Kabul, Spring 1987
JN ine-year-old Laila rose from bed, as she did most mornings, hungry for the sight of her friend
Tariq. This morning, however, she knew there would be no Tariq sighting.
"How long will you be gone?" she'd asked when Tariq had told her that his parents were taking him
south, to the city of Ghazni, to visit his paternal uncle.
"Thirteen days."
"Thirteen days?"
"It's not so long. You're making a face, Laila."
"I am not."
"You're not going to cry, are you?"
"I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years."
She'd kicked at his shin, not his artificial but his real one, and he'd playfully whacked the back of her
head.
Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about
time: Like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched
and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence-Downstairs, her parents were fighting.
Again. Laila knew the routine: Mammy, ferocious, indomitable, pacing and ranting; Babi, sitting,
looking sheepish and dazed, nodding obediently, waiting for the storm to pass. Laila closed her door
and changed. But she could still hear them. She could still hearher Finally, a door slammed. Pounding
footsteps. Mammy's bed creaked loudly. Babi, it seemed, would survive to see another day.
"Laila!" he called now. "I'm going to be late for work!"
"One minute!"
Laila put on her shoes and quickly brushed her shoulder-length, blond curls in the mirror. Mammy
always told Laila that she had inherited her hair color-as well as her thick-lashed, turquoise green
eyes, her dimpled cheeks, her high cheekbones, and the pout of her lower lip, which Mammy shared-
from her great-grandmother, Mammy's grandmother.She was a 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'sghazals 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 hadlet 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 ritual, like brushing
teeth.
Babi ran his finger through the rip. "I'll patch this as soon as I get a chance. We'd better go." He
raised his voice and called over his shoulder, "We're going now, Fariba! I'm taking Laila to school.
Don't forget to pick her up!"
Outside, as she was climbing on the carrier pack of Babi's bicycle, Laila spotted a car parked up the
street, across from the house where the shoemaker, Rasheed, lived with his reclusive wife. It was a
Benz, an unusual car in this neighborhood, blue with a thick white stripe bisecting the hood, the roof,
and the trunk. Laila could make out two men sitting inside, one behind the wheel, the other in the back.
"Who are they?" she said."It's not our business," Babi said. "Climb on, you'll be late for class."
Laila remembered another fight, and, that time, Mammy had stood over Babi and said in a mincing
way,That's your business, isn't it, cousin? To make nothing your business. Even your own sons going
to war. Howl pleaded with you. Bui you buried your nose in those cursed books and let our sons go
like they were a pair of haramis.
Babi pedaled up the street, Laila on the back, her arms wrapped around his belly. As they passed the
blue Benz, Laila caught a fleeting glimpse of the man in the backseat: thin, white-haired, dressed in a
dark brown suit, with a white handkerchief triangle in the breast pocket. The only other thing she had
time to notice was that the car had Herat license plates.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, except at the turns, where Babi braked cautiously and said,
"Hold on, Laila. Slowing down. Slowing down. There."
* * *
In class that day, Laila found it hard to pay attention, between Tariq's absence and her parents' fight.
So when the teacher called on her to name the capitals of Romania and Cuba, Laila was caught off
guard.
The teacher's name was Shanzai, but, behind her back, the students called her Khala Rangmaal,
Auntie Painter, referring to the motion she favored when she slapped students-palm, then back of the
hand, back and forth, like a painter working a brush. Khala Rangmaal was a sharp-faced young
woman with heavy eyebrows. On the first day of school, she had proudly told the class that she was
the daughter of a poor peasant from Khost. She stood straight, and wore her jet-black hair pulled
tightly back and tied in a bun so that, when Khala Rangmaal turned around, Laila could see the dark
bristles on her neck. Khala Rangmaal did not wear makeup or jewelry. She did not cover and forbade
the female students from doing it. She said women and men were equal in every way and there was no
reason women should cover if men didn't.
She said that the Soviet Union was the best nation in the world, along with Afghanistan. It was kind
to its workers, and its people were all equal. Everyone in the Soviet Union was happy and friendly,
unlike America, where crime made people afraid to leave their homes. And everyone in Afghanistan
would be happy too, she said, once the antiprogressives, the backward bandits, were defeated.
"That's why our Soviet comrades came here in 1979. To lend their neighbor a hand. To help us
defeat these brutes who want our country to be a backward, primitive nation. And you must lend your
own hand, children. You must report anyone who might know about these rebels. It's your duty. You
must listen, then report. Even if it's your parents, your uncles or aunts. Because none of them loves
you as much as your country does. Your country comes first, remember! I will be proud of you, and so
will your country."
On the wall behind Khala Rangmaal's desk was a map of the Soviet Union, a map of Afghanistan,
and a framed photo of the latest communist president, Najibullah, who, Babi said, had once been the
head of the dreaded KHAD, the Afghan secret police. There were other photos too, mainly of young.Soviet soldiers shaking hands with peasants, planting apple saplings, building homes, always smiling
genially.
