"Laila?"
"Yes, Babi."
"Pyramid. Area. Where are you?"
"Sorry, Babi. I was, uh...Let's see. Pyramid. Pyramid. One third the area of the base times
the height."
Babi nodded uncertainly, his gaze lingering on her, and Laila thought of Tariq's hands,
squeezing her breast, sliding down the small of her back, as the two of them kissed and
kissed.
One daY that same month of June, Giti was walking home from school with two
classmates. Only three blocks from Giti's house, a stray rocket struck the girls. Later that
terrible day, Laila learned that Nila, Giti's mother, had run up and down the street where
Giti was killed, collecting pieces of her daughter's flesh in an apron, screeching hysterically.
Giti's decomposing right foot, still in its nylon sock and purple sneaker, would be found on
a rooftop two weeks later.
At Giti's faiiha, the day after the killings, Laila sat stunned in a roomful of weeping
women. This was the first time that someone whom Laila had known, been close to, loved,
had died. She couldn't get around the unfathomable reality that Giti wasn't alive anymore.
Giti, with whom Laila had exchanged secret notes in class, whose fingernails she had
polished, whose chin hair she had plucked with tweezers. Giti, who was going to marry
Sabir the goalkeeper. Giti was dead. Dead. Blown to pieces. At last, Laila began to weep
for her friend. And all the tears that she hadn't been able to shed at her brothers' funeral
came pouring down.