Chapter 19.

I need to speak to your parents,dokhiarjan" he said whenLaila opened the door. He was a stocky man, with a sharp,weather-roughened face. He wore a potato-colored coat, and abrown woolpakol on his head"Can I tell them who's here?"Then Babi's hand was on Laila's shoulder, and he gentlypulled her from the door.
"Why don't you go upstairs, Laila. Go on."As she moved toward the steps, Laila heard the visitor say toBabi that he had news from Panjshir. Mammy was in theroom now too. She had one hand clamped over her mouth,and her eyes were skipping from Babi to the man in thepakolLaila peeked from the top of the stairs. She watched thestranger sit down with her parents. He leaned toward them.
Said a few muted words. Then Babi's face was white, andgetting whiter, and he was looking at his hands, and Mammywas screaming, screaming, and tearing at her hair.
* * *The next morning, the day ofthefaiiha, a flock of neighborhoodwomen descended on the house and took charge ofpreparations for thekhatm dinner that would take place afterthe funeral Mammy sat on the couch the whole morning, herfingers working a handkerchief, her face bloated. She wastended to by a pair of sniffling women who took turns pattingMammy's hand gingerly, like she was the rarest and mostfragile doll in the world. Mammy did not seem aware of theirpresence.
Laila kneeled before her mother and took her hands.
"Mammy."Mammy's eyes drifted down. She blinked.
"We'll take care of her, Laila jan," one of the women saidwith an air of self-importance. Laila had been to funerals beforewhere she had seen women like this, women who relished allthings that had to do with death, official consolers who let noone trespass on their self-appointed duties.
"It's under control. You go on now, girl, and do somethingelse. Leave your mother be."Shooed away, Laila felt useless. She bounced from one roomto the next. She puttered around the kitchen for a while. Anuncharacteristically subdued Hasina and her mother came. Sodid Giti and her mother. When Giti saw Laila, she hurriedover, threw her bony arms around her, and gave Laila a verylong, and surprisingly strong, embrace. When she pulled back,tears had pooled in her eyes. "I am so sorry, Laila," she said.
Laila thanked her. The three girls sat outside in the yard untilone of the women assigned them the task of washing glassesand stacking plates on the table.
Babi too kept walking in and out of the house aimlessly,looking, it seemed, for something to do.
"Keep him away from me." That was the only time Mammysaid anything all morning.
Babi ended up sitting alone on a folding chair in the hallway,looking desolate and small Then one of the women told him hewas in the way there. He apologized and disappeared into hisstudy.
* * *That apternoon, the men went to a hall in Karteh-Seh thatBabi had rented for thefatiha. The women came to the house.
Laila took her spot beside Mammy, next to the living-roomentrance where it was customary for the family of the deceasedto sit. Mourners removed their shoes at the door, nodded atacquaintances as they crossed the room, and sat on foldingchairs arranged along the walls. Laila saw Wajma, the elderlymidwife who had delivered her. She saw Tariq's mother too,wearing a black scarf over the wig. She gave Laila a nod anda slow, sad, close-lipped smile.
From a cassette player, a man's nasal voice chanted versesfrom the Koran. In between, the women sighed and shiftedand sniffled. There were muted coughs, murmurs, and,periodically, someone let out a theatrical, sorrow-drenched sob.
Rasheed's wife, Mariam, came in. She was wearing ablackhijab. Strands of her hair strayed from it onto her brow.
She took a seat along the wall across from Laila.
Next to Laila, Mammy kept rocking back and forth. Lailadrew Mammy's hand into her lap and cradled it with both ofhers, but Mammy did not seem to notice.
"Do you want some water, Mammy?" Laila said in her ear.
"Are you thirsty?"But Mammy said nothing. She did nothing but sway back andforth and stare at the rug with a remote, spiritless look.
Now and then, sitting next to Mammy, seeing the drooping,woebegone looks around the room, the magnitude of thedisaster that had struck her family would register with Laila.
The possibilities denied. The hopes dashed.
But the feeling didn't last. It was hard to feel,really feel,Mammy's loss. Hard to summon sorrow, to grieve the deathsof people Laila had never really thought of as alive in the firstplace. Ahmad and Noor had always been like lore to her. Likecharacters in a fable. Kings in a history book.
It was Tariq who was real, flesh and blood. Tariq, who taughther cusswords in Pashto, who liked salted clover leaves, whofrowned and made a low, moaning sound when he chewed,who had a light pink birthmark just beneath his left collarboneshaped like an upside-down mandolin.
So she sat beside Mammy and dutifully mourned Ahmad andNoor, but, in Laila's heart, her true brother was alive and well.