"Well," Khala Rangmaal said now, "have I disturbed your daydreaming,Inqilabi Girl?"
This was her nickname for Laila, Revolutionary Girl, because she'd been born the night of the April
coup of 1978-except Khala Rangmaal became angry if anyone in her class used the wordcoup. What
had happened, she insisted, was aninqilab, a revolution, an uprising of the working people against
inequality.Jihad was another forbidden word. According to her, there wasn't even a war out there in
the provinces, just skirmishes against troublemakers stirred by people she called foreign
provocateurs. And certainly no one,no one, dared repeat in her presence the rising rumors that, after
eight years of fighting, the Soviets were losing this war. Particularly now that the American president,
Reagan, had started shipping the Mujahideen Stinger Missiles to down the Soviet helicopters, now
that Muslims from all over the world were joining the cause: Egyptians, Pakistanis, even wealthy
Saudis, who left their millions behind and came to Afghanistan to fight the jihad.
"Bucharest. Havana," Laila managed.
"And are those countries our friends or not?"
"They are,moolim sahib. They are friendly countries."
Khala Rangmaal gave a curt nod.
* * *
When school let out. Mammy again didn't show up like she was supposed to. Laila ended up walking
home with two of her classmates, Giti and Hasina.
Giti was a tightly wound, bony little girl who wore her hair in twin ponytails held by elastic bands.
She was always scowling, and walking with her books pressed to her chest, like a shield. Hasina was
twelve, three years older than Laila and Giti, but had failed third grade once and fourth grade twice.
What she lacked in smarts Hasina made up for in mischief and a mouth that, Giti said, ran like a
sewing machine. It was Hasina who had come up with the Khala Rangmaal nickname-Today, Hasina
was dispensing advice on how to fend off unattractive suitors. "Foolproof method, guaranteed to
work. I give you my word."
"This is stupid. I'm too young to have a suitor!" Giti said.
"You're not too young."
"Well, no one's come to ask formy hand."
"That's because you have a beard, my dear."
Giti's hand shot up to her chin, and she looked with alarm to Laila, who smiled pityingly-Giti was
the most humorless person Laila had ever met-and shook her head with reassurance."Anyway, you want to know what to do or not, ladies?"
"Go ahead," Laila said.
"Beans. No less than four cans. On the evening the toothless lizard comes to ask for your hand. But
the timing, ladies, the timing is everything- You have to suppress the fireworks 'til it's time to serve
him his tea."
"I'll remember that," Laila said.
"So will he."
Laila could have said then that she didn't need this advice because Babi had no intention of giving
her away anytime soon. Though Babi worked at Silo, Kabul's gigantic bread factory, where he
labored amid the heat and the humming machinery stoking the massive ovens and mill grains all day,
he was a university-educated man. He'd been a high school teacher before the communists fired him-
this was shortly after the coup of 1978, about a year and a half before the Soviets had invaded. Babi
had made it clear to Laila from ayoung age that the most important thing in his life, after her safety,
was her schooling.
I know you're still young, bull waniyou to understand and learn this now,he said.Marriage can wait,
education cannot You're a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila I
know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as
much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are
uneducated, Laila No chance.
But Laila didn't tell Hasina that Babi had said these things, or how glad she was to have a father like
him, or how proud she was of his regard for her, or how determined she was to pursue her education
just as he had his. For the last two years, Laila had received theawal numra certificate, given yearly
to the top-ranked student in each grade.
She said nothing of these things to Hasina, though, whose own father was an ill-tempered taxi driver
who in two or three years would almost certainly give her away. Hasina had told Laila, in one of her
infrequent serious moments, that it had already been decided that she would marry a first cousin who
was twenty years older than her and owned an auto shop in Lahore.I've seen him twice, Hasina had
said.Both times he ate with his mouth open.
"Beans, girls," Hasina said. "You remember that. Unless, of course"-here she flashed an impish grin
and nudged Laila with an elbow-"it's your young handsome, one-legged prince who comes knocking-
Then…"
Laila slapped the elbow away. She would have taken offense if anyone else had said that about
Tariq. But she knew that Hasina wasn't malicious. She mocked-it was what she did-and her mocking
spared no one, least of all herself.
"You shouldn't talk that way about people!" Giti said."What people is that?"
"People who've been injured because of war," Giti said earnestly, oblivious to Hasina's toying.
"I think Mullah Giti here has a crush on Tariq. I knew it! Ha! But he's already spoken for, don't you
know? Isn't he, Laila?"
"I do not have a crush. On anyone!"
They broke off from Laila, and, still arguing this way, turned in to their street.
Laila walked alone the last three blocks. When she was on her street, she noticed that the blue Benz
was still parked there, outside Rasheed and Mariam's house. The elderly man in the brown suit was
standing by the hood now, leaning on a cane, looking up at the house.
That was when a voice behind Laila said, "Hey. Yellow Hair. Look here."
Laila turned around and was greeted by the barrel of a gun.