Laila
As daylight steadily bleached darkness from the skythat spring morning of1994, Laila became
certain that Rasheed knew. That, any moment now, he would drag her out of bed and ask whether
she'd really taken him for such akhar, such a donkey, that he wouldn't find out. Butazan rang out, and
then the morning sun was falling flat on the rooftops and the roosters were crowing and nothing out of
the ordinary happened
She could hear him now in the bathroom, the tapping of his razor against the edge of the basin. Then
downstairs, moving about, heating tea. The keys jingled. Now he was crossing the yard, walking his
bicycle.
Laila peered through a crack in the living-room curtains. She watched him pedal away, a big man on
a small bicycle, the morning sun glaring off the handlebars.
"Laila?"
Mariam was in the doorway. Laila could tell that she hadn't slept either. She wondered if Mariam
too had been seized all night by bouts of euphoria and attacks of mouth-drying anxiety.
"We'll leave in half an hour," Laila said.
* * *
In the backseat of the taxi, they did not speak. Aziza sat on Mariam's lap, clutching her doll, looking
with wide-eyed puzzlement at the city speeding by.
"Ona!"she cried, pointing to a group of little girls skipping rope. "Mayam!Ona"
Everywhere she looked, Laila saw Rasheed. She spotted him coming out of barbershops with
windows the color of coal dust, from tiny booths that sold partridges, from battered, open-fronted
stores packed with old tires piled from floor to ceiling.
She sank lower in her seat.
Beside her, Mariam was muttering a prayer. Laila wished she could see her face, but Mariam was in
burqa-they both were-and all she could see was the glitter of her eyes through the grid.
This was Laila's first time out of the house in weeks, discounting the short trip to the pawnshop the
day before-where she had pushed her wedding ring across a glass counter, where she'd walked out
thrilled by the finality of it, knowing there was no going back.All around her now, Laila saw the consequences of the recent fighting whose sounds she'd heard
from the house. Homes that lay in roofless ruins of brick and jagged stone, gouged buildings with
fallen beams poking through the holes, the charred, mangled husks of cars, upended, sometimes
stacked on top of each other, walls pocked by holes of every conceivable caliber, shattered glass
everywhere. She saw a funeral procession marching toward a mosque, a black-clad old woman at the
rear tearing at her hair. They passed a cemetery littered with rock-piled graves and raggedshaheed
flags fluttering in the breeze.
Laila reached across the suitcase, wrapped her fingers around the softness of her daughter's arm.
* * *
At the Lahore Gate bus station, near Pol Mahmood Khan in East Kabul, a row of buses sat idling
along the curbside. Men in turbans were busy heaving bundles and crates onto bus tops, securing
suitcases down with ropes. Inside the station, men stood in a long line at the ticket booth. Burqa-clad
women stood in groups and chatted, their belongings piled at their feet. Babies were bounced,
children scolded for straying too far.
Mujahideen militiamen patrolled the station and the curbside, barking curt orders here and there.
They wore boots,pakols, dusty green fatigues. They all carried Kalashnikovs.
Laila felt watched. She looked no one in the face, but she felt as though every person in this place
knew, that they were looking on with disapproval at what she and Mariam were doing.
"Do you see anybody?" Laila asked.
Mariam shifted Aziza in her arms. "I'm looking."
This, Laila had known, would be the first risky part, finding a man suitable to pose with them as a
family member. The freedoms and opportunities that women had enjoyed between 1978 and 1992
were a thing of the past now- Laila could still remember Babi saying of those years of communist
rule,It's a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan, Laila Since the Mujahideen takeover in April
1992, Afghanistan's name had been changed to the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The Supreme Court
under Rabbani was filled now with hard-liner mullahs who did away with the communist-era decrees
that empowered women and instead passed rulings based on Shari'a, strict Islamic laws that ordered
women to cover, forbade their travel without a male relative, punished adultery with stoning. Even if
the actual enforcement of these laws was sporadic at best.But they'd enforce them on us more, Laila
had said to Mariam,if they weren't so busy killing each other. And us.
The second risky part of this trip would come when they actually arrived in Pakistan. Already
burdened with nearly two million Afghan refugees, Pakistan had closed its borders to Afghans in
January of that year. Laila had heard that only those with visas would be admitted. But the border was
porous-always had been-and Laila knew that thousands of Afghans were still crossing into Pakistan
either with bribes or by proving humanitarian grounds- and there were always smugglers who could
be hired.We'll find a way when we get there, she'd told Mariam."How about him?" Mariam said, motioning with her chin.
