It was, by far, the hottest day of the year. The mountainstrapped the bone-scorching heat, stifled the city like smoke.
Power had been out for days. All over Kabul, electric fans satidle, almost mockingly so.
Laila was lying still on the living-room couch, sweating throughher blouse. Every exhaled breath burned the tip of her nose.
She was aware of her parents talking in Mammy's room. Twonights ago, and again last night, she had awakened andthought she heard their voices downstairs. They were talkingevery day now, ever since the bullet, ever since the new holein the gate.
Outside, the far-offboom of artillery, then, more closely, thestammering of a long string of gunfire, followed by another.
Inside Laila too a battle was being waged: guilt on one side,partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction thatwhat she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had beennatural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by theknowledge that they might never see each other again.
Laila rolled to her side on the couch now and tried toremember something: At one point, when they were on thefloor, Tariq had lowered his forehead on hers. Then he hadpanted something, eitherAm I hurting you? orIs this hurtingyou?
Laila couldn't decide which he had said.
Am Ihurting you?
Is this hurting you?
Only two weeks since he had left, and it was alreadyhappening- Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories.
Laila bore down mentally. What had he said? It seemed vital,suddenly, that she know.
Laila closed hereyes. Concentrated.
With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise.
She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dustoff, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There wouldcome a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longerbewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There wouldcome a day when the details of his face would begin to slipfrom memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the streetcall after her child by Tariq's name would no longer cut heradrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the acheof his absence was her unremitting companion-like the phantompain of an amputee.
Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grownwoman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set,something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath herfeet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, wouldset off a memory of that afternoon together. And it would allcome rushing back. The spontaneity of it. Their astonishingimprudence. Their clumsiness. The pain of the act, the pleasureof it, the sadness of it. The heat of their entangled bodies.
It would flood her, steal her breath.
But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave herdeflated, feeling nothing but a vague restlessness.
She decided that he had saidAmi hurting you? Yes. Thatwasit. Laila was happy that she'd rememberedThen Babi was in the hallway, calling her name from the topof the stairs, asking her to come up quickly.
"She's agreed!"he said, his voice tremulous with suppressedexcitement- "We're leaving, Laila. All three of us. We'releavingKabul."* * *InMammy's room, the three of them sat on the bed.Outside,rockets were zipping acrossthe sky as Hekmatyar's andMassoud'sforces fought and fought. Laila knew that somewherein the city someone had justdied, and that a pall of blacksmoke was hovering over some building that had collapsed in apuffing mass of dust. There would be bodies to step around inthe morning. Some would be collected. Others not. ThenKabul's dogs, who had developed a taste for human meat,would feast.
All the same, Laila had an urge to run through thosestreets.She could barely contain her own happiness. It tookeffortto sit, to not shriek withjoy. Babi said they would go toPakistan first, to apply forvisas. Pakistan, where Tariq was!
Tariq was only gone seventeen days, Laila calculated excitedly.
If only Mammy had made up her mindseventeen days earlier,they could have left together. She would have been with Tariqright now! But that didn'tmatter now. They were goingtoPeshawar-she,Mammy, and Babi-and they would find Tariq andhis parents there. Surely they would. They would process theirpaperwork together. Then, who knew? Who knew? Europe?
America? Maybe, as Babi was always saying, somewhere nearthe sea…Mammy was half lying, half sitting against the headboard. Hereyes were puffy. She was picking at her hair.
Three days before, Laila had gone outside for a breath of air.
She'd stood by the front gates, leaning against them, whenshe'd heard a loud crack and something had zipped by herright ear, sending tiny splinters of wood flying before her eyes.
After Giti's death, and the thousands of rounds fired andmyriad rockets that had fallen on Kabul, it was the sight ofthat single round hole in the gate, less than three fingers awayfrom where Laila's head had been, that shook Mammy awake.
Made her see that one war had cost her two children already;this latest could cost her her remaining one.
