looked no one in the face, but she felt as though every person in this place knew, that they were looking on with disapproval at what she and Mariam were doing.
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"Do you see anybody?" Laila asked.
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Mariam shifted Aziza in her arms. "I'm looking."
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This, Laila had known, would be the first risky part, finding a man suitable to pose with them as a family member. The freedoms and opportunities that women had enjoyed between 1978 and 1992 were a thing of the past now -- Laila could still remember Babi saying of those years of communist rule, It's a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan, Laila. Since the Mujahideen takeover in April 1992, Afghanistan's name had been changed to the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The Supreme Court under Rabbani was filled now with hardliner mullahs who did away with the communist-era decrees that empowered women and instead passed rulings based on Shari'a, strict Islamic laws that ordered women to cover, forbade their travel without a male relative, punished adultery with stoning. Even if the actual enforcement of these laws was sporadic at best. But they'd enforce them on us more, Laila had said to Mariam, if they weren't so busy killing each other. And us.
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"And him?"
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"He doesn't look trustworthy."
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The second risky part of this trip would come when they actually arrived in Pakistan. Already burdened with nearly two million Afghan refugees, Pakistan had closed its borders to Afghans in January of that year. Laila had heard that only those with visas would be admitted. But the border was porous -- always had been -- and Laila knew that thousands of Afghans were still crossing into Pakistan either with bribes or by proving humanitarian grounds -- and there were always smugglers who could be hired. We'll find a way when we get there, she'd told Mariam.
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"How about him?" Mariam said, motioning with her chin.
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"Too old. And he's traveling with two other men."
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Eventually, Laila found him sitting outside on a park bench, with a veiled woman at his side and a little boy in a skullcap, roughly Aziza's age, bouncing on his knees. He was tall and slender, bearded, wearing an open-collared shirt and a modest gray coat with missing buttons.
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"Wait here," she said to Mariam. Walking away, she again heard Mariam muttering a prayer.
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"Thank you, brother. This is sawab, a good deed. God will remember."
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She fished the envelope from her pocket beneath the burqa and passed it to him. In it was eleven hundred afghanis, or about half of the money she'd stashed over the past year plus the sale of the ring. He slipped the envelope in his trouser pocket.
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She told him the story that she and Mariam had agreed on. She was a biwa, she said, a widow. She and her mother and daughter had no one left in Kabul. They were going to Peshawar to stay with her uncle.
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"Don't worry, hamshira. I understand. It's no trouble. Let me go and buy your tickets."
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He passed the boy to his wife. He and Laila stepped away.
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"What is it, hamshira?"
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When Laila approached the young man, he looked up, shielded the sun from his eyes with a hand.
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"Forgive me, brother, but are you going to Peshawar?"
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"I know it's zahmat for you. But you look like a decent brother, and I --"
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"You want to come with my family," the young man said.
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"Yes," he said, squinting.
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"I wonder if you can help us. Can you do us a favor?"
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She was encouraged to see that he had soft eyes, a kind face.
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"For this. For coming with us," Laila said. "I don't think I could do this alone."
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"You won't have to."
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She watched him enter the station. He returned half an hour later.
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"We're going to be all right, aren't we, Mariam, where we're going?"
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"It's best I hold on to your tickets," he said. The bus leaves in one hour, at eleven. We'll all board together. My name is Wakil. If they ask -- and they shouldn't -- I'll tell them you're my cousin."
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"Thank you, Mariam."
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They sat on the bench adjacent to Wakil and his family's. It was a sunny, warm morning, the sky streaked only by a few wispy clouds hovering in the distance over the hills. Mariam began feeding Aziza a few of the crackers she'd remembered to bring in their rush to pack. She offered one to Laila.
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"Stay close," he said.
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"For what?"
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Laila gave him their names, and he said he would remember.
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"Wait here."
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Mariam's hand slid across the bench and closed over hers. "The Koran says Allah is the East and the West, therefore wherever you turn there is Allah's purpose."
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"Me too."
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"I'll throw up," Laila laughed. "I'm too excited."
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"I see it, Aziza jo," Mariam said. "That's right, bov. Soon we're all going to ride on a bov. Oh, the things you're going to see."
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Laila smiled. She watched a carpenter in his shop across the street sawing wood, sending chips flying. She watched the cars bolting past, their windows coated with soot and grime. She watched the buses growling idly at the curb, with peacocks, lions, rising suns, and glittery swords painted on their sides.
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"Bov!" Aziza cried, pointing to a bus. "Mayam, bov!"
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In the warmth of the morning sun, Laila felt giddy and bold. She had another of those little sparks of euphoria, and when a stray dog with yellow eyes limped by, Laila leaned forward and pet its back.
