Laila jo?
Laila's eyes snap open. She gasps, and her body pitches forward. She startles the bat,
which zips from one end of the kolba to the other, its beating wings like the fluttering pages
of a book, before it flies out the window.
Laila gets to her feet, beats the dead leaves from the seat of her trousers. She steps out of
the kolba Outside, the light has shifted slightly. A wind is blowing, making the grass ripple
and the willow branches click.
Before she leaves the clearing, Laila takes one last look at the kolba where Mariam had
slept, eaten, dreamed, held her breath for Jalil. On sagging walls, the willows cast crooked
patterns that shift with each gust of wind. A crow has landed on the flat roof. It pecks at
something, squawks, flies off.
"Good bye, Mariam."
And, with that, unaware that she is weeping, Laila begins to run through the grass.
She finds Hamza still sitting on the rock. When he spots her, he stands up.
"Let's go back," he says. Then, "I have something to give you."
Laila watts for Hamza in the garden by the front door. The boy who had served them tea
earlier is standing beneath one of the fig trees holding a chicken, watching her impassively.
Laila spies two faces, an old woman and a young girl in hijab observing her demurely from
a window.
The door to the house opens and Hamza emerges. He is carrying a box.
He gives it to Laila.
"Jalil Khan gave this to my father a month or so before he died/' Hamza says. "He asked
my father to safeguard it for Mariam until she came to claim it. My father kept it for two
years. Then, just before he passed away, he gave it to me, and asked me to save it for
Mariam. But she...you know, she never came."
Laila looks down at the oval shaped tin box. It looks like an old chocolate box. It's olive
green, with fading gilt scrolls all around the hinged lid There is a little rust on the sides, and
two tiny dents on the front rim of the lid. Laila tries to open the box, but the latch is locked.
"What's in it?" she asks.
Hamza puts a key in her palm. "My father never unlocked it. Neither did 1.Isuppose it was
God's will that it be you."
Back at the hotel, Tariq and the children are not back yet.
Laila sits on the bed, the box on her lap. Part of her wants to leave it unopened, let