From the walls of the room, Ahmad and Noor smiled down.
Laila watched Mammy's eyes bouncing now, guiltily, from onephoto to the other. As if looking for their consent. Theirblessing. As if asking for forgiveness.
"There's nothing left for us here," Babi said. "Our sons aregone, but we still have Laila. We still have each other, Fariba.
We can make a new life."Babi reached across the bed. When he leaned to take herhands, Mammy let him. On her face, a look of concession. Ofresignation. They held each other's hands, lightly, and then theywere swaying quietly in an embrace. Mammy buried her facein his neck. She grabbed a handful of his shirt.
For hours that night, the excitement robbed Laila of sleep. Shelay in bed and watched the horizon light up in garish shadesof orange and yellow. At some point, though, despite theexhilaration inside and the crack ofartillery fire outside, she fell asleep.
And dreamedThey are on a ribbon of beach, sitting on aquilt. It's a chilly,overcast day,but it's warm next to Tariq under the blanketdraped over their shoulders. She can see cars parked behind alow fence of chipped white paint beneath a row of windsweptpalm trees. The wind makes her eyes water and buries theirshoes in sand, hurls knots of dead grass from the curvedridgesof one dune to another. They're watching sailboats bob inthe distance. Around them, seagulls squawk and shiver in thewind. The wind whips up another spray of sand off theshallow, windwardslopes. There is a noise then likea chant, andshe tells him something Babi had taught her years before aboutsinging sand.
He rubs at her eyebrow, wipesgrains of sand from it. Shecatches a flicker of the band on his finger. It's identicalto hers-gold with a sort of maze patternetched all the way around.
It's true,she tellshim.It's the friction, of grain against grain.
Listen. Hedoes. He frowns. They wait. They hear it again. Agroaning sound, when the wind is soft, when it blows hard, amewling, high-pitched chorus.
* * * Babi said theyshould take only what was absolutelynecessary. They would sell the rest.
"That should hold us in Peshawar until I find work."For the next two days, they gathered items to be sold. Theyput them in big piles.
In her room, Laila set aside old blouses, old shoes, books,toys. Looking under her bed, she found a tiny yellow glass cowHasina had passed to her during recess in fifth grade. Aminiature-soccer-ball key chain, a gift from Giti. A little woodenzebra on wheels. A ceramic astronaut she and Tariq had foundone day in a gutter. She'd been six and he eight. They'd hada minor row, Laila remembered, over which one of them hadfound it.
Mammy too gathered her things. There was a reluctance inher movements, and her eyes had a lethargic, faraway look inthem. She did away with her good plates, her napkins, all herjewelry-save for her wedding band-and most of her old clothes.
"You're not selling this, are you?" Laila said, lifting Mammy'swedding dress. It cascaded open onto her lap. She touched thelace and ribbon along the neckline, the hand-sewn seed pearlson the sleeves.
Mammy shrugged and took it from her. She tossed itbrusquely on a pile of clothes. Like ripping off a Band-Aid inone stroke, Laila thought.
It was Babi who had the most painful task.
Laila found him standing in his study, a rueful expression onhis face as he surveyed his shelves. He was wearing asecondhand T-shirt with a picture of San Francisco's red bridgeon it. Thick fog rose from the whitecapped waters and engulfedthe bridge's towers.
"You know the old bit," he said. "You're on a deserted island.
You can have five books. Which do you choose? I neverthought I'd actually have to.""We'll have to start you a new collection, Babi.""Mm." He smiled sadly. "I can't believe I'm leaving Kabul. Iwent to school here, got my first job here, became a father inthis town. It's strange to think that I'll be sleeping beneathanother city's skies soon.""It's strange for me too.""All day, this poem about Kabul has been bouncing around inmy head. Saib-e-Tabrizi wrote it back in the seventeenthcentury, I think. I used to know the whole poem, but all I canremember now is two lines:
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her -walls."Laila looked up, saw he was weeping. She put an armaround his waist. "Oh, Babi. We'll come back. When this war isover. We'll come back to Kabul,inshallah. You'll see."* * *On the third morning, Laila began moving the piles of thingsto the yard and depositing them by the front door. They wouldfetch a taxi then and take it all to a pawnshop.
