learn Pashto."
Mariam's chest was tightening. The room was reeling up and down, the ground shifting
beneath her feet.
"He's a shoemaker," Khadija was saying now. "But not some kind of ordinary street-side
moochi, no, no. He has his own shop, and he is one of the most sought after shoemakers in
Kabul He makes them for diplomats, members of the presidential family that class of
people. So you see, he will have no trouble providing for you."
Mariam fixed her eyes on Jalil, her heart somersaulting in her chest. "Is this true? What
she's saying, is it true?"
But Jalil wouldn't look at her. He went on chewing the corner of his lower lip and staring
at the pitcher.
"Now he is a little older than you," Afsoon chimed in. "But he can't be more than...forty.
Forty five at the most. Wouldn't you say, Nargis?"
"Yes. But I've seen nine year old girls given to men twenty years older than your suitor,
Mariam. We all have. What are you, fifteen? That's a good, solid marrying age for a girl."
There was enthusiastic nodding at this. It did not escape Mariam that no mention was made
of her half sisters Saideh or Naheed, both her own age, both students in the Mehri School in
Herat, both with plans to enroll in Kabul University. Fifteen, evidently, was not a good,
solid marrying age for them.
"What's more," Nargis went on, "he too has had a great loss in his life. His wife, we hear,
died during childbirth ten years ago. And then, three years ago, his son drowned in a lake."
"It's very sad, yes. He's been looking for a bride the last few years but hasn't found anyone
suitable."
"I don't want to," Mariam said. She looked at Jalil. "I don't want this. Don't make me." She
hated the sniffling, pleading tone of her voice but could not help it.
"Now, be reasonable, Mariam," one of the wives said.
Mariam was no longer keeping track of who was saying what. She went on staring at Jalil,
waiting for him to speak up, to say that none of this was true.
"You can't spend the rest of your life here."
"Don't you want a family of your own?"
"Yes. A home, children of your own?"
"You have to move on."