"He doesn't look trustworthy."
"And him?"
"Too old. And he's traveling with two other men."
Eventually,Laila found him sitting outside on a park bench,with a veiled woman at his side and a
little boy in a skullcap, roughly Aziza's age, bouncing on his knees.He wastall and slender, bearded,
wearing an open-collaredshirt and a modest gray coat with missing buttons.
"Wait here,"she said to Mariam. Walking away, she again heard Mariam muttering a prayer.
When Laila approached the young man, he looked up, shielded the sun from his eyes with a hand.
"Forgive me, brother, but are you going to Peshawar?"
"Yes," he said, squinting.
"I wonder ifyou can help us. Can you do us a favor?"
He passed the boy to his wife. He and Laila stepped away.
"What is it,hamshiraT'
She was encouraged to see that he had soft eyes, a kind face.
She told him the story that she and Mariam had agreed on. She was abiwa,she said, a widow. She
and her mother and daughter had no oneleft in Kabul. They were going to Peshawar to stay with her
uncle.
"You want to come with my family," the young man said
"I know it'szahmat for you. But you look like a decent brother, and I-"
"Don't worry,hamshira I understand. It's no trouble. Let me go and buy your tickets."
"Thank you, brother. This issawab, a good deed. God will remember."
She fished the envelope from her pocket beneath the burqa and passed it to him. In it was eleven
hundred afghanis, or about half of the money she'd stashed over the past year plus the sale of the ring.
He slipped the envelope in his trouser pocket.
"Wait here."
She watched him enter the station. He returned half an hour later."It's best I hold on to your tickets," he said. The bus leaves in one hour, at eleven. We'll all board
together. My name is Wakil. If they ask-and they shouldn't-I'll tell them you're my cousin."
Laila gave him their names, and he said he would remember.
"Stay close," he said.
They sat on the bench adjacent to Wakil and his family's. It was a sunny, warm morning, the sky
streaked only by a few wispy clouds hovering in the distance over thehills. Mariam began feeding
Aziza a few of the crackers she'd remembered to bring in their rush to pack. She offered one to Laila.
"I'll throwup," Laila laughed. "I'm too excited."
"Metoo."
"Thankyou, Mariam."
"For what?"
"For this.For coming with us," Laila said. "I don't think I could do this alone."
"You won't have to."
"We're going to be all right, aren't we, Mariam, where we're going?"
Mariam's hand slid across the bench and closed over hers. "The Koran says Allah is the East and the
West, therefore wherever you turn there is Allah's purpose."
"Bov!"Aziza cried, pointing to a bus. "Mayam,bov"
"I see it, Aziza jo," Mariam said. "That's right,bov. Soon we're all going to ride on abov. Oh, the
things you're going to see."
Laila smiled. She watched a carpenter in his shop across the street sawing wood, sending chips
flying. She watched the cars bolting past, their windows coated with soot and grime. She watched the
buses growling idly at the curb, with peacocks, lions, rising suns, and glittery swords painted on their
sides.
In the warmth of the morning sun, Laila felt giddy and bold. She had another of those little sparks of
euphoria, and when a stray dog with yellow eyes limped by, Laila leaned forward and pet its back.
A few minutes before eleven, a man with a bullhorn called for all passengers to Peshawar to begin
boarding. The bus doors opened with a violent hydraulic hiss. A parade of travelers rushed toward it,
scampering past each other to squeeze through.
Wakil motioned toward Laila as he picked up his son."We're going," Laila said.
Wakil led the way. As they approached the bus, Laila saw faces appear in the windows, noses and
palms pressed to the glass. All around them, farewells were yelled.
A young militia soldier was checking tickets at the bus door.
"Bov!" Azxzz.cried.
Wakil handed tickets to the soldier, who tore them in half and handed them back. Wakil let his wife
board first. Laila saw a look pass between Wakil and the militiaman. Wakil, perched on the first step
of the bus, leaned down and said something in his ear. The militiaman nodded.
Laila's heart plummeted.
"You two, with the child, step aside," the soldier said.
