"Besides," he said, "you'd be surprised how much they can bring in."
Laila said no again. They were in the living room. Mariam and the children were in the
kitchen. Laila could hear the clatter of dishes, Zalmai's high pitched laugh, Aziza saying
something to Mariam in her steady, reasonable voice.
"There will be others like her, younger even," Rasheed said. "Everyone in Kabul is doing
the same."
Laila told him she didn't care what other people did with their children.
"I'll keep a close eye on her," Rasheed said, less patiently now. "It's a safe corner. There's
a mosque across the street."
"I won't let you turn my daughter into a street beggar!" Laila snapped.
The slap made a loud smacking sound, the palm of his thick fingered hand connecting
squarely with the meat of Laila's cheek. It made her head whip around. It silenced the
noises from the kitchen. For a moment, the house was perfectly quiet. Then a flurry of
hurried footsteps in the hallway before Mariam and the children were in the living room,
their eyes shifting from her to Rasheed and back.
Then Laila punched him.
It was the first time she'd struck anybody, discounting the playful punches she and Tariq
used to trade. But those had been open fisted, more pats than punches, self consciously
friendly, comfortable expressions of anxieties that were both perplexing and thrilling. They
would aim for the muscle that Tariq, in a professorial voice, called the deltoid
Laila watched the arch of her closed fist, slicing through the air, felt the crinkle of
Rasheed's stubbly, coarse skin under her knuckles. It made a sound like dropping a rice bag
to the floor. She hit him hard. The impact actually made him stagger two steps backward.
From the other side of the room, a gasp, a yelp, and a scream. Laila didn't know who had
made which noise. At the moment, she was too astounded to notice or care, waiting for her
mind to catch up with what her hand had done. When it did, she believed she might have
smiled. She might have grinned when, to her astonishment, Rasheed calmly walked out of
the room.
Suddenly, it seemed to Laila that the collective hardships of their lives hers, Aziza's,
Mariam's simply dropped away, vaporized like Zalmai's palms from the TV screen. It
seemed worthwhile, if absurdly so, to have endured all they'd endured for this one
crowning moment, for this act of defiance that would end the suffering of all indignities.
Laila did not notice that Rasheed was back in the room. Until his hand was around her
throat. Until she was lifted off her feet and slammed against the wall.
Up close, his sneering face seemed impossibly large. Laila noticed how much puffier it
was getting with age, how many more broken vessels charted tiny paths on his nose.
Rasheed didn't say anything. And, really, what could be said, what needed saying, when
you'd shoved the barrel of your gun into your wife's mouth?
It was the raids, the reason they were in the yard digging. Sometimes monthly raids,
sometimes weekly. Of late, almost daily. Mostly, the Taliban confiscated stuff, gave a kick
to someone's rear, whacked the back of a head or two. But sometimes there were public