APRIL 2003he drought has ended. It snowed at last this past winter, knee-deep, and now it has been
raining for days. The Kabul River is flowing once again. Its spring floods have washed
away Titanic City.
There is mud on the streets now. Shoes squish. Cars get trapped. Donkeys loaded with
apples slog heavily, their hooves splattering muck from rain puddles. But no one is
complaining about the mud, no one is mourning Titanic City. We need Kabul to be green
again, people say.
Yesterday, Laila watched her children play in the downpour, hopping from one puddle to
another in their backyard beneath a lead colored sky. She was watching from the kitchen
window of the small two bedroom house that they are renting in Deh Mazang. There is a
pomegranate tree in the yard and a thicket of sweetbriar bushes. Tariq has patched the walls
and built the children a slide, a swing set, a little fenced area for Zalmai's new goat. Laila
watched the rain slide off Zalmai's scalp he has asked that he be shaved, like Tariq, who is
in charge now of saying the Babaloo prayers. The rain flattened Aziza's long hair, turned it
into sodden tendrils that sprayed Zalmai when she snapped her head.
Zalmai is almost six. Aziza is ten. They celebrated her birthday last week, took her to
Cinema Park, where, at last, Titanic was openly screened for the people of Kabul.
"Come on, children, we're going to be late," Laila calls, putting their lunches in a paper
bag It's eight o'clock in the morning. Laila was up at five. As always, it was Aziza who
shook her awake for morning namaz. The prayers, Laila knows, are Aziza's way of clinging
to Mariam, her way of keeping Mariam close awhile yet before time has its way, before it
snatches Mariam from the garden of her memory like a weed pulled by its roots.
After namaz, Laila had gone back to bed, and was still asleep when Tariq left the house.
She vaguely remembers him kissing her cheek. Tariq has found work with a French NGO
that fits land mine survivors and amputees with prosthetic limbs.
Zalmai comes chasing Aziza into the kitchen.
"You have your notebooks, you two? Pencils? Textbooks?"
"Right here," Aziza says, lifting her backpack. Again, Laila notices how her stutter is
lessening.
"Let's go, then."