pari, a stunner, Mammy said. Her beauty was the talk of the valley. It skipped two
generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila The valley Mammy
referred to was the Panjshir, the Farsi speaking Tajik region one hundred kilometers
northeast of Kabul. Both Mammy and Babi, who were first cousins, had been born and
raised in Panjshir; they had moved to Kabul back in 1960 as hopeful, bright-eyed
newlyweds when Babi had been admitted to Kabul University.
Laila scrambled downstairs, hoping Mammy wouldn't come out of her room for another
round. She found Babi kneeling by the screen door.
"Did you see this, Laila?"
The rip in the screen had been there for weeks. Laila hunkered down beside him. "No.
Must be new."
"That's what I told Fariba." He looked shaken, reduced, as he always did after Mammy
was through with him. "She says it's been letting in bees."
Laila's heart went out to him. Babi was a small man, with narrow shoulders and slim,
delicate hands, almost like a woman's. At night, when Laila walked into Babi's room, she
always found the downward profile of his face burrowing into a book, his glasses perched
on the tip of his nose. Sometimes he didn't even notice that she was there. When he did, he
marked his page, smiled a close-lipped, companionable smile. Babi knew most of Rumi's
and Hafez's ghazals by heart. He could speak at length about the struggle between Britain
and czarist Russia over Afghanistan. He knew the difference between a stalactite and a
stalagmite, and could tell you that the distance between the earth and the sun was the same
as going from Kabul to Ghazni one and a half million times. But if Laila needed the lid of a
candy jar forced open, she had to go to Mammy, which felt like a betrayal. Ordinary tools
befuddled Babi. On his watch, squeaky door hinges never got oiled. Ceilings went on
leaking after he plugged them. Mold thrived defiantly in kitchen cabinets. Mammy said that
before he left with Noor to join the jihad against the Soviets, back in 1980, it was Ahmad
who had dutifully and competently minded these things.
"But if you have a book that needs urgent reading," she said, "then Hakim is your man."
Still, Laila could not shake the feeling that at one time, before Ahmad and Noor had gone
to war against the Soviets before Babi had let them go to war Mammy too had thought
Babi's bookishness endearing, that, once upon a time, she too had found his forgetfulness
and ineptitude charming.
"So what is today?" he said now, smiling coyly. "Day five? Or is it six?"
"What do I care? I don't keep count," Laila lied, shrugging, loving him for remembering
Mammy had no idea that Tariq had left.
"Well, his flashlight will be going off before you know it," Babi said, referring to Laila
and Tariq's nightly signaling game. They had played it for so long it had become a bedtime