north and east. Their deafening shrieks hurt her ears. In the distance, loud booms resonated
and sudden plumes of smoke rose to the sky.
"What's going on, Rasheed?" she said. "What is all this?"
"God knows," he muttered. He tried the radio and got only static.
"What do we do?"
Impatiently, Rasheed said, "We wait."
Later in the day, Rasheed was still trying the radio as Mariam made rice with spinach
sauce in the kitchen. Mariam remembered a time when she had enjoyed, even looked
forward to, cooking for Rasheed. Now cooking was an exercise in heightened anxiety. The
qurmas were always too salty or too bland for his taste. The rice was judged either too
greasy or too dry, the bread declared too doughy or too crispy. Rasheed's faultfinding left
her stricken in the kitchen with self doubt.
When she brought him his plate, the national anthem was playing on the radio.
"I made sabzi, " she said.
"Put it down and be quiet."
After the music faded, a man's voice came on the radio. He announced himself as Air
Force Colonel Abdul Qader. He reported that earlier in the day the rebel Fourth Armored
Division had seized the airport and key intersections in the city. Kabul Radio, the ministries
of Communication and the Interior, and the Foreign Ministry building had also been
captured. Kabul was in the hands of the people now, he said proudly. Rebel MiGs had
attacked the Presidential Palace. Tanks had broken into the premises, and a fierce battle was
under way there. Daoud's loyalist forces were all but defeated, Abdul Qader said in a
reassuring tone.
Days later, when the communists began the summary executions of those connected with
Daoud Khan's regime, when rumors began floating about Kabul of eyes gouged and
genitals electrocuted in the Pol-e-Charkhi Prison, Mariam would hear of the slaughter that
had taken place at the Presidential Palace. Daoud Khan had been killed, but not before the
communist rebels had killed some twenty members of his family, including women and
grandchildren. There would be rumors that he had taken his own life, that he'd been gunned
down in the heat of battle; rumors that he'd been saved for last, made to watch the massacre
of his family, then shot.
Rasheed turned up the volume and leaned in closer.
"A revolutionary council of the armed forces has been established, and our watan will
now be known as the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan," Abdul Qader said. "The era of