"No. Of course not."
"Then stop pestering me!"
"I'm sorry. Bebakhsh, Rasheed. I'm sorry."
He crushed out his cigarette and lit another. He turned up the volume on the radio.
"I've been thinking, though," Mariam said, raising her voice so as to be heard over the
music.
Rasheed sighed again, more irritably this time, turned down the volume once more. He
rubbed his forehead wearily. "What now?"
"I've been thinking, that maybe we should have a proper burial For the baby, I mean. Just
us, a few prayers,
nothing more."
Mariam had been thinking about it for a while. She didn't want to forget this baby. It didn't
seem right, not to mark this loss in some way that was permanent.
"What for? It's idiotic."
"It would make me feel better, I think."
"Then you do it," he said sharply. "I've already buried one son. I won't bury another.
Now, if you don't mind, I'm trying to listen."
He turned up the volume again, leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
One sunny morning that week, Mariam picked a spot in the yard and dug a hole.
"In the name of Allah and with Allah, and in the name of the messenger of Allah upon
whom be the blessings and peace of Allah," she said under her breath as her shovel bit into
the ground. She placed the suede coat that Rasheed had bought for the baby in the hole and
shoveled dirt over it.
"You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into the night, and
You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living, and
You give sustenance to whom You please without measure."
She patted the dirt with the back of the shovel. She squatted by the mound, closed her
eyes.
Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me.