Laila
aila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and foreboding eyes. She was
dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence beyond the face, of her fists raining down.
Above them was the ceiling, and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark markings
of mold spreading across it like ink on a dress, the crack in the plaster that was a stolid
smile or a frown, depending on which end of the room you looked at it from. Laila thought
of all the times she had tied a rag around the end of a broom and cleaned cobwebs from this
ceiling. The three times she and Mariam had put coats of white paint on it. The crack wasn't
a smile any longer now but a mocking leer. And it was receding. The ceiling was shrinking,
lifting, rising away from her and toward some hazy dimness beyond. It rose until it shrank
to the size of a postage stamp, white and bright, everything around it blotted out by the
shuttered darkness. In the dark, Rasheed's face was like a sunspot.
Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars exploding. Bizarre
geometric forms in the light, worms, egg shaped things, moving up and down, sideways,
melting into each other, breaking apart, morphing into something else, then fading, giving
way to blackness.
Voices muffled and distant.
Behind the lids of her eyes, her children's faces flared and fizzled. Aziza, alert and
burdened, knowing, secretive. Zalmai, looking up at his father with quivering eagerness.
It would end like this, then, Laila thought. What a pitiable end But then the darkness
began to lift. She had a sensation of rising up, of being hoisted up. The ceiling slowly came
back, expanded, and now Laila could make out the crack again, and it was the same old
dull smile.
She was being shaken. Are you all right? Answer me, are you all right? Mariam's face,
engraved with scratches, heavy with worry, hovered over Laila.
Laila tried a breath. It burned her throat. She tried another. It burned even more this time,
and not just her throat but her chest too. And then she was coughing, and wheezing.
Gasping. But breathing. Her good ear rang.
The first thing she saw when she sat up was Rasheed. He was lying on his back, staring at
nothing with an unblinking, fish mouthed expression. A bit of foam, lightly pink, had
dribbled from his mouth down his cheek. The front of his pants was wet. She saw his
forehead.
Then she saw the shovel.