Laila pretended not to hear. She went to climb the steps, but he grabbed her by the shoulder and
roughly pulled her out of the line. "You too," he called to Mariam. "Hurry up! You're holding up the
line."
"What's the problem, brother?" Laila said through numb lips. "We have tickets. Didn't my cousin
hand them to you?"
He made aShh motion with his finger and spoke in a low voice to another guard. The second guard,
a rotund fellow with a scar down his right cheek, nodded.
"Follow me," this one said to Laila.
"We have to board this bus," Laila cried, aware that her voice was shaking. "We have tickets. Why
are you doing this?"
"You're not going to get on this bus. You might as well accept that. You will follow me. Unless you
want your little girl to see you dragged."
As they were led to a truck, Laila looked over her shoulder and spotted Wakil's boy at the rear of the
bus. The boy saw her too and waved happily.
* * *
At the police station at Torabaz Khan Intersection, they were made to sit apart, on opposite ends of a
long, crowded corridor, between them a desk, behind which a man smoked one cigarette after another
and clacked occasionally on a typewriter. Three hours passed this way. Aziza tottered from Laila to
Mariam, then back. She played with a paper clip that the man at the desk gave her. She finished the
crackers. Eventually, she fell asleep in Mariam's lap.
At around three o'clock, Laila was taken to an interview room. Mariam was made to wait with Aziza in the corridor.
The man sitting on the other side of the desk in the interview room was in his thirties and wore
civilian clothes- black suit, tie, black loafers. He had a neatly trimmed beard, short hair, and
eyebrows that met. He stared at Laila, bouncing a pencil by the eraser end on the desk.
"We know," he began, clearing his throat and politely covering his mouth with a fist, "that you have
already told one lie today,kamshira The young man at the station was not your cousin. He told us as
much himself. The question is whether you will tell more lies today. Personally, I advise you against
it."
"We were going to stay with my uncle," Laila said "That's the truth."
The policeman nodded. "Thehamshira in the corridor, she's your mother?"
"Yes."
"She has a Herati accent. You don't."
"She was raised in Herat, I was born here in Kabul."
"Of course. And you are widowed? You said you were. My condolences. And this uncle, thiskaka,
where does he live?"
"In Peshawar."
"Yes, you said that." He licked the point of his pencil and poised it over a blank sheet of paper. "But
where in Peshawar? Which neighborhood, please? Street name, sector number."
Laila tried to push back the bubble of panic that was coming up her chest. She gave him the name of
the only street she knew in Peshawar-she'd heard it mentioned once, at the party Mammy had thrown
when the Mujahideen had first come to Kabul-"Jamrud Road."
"Oh, yes. Same street as the Pearl Continental Hotel. He might have mentioned it."
Laila seized this opportunity and said he had. "That very same street, yes."
"Except the hotel is on Khyber Road."
Laila could hear Aziza crying in the corridor. "My daughter's frightened. May I get her, brother?"
"I prefer 'Officer.' And you'll be with her shortly. Do you have a telephone number for this uncle?"
"I do. I did. I…" Even with the burqa between them, Laila was not buffered from his penetrating
eyes. "I'm so upset, I seem to have forgotten it."
He sighed through his nose. He asked for the uncle's name, his wife's name. How many children did he have? What were their names? Where did he work? How old was he? His questions left Laila
flustered.
He put down his pencil, laced his fingers together, and leaned forward the way parents do when they
want to convey something to a toddler. "You do realize,hamshira, that it is a crime for a woman to run
away. We see a lot of it. Women traveling alone, claiming their husbands have died. Sometimes
they're telling the truth, most times not. You can be imprisoned for running away, I assume you
understand that,nay1?"
"Let us go, Officer…" She read the name on his lapel tag. "Officer Rahman. Honor the meaning of
your name and show compassion. What does it matter to you to let a mere two women go? What's the
harm in releasing us? We are not criminals."
"I can't."
"I beg you, please."
"It's a matter ofqanoon, hamshira, a matter of law," Rahman said, injecting his voice with a grave,
self-important tone. "It is my responsibility, you see, to maintain order."
In spite of her distraught state, Laila almost laughed. She was stunned that he'd used that word in the
face of all that the Mujahideen factions had done-the murders, the lootings, the rapes, the tortures, the
executions, the bombings, the tens of thousands of rockets they had fired at each other, heedless of all
the innocent people who would die in the cross fire.Order. But she bit her tongue.
