he ailments that would hound Mammy for the rest of her days began. Chest pains and
headaches, joint aches and night sweats, paralyzing pains in her ears, lumps no one else
could feel. Babi took her to a doctor, who took blood and urine, shot X rays of Mammy's
body, but found no physical illness.
Mammy lay in bed most days. She wore black. She picked at her hair and gnawed on the
mole below her lip. When Mammy was awake, Laila found her staggering through the
house. She always ended up in Laila's room, as though she would run into the boys sooner
or later if she just kept walking into the room where they had once slept and farted and
fought with pillows. But all she ran into was their absence. And Laila. Which, Laila
believed, had become one and the same to Mammy.
The only task Mammy never neglected was her five daily namaz prayers. She ended each
namaz with her head hung low, hands held before her face, palms up, muttering a prayer for
God to bring victory to the Mujahideen. Laila had to shoulder more and more of the chores.
If she didn't tend to the house, she was apt to find clothes, shoes, open rice bags, cans of
beans, and dirty dishes strewn about everywhere. Laila washed Mammy's dresses and
changed her sheets. She coaxed her out of bed for baths and meals. She was the one who
ironed Babi's shirts and folded his pants. Increasingly, she was the cook.
Sometimes, after she was done with her chores, Laila crawled into bed next to Mammy.
She wrapped her arms around her, laced her fingers with her mother's, buried her face in
her hair. Mammy would stir, murmur something. Inevitably, she would start in on a story
about the boys.
One day, as they were lying this way, Mammy said, "Ahmad was going to be a leader. He
had the charisma for it People three times his age listened to him with respect, Laila. It was
something to see. And Noon Oh, my Noor. He was always making sketches of building
sand bridges. He was going to be an architect, you know. He was going to transform Kabul
with his designs. And now they're both shaheed, my boys, both martyrs."
Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice that she, Laila, hadn't become
shaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila
knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life.
They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum
and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which
Mammy meant to ink their legends.
"The messenger who came with the news, he said that when they brought the boys back to
camp, Ahmad Shah Massoud personally oversaw the burial. He said a prayer for them at
the gravesite. That's the kind of brave young men your brothers were, Laila, that
Commander Massoud himself, the Lion of Panjshir, God bless him, would oversee their
burial."