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A few minutes before eleven, a man with a bullhorn called for all passengers to Peshawar to begin boarding. The bus doors opened with a violent hydraulic hiss. A parade of travelers rushed toward it, scampering past each other to squeeze through.
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Wakil motioned toward Laila as he picked up his son.
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"We're going," Laila said.
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Laila pretended not to hear. She went to climb the steps, but he grabbed her by the shoulder and roughly pulled her out of the line. "You too," he called to Mariam. "Hurry up! You're holding up the line."
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A young militia soldier was checking tickets at the bus door.
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"Bov!" Aziza cried.
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Wakil handed tickets to the soldier, who tore them in half and handed them back. Wakil let his wife board first. Laila saw a look pass between Wakil and the militiaman. Wakil, perched on the first step of the bus, leaned down and said something in his ear. The militiaman nodded.
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Laila's heart plummeted.
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"What's the problem, brother?" Laila said through numb lips. "We have tickets. Didn't my cousin hand them to you?"
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Wakil led the way. As they approached the bus, Laila saw faces appear in the windows, noses and palms pressed to the glass. All around them, farewells were yelled.
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"You two, with the child, step aside," the soldier said.
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He made a Shh motion with his finger and spoke in a low voice to another guard. The second guard, a rotund fellow with a scar down his right cheek, nodded.
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"We have to board this bus," Laila cried, aware that her voice was shaking. "We have tickets. Why are you doing this?"
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"You're not going to get on this bus. You might as well accept that. You will follow me. Unless you want your little girl to see you dragged."
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"Follow me," this one said to Laila.
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As they were led to a truck, Laila looked over her shoulder and spotted Wakil's boy at the rear of the bus. The boy saw her too and waved happily.
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AT THE POLICE STATION at Torabaz Khan Intersection, they were made to sit apart, on opposite ends of a long, crowded corridor, between them a desk, behind which a man smoked one cigarette after another and clacked occasionally on a typewriter. Three hours passed this way. Aziza tottered from Laila to Mariam, then back. She played with a paper clip that the man at the desk gave her. She finished the crackers. Eventually, she fell asleep in Mariam's lap.
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At around three o'clock, Laila was taken to an interview room. Mariam was made to wait with Aziza in the corridor.
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"We know," he began, clearing his throat and politely covering his mouth with a fist, "that you have already told one lie today, hamshira. The young man at the station was not your cousin. He told us as much himself. The question is whether you will tell more lies today. Personally, I advise you against it."
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The policeman nodded. "The hamshira in the corridor, she's your mother?"
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The man sitting on the other side of the desk in the interview room was in his thirties and wore civilian clothes -- black suit, tie, black loafers. He had a neatly trimmed beard, short hair, and eyebrows that met. He stared at Laila, bouncing a pencil by the eraser end on the desk.
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"We were going to stay with my uncle," Laila said. "That's the truth."
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"She has a Herati accent. You don't."
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"Yes."
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"Of course. And you are widowed? You said you were. My condolences. And this uncle, this kaka, where does he live?"
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"In Peshawar."
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"She was raised in Herat, I was born here in Kabul."
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"Yes, you said that." He licked the point of his pencil and poised it over a blank sheet of paper. "But where in Peshawar? Which neighborhood, please? Street name, sector number."
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"Oh, yes. Same street as the Pearl Continental Hotel. He might have mentioned it."
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Laila tried to push back the bubble of panic that was coming up her chest. She gave him the name of the only street she knew in Peshawar -- she'd heard it mentioned once, at the party Mammy had thrown when the Mujahideen had first come to Kabul --"Jamrud Road."
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"I prefer 'Officer.' And you'll be with her shortly. Do you have a telephone number for this uncle?"
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Laila seized this opportunity and said he had. "That very same street, yes."
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"Except the hotel is on Khyber Road."
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"I do. I did. I…" Even with the burqa between them, Laila was not buffered from his penetrating eyes. "I'm so upset, I seem to have forgotten it."
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He sighed through his nose. He asked for the uncle's name, his wife's name. How many children did he have? What were their names? Where did he work? How old was he? His questions left Laila flustered.
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Laila could hear Aziza crying in the corridor. "My daughter's frightened. May I get her, brother?"
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He put down his pencil, laced his fingers together, and leaned forward the way parents do when they want to convey something to a toddler. "You do realize, hamshira, that it is a crime for a woman to run away. We see a lot of it. Women traveling alone, claiming their husbands have died. Sometimes they're telling the truth, most times not. You can be imprisoned for running away, I assume you understand that, nay?"
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"I beg you, please."
