"Heart attack. His second," Tariq's mother said, giving her husband an admonishing look.
Tariq's father blew smoke and winked at Laila. It struck her again that Tariq's parents
could easily pass for his grandparents. His mother hadn't had him until she'd been well into
her forties.
"How is your father, my dear?" Tariq's mother said, looking on over her bowl As long as
Laila had known her, Tariq's mother had worn a wig. It was turning a dull purple with age.
It was pulled low on her brow today, and Laila could see the gray hairs of her sideburns.
Some days, it rode high on her forehead. But, to Laila, Tariq's mother never looked pitiable
in it What Laila saw was the calm, self assured face beneath the wig, the clever eyes, the
pleasant, unhurried manners.
"He's fine," Laila said. "Still at Silo, of course. He's fine."
"And your mother?"
"Good days. Bad ones too. The same "
"Yes," Tariq's mother said thoughtfully, lowering her spoon into the bowl "How hard it
must be, how terribly hard, for a mother to be away from her sons."
"You're staying for lunch?" Tariq said
"You have to," said his mother. "I'm making shorwa"
"I don't want to be a mozahem. "
"Imposing?" Tariq's mother said. "We leave for a couple of weeks and you turn polite on
us?"
"All right, I'll stay," Laila said, blushing and smiling.
"It's settled, then."
The truth was, Laila loved eating meals at Tariq's house as much as she disliked eating
them at hers. At Tariq's, there was no eating alone; they always ate as a family. Laila liked
the violet plastic drinking glasses they used and the quarter lemon that always floated in the
water pitcher. She liked how they started each meal with a bowl of fresh yogurt, how they
squeezed sour oranges on everything, even their yogurt, and how they made small,
harmless jokes at each other's expense.
Over meals, conversation always flowed. Though Tariq and his parents were ethnic
Pashtuns, they spoke Farsi when Laila was around for her benefit, even though Laila more
or less understood their native Pashto, having learned it in school. Babi said that there were
tensions between their people the Tajiks, who were a minority, and Tariq's people, the