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 down and teach her a lesson. Who does she think she is, that
harami, treating you "
"No!"
He was getting up already, and she had to grab him by the forearm, pull him back down.
"Don't! No! She's been decent to me. I need a minute, that's all. I'll be fine."
He sat beside her, stroking her neck, murmuring His hand slowly crept down to her back,
then up again. He leaned in, flashed his crowded teeth.
"Let's see, then," he purred, "if I can't help you feel better."
First, the trees those that hadn't been cut down for firewood shed their spotty yellow and
copper leaves. Then came the winds, cold and raw, ripping through the city. They tore off
the last of the clinging leaves, and left the trees looking ghostly against the muted brown of
the hills. The season's first snowfall was light, the flakes no sooner fallen than melted. Then
the roads froze, and snow gathered in heaps on the rooftops, piled halfway up frost caked
windows. With snow came the kites, once the rulers of Kabul's winter skies, now timid
trespassers in territory claimed by streaking rockets and fighter jets.
Rasheed kept bringing home news of the war, and Laila was baffled by the allegiances
that Rasheed tried to explain to her. Sayyaf was fighting the Hazaras, he said. The Hazaras
were fighting Massoud.
"And he's fighting Hekmatyar, of course, who has the support of the Pakistanis. Mortal
enemies, those two, Massoud and Hekmatyar. Sayyaf, he's siding with Massoud. And
Hekmatyar supports the Hazaras for now."
As for the unpredictable Uzbek commander Dostum, Rasheed said no one knew where he
would stand. Dostum had fought the Soviets in the 1980s alongside the Mujahideen but had
defected and joined Najibullah's communist puppet regime after the Soviets had left. He
had even earned a medal, presented by Najibullah himself, before defecting once again and
returning to the Mujahideen's side. For the time being, Rasheed said, Dostum was
supporting Massoud.
In Kabul, particularly in western Kabul, fires raged, and black palls of smoke
mushroomed over snow clad buildings. Embassies closed down. Schools collapsed In
hospital waiting rooms, Rasheed said, the wounded were bleeding to death. In operating
rooms, limbs were being amputated without anesthesia.
"But don't worry," he said. "You're safe with me, my flower, my gul. Anyone tries to harm
you, I'll rip out their liver and make them eat it."
That winter, everywhere Laila turned, walls blocked her way. She thought longingly of
the wide open skies of her childhood, of her days of going to buzkashi tournaments with
Babi and shopping at Mandaii with Mammy, of her days of running free in the streets and
gossiping about boys with Giti and Hasina. Her days of sitting with Tariq in a bed of clover
on the banks of a stream somewhere, trading riddles and candy, watching the sun go down.