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"Let us go, Officer…" She read the name on his lapel tag. "Officer Rahman. Honor the meaning of your name and show compassion. What does it matter to you to let a mere two women go? What's the harm in releasing us? We are not criminals."
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"I can't."
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"It's a matter of qanoon, hamshira, a matter of law,"
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In spite of her distraught state, Laila almost laughed.
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She was stunned that he'd used that word in the face of all that the Mujahideen factions had done -- the murders, the lootings, the rapes, the tortures, the executions, the bombings, the tens of thousands of rockets they had fired at each other, heedless of all the innocent people who would die in the cross fire. Order. But she bit her tongue.
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She could see the effort it took him to keep his eyes from shifting. "What a man does in his home is his business."
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"If you send us back," she said instead, slowly, "there is no saying what he will do to us."
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Rahman said, injecting his voice with a grave, self-important tone. "It is my responsibility, you see, to maintain order."
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"As a matter of policy, we do not interfere with private family matters, hamshira."
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"Of course you don't. When it benefits the man. And isn't this a 'private family matter,' as you say? Isn't it?"
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"What about the law, then, Officer Rahman?" Tears of rage stung her eyes. "Will you be there to maintain order?"
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He pushed back from his desk and stood up, straightened his jacket. "I believe this interview is finished. I must say, hamshira, that you have made a very poor case for yourself. Very poor indeed. Now, if you would wait outside I will have a few words with your… whoever she is."
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Laila began to protest, then to yell, and he had to summon the help of two more men to have her dragged out of his office.
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Mariam's interview lasted only a few minutes. When she came out, she looked shaken.
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"It's not your fault, Mariam," Laila said weakly. "It's mine. It's all my fault. Everything is my fault."
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"He asked so many questions," she said. "I'm sorry, Laila jo. I am not smart like you. He asked so many questions, I didn't know the answers. I'm sorry."
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Mariam quietly took a seat on the couch.
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IT WAS PAST six o'clock when the police car pulled up in front of the house. Laila and Mariam were made to wait in the backseat, guarded by a Mujahid soldier in the passenger seat. The driver was the one who got out of the car, who knocked on the door, who spoke to Rasheed. It was he who motioned for them to come.
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"You two, upstairs."
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"Welcome home," the man in the front seat said, lighting a cigarette.
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"YOU," he said to Mariam. "You wait here."
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"She didn't want to do it," she said. "I made her do it. She didn't want to go --"
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At the top of the stairs, Laila turned to him.
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Laila didn't see the punch coming. One moment she was talking and the next she was on all fours, wide-eyed and red-faced, trying to draw a breath. It was as if a car had hit her at full speed, in the tender place between the lower tip of the breastbone and the belly button. She realized she had dropped Aziza, that Aziza was screaming. She tried to breathe again and could only make a husky, choking sound. Dribble hung from her mouth.
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Rasheed grabbed Laila by the elbow and pushed her up the steps. He was still wearing the shoes he wore to work, hadn't yet changed to his flip-flops, taken off his watch, hadn't even shed his coat yet. Laila pictured him as he must have been an hour, or maybe minutes, earlier, rushing from one room to another, slamming doors, furious and incredulous, cursing under his breath.
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Then she was being dragged by the hair. She saw Aziza lifted, saw her sandals slip off, her tiny feet kicking. Hair was ripped from Laila's scalp, and her eyes watered with pain. She saw his foot kick open the door to Mariam's room, saw Aziza flung onto the bed. He let go of Laila's hair, and she felt the toe of his shoe connect with her left buttock. She howled with pain as he slammed the door shut. A key rattled in the lock.
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Downstairs, the beating began. To Laila, the sounds she heard were those of a methodical, familiar proceeding. There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten, the thump, thump of something solid repeatedly striking flesh, something, someone, hitting a wall with a thud, cloth ripping. Now and then, Laila heard running footsteps, a wordless chase, furniture turning over, glass shattering, then the thumping once more.
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Aziza was still screaming. Laila lay curled up on the floor, gasping. She pushed herself up on her hands, crawled to where Aziza lay on the bed. She reached for her daughter.
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Downstairs, the running and chasing finally stopped.
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Laila took Aziza in her arms. A warmth spread down the front of her dress when Aziza's bladder let go.
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There was a sound now like a wooden club repeatedly slapping a side of beef.
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"I'm so sorry, Mariam," Laila cried into the glass.
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She watched him shove Mariam into the toolshed. He went in, came out with a hammer and several long planks of wood. He shut the double doors to the shed, took a key from his pocket, worked the padlock. He tested the doors, then went around the back of the shed and fetched a ladder.
