Madam
Do you know who I am?"
The girl's eyes fluttered
"Do you know what has happened?"
The girl's mouth quivered. She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Her hand grazed her left cheek. She
mouthed something.
Mariam leaned in closer.
"This ear," the girl breathed. "I can't hear."
* * *
For the first "week, the girl did little but sleep, with help from the pink pills Rasheed paid for at the
hospital. She murmured in her sleep. Sometimes she spoke gibberish, cried out, called out names
Mariam did not recognize. She wept in her sleep, grew agitated, kicked the blankets off, and then
Mariam had to hold her down. Sometimes she retched and retched, threw up everything Mariam fed
her.
When she wasn't agitated, the girl was a sullen pair of eyes staring from under the blanket, breathing
out short little answers to Mariam and Rasheed's questions. Some days she was childlike, whipped
her head side to side, when Mariam, then Rasheed, tried to feed her. She went rigid when Mariam
came at her with a spoon. But she tired easily and submitted eventually to their persistent badgering.
Long bouts of weeping followed surrender.
Rasheed had Mariam rub antibiotic ointment on the cuts on the girl's face and neck, and on the
sutured gashes on her shoulder, across her forearms and lower legs. Mariam dressed them with
bandages, which she washed and recycled. She held the girl's hair back, out of her face, when she had
to retch.
"How long is she staying?" she asked Rasheed.
"Until she's better. Look at her. She's in no shape to go. Poor thing."
* * *
It was Rasheed who found the girl, who dug her out from beneath the rubble "Lucky I was home," he said to the girl. He was sitting on a folding chair beside Mariam's bed,
where the girl lay. "Lucky for you, I mean. I dug you out with my own hands. There was a scrap of
metal this big-" Here, he spread his thumb and index finger apart to show her, at least doubling, in
Mariam's estimation, the actual size of it. "This big. Sticking right out of your shoulder. It was really
embedded in there. I thought I'd have to use a pair of pliers.
But you're all right. In no time, you'll benau socha. Good as new."
It was Rasheed who salvaged a handful of Hakim's books.
"Most of them were ash. The rest were looted, I'm afraid."
He helped Mariam watch over the girl that first week. One day, he came home from work with a
new blanket and pillow. Another day, a bottle of pills.
"Vitamins," he said.
It was Rasheed who gave Laila the news that her friend Tariq's house was occupied now.
"A gift," he said. "From one of Sayyaf s commanders to three of his men. A gift. Ha!"
The threemen were actually boys with suntanned, youthful faces. Mariam would see them when she
passed by, always dressed in their fatigues, squatting by the front door of Tariq's house, playing cards
and smoking, their Kalashnikovs leaning against the wall. The brawny one, the one with the self-
satisfied, scornful demeanor, was the leader. The youngest was also the quietest, the one who seemed
reluctant to wholeheartedly embrace his friends' air of impunity. He had taken to smiling and tipping
his headsalaam when Mariam passed by. When he did, some of his surface smugness dropped away,
and Mariam caught a glint of humility as yet uncorrupted.
Then one morning rockets slammed into the house. They were rumored later to have been fired by
the Hazaras of Wahdat. For some time, neighbors kept finding bits and pieces of the boys.
"They had it coming," said Rasheed.
* * *
The girl was extraordinarily lucky, Mariam thought, to escape with relatively minor injuries,
considering the rocket had turned her house into smoking rubble. And so,slowly, the girl got better.
She began to eat more, began to brush her own hair. She took baths on her own. She began taking her
meals downstairs, with Mariam and Rasheed.
But then some memory would rise, unbidden, and there would be stony silences or spells of
churlishness. Withdrawals and collapses. Wan looks. Nightmares and sudden attacks of grief.
Retching.
And sometimes regrets. "I shouldn't even be here,"she said one day.
Mariam was changing the sheets. The girl watchedfrom thefloor, herbruised knees drawn up against
her chest.
"My father wanted to take out the boxes. The books. He said they were too heavyfor me. But I
wouldn't let him. I was so eager. I should have been the one inside the house when it happened."
Mariam snapped the clean sheet and let it settle on the bed She looked at the girl, at her blond curls,
her slender neck and green eyes, her high cheekbones and plump lips. Mariam remembered seeing her
on the streets when she was little, tottering after her mother on the way to the tandoor, riding on the
shoulders of her brother, the younger one, with the patch of hair on his ear. Shooting marbles with the
carpenter's boy.
The girl was looking back as if waiting for Mariam to pass on some morsel of wisdom, to say
something encouraging- But what wisdom did Mariam have to offer? What encouragement? Mariam
remembered the day they'd buried Nana and how little comfort she had found when Mullah Faizullah
had quoted the Koran for her.Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power
over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you. Or when he'd said of her own
guilt,These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. They will destroy you. It wasn't your fault It wasn't your
fault.
What could she say to this girl that would ease her burden?
As it turned out, Mariam didn't have to say anything. Because the girl's face twisted, and she was on
all fours then saying she was going to be sick.
"Wait! Hold on. I'll get a pan. Not on the floor. I just cleaned…Oh. Oh.Khodaya. God."
* * *
Then one day, about a month after the blast that killed the girl's parents, a man came knocking.
Mariam opened the door. He stated his business.
"There is a man here to see you," Mariam said.
The girl raised her head from the pillow.
"He says his name is Abdul Sharif."
"I don't know any Abdul Sharif."
"Well, he's here asking for you. You need to come down and talk to him."