Chapter 38.

LailaJLaila was glad, when the Taliban went to work, that Babiwasn't around to witness it. It would have crippled him.
Men wielding pickaxes swarmed the dilapidated Kabul Museumand smashed pre-Islamic statues to rubble-that is, those thathadn't already been looted by the Mujahideen. The universitywas shut down and its students sent home. Paintings wereripped from walls, shredded with blades. Television screens werekicked in. Books, except the Koran, were burned in heaps, thestores that sold them closed down. The poems of Khalili,Pajwak, Ansari, Haji Dehqan, Ashraqi, Beytaab, Hafez, Jami,Nizami, Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, and more went up in smoke.
Laila heard of men being dragged from the streets, accused ofskippingnamaz, and shoved into mosques. She learned thatMarco Polo Restaurant, near Chicken Street, had been turnedinto an interrogation center. Sometimes screaming was heardfrom behind its black-painted windows. Everywhere, the BeardPatrol roamed the streets in Toyota trucks on the lookout forclean-shaven faces to bloody.
They shut down the cinemas too. Cinema Park. Ariana. Aryub.
Projection rooms were ransacked and reels of films set to fire.
Laila remembered all the times she and Tariq had sat in thosetheaters and watched Hindi films, all those melodramatic tales oflovers separated by some tragic turn of fate, one adrift in somefaraway land, the other forced into marriage, the weeping, thesinging in fields of marigolds, the longing for reunions. Sheremembered how Tariq would laugh at her for crying at thosefilms.
"I wonder what they've done to my father's cinema," Mariamsaid to her one day. "If it's still there, that is. Or if he stillowns it."Kharabat, Kabul's ancient music ghetto, was silenced. Musicianswere beaten and imprisoned, theirrubab%?iamboura%? andharmoniums trampled upon. The Taliban went to the grave ofTariq's favorite singer, Ahmad Zahir, and fired bullets into it.
"He's been dead for almost twenty years," Laila said toMariam. "Isn't dying once enough?"* * *Rasheed wasnt bothered much by the Taliban. All he had todo was grow a beard, which he did, and visit the mosque,which he also did. Rasheed regarded the Taliban with aforgiving, affectionate kind of bemusement, as one might regardan erratic cousin prone to unpredictable acts of hilarity andscandal.
Every Wednesday night, Rasheed listened to the VoiceofShari'a when the Taliban would announce the names of thosescheduled for punishment. Then, on Fridays, he went to GhaziStadium, bought a Pepsi, and watched the spectacle. In bed, hemade Laila listen as he described with a queer sort ofexhilaration the hands he'd seen severed, the lashings, thehangings, the beheadings.
"I saw a man today slit the throat of his brother's murderer,"he said one night, blowing halos of smoke.
"They're savages," Laila said.
"You think?" he said "Compared to what? The Soviets killed amillion people. Do you know how many people the Mujahideenkilled in Kabul alone these last four years? Fifty thousandFiftythousand! Is it so insensible, by comparison, to chop the handsoff a few thieves? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. It's in theKoran. Besides, tell me this: If someone killed Aziza, wouldn'tyou want the chance to avenge her?"Laila shot him a disgusted look.
"I'm making a point," he said.
"You're just like them.""It's an interesting eye color she has, Aziza. Don't you think?
It's neither yours nor mine."Rasheed rolled over to face her, gently scratched her thighwith the crooked nail of his index finger.
"Let me explain," he said. "If the fancy should strike me-andI'm not saying it will, but it could, it could-I would be withinmy rights to give Aziza away. How would you like that? Or Icould go to the Taliban one day, just walk in and say that Ihave my suspicions about you. That's all it would take. Whoseword do you think they would believe? What do you thinkthey'd do to you?"Laila pulled her thigh from him.
"Not that I would," he said. "I wouldn't.Nay. Probably not.
You know me.""You're despicable," Laila said.
"That's a big word," Rasheed said. "I've always disliked thatabout you. Even when you were little, when you were runningaround with that cripple, you thought you were so clever, withyour books and poems. What good are all your smarts to younow? What's keeping you off the streets, your smarts or me?
I'm despicable? Half the women in this city would kill to havea husband like me. They wouldkill for it."He rolled back and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
"You like big words? I'll give you one: perspective. That's whatI'm doing here, Laila. Making sure you don't lose perspective."What turned Laila's stomach the rest of the night was thatevery word Rasheed had uttered, every last one, was true.
But, in the morning, and for several mornings after that, thequeasiness in her gut persisted, then worsened, becamesomething dismayingly familiar.
* * *One cold, overcast afternoon soon after, Laila lay on her backon the bedroom floor. Mariam was napping with Aziza in herroom.
In Laila's hands was a metal spoke she had snapped with apair of pliers from an abandoned bicycle wheel She'd found itin the same alley where she had kissed Tariq years back. Fora long time, Laila lay on the floor, sucking air through herteeth, legs partedShe'd adored Aziza from the moment when she'd firstsuspected her existence. There had been none of thisself-doubt, this uncertainty. What a terrible thing it was, Lailathought now, for a mother to fear that she could not summonlove for her own child. What an unnatural thing. And yet shehad to wonder, as she lay on the floor, her sweaty handspoised to guide the spoke, if indeed she could ever loveRasheed's child as she had Tariq's.
In the end, Laila couldn't do it.
It wasn't the fear of bleeding to death that made her dropthe spoke, or even the idea that the act was damnable- whichshe suspected it was. Laila dropped the spoke because shecould not accept what the Mujahideen readily had: thatsometimes in war innocent life had to be taken. Her war wasagainst Rasheed. The baby was blameless. And there had beenenough killing already. Laila had seen enough killing ofinnocents caught in the cross fire of enemies.