Laila kept shuffling between the house and the yard, back andforth, carrying stacks of clothes and dishes and box after boxof Babi's books. She should have been exhausted by noon,when the mound of belongings by the front door had grownwaist high. But, with each trip, she knew that she was thatmuch closer to seeing Tariq again, and, with each trip, her legsbecame more sprightly, her arms more tireless.
"We're going to need a big taxi."Laila looked up. It was Mammy calling down from herbedroom upstairs. She was leaning out the window, resting herelbows on the sill. The sun, bright and warm, caught in hergraying hair, shone on her drawn, thin face. Mammy waswearing the same cobalt blue dress she had worn the day ofthe lunch party four months earlier, a youthful dress meant fora young woman, but, for a moment, Mammy looked to Lailalike an old woman. An old woman with stringy arms andsunken temples and slow eyes rimmed by darkened circles ofweariness, an altogether different creature from the plump,round-faced woman beaming radiantly from those grainywedding photos.
"Two big taxis," Laila said.
She could see Babi too, in the living room stacking boxes ofbooks atop each other.
"Come up when you're done with those," Mammy said. "We'llsit down for lunch. Boiled eggs and leftover beans.""My favorite," Laila said.
She thought suddenly of her dream. She and Tariq on a quilt.
The ocean. The wind. The dunes.
What had it sounded like, she wondered now, the singingsands?
Laila stopped. She saw a gray lizard crawl out of a crack inthe ground. Its head shot side to side. It blinked. Darted undera rock.
Laila pictured the beach again. Except now the singing was allaround. And growing. Louder and louder by the moment,higher and higher. It flooded her ears. Drowned everything elseout. The gulls were feathered mimes now, opening and closingtheir beaks noiselessly, and the waves were crashing with foamand spray but no roar. The sands sang on. Screaming now. Asound like…a tinkling?
Not a tinkling. No. A whistling.
Laila dropped the books at her feet. She looked up to thesky. Shielded her eyes with one hand.
Then a giant roar.
Behind her, a flash of white.
The ground lurched beneath her feet.
Something hot and powerful slammed into her from behind. Itknocked her out of her sandals. Lifted her up. And now shewas flying, twisting and rotating in the air, seeing sky, thenearth, then sky, then earth. A big burning chunk of woodwhipped by. So did a thousand shards of glass, and it seemedto Laila that she could see each individual one flying all aroundher, flipping slowly end over end, the sunlight catching in each.
Tiny, beautiful rainbows.
Then Laila struck the wall. Crashed to the ground. On herface and arms, a shower of dirt and pebbles and glass. Thelast thing she was aware of was seeing something thud to theground nearby. A bloody chunk of something. On it, the tip ofa red bridge poking through thick fog.
* * *Shapes moving about. A fluorescent light shines from theceiling above. A woman's face appears, hovers over hers.
Laila fades back to the dark.
* * *Another face. This time a man's. His features seem broad anddroopy. His lips move but make no sound. All Laila hears isringing.
The man waves his hand at her. Frowns. His lips move again.
It hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts everywhere.
A glass of water. A pink pill.
Back to the darkness.
* * *The woman again. Long face, narrow-set eyes. She sayssomething. Laila can't hear anything but the ringing. But shecan see the words, like thick black syrup, spilling out of thewoman's mouth.
Her chest hurts. Her arms and legs hurt.
All around, shapes moving.
Where is Tariq?
Why isn't he here?
Darkness. A flock of stars.
Babi and she, perched somewhere high up. He is pointing toa field of barley. A generator comes to life.
The long-faced woman is standing over her looking down.
It hurts to breathe.
Somewhere, an accordion playing.
