Mammy always spoke this way about Babi. A time when her parents did not sleep in
separate rooms. Laila wished she hadn't missed out on those times.
Inevitably, Mammy's proposal story led to matchmaking schemes. When Afghanistan was
free from the Soviets and the boys returned home, they would need brides, and so, one by
one, the women paraded the neighborhood girls who might or might not be suitable for
Ahmad and Noon Laila always felt excluded when the talk turned to her brothers, as though
the women were discussing a beloved film that only she hadn't seen. She'd been two years
old when Ahmad and Noor had left Kabul for Panjshir up north, to join Commander
Ahmad Shah Massoud's forces and fight the jihad Laila hardly remembered anything at all
about them. A shiny allah pendant around Ahmad's neck. A patch of black hairs on one of
Noor's ears. And that was it.
"What about Azita?"
"The rugmaker's daughter?" Mammy said, slapping her cheek with mock outrage.
"She has a thicker mustache than Hakim!"
"There's Anahita. We hear she's top in her class at Zarghoona."
"Have you seen the teeth on that girl? Tombstones. She's hiding a graveyard behind those
lips."
"How about the Wahidi sisters?"
"Those two dwarfs? No, no, no. Oh, no. Not for my sons. Not for my sultans. They
deserve better."
As the chatter went on, Laila let her mind drift, and, as always, it found Tariq.
Mammy had pulled the yellowish curtains. In the darkness, the room had a layered smell
about it: sleep, unwashed linen, sweat, dirty socks, perfume, the previous night's left over
qurma. Laila waited for her eyes to adjust before she crossed the room. Even so, her feet
became entangled with items of clothing that littered the floor.
Laila pulled the curtains open. At the foot of the bed was an old metallic folding chair.
Laila sat on it and watched the unmoving blanketed mound that was her mother.
The walls of Mammy's room were covered with pictures of Ahmad and Noor. Everywhere
Laila looked, two strangers smiled back. Here was Noor mounting a tricycle. Here was
Ahmad doing his prayers, posing beside a sundial Babi and he had built when he was
twelve. And there they were, her brothers, sitting back to back beneath the old pear tree in
the yard.