"There is a way," she said, "and I just have to find it."
"We have to leave! We can't stay here," Laila said in a broken, husky voice. She thought
suddenly of the sound the shovel must have made striking Rasheed's head, and her body
pitched forward. Bile surged up her chest.
Mariam waited patiently until Laila felt better. Then she had Laila lie down, and, as she
stroked Laila's hair in her lap, Mariam said not to worry, that everything would be fine. She
said that they would leave she, Laila, the children, and Tariq too. They would leave this
house, and this unforgiving city. They would leave this despondent country altogether,
Mariam said, running her hands through Laila's hair, and go someplace remote and safe
where no one would find them, where they could disown their past and find shelter.
"Somewhere with trees," she said. "Yes. Lots of trees."
They would live in a small house on the edge of some town they'd never heard of, Mariam
said, or in a remote village where the road was narrow and unpaved but lined with all
manner of plants and shrubs. Maybe there would be a path to take, a path that led to a grass
field where the children could play, or maybe a graveled road that would take them to a
clear blue lake where trout swam and reeds poked through the surface. They would raise
sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together and teach the children to read.
They would make new lives for themselves peaceful, solitary lives and there the weight of
all that they'd endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the
happiness and simple prosperity they would find.
Laila murmured encouragingly. It would be an existence rife with difficulties, she saw,
but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would
a family heirloom. Mariam's soft maternal voice went on, brought a degree of comfort to
her. There is a way, she'd said, and, in the morning, Mariam would tell her what needed to
be done and they would do it, and maybe by tomorrow this time they would be on their way
to this new life, a life luxuriant with possibility and joy and welcomed difficulties. Laila
was grateful that Mariam was in charge, unclouded and sober, able to think this through for
both of them. Her own mind was a jittery, muddled mess.
Mariam got up. "You should tend to your son now." On her was the most stricken
expression Laila had ever seen on a human face.
Laila found him in the dark, curled up on Rasheed's side of the mattress. She slipped
beneath the covers beside him and pulled the blanket over them.
"Are you asleep?"
Without turning around to face her, he said, "Can't sleep yet. Baba jan hasn't said the
Babaloo prayers with me."