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A few minutes later, his face was in Laila's window, nails tucked in the corner of his mouth. His hair was disheveled. There was a swath of blood on his brow. At the sight of him, Aziza shrieked and buried her face in Laila's armpit.
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Laila rocked Aziza until the sounds stopped, and, when she heard the screen door creak open and slam shut, she lowered Aziza to the ground and peeked out the window. She saw Rasheed leading Mariam across the yard by the nape of her neck. Mariam was barefoot and doubled over. There was blood on his hands, blood on Mariam's face, her hair, down her neck and back. Her shirt had been ripped down the front.
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Rasheed began nailing boards across the window.
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The first day, they groped and fumbled for each other in the dark. Laila couldn't see Aziza when she cried, when she went crawling.
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THE DARK WAS TOTAL, impenetrable and constant, without layer or texture. Rasheed had filled the cracks between the boards with something, put a large and immovable object at the foot of the door so no light came from under it. Something had been stuffed in the keyhole.
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Laila found it impossible to tell the passage of time with her eyes, so she did it with her good ear. Azan and crowing roosters signaled morning. The sounds of plates clanking in the kitchen downstairs, the radio playing, meant evening.
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Laila sang her a few songs.
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"Soon." Laila kissed her daughter, aiming for the forehead, finding the crown of her head instead. "We'll have milk soon. You just be patient. Be a good, patient little girl for Mammy, and I'll get you some aishee."
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"Aishee," Aziza mewled. "Aishee."
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Azan rang out a second time and still Rasheed had not given them any food, and, worse, no water. That day, a thick, suffocating heat fell on them. The room turned into a pressure cooker. Laila dragged a dry tongue over her lips, thinking of the well outside, the water cold and fresh. Aziza kept crying, and Laila noticed with alarm that when she wiped her cheeks her hands came back dry. She stripped the clothes off Aziza, tried to find something to fan her with, settled for blowing on her until she became light-headed. Soon, Aziza stopped crawling around. She slipped in and out of sleep.
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Several times that day, Laila banged her fists against the walls, used up her energy screaming for help, hoping that a neighbor would hear. But no one came, and her shrieking only frightened Aziza, who began to cry again, a weak, croaking sound. Laila slid to the ground. She thought guiltily of Mariam, beaten and bloodied, locked in this heat in the toolshed.
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Laila fell asleep at some point, her body baking in the heat. She had a dream that she and Aziza had run into Tariq. He was across a crowded street from them, beneath the awning of a tailor's shop. He was sitting on his haunches and sampling from a crate of figs. That's your father, Laila said. That man there, you see him? He's your real baba. She called his name, but the street noise drowned her voice, and Tariq didn't hear.
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She woke up to the whistling of rockets streaking overhead. Somewhere, the sky she couldn't see erupted with blasts and the long, frantic hammering of machine-gun fire. Laila closed her eyes. She woke again to Rasheed's heavy footsteps in the hallway. She dragged herself to the door, slapped her palms against it.
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"Just one glass, Rasheed. Not for me. Do it for her. You don't want her blood on your hands."
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His door closed. The radio came on.
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The muezzin called azan a third time. Again the heat. Aziza became even more listless. She stopped crying, stopped moving altogether.
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Laila put her ear over Aziza's mouth, dreading each time that she would not hear the shallow whooshing of breath. Even this simple act of lifting herself made her head swim. She fell asleep, had dreams she could not remember. When she woke up, she checked on Aziza, felt the parched cracks of her lips, the faint pulse at her neck, lay down again. They would die here, of that Laila was sure now, but what she really dreaded was that she would outlast Aziza, who was young and brittle. How much more could Aziza take? Aziza would die in this heat, and Laila would have to lie beside her stiffening little body and wait for her own death. Again she fell asleep. Woke up. Fell asleep. The line between dream and wakefulness blurred.
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She began to plead with him. She begged for forgiveness, made promises. She cursed him.
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He walked past.
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It wasn't roosters or azan that woke her up again but the sound of something heavy being dragged. She heard a rattling. Suddenly, the room was flooded with light. Her eyes screamed in protest. Laila raised her head, winced, and shielded her eyes. Through the cracks between her fingers, she saw a big, blurry silhouette standing in a rectangle of light. The silhouette moved. Now there was a shape crouching beside her, looming over her, and a voice by her ear.
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"You try this again and I will find you. I swear on the Prophet's name that I will find you. And, when I do, there isn't a court in this godforsaken country that will hold me accountable for what I will do. To Mariam first, then to her, and you last. I'll make you watch. You understand me? I'll make you watch."
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And, with that, he left the room. But not before delivering a kick to the flank that would have Laila pissing blood for days.
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