Mercifully, the pink pill again. Then a deep hush. A deephushfalls over everything.
Power had been out for days. All over Kabul, electric fans satidle, almost mockingly so.
Laila was lying still on the living-room couch, sweating throughher blouse. Every exhaled breath burned the tip of her nose.
She was aware of her parents talking in Mammy's room. Twonights ago, and again last night, she had awakened andthought she heard their voices downstairs. They were talkingevery day now, ever since the bullet, ever since the new holein the gate.
Outside, the far-offboom of artillery, then, more closely, thestammering of a long string of gunfire, followed by another.
Inside Laila too a battle was being waged: guilt on one side,partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction thatwhat she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had beennatural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by theknowledge that they might never see each other again.
Laila rolled to her side on the couch now and tried toremember something: At one point, when they were on thefloor, Tariq had lowered his forehead on hers. Then he hadpanted something, eitherAm I hurting you? orIs this hurtingyou?
Laila couldn't decide which he had said.
Am Ihurting you?
Is this hurting you?
Only two weeks since he had left, and it was alreadyhappening- Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories.
Laila bore down mentally. What had he said? It seemed vital,suddenly, that she know.
Laila closed hereyes. Concentrated.
With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise.
She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dustoff, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There wouldcome a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longerbewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There wouldcome a day when the details of his face would begin to slipfrom memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the streetcall after her child by Tariq's name would no longer cut heradrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the acheof his absence was her unremitting companion-like the phantompain of an amputee.
Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grownwoman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set,something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath herfeet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, wouldset off a memory of that afternoon together. And it would allcome rushing back. The spontaneity of it. Their astonishingimprudence. Their clumsiness. The pain of the act, the pleasureof it, the sadness of it. The heat of their entangled bodies.
It would flood her, steal her breath.
But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave herdeflated, feeling nothing but a vague restlessness.
She decided that he had saidAmi hurting you? Yes. Thatwasit. Laila was happy that she'd rememberedThen Babi was in the hallway, calling her name from the topof the stairs, asking her to come up quickly.
"She's agreed!"he said, his voice tremulous with suppressedexcitement- "We're leaving, Laila. All three of us. We'releavingKabul."* * *InMammy's room, the three of them sat on the bed.Outside,rockets were zipping acrossthe sky as Hekmatyar's andMassoud'sforces fought and fought. Laila knew that somewherein the city someone had justdied, and that a pall of blacksmoke was hovering over some building that had collapsed in apuffing mass of dust. There would be bodies to step around inthe morning. Some would be collected. Others not. ThenKabul's dogs, who had developed a taste for human meat,would feast.
All the same, Laila had an urge to run through thosestreets.She could barely contain her own happiness. It tookeffortto sit, to not shriek withjoy. Babi said they would go toPakistan first, to apply forvisas. Pakistan, where Tariq was!
Tariq was only gone seventeen days, Laila calculated excitedly.
If only Mammy had made up her mindseventeen days earlier,they could have left together. She would have been with Tariqright now! But that didn'tmatter now. They were goingtoPeshawar-she,Mammy, and Babi-and they would find Tariq andhis parents there. Surely they would. They would process theirpaperwork together. Then, who knew? Who knew? Europe?
America? Maybe, as Babi was always saying, somewhere nearthe sea…Mammy was half lying, half sitting against the headboard. Hereyes were puffy. She was picking at her hair.
Three days before, Laila had gone outside for a breath of air.
She'd stood by the front gates, leaning against them, whenshe'd heard a loud crack and something had zipped by herright ear, sending tiny splinters of wood flying before her eyes.
After Giti's death, and the thousands of rounds fired andmyriad rockets that had fallen on Kabul, it was the sight ofthat single round hole in the gate, less than three fingers awayfrom where Laila's head had been, that shook Mammy awake.
Made her see that one war had cost her two children already;this latest could cost her her remaining one.
From the walls of the room, Ahmad and Noor smiled down.
