t was early evening the following day by the time they arrived at Rasheed's house.
"We're in Deh Mazang," he said. They were outside, on the sidewalk. He had her
suitcase in one hand and was unlocking the wooden front gate with the other. "In the south
and west part of the city. The zoo is nearby, and the university too."
Mariam nodded. Already she had learned that, though she could understand him, she had
to pay close attention when he spoke. She was unaccustomed to the Kabuli dialect of his
Farsi, and to the underlying layer of Pashto accent, the language of his native Kandahar. He,
on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble understanding her Herati Farsi.
Mariam quickly surveyed the narrow, unpaved road along which Rasheed's house was
situated. The houses on this road were crowded together and shared common walls, with
small, walled yards in front buffering them from the street. Most of the homes had flat
roofs and were made of burned brick, some of mud the same dusty color as the mountains
that ringed the city. Gutters separated the sidewalk from the road on both sides and flowed
with muddy water. Mariam saw small mounds of flyblown garbage littering the street here
and there. Rasheed's house had two stories. Mariam could see that it had once been blue.
When Rasheed opened the front gate, Mariam found herself in a small, unkempt yard
where yellow grass struggled up in thin patches. Mariam saw an outhouse on the right, in a
side yard, and, on the left, a well with a hand pump, a row of dying saplings. Near the well
was a toolshed, and a bicycle leaning against the wall.
"Your father told me you like to fish," Rasheed said as they were crossing the yard to the
house. There was no backyard, Mariam saw. "There are valleys north of here. Rivers with
lots of fish. Maybe I'll take you someday."
He unlocked the front door and let her into the house.
Rasheed's house was much smaller than Jalil's, but, compared to Mariam and Nana's kolba,
it was a mansion. There was a hallway, a living room downstairs, and a kitchen in which he
showed her pots and pans and a pressure cooker and a kerosene ishiop. The living room had
a pistachio green leather couch. It had a rip down its side that had been clumsily sewn
together. The walls were bare. There was a table, two cane seat chairs, two folding chairs,
and, in the corner, a black, cast iron stove.
Mariam stood in the middle of the living room, looking around. At the kolba, she could
touch the ceiling with her fingertips. She could lie in her cot and tell the time of day by the
angle of sunlight pouring through the window. She knew how far her door would open
before its hinges creaked. She knew every splinter and crack in each of the thirty wooden
floorboards. Now all those familiar things were gone. Nana was dead, and she was here, in
a strange city, separated from the life she'd known by valleys and chains of snow capped
mountains and entire deserts. She was in a stranger's house, with all its different rooms and
its smell of cigarette smoke, with its unfamiliar cupboards full of unfamiliar utensils, its
heavy, dark green curtains, and a ceiling she knew she could not reach. The space of it