A Thousand Splendid Suns

And dreamed They are on a ribbon of beach, sitting on a quilt. It's a chilly, overcast day, but it's warm next to Tariq under th ...

can remember now is two lines: "One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide ...

The ground lurched beneath her feet. Something hot and powerful slammed into her from behind. It knocked her out of her sandals. ...

PART THREE Mariam o you know who I am?" The girl's eyes fluttered "Do you know what has happened?" The girl's mouth quivered ...

"Most of them were ash. The rest were looted, I'm afraid." He helped Mariam watch over the girl that first week. One day, he cam ...

that He may try you. Or when he'd said of her own guilt, These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. They will destroy you. It wasn't ...

Laila aila sat across from Abdul Sharif, who was a thin, small headed man with a bulbous nose pocked with the same cratered ...

legs felt heavy, as though weights had been tethered to them. She told herself that he wasn't done, that he hadn't told her anyt ...

to him from my bed. I told him who I was, where I was from. He was glad, I think, that there was ahamwaian next to him. "I did m ...

come to deliver the news of Ahmad's and Noor's deaths. She remembered Babi, white faced, slumping on the couch, and Mammy, her h ...

Mariam 'm so sorry," Rasheed said to the girl, taking his bowl of masiawa and meatballs from Mariam without looking at her. ...

fact that he had not raised a hand to her, Mariam, since he had dug the girl out from under those bricks. It was the staged deli ...

"Don't be so dramatic. It's a common thing and you know it. I have friends who have two, three, four wives. Your own father had ...

Laila he next day, Laila stayed in bed. She was under the blanket in the morning when Rasheed poked his head in and said he ...

makeshift tents, she saw her baby, Tariq's baby, its temples wasted, its jaws slack, its skin mottled, bluish gray. She pictured ...

Mariam n the daytime, the girl was no more than a creaking bedspring, a patter of footsteps overhead. She was water splashin ...

leniency with you. I'm sorry." The cold, hateful look the girl flashed Rasheed at this did not escape Mariam, but he was looking ...

"Oh." "Is there something you want?" "Mariam jan, I want to...About the things he said the other night " "I have been meaning to ...

Laila aila remembered a gathering once, years before at the house, on one of Mammy's good days. The women had been sitting i ...

baby, was something wrong with the baby? No? Was Mariam mistreating her? "That's it, isn't it?" "No." "Wallah o billah, I'll go ...