Laila watched Mammy's eyes bouncing now, guiltily, from onephoto to the other. As if looking for their consent. Theirblessing. As if asking for forgiveness.
"There's nothing left for us here," Babi said. "Our sons aregone, but we still have Laila. We still have each other, Fariba.
We can make a new life."Babi reached across the bed. When he leaned to take herhands, Mammy let him. On her face, a look of concession. Ofresignation. They held each other's hands, lightly, and then theywere swaying quietly in an embrace. Mammy buried her facein his neck. She grabbed a handful of his shirt.
For hours that night, the excitement robbed Laila of sleep. Shelay in bed and watched the horizon light up in garish shadesof orange and yellow. At some point, though, despite theexhilaration inside and the crack ofartillery fire outside, she fell asleep.
And dreamedThey are on a ribbon of beach, sitting on aquilt. It's a chilly,overcast day,but it's warm next to Tariq under the blanketdraped over their shoulders. She can see cars parked behind alow fence of chipped white paint beneath a row of windsweptpalm trees. The wind makes her eyes water and buries theirshoes in sand, hurls knots of dead grass from the curvedridgesof one dune to another. They're watching sailboats bob inthe distance. Around them, seagulls squawk and shiver in thewind. The wind whips up another spray of sand off theshallow, windwardslopes. There is a noise then likea chant, andshe tells him something Babi had taught her years before aboutsinging sand.
He rubs at her eyebrow, wipesgrains of sand from it. Shecatches a flicker of the band on his finger. It's identicalto hers-gold with a sort of maze patternetched all the way around.
It's true,she tellshim.It's the friction, of grain against grain.
Listen. Hedoes. He frowns. They wait. They hear it again. Agroaning sound, when the wind is soft, when it blows hard, amewling, high-pitched chorus.
* * * Babi said theyshould take only what was absolutelynecessary. They would sell the rest.
"That should hold us in Peshawar until I find work."For the next two days, they gathered items to be sold. Theyput them in big piles.
In her room, Laila set aside old blouses, old shoes, books,toys. Looking under her bed, she found a tiny yellow glass cowHasina had passed to her during recess in fifth grade. Aminiature-soccer-ball key chain, a gift from Giti. A little woodenzebra on wheels. A ceramic astronaut she and Tariq had foundone day in a gutter. She'd been six and he eight. They'd hada minor row, Laila remembered, over which one of them hadfound it.
Mammy too gathered her things. There was a reluctance inher movements, and her eyes had a lethargic, faraway look inthem. She did away with her good plates, her napkins, all herjewelry-save for her wedding band-and most of her old clothes.
"You're not selling this, are you?" Laila said, lifting Mammy'swedding dress. It cascaded open onto her lap. She touched thelace and ribbon along the neckline, the hand-sewn seed pearlson the sleeves.
Mammy shrugged and took it from her. She tossed itbrusquely on a pile of clothes. Like ripping off a Band-Aid inone stroke, Laila thought.
It was Babi who had the most painful task.
Laila found him standing in his study, a rueful expression onhis face as he surveyed his shelves. He was wearing asecondhand T-shirt with a picture of San Francisco's red bridgeon it. Thick fog rose from the whitecapped waters and engulfedthe bridge's towers.
"You know the old bit," he said. "You're on a deserted island.
You can have five books. Which do you choose? I neverthought I'd actually have to.""We'll have to start you a new collection, Babi.""Mm." He smiled sadly. "I can't believe I'm leaving Kabul. Iwent to school here, got my first job here, became a father inthis town. It's strange to think that I'll be sleeping beneathanother city's skies soon.""It's strange for me too.""All day, this poem about Kabul has been bouncing around inmy head. Saib-e-Tabrizi wrote it back in the seventeenthcentury, I think. I used to know the whole poem, but all I canremember now is two lines:
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her -walls."Laila looked up, saw he was weeping. She put an armaround his waist. "Oh, Babi. We'll come back. When this war isover. We'll come back to Kabul,inshallah. You'll see."* * *On the third morning, Laila began moving the piles of thingsto the yard and depositing them by the front door. They wouldfetch a taxi then and take it all to a pawnshop.
