"No."
Niloufar dropped her legs and pulled her blouse back down. "I could teach you," she said,
pushing hair from her flushed brow. "So how long will you stay here?"
"I don't know."
"My mother says you're not really my sister like you say you are."
"I never said I was," Mariam lied.
"She says you did. I don't care. What I mean is, I don't mind if you did say it, or if you are
my sister. I don't mind."
Mariam lay down. "I'm tired now."
"My mother says a jinn made your mother hang herself."
"You can stop that now," Mariam said, turning to her side. "The music, I mean."
Bibi jo came to see her that day too. It was raining by the time she came. She lowered her
large body onto the chair beside the bed, grimacing.
"This rain, Mariam jo, it's murder on my hips. Just murder, I tell you. I hope...Oh, now,
come here, child. Come here to Bibi jo. Don't cry. There, now. You poor thing. Ask You
poor, poor thing."
That night, Mariam couldn't sleep for a long time. She lay in bed looking at the sky,
listening to the footsteps below, the voices muffled by walls and the sheets of rain
punishing the window. When she did doze off, she was startled awake by shouting. Voices
downstairs, sharp and angry. Mariam couldn't make out the words. Someone slammed a
door.
The next morning, Mullah Faizullah came to visit her. When she saw her friend at the
door, his white beard and his amiable, toothless smile, Mariam felt tears stinging the
corners of her eyes again. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and hurried over. She
kissed his hand as always and he her brow. She pulled him up a chair He showed her the
Koran he had brought with him and opened it. "I figured no sense in skipping our routine,
eh?"
"You know I don't need lessons anymore, Mullah sahib. You taught me every surrah and
ayat in the Koran years ago."
He smiled, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I confess, then. I've been found
out. But I can think of worse excuses to visit you."