floorboards. The rest, she imagines, have been ripped up for burning as firewood. The floor
is carpeted now with dry edged leaves, broken bottles, discarded chewing gum wrappers,
wild mushrooms, old yellowed cigarette butts. But mostly with weeds, some stunted, some
springing impudently halfway up the walls.
Fifteen years, Laila thinks. Fifteen years in this place.
Laila sits down, her back to the wall. She listens to the wind filtering through the willows.
There are more spider webs stretched across the ceiling. Someone has spray painted
something on one of the walls, but much of it has sloughed off, and Laila cannot decipher
what it says. Then she realizes the letters are Russian. There is a deserted bird's nest in one
corner and a bat hanging upside down in another corner, where the wall meets the low
ceiling.
Laila closes her eyes and sits there awhile.
In Pakistan, it was difficult sometimes to remember the details of Mariam's face. There
were times when, like a word on the tip of her tongue, Mariam's face eluded her. But now,
here in this place, it's easy to summon Mariam behind the lids of her eyes: the soft radiance
of her gaze, the long chin, the coarsened skin of her neck, the tight lipped smile. Here, Laila
can lay her cheek on the softness of Mariam's lap again, can feel Mariam swaying back and
forth, reciting verses from the Koran, can feel the words vibrating down Mariam's body, to
her knees, and into her own ears.
Then, suddenly, the weeds begin to recede, as if something is pulling them by the roots
from beneath the ground. They sink lower and lower until the earth in the kolba has
swallowed the last of their spiny leaves. The spider webs magically unpin themselves. The
bird's nest self disassembles, the twigs snapping loose one by one, flying out of the kolba
end over end. An invisible eraser wipes the Russian graffiti off the wall.
The floorboards are back. Laila sees a pair of sleeping cots now, a wooden table, two
chairs, a cast iron stove in the corner, shelves along the walls, on which sit clay pots and
pans, a blackened teakettle, cups and spoons. She hears chickens clucking outside, the
distant gurgling of the stream.
A young Mariam is sitting at the table making a doll by the glow of an oil lamp. She's
humming something. Her face is smooth and youthful, her hair washed, combed back. She
has all her teeth.
Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yam onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little
girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others,
who will never let on that she too has had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been
ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her
grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees
something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed
nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of
limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts down the doll. Smiles.