other. Some were still holding their babies. Some broke from the mass and charged the
double doors that led to the treatment rooms. An armed Talib guard blocked their way, sent
them back.
Mariam waded in. She dug in her heels and burrowed against the elbows, hips, and
shoulder blades of strangers. Someone elbowed her in the ribs, and she elbowed back. A
hand made a desperate grab at her face. She swatted it away. To propel herself forward,
Mariam clawed at necks, at arms and elbows, at hair, and, when a woman nearby hissed,
Mariam hissed back.
Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one. She thought
ruefully of Nana, of the sacrifices that she too had made. Nana, who could have given her
away, or tossed her in a ditch somewhere and run. But she hadn't. Instead, Nana had
endured the shame of bearing a harami, had shaped her life around the thankless task of
raising Mariam and, in her own way, of loving her. And, in the end, Mariam had chosen
Jalil over her. As she fought her way with impudent resolve to the front of the melee,
Mariam wished she had been a better daughter to Nana. She wished she'd understood then
what she understood now about motherhood She found herself face to face with a nurse,
who was covered head to toe in a dirty gray burqa. The nurse was talking to a young
woman, whose burqa headpiece had soaked through with a patch of matted blood
"My daughter's water broke and the baby won't come," Mariam called.
"I'm talking to her!" the bloodied young woman cried "Wait your turn!"
The whole mass of them swayed side to side, like the tall grass around the kolba when the
breeze swept across the clearing. A woman behind Mariam was yelling that her girl had
broken her elbow falling from a tree. Another woman cried that she was passing bloody
stools.
"Does she have a fever?" the nurse asked. It took Mariam a moment to realize she was
being spoken to.
"No," Mariam said.
Bleeding?
"No."
"Where is she?"
Over the covered heads, Mariam pointed to where Laila was sitting with Rasheed.
"We'll get to her," the nurse said
"How long?" Mariam cried Someone had grabbed her by the shoulders and was pulling
her back.
"I don't know," the nurse said. She said they had only two doctors and both were operating
at the moment.
"She's in pain," Mariam said.
"Me too!" the woman with the bloodied scalp cried. "Wait your turn!"
Mariam was being dragged back. Her view of the nurse was blocked now by shoulders
and the backs of heads. She smelled a baby's milky burp.
"Take her for a walk," the nurse yelled. "And wait."
It was dark outside when a nurse finally called them in. The delivery room had eight beds,