"Keep him away from me." That was the only time Mammy said anything all morning.
Babi ended up sitting alone on a folding chair in the hallway, looking desolate and small
Then one of the women told him he was in the way there. He apologized and disappeared
into his study.
That afternoon, the men went to a hall in Karteh Seh that Babi had rented for the fatiha.
The women came to the house. Laila took her spot beside Mammy, next to the living room
entrance where it was customary for the family of the deceased to sit. Mourners removed
their shoes at the door, nodded at acquaintances as they crossed the room, and sat on
folding chairs arranged along the walls. Laila saw Wajma, the elderly midwife who had
delivered her. She saw Tariq's mother too, wearing a black scarf over the wig. She gave
Laila a nod and a slow, sad, close lipped smile.
From a cassette player, a man's nasal voice chanted verses from the Koran. In between,
the women sighed and shifted and sniffled. There were muted coughs, murmurs, and,
periodically, someone let out a theatrical, sorrow drenched sob.
Rasheed's wife, Mariam, came in. She was wearing a blackhijab. Strands of her hair
strayed from it onto her brow. She took a seat along the wall across from Laila.
Next to Laila, Mammy kept rocking back and forth. Laila drew Mammy's hand into her
lap and cradled it with both of hers, but Mammy did not seem to notice.
"Do you want some water, Mammy?" Laila said in her ear. "Are you thirsty?"
But Mammy said nothing. She did nothing but sway back and forth and stare at the rug
with a remote, spiritless look.
Now and then, sitting next to Mammy, seeing the drooping, woebegone looks around the
room, the magnitude of the disaster that had struck her family would register with Laila.
The possibilities denied. The hopes dashed.
But the feeling didn't last. It was hard to feel, really feel, Mammy's loss. Hard to summon
sorrow, to grieve the deaths of people Laila had never really thought of as alive in the first
place. Ahmad and Noor had always been like lore to her. Like characters in a fable. Kings
in a history book.
It was Tariq who was real, flesh and blood. Tariq, who taught her cusswords in Pashto,
who liked salted clover leaves, who frowned and made a low, moaning sound when he
chewed, who had a light pink birthmark just beneath his left collarbone shaped like an
upside down mandolin.
So she sat beside Mammy and dutifully mourned Ahmad and Noor, but, in Laila's heart,
her true brother was alive and well.