Chapter 42.

LailaIn a paper bag, Aziza packed these things: her flowered shirtand her lone pair of socks, her mismatched wool gloves, anold, pumpkin-colored blanket dotted with stars and comets, asplintered plastic cup, a banana, her set of dice-It was a coolmorning in April 2001, shortly before Laila's twenty-thirdbirthday. The sky was a translucent gray, and gusts of aclammy, cold wind kept rattling the screen door.
This was a few days after Laila heard that Ahmad ShahMassoud had gone to France and spoken to the EuropeanParliament. Massoud was now in his native North, and leadingthe Northern Alliance, the sole opposition group still fighting theTaliban. In Europe, Massoud had warned the West aboutterrorist camps in Afghanistan, and pleaded with the U.S. tohelp him fight the Taliban.
"If President Bush doesn't help us," he had said, "theseterrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon."A month before that, Laila had learned that the Taliban hadplanted TNT in the crevices of the giant Buddhas in Bamiyanand blown them apart, calling them objects of idolatry and sin.
There was an outcry around the world, from the U.S. toChina. Governments, historians, and archaeologists from all overthe globe had written letters, pleaded with the Taliban not todemolish the two greatest historical artifacts in Afghanistan. Butthe Taliban had gone ahead and detonated their explosivesinside the two-thousand-year-old Buddhas. They hadchantedAllah-u-akbar with each blast, cheered each time thestatues lost an arm or a leg in a crumbling cloud of dust. Lailaremembered standing atop the bigger of the two Buddhas withBabi and Tariq, back in 1987, a breeze blowing in their sunlitfaces, watching a hawk gliding in circles over the sprawlingvalley below. But when she heard the news of the statues'
demise, Laila was numb to it. It hardly seemed to matter. Howcould she care about statues when her own life was crumblingdust?
Until Rasheed told her it was time to go, Laila sat on thefloor in a comer of the living room, not speaking andstone-faced, her hair hanging around her face in straggly curls.
No matter how much she breathed in and out, it seemed toLaila that she couldn't fill her lungs with enough air.
* * *On the way to Karteh-Seh, Zalmai bounced in Rasheed's arms,and Aziza held Mariam's hand as she walked quickly besideher. The wind blew the dirty scarf tied under Aziza's chin andrippled the hem of her dress. Aziza was more grim now, asthough she'd begun to sense, with each step, that she wasbeing duped. Laila had not found the strength to tell Aziza thetruth. She had told her that she was going to a school, aspecial school where the children ate and slept and didn't comehome after class. Now Aziza kept pelting Laila with the samequestions she had been asking for days. Did the students sleepin different rooms or all in one great big room? Would shemake friends? Was she, Laila, sure that the teachers would benice?
And, more than once,How long do I have to stay?
They stopped two blocks from the squat, barracks-stylebuilding.
"Zalmai and I will wait here," Rasheed said. "Oh, before Iforget…"He fished a stick of gum from his pocket, a parting gift, andheld it out to Aziza with a stiff, magnanimous air. Aziza took itand muttered a thank-you. Laila marveled at Aziza's grace,Aziza's vast capacity for forgiveness, and her eyes filled. Herheart squeezed, and she was faint with sorrow at the thoughtthat this afternoon Aziza would not nap beside her, that shewould not feel the flimsy weight of Aziza's arm on her chest,the curve of Aziza's head pressing into her ribs, Aziza's breathwarming her neck, Aziza's heels poking her belly.
When Aziza was led away, Zalmai began wailing, crying, Ziza!
Ziza! He squirmed and kicked in his father's arms, called forhis sister, until his attention was diverted by an organ-grinder'smonkey across the street.
They walked the last two blocks alone, Mariam, Laila, andAziza. As they approached the building, Laila could see itssplintered fa9ade, the sagging roof, the planks of wood nailedacross frames with missing windows, the top of a swing setover a decaying wall.
They stopped by the door, and Laila repeated to Aziza whatshe had told her earlier.
"And if they ask about your father, what do you say?""The Mujahideen killed him," Aziza said, her mouth set withwariness.
"That's good. Aziza, do you understand?""Because this is a special school," Aziza said Now that theywere here, and the building was a reality, she looked shaken.
Her lower lip was quivering and her eyes threatened to wellup, and Laila saw how hard she was struggling to be brave.
