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 was going to the barber. She was still in bed
when he came home late in the afternoon, when he showed her his new haircut, his new
used suit, blue with cream pinstripes, and the wedding band he'd bought her.
Rasheed sat on the bed beside her, made a great show of slowly undoing the ribbon, of
opening the box and plucking out the ring delicately. He let on that he'd traded in Mariam's
old wedding ring for it.
"She doesn't care. Believe me. She won't even notice."
Laila pulled away to the far end of the bed. She could hear Mariam downstairs, the hissing
of her iron.
"She never wore it anyway," Rasheed said.
"I don't want it," Laila said, weakly. "Not like this. You have to take it back."
"Take it back?" An impatient look flashed across his face and was gone. He smiled. "I had
to add some cash too quite a lot, in fact. This is a better ring, twenty two karat gold. Feel
how heavy? Go on, feel it. No?" He closed the box. "How about flowers? That would be
nice. You like flowers? Do you have a favorite? Daisies?
Tulips? Lilacs? No flowers? Good! I don't see the point myself. I just thought...Now, I
know a tailor here in Deh Mazang. I was thinking we could take you there tomorrow, get
you fitted for a proper dress."
Laila shook her head.
Rasheed raised his eyebrows.
"I'd just as soon " Laila began.
He put a hand on her neck. Laila couldn't help wincing and recoiling. His touch felt like
wearing a prickly old wet wool sweater with no undershirt.
"Yes?"
"I'd just as soon we get it done."
Rasheed's mouth opened, then spread in a yellow, toothy grin. "Eager," he said.
Before Abdul Sharif's visit, Laila had decided to leave for Pakistan. Even after Abdul
Sharif came bearing his news, Laila thought now, she might have left. Gone somewhere far
from here. Detached herself from this city where every street corner was a trap, where
every alley hid a ghost that sprang at her like a jack in the box. She might have taken the
risk.
But, suddenly, leaving was no longer an option.
Not with this daily retching.
This new fullness in her breasts.
And the awareness, somehow, amid all of this turmoil, that she had missed a cycle.
Laila pictured herself in a refugee camp, a stark field with thousands of sheets of plastic
strung to makeshift poles flapping in the cold, stinging wind. Beneath one of these