it merely looked black and deadly.
"I don't like it," she said. "Guns scare me."
Tariq turned the magazine over in his hand
"They found three bodies in a house in Karteh Seh last week," he said. "Did you hear?
Sisters. All three raped Their throats slashed. Someone had bitten the rings off their fingers.
You could tell, they had teeth marks "
"I don't want to hear this."
"I don't mean to upset you," Tariq said "But I just...I feel better carrying this."
He was her lifeline to the streets now. He heard the word of mouth and passed it on to her.
Tariq was the one who told her, for instance, that militiamen stationed in the mountains
sharpened their marksmanship and settled wagers over said marksmanship by shooting
civilians down below, men, women, children, chosen at random. He told her that they fired
rockets at cars but, for some reason, left taxis alone which explained to Laila the recent rash
of people spraying their cars yellow.
Tariq explained to her the treacherous, shifting boundaries within Kabul. Laila learned
from him, for instance, that this road, up to the second acacia tree on the left, belonged to
one warlord; that the next four blocks, ending with the bakery shop next to the demolished
pharmacy, was another warlord's sector; and that if she crossed that street and walked half a
mile west, she would find herself in the territory of yet another warlord and, therefore, fair
game for sniper fire. And this was what Mammy's heroes were called now. Warlords. Laila
heard them called iofangdar too. Riflemen. Others still called them Mujahideen, but, when
they did, they made a face a sneering, distasteful face the word reeking of deep aversion
and deep scorn. Like an insult.
Tariq snapped the magazine back into his handgun. "Do you have it in you?" Laila
said."To what?"
"To use this thing. To kill with it."
Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and
terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila."
He slid closer to her and their hands brushed, once, then again. When Tariq's fingers
tentatively began to slip into hers, Laila let them. And when suddenly he leaned over and
pressed his lips to hers, she let him again.
At that moment, all of Mammy's talk of reputations and mynah birds sounded immaterial
to Laila. Absurd, even. In the midst of all this killing and looting, all this ugliness, it was a
harmless thing to sit here beneath a tree and kiss Tariq. A small thing. An easily forgivable