"If we tell the truth," Aziza said in a thin, breathless voice,"they won't take me. It's a special school. I want to go home.""I'll visit all the time," Laila managed to say. "I promise.""Me too," said Mariam. "We'll come to see you, Aziza jo, andwe'll play together, just like always. It's only for a while, untilyour father finds work.""They have food here," Laila said shakily. She was glad forthe burqa, glad that Aziza couldn't see how she was fallingapart inside it. "Here, you won't go hungry. They have riceand bread and water, and maybe even fruit.""Butyouwon't be here. And Khala Mariam won't be with me.""I'll come and see you," Laila said. "All the time. Look at me,Aziza. I'll come and see you. I'm your mother. If it kills me, I'llcome and see you."* * *The orphanage director was a stooping, narrow-chested manwith a pleasantly lined face. He was balding, had a shaggybeard, eyes like peas. His name was Zaman. He wore askullcap. The left lens of his eyeglasses was chipped.
As he led them to his office, he asked Laila and Mariam theirnames, asked for Aziza's name too, her age. They passedthrough poorly lit hallways where barefoot children steppedaside and watched They had disheveled hair or shaved scalps.
They wore sweaters with frayed sleeves, ragged jeans whoseknees had worn down to strings, coats patched with duct tape.
Laila smelled soap and talcum, ammonia and urine, and risingapprehension in Aziza, who had begun whimpering.
Laila had a glimpse of the yard: weedy lot, rickety swing set,old tires, a deflated basketball. The rooms they passed werebare, the windows covered with sheets of plastic. A boy dartedfrom one of the rooms and grabbed Laila's elbow, and tried toclimb up into her arms. An attendant, who was cleaning upwhat looked like a puddle of urine, put down his mop andpried the boy off.
Zaman seemed gently proprietary with the orphans. He pattedthe heads of some, as he passed by, said a cordial word ortwo to them, tousled their hair, without condescension. Thechildren welcomed his touch. They all looked at him, Lailathought, in hope of approval.
He showed them into his office, a room with only threefolding chairs, and a disorderly desk with piles of paperscattered atop it.
"You're from Herat," Zaman said to Mariam. "I can tell fromyour accent."He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands over hisbelly, and said he had a brother-in-law who used to live there.
Even in these ordinary gestures, Laila noted a laborious qualityto his movements. And though he was smiling faintly, Lailasensed something troubled and wounded beneath,disappointment and defeat glossed over with a veneer of goodhumor.
"He was a glassmaker," Zaman said. "He made thesebeautiful, jade green swans. You held them up to sunlight andthey glittered inside, like the glass was filled with tiny jewels.
Have you been back?"Mariam said she hadn't.
"I'm from Kandahar myself. Have you ever been toKandahar,hamshira1? No? It's lovely. What gardens! And thegrapes! Oh, the grapes. They bewitch the palate."A few children had gathered by the door and were peekingin. Zaman gently shooed them away, in Pashto.
"Of course I love Herat too. City of artists and writers, Sufisand mystics. You know the old joke, that you can't stretch aleg in Herat without poking a poet in the rear."Next to Laila, Aziza snorted.
Zaman feigned a gasp. "Ah, there. I've made you laugh,littlehamshira. That's usually the hard part. I was worried, there,for a while. I thought I'd have to cluck like a chicken or braylike a donkey. But, there you are. And so lovely you are."He called in an attendant to look after Aziza for a fewmoments. Aziza leaped onto Mariam's lap and clung to her.
"We're just going to talk, my love,"Laila said. "I'll be righthere. All right? Right here.""Why don't we go outside for a minute, Aziza jo?" Mariamsaid. "Your mother needs to talk to Kaka Zaman here.Just fora minute. Now, come on."When they were alone, Zaman asked for Aziza's date of birth,history of illnesses, allergies. He asked about Aziza's father, andLaila had the strange experience of telling a lie that was reallythe truth. Zaman listened, his expression revealing neither beliefnor skepticism. He ran the orphanage on the honor system, hesaid. If ahamshira said her husband was dead and she couldn'tcare for her children, he didn't question it.
Laila began to cry.
Zaman put down his pen.
"I'm ashamed," Laila croaked, her palm pressed to her mouth.
"Look at me,hamshira ""What kind of mother abandons her own child?""Look at me."Laila raised her gaze.
"It isn't your fault. Do you hear me? Not you. It'sthosesavages, thosewahshis, who are to blame. They bringshame on me as a Pashtun. They've disgraced the name ofmy people. And you're not alone,hamshira We get mothers likeyou all the time-all the time-mothers who come here who can'tfeed their children because the Taliban won't let them go outand make a living. So you don't blame yourself. No one hereblames you. I understand." He leaned forward."Hamshira Iunderstand."Laila wiped her eyes with the cloth of her burqa.
