A Thousand Splendid Suns

full speed, in the tender place between the lower tip of the breastbone and the belly button. She realized she had dropped Aziza ...

"Aishee," Aziza mewled."Aishee." "Soon." Laila kissed her daughter, aiming for the forehead, finding the crown of her head inste ...

cracks between her fingers, she saw a big, blurry silhouette standing in a rectangle of light. The silhouette moved. Now there w ...

Mariam SEPTEMBER 1996 wo and a half years later, Mariam awoke on the morning of September 27 to the sounds of shouting and w ...

They "went our that day, the four of them, Rasheed leading them from one bus to the next, to greet their new world, their new l ...

The following day, Kabul was overrun by trucks. In Khair khana, in Shar-e-Nau, in Karteh Parwan, in Wazir Akbar Khan and Taiman ...

Rasheed turned off the radio. They were sitting on the living room floor, eating dinner less than a week after they'd seen Najib ...

Laila aila was glad, when the Taliban went to work, that Babi wasn't around to witness it. It would have crippled him. Men w ...

"They're savages," Laila said. "You think?" he said "Compared to what? The Soviets killed a million people. Do you know how many ...

unnatural thing. And yet she had to wonder, as she lay on the floor, her sweaty hands poised to guide the spoke, if indeed she c ...

Mariam SEPTEMBER 1997 his hospital no longer treats women," the guard barked. He was standing at the top of the stairs, look ...

other. Some were still holding their babies. Some broke from the mass and charged the double doors that led to the treatment roo ...

on which women moaned and twisted tended to by fully covered nurses. Two of the women were in the act of delivering. There were ...

"What's going on?" Laila moaned. "You can buy the medicine yourself, but " "Write the name," Mariam said. "You write it down and ...

Laila FALL 1999 t was Mariam's idea to dig the hole. One morning, she pointed to a patch of soil behind the toolshed. "We ca ...

clutching her ear. Her stomach turned when she thought of that afternoon, lying on the floor with the spoke of a bicycle wheel b ...

and already thickening into a starless, chilly night He set it down on the living room table. He said he'd bought it on the blac ...

"Besides," he said, "you'd be surprised how much they can bring in." Laila said no again. They were in the living room. Mariam a ...

beatings, lashings of soles and palms. "Gently," Mariam said now, her knees over the edge. They lowered the TV into the hole by ...

Mariam n the summer of 2000, the drought reached its third and worst year. In Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar, villages turned into ...