"We're standing atop its head," he said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief "There's a
niche over here where we can look out."
They inched over to the craggy overhang and, standing side by side, with Babi in the
middle, gazed down on the valley.
"Look at this!" said Laila.
Babi smiled.
The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields. Babi said they were
green winter wheat and alfalfa, potatoes too. The fields were bordered by poplars and
crisscrossed by streams and irrigation ditches, on the banks of which tiny female figures
squatted and washed clothes. Babi pointed to rice paddies and barley fields draping the
slopes. It was autumn, and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofs of mud
brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry. The main road going through the town was
poplar lined too. There were small shops and teahouses and street side barbers on either
side of it. Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams, Laila saw foothills, bare
and dusty brown, and, beyond those, as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the
snowcapped Hindu Kush.
The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.
"It's so quiet," Laila breathed. She could see tiny sheep and horses but couldn't hear their
bleating and whinnying.
"It's what I always remember about being up here," Babi said. "The silence. The peace of
it. I wanted you to experience it. But I also wanted you to see your country's heritage,
children, to learn of its rich past. You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn
from books. But there are things that, well, you just have tosee andfeel."
"Look," said Tariq.
They watched a hawk, gliding in circles above the village.
"Did you ever bring Mammy up here?" Laila asked
"Oh, many times. Before the boys were born. After too. Your mother, she used to be
adventurous then, and...so alive. She was just about the liveliest, happiest person I'd ever
met." He smiled at the memory. "She had this laugh. I swear it's why I married her, Laila,
for that laugh. It bulldozed you. You stood no chance against it."
A wave of affection overcame Laila. From then on, she would always remember Babi this
way: reminiscing about Mammy, with his elbows on the rock, hands cupping his chin, his
hair ruffled by the wind, eyes crinkled against the sun.
"I'm going to look at some of those caves," Tariq said.