A Thousand Splendid Suns

But thinking of Tariq was treacherous because, before she could stop, she saw him lying on a bed, far from home, tubes piercing ...

"Where did you put it?" she said, wheeling around to face Laila. "Me?" Laila said "I didn't take it. I hardly come in here." "I' ...

Mariam arly one morning the next spring, of 1993, Mariam stood by the living room window and watched Rasheed escort the girl ...

Cherished One. It was always the baby, or, when he was really exasperated, that thing. Some nights, Mariam overheard them arguin ...

"Watch. Watch how she laughs when I snap my fingers. There. See? Did you see?" Rasheed would grunt, and go back to his plate. Ma ...

"I should have known that you'd corrupt her," Rasheed spat at Mariam. He swung the belt, testing it against his own thigh. The b ...

Mariam had the impression that the baby too was examining her. She was lying on her back, her head tilted sideways, looking at M ...

Laila f all earthly pleasures, Laila's favorite was lying next to Aziza, her baby's face so close that she could watch her b ...

Every week, since Aziza's birth, she pried his wallet open when he was asleep or in the outhouse and took a single bill. Some we ...

with slimy, gray juice and sliced off its head. "It was either your daughter or the moths." "Where did you learn to clean fish l ...

They had a second cup, and when Laila asked her if she wanted a third Mariam said she did. As gunfire cracked in the hills, they ...

Mariam rom that night on, Mariam and Laila did their chores together. They sat in the kitchen and rolled dough, chopped gree ...

Defense and the Presidential Palace. From either side of the Kabul River, they released rounds of artillery at each other. The s ...

One day that winter, Laila asked to braid Mariam's hair. Mariam sat still and watched Laila's slim fingers in the mirror tighten ...

Laila s daylight steadily bleached darkness from the sky that spring morning of 1994 , Laila became certain that Rasheed kne ...

At the Lahore Gate bus station, near Pol Mahmood Khan in East Kabul, a row of buses sat idling along the curbside. Men in turban ...

"Yes," he said, squinting. "I wonder if you can help us. Can you do us a favor?" He passed the boy to his wife. He and Laila ste ...

sparks of euphoria, and when a stray dog with yellow eyes limped by, Laila leaned forward and pet its back. A few minutes before ...

hair, and eyebrows that met. He stared at Laila, bouncing a pencil by the eraser end on the desk. "We know," he began, clearing ...

word in the face of all that the Mujahideen factions had done the murders, the lootings, the rapes, the tortures, the executions ...