"As for this place," Zaman sighed, motioning with his hand,"you can see that it's in dire state. We're always underfunded,always scrambling, improvising. We get little or no support fromthe Taliban. But we manage. Like you, we do what we have todo. Allah is good and kind, and Allah provides, and, as longHe provides, I will see to it that Aziza is fed and clothed. Thatmuch I promise you."Laila nodded.
"All right?"He was smiling companionably. "But don't cry,hamshira Don'tlet her see you cry."Laila wiped her eyes again. "God bless you," she said thickly.
"God bless you, brother."***But "when the time for good-byes came, the scene eruptedprecisely as Laila had dreaded.
Aziza panicked.
All the way home, leaning on Mariam, Laila heard Aziza'sshrill cries. In her head, she saw Zaman's thick, callousedhands close around Aziza's arms; she saw them pull, gently atfirst, then harder, then with force to pry Aziza loose from her.
She saw Aziza kicking in Zaman's arms as he hurriedly turnedthe corner, heard Aziza screaming as though she were aboutto vanish from the face of the earth. And Laila saw herselfrunning down the hallway, head down, a howl rising up herthroat.
"I smell her," she told Mariam at home. Her eyes swamunseeingly past Mariam's shoulder, past the yard, the walls, tothe mountains, brown as smoker's spit. "I smell her sleep smell.
Do you? Do you smell it?""Oh, Laila jo," said Mariam. "Don't. What good is this? Whatgood?"* * *At first, Rasheed humored Laila, and accompanied them-her,Mariam, and Zalmai-to the orphanage, though he made sure,as they walked, that she had an eyeful of his grievous looks,an earful of his rants over what a hardship she was puttinghim through, how badly his legs and back and feet achedwalking to and from the orphanage. He made sure she knewhow awfully put out he was.
"I'm not a young man anymore," he said. "Not that you care.
You'd run me to the ground, if you had your way. But youdon't, Laila. You don't have your way."They parted ways two blocks from the orphanage, and henever spared them more than fifteen minutes. "A minute late,"he said, "and I start walking. I mean it."Laila had to pester him, plead with him, in order to spin outthe allotted minutes with Aziza a bit longer. For herself, and forMariam, who was disconsolate over Aziza's absence, though, asalways, Mariam chose to cradle her own suffering privately andquietly. And for Zalmai too, who asked for his sister every day,and threw tantrums that sometimes dissolved into inconsolablefits of crying.
Sometimes, on the way to the orphanage, Rasheed stoppedand complained that his leg was sore. Then he turned aroundand started walking home in long, steady strides, without somuch as a limp. Or he clucked his tongue and said, "It's mylungs, Laila. I'm short of breath. Maybe tomorrow I'll feelbetter, or the day after. We'll see." He never bothered to feigna single raspy breath. Often, as he turned back and marchedhome, he lit a cigarette. Laila would have to tail him home,helpless, trembling with resentment and impotent rage.
Then one day he told Laila he wouldn't take her anymore.
"I'm too tired from walking the streets all day," he said,"looking for work.""Then I'll go by myself," Laila said. "You can't stop me,Rasheed. Do you hear me? You can hit me all you want, butI'll keep going there.""Do as you wish. But you won't get past the Taliban. Don'tsay I didn't warn you.""I'm coming with you," Mariam said.
Laila wouldn't allow it. "You have to stay home with Zalmai. Ifwe get stopped…Idon't want him to see."And so Laila's life suddenly revolved around finding ways tosee Aziza. Half the time, she never made it to the orphanage.
Crossing the street, she was spotted by the Taliban and riddledwith questions-What is your name? Where are you going? Whyare you alone? Where is yourmahram? -before she was senthome. If she was lucky, she was given a tongue-lashing or asingle kick to the rear, a shove in the back. Other times, shemet with assortments of wooden clubs, fresh tree branches,short whips, slaps, often fists.
One day, a young Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna.
When he was done, he gave a final whack to the back of herneck and said, "I see you again, I'll beat you until yourmother's milk leaks out of your bones."That time, Laila went home. She lay on her stomach, feelinglike a stupid, pitiable animal, and hissed as Mariam arrangeddamp cloths across her bloodied back and thighs. But, usually,Laila refused to cave in. She made as if she were going home,then took a different route down side streets. Sometimes shewas caught, questioned, scolded-two, three, even four times in asingle day. Then the whips came down and the antennas slicedthrough the air, and she trudged home, bloodied, without somuch as a glimpse of Aziza. Soon Laila took to wearing extralayers, even in the heat, two, three sweaters beneath the burqa,for padding against the beatings.
