A Thousand Splendid Suns

to him from my bed. I told him who I was, where I was from. He was glad, I think, that
there was ahamwaian next to him.
"I did most of the talking. It was hard for him to. His voice was hoarse, and I think it hurt
him to move his lips. So I told him about my daughters, and about our house in Peshawar
and the veranda my brother in law and I are building out in the back. I told him I had sold
the stores in Kabul and that I was going back to finish up the paperwork. It wasn't much.
But it occupied him. At least, I like to think it did.
"Sometimes he talked too. Half the time, I couldn't make out what he was saying, but I
caught enough. He described where he'd lived.
He talked about his uncle in Ghazni. And his mother's cooking and his father's carpentry,
him playing the accordion.
"But, mostly, he talked about you, hamshira. He said you were how did he put it his
earliest memory. I think that's right, yes. I could tell he cared a great deal about you. Balay,
that much was plain to see. But he said he was glad you weren't there. He said he didn't
want you seeing him like that."
Laila's feet felt heavy again, anchored to the floor, as if all her blood had suddenly pooled
down there. But her mind was far away, free and fleet, hurtling like a speeding missile
beyond Kabul, over craggy brown hills and over deserts ragged with clumps of sage, past
canyons of jagged red rock and over snowcapped mountains...
"When I told him I was going back to Kabul, he asked me to find you. To tell you that he
was thinking of you. That he missed you. I promised him I would I'd taken quite a liking to
him, you see. He was a decent sort of boy, I could tell."
Abdul Sharif wiped his brow with the handkerchief.
"I woke up one night," he went on, his interest in the wedding band renewed, "I think it
was night anyway, it's hard
to tell in those places. There aren't any windows. Sunrise, sundown, you just don't know.
But I woke up, and there was some sort of commotion around the bed next to mine. You
have to understand that I was full of drugs myself, always slipping in and out, to the point
where it was hard to tell what was real and what you'd dreamed up. All I remember is,
doctors huddled around the bed, calling for this and that, alarms bleeping, syringes all over
the ground.
"In the morning, the bed was empty. I asked a nurse. She said he fought valiantly."
Laila was dimly aware that she was nodding. She'd known. Of course she'd known. She'd
known the moment she had sat across from this man why he was here, what news he was
bringing.
"At first, you see, at first I didn't think you even existed," he was saying now. "I thought it
was the morphine talking. Maybe I even hoped you didn't exist; I've always dreaded bearing
bad news. But I promised him. And, like I said, I'd become rather fond of him. So I came
by here a few days ago. I asked around for you, talked to some neighbors. They pointed to
this house. They also told me what had happened to your parents. When I heard about that,
well, I turned around and left. I wasn't going to tell you. I decided it would be too much for
you. For anybody."
Abdul Sharif reached across the table and put a hand on her kneecap. "But I came back.
Because, in the end, I think he would have wanted you to know. I believe that. I'm so sorry.
I wish..."
Laila wasn't listening anymore. She was remembering the day the man from Panjshir had