Laila kept shuffling between the house and the yard, back andforth, carrying stacks of clothes and dishes and box after boxof Babi's books. She should have been exhausted by noon,when the mound of belongings by the front door had grownwaist high. But, with each trip, she knew that she was thatmuch closer to seeing Tariq again, and, with each trip, her legsbecame more sprightly, her arms more tireless.
"We're going to need a big taxi."Laila looked up. It was Mammy calling down from herbedroom upstairs. She was leaning out the window, resting herelbows on the sill. The sun, bright and warm, caught in hergraying hair, shone on her drawn, thin face. Mammy waswearing the same cobalt blue dress she had worn the day ofthe lunch party four months earlier, a youthful dress meant fora young woman, but, for a moment, Mammy looked to Lailalike an old woman. An old woman with stringy arms andsunken temples and slow eyes rimmed by darkened circles ofweariness, an altogether different creature from the plump,round-faced woman beaming radiantly from those grainywedding photos.
"Two big taxis," Laila said.
She could see Babi too, in the living room stacking boxes ofbooks atop each other.
"Come up when you're done with those," Mammy said. "We'llsit down for lunch. Boiled eggs and leftover beans.""My favorite," Laila said.
She thought suddenly of her dream. She and Tariq on a quilt.
The ocean. The wind. The dunes.
What had it sounded like, she wondered now, the singingsands?
Laila stopped. She saw a gray lizard crawl out of a crack inthe ground. Its head shot side to side. It blinked. Darted undera rock.
Laila pictured the beach again. Except now the singing was allaround. And growing. Louder and louder by the moment,higher and higher. It flooded her ears. Drowned everything elseout. The gulls were feathered mimes now, opening and closingtheir beaks noiselessly, and the waves were crashing with foamand spray but no roar. The sands sang on. Screaming now. Asound like…a tinkling?
Not a tinkling. No. A whistling.
Laila dropped the books at her feet. She looked up to thesky. Shielded her eyes with one hand.
Then a giant roar.
Behind her, a flash of white.
The ground lurched beneath her feet.
Something hot and powerful slammed into her from behind. Itknocked her out of her sandals. Lifted her up. And now shewas flying, twisting and rotating in the air, seeing sky, thenearth, then sky, then earth. A big burning chunk of woodwhipped by. So did a thousand shards of glass, and it seemedto Laila that she could see each individual one flying all aroundher, flipping slowly end over end, the sunlight catching in each.
Tiny, beautiful rainbows.
Then Laila struck the wall. Crashed to the ground. On herface and arms, a shower of dirt and pebbles and glass. Thelast thing she was aware of was seeing something thud to theground nearby. A bloody chunk of something. On it, the tip ofa red bridge poking through thick fog.
* * *Shapes moving about. A fluorescent light shines from theceiling above. A woman's face appears, hovers over hers.
Laila fades back to the dark.
* * *Another face. This time a man's. His features seem broad anddroopy. His lips move but make no sound. All Laila hears isringing.
The man waves his hand at her. Frowns. His lips move again.
It hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts everywhere.
A glass of water. A pink pill.
Back to the darkness.
* * *The woman again. Long face, narrow-set eyes. She sayssomething. Laila can't hear anything but the ringing. But shecan see the words, like thick black syrup, spilling out of thewoman's mouth.
Her chest hurts. Her arms and legs hurt.
All around, shapes moving.
Where is Tariq?
Why isn't he here?
Darkness. A flock of stars.
Babi and she, perched somewhere high up. He is pointing toa field of barley. A generator comes to life.
The long-faced woman is standing over her looking down.
It hurts to breathe.
Somewhere, an accordion playing.
Mercifully, the pink pill again. Then a deep hush. A deephushfalls over everything.