But for Laila, the reward, if she made it past the Taliban, wasworth it. She could spend as much time as she likedthen-hours,even-with Aziza. They sat in the courtyard, near theswing set, among other children and visiting mothers, andtalked about what Aziza had learned that week.
Aziza said Kaka Zaman made it a point to teach themsomething every day, reading and writing most days, sometimesgeography, a bit of history or science, something about plants,animals.
"But we have to pull the curtains," Aziza said, "so the Talibandon't see us." Kaka Zaman had knitting needles and balls ofyarn ready, she said, in case of a Taliban inspection. "We putthe books away and pretend to knit."One day, during a visit with Aziza, Laila saw a middle-agedwoman, her burqa pushed back, visiting with three boys and agirl. Laila recognized the sharp face, the heavy eyebrows, if notthe sunken mouth and gray hair. She remembered the shawls,the black skirts, the curt voice, how she used to wear herjet-black hair tied in a bun so that you could see the darkbristles on the back of her neck. Laila remembered this womanonce forbidding the female students from covering, sayingwomen and men were equal, that there was no reason womenshould cover if men didn't.
At one point, Khala Rangmaal looked up and caught her gaze,but Laila saw no lingering, no light of recognition, in her oldteacher's eyes.
* * *"They're fractures along the earth's crust," said Aziza. 'They'recalled faults."It was a warm afternoon, a Friday, in June of 2001. Theywere sitting in the orphanage's back lot, the four of them,Laila, Zalmai, Mariam, and Aziza. Rasheed had relented thistime-as he infrequently did-and accompanied the four of them.
He was waiting down the street, by the bus stop.
Barefoot kids scampered about around them. A flat soccer ballwas kicked around, chased after listlessly.
"And, on either side of the faults, there are these sheets ofrock that make up the earth's crust," Aziza was saying.
Someone had pulled the hair back from Aziza's face, braidedit, and pinned it neatly on top of her head. Laila begrudgedwhoever had gotten to sit behind her daughter, to flip sectionsof her hair one over the other, had asked her to sit still.
Aziza was demonstrating by opening her hands, palms up,and rubbing them against each other. Zalmai watched this withintense interest.
"Kectonic plates, they're called?""Tectonic,"Laila said. It hurt to talk. Her jaw was still sore,her back and neck ached. Her lip was swollen, and her tonguekept poking the empty pocket of the lower incisor Rasheed hadknocked loose two days before. Before Mammy and Babi haddied and her life turned upside down, Laila never would havebelieved that a human body could withstand this much beating,this viciously, this regularly, and keep functioning.
"Right. And when they slide past each other, they catch andslip-see, Mammy?-and it releases energy, whichtravels to the earth's surface and makes it shake.""You're getting so smart," Mariam said "So much smarterthan your dumbkhala"Aziza's face glowed, broadened. "You're not dumb, KhalaMariam. And Kaka Zaman says that, sometimes, the shifting ofrocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary downthere, but all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only aslight tremor."The visit before this one, it was oxygen atoms in theatmosphere scattering the blue light from the sun.If the earthhad no atmosphere, Aziza had said a little breathlessly,the skywouldn ‘t be blue at all but a pitch-black sea and the sun abig bright star in the dark"Is Aziza coming home with us this time?" Zalmai said.
"Soon, my love," Laila said. "Soon."Laila watched him wander away, walking like his father,stooping forward, toes turned in. He walked to the swing set,pushed an empty seat, ended up sitting on the concrete,ripping weeds from a crack.
Water evaporates from the leaves-Mammy, did you know?-theway it does from laundry hanging from a line. And that drivesthe flow of water up the tree. From the ground and throughthe roots, then all the way up the tree trunk, through thebranches and into the leaves. It's called transpiration.
More than once, Laila had wondered what the Taliban woulddo about Kaka Zaman's clandestine lessons if they found out.
During visits, Aziza didn't allow for much silence. She filled allthe spaces with effusive speech, delivered in a high, ringingvoice. She was tangential with her topics, and her handsgesticulated wildly, flying up with a nervousness that wasn't likeher at all. She had a new laugh, Aziza did. Not so much alaugh, really, as nervous punctuation, meant, Laila suspected, toreassure.
And there were other changes. Laila would notice the dirtunder Aziza's fingernails, and Aziza would notice her noticingand bury her hands under her thighs. Whenever a kid cried intheir vicinity, snot oozing from his nose, or if a kid walked bybare-assed, hair clumped with dirt, Aziza's eyelids fluttered andshe was quick to explain it away. She was like a hostessembarrassed in front of her guests by the squalor of herhome, the untidiness of her children.
Questions of how she was coping were met with vague butcheerful replies.
Doing Jim, Khala I'm fine.
Do kids pick on you?
They dont Mammy. Everyone is nice.
Are you eating? Sleeping all right?
Eating. Sleeping too. Yes. We had lamb last night Maybe itwas last week.
When Aziza spoke like this, Laila saw more than a little ofMariam in her.
Aziza stammered now. Mariam noticed it first. It was subtlebut perceptible, and more pronounced with words that beganwith /. Laila asked Zaman about it. He frowned and said, "Ithought she'd always done that."They left the orphanage with Aziza that Friday afternoon for ashort outing and met Rasheed, who was waiting for them bythe bus stop. When Zalmai spotted his father, he uttered anexcited squeak and impatiently wriggled from Laila's arms.
Aziza's greeting to Rasheed was rigid but not hostile.
Rasheed said they should hurry, he had only two hoursbefore he had to report back to work. This was his first weekas a doorman for the Intercontinental. From noon to eight, sixdays a week, Rasheed opened car doors, carried luggage,mopped up the occasional spill. Sometimes, at day's end, thecook at the buffet-style restaurant let Rasheed bring home afew leftovers-as long as he was discreet about it-cold meatballssloshing in oil; fried chicken wings, the crust gone hard anddry; stuffed pasta shells turned chewy; stiff, gravelly rice.
Rasheed had promised Laila that once he had some moneysaved up, Aziza could move back home.
Rasheed was wearing his uniform, a burgundy red polyestersuit, white shirt, clip-on tie, visor cap pressing down on hiswhite hair. In this uniform, Rasheed was transformed. Helooked vulnerable, pitiably bewildered, almost harmless. Likesomeone who had accepted without a sigh of protest theindignities life had doled out to him. Someone both patheticand admirable in his docility.
They rode the bus to Titanic City. They walked into theriverbed, flanked on either side by makeshift stalls clinging tothe dry banks. Near the bridge, as they were descending thesteps, a barefoot man dangled dead from a crane, his ears cutoff, his neck bent at the end of a rope. In the river, theymelted into the horde of shoppers milling about, the moneychangers and bored-looking NGO workers, the cigarettevendors, the covered women who thrust fake antibioticprescriptions at people and begged for money to fill them.
Whip-toting,naswar-chew'mg Talibs patrolled Titanic City on thelookout for the indiscreet laugh, the unveiled face.
From a toy kiosk, betweenapoosieen coat vendor and afake-flower stand, Zalmai picked out a rubber basketball withyellow and blue swirls.
"Pick something," Rasheed said to Aziza.
Aziza hedged, stiffened with embarrassment.
"Hurry. I have to be at work in an hour."Aziza chose a gum-ball machine-the same coin could beinserted to get candy, then retrieved from the flap-door coinreturn below.
Rasheed's eyebrows shot up when the seller quoted him theprice. A round of haggling ensued, at the end of whichRasheed said to Aziza contentiously, as if itwere she who'dhaggled him, "Give it back. I can't afford both."On the way back, Aziza's high-spirited fa9ade waned thecloser they got to the orphanage. The hands stopped flyingup. Her face turned heavy. It happened every time. It wasLaila's turn now, with Mariam pitching in, to take up thechattering, to laugh nervously, to fill the melancholy quiet withbreathless, aimless banter-Later, after Rasheed had droppedthem off and taken a bus to work, Laila watched Aziza wavegood-bye and scuff along the wall in the orphanage back lot.
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had saidearlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down andhow sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
* * *"Getaway, you!" Zalmai cried.
"Hush," Mariam said "Who are you yelling at?"He pointed. "There. That man."Laila followed his finger. Therewas a man at the front door ofthe house, leaning against it. His head turned when he sawthem approaching. He uncrossed his arms. Limped a few stepstoward them.
Laila stopped.
A choking noise came up her throat. Her knees weakened.
Laila suddenly wanted,needed, to grope for Mariam's arm, hershoulder, her wrist, something, anything, to lean on. But shedidn't. She didn't dare. She didn't dare move a muscle. Shedidn't dare breathe, or blink even, for fear that he was nothingbut a mirage shimmering in the distance, a brittle illusion thatwould vanish at the slightest provocation. Laila stood perfectlystill and looked at Tariq until her chest screamed for air andher eyes burned to blink. And, somehow, miraculously, aftershe took a breath, closed and opened her eyes, he was stillstanding there. Tariq was still standing there.
Laila allowed herself to take a step toward him. Then another.
And another. And then she was running.