"If you send us back," she said instead, slowly, "there is no saying what he will do to us."
She could see the effort it took him to keep his eyes from shifting. "What a man does in his home is
his business."
"What about the law,then, Officer Rahman?" Tears of rage stung her eyes. "Will you be there to
maintain order?"
"As a matter of policy, we do not interfere with private family matters,hamshira"
"Of course you don't. When it benefits the man. And isn't this a 'private family matter,' as you say?
Isn't it?"
He pushed back from his desk and stood up, straightened his jacket. "I believe this interview is
finished. I must say,hamshira, that you have made a very poor case for yourself. Very poor indeed.
Now, if you would wait outside I will have a few words with your…whoever she is."
Laila began to protest, then to yell, and he had to summon the help of two more men to have her
dragged out of his office.
Mariam's interview lasted only a few minutes. When she came out, she looked shaken."He asked so many questions," she said. "I'm sorry, Laila jo. I am not smart like you. He asked so
many questions, I didn't know the answers. I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Mariam," Laila said weakly. "It's mine. It's all my fault. Everything is my fault."
* * *
It was past six o'clock when the police car pulled up in front of the house. Laila and Mariam were
made to wait in the backseat, guarded by a Mujahid soldier in the passenger seat. The driver was the
one who got out of the car, who knocked on the door, who spoke to Rasheed. It was he who motioned
for them to come.
"Welcome home," the man in the front seat said, lighting a cigarette.
* * *
"You," he said to Mariam. "You wait here."
Mariam quietly took a seat on the couch.
"You two, upstairs."
Rasheed grabbed Laila by the elbow and pushed her up the steps. He was still wearing the shoes he
wore to work, hadn't yet changed to his flip-flops, taken off his watch, hadn't even shed his coat yet.
Laila pictured him as he must have been an hour, or maybe minutes, earlier, rushing from one room to
another, slamming doors, furious and incredulous, cursing under his breath.
At the top of the stairs, Laila turned to him.
"She didn't want to do it," she said. "I made her do it. She didn't want to go-"
Laila didn't see the punch coming. One moment she was talking and the next she was on all fours,
wide-eyed and red-faced, trying to draw a breath. It was as if a car had hit her at full speed, in the
tender place between the lower tip of the breastbone and the belly button. She realized she had
dropped Aziza, that Aziza was screaming. She tried to breathe again and could only make a husky,
choking sound. Dribble hung from her mouth.
Then she was being dragged by the hair. She saw Aziza lifted, saw her sandals slip off, her tiny feet
kicking. Hair was ripped from Laila's scalp, and her eyes watered with pain. She saw his foot kick
open the door to Mariam's room, saw Aziza flung onto the bed. He let go of Laila's hair, and she felt
the toe of his shoe connect with her left buttock. She howled with pain as he slammed the door shut. A
key rattled in the lock.
Aziza was still screaming. Laila lay curled up on the floor, gasping. She pushed herself up on her
hands, crawled to where Aziza lay on the bed. She reached for her daughter.
Downstairs, the beating began. To Laila, the sounds she heard were those of a methodical, familiar proceeding. There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic
business of beating and being beaten, thethump, thump of something solid repeatedly striking flesh,
something, someone, hitting a wall with a thud, cloth ripping. Now and then, Laila heard running
footsteps, a wordless chase, furniture turning over, glass shattering, then the thumping once more.
Laila took Aziza in her arms. A warmth spread down the front of her dress when Aziza's bladder let
go.
Downstairs, the running and chasing finally stopped. There was a sound now like a wooden club
repeatedly slapping a side of beef.
Laila rocked Aziza until the sounds stopped, and, when she heard the screen door creak open and
slam shut, she lowered Aziza to the ground and peeked out the window. She saw Rasheed leading
Mariam across the yard by the nape of her neck. Mariam was barefoot and doubled over. There was
blood on his hands, blood on Mariam's face, her hair, down her neck and back. Her shirt had been
ripped down the front.
"I'm so sorry, Mariam," Laila cried into the glass.
She watched him shove Mariam into the toolshed. He went in, came out with a hammer and several
long planks of wood. He shut the double doors to the shed, took a key from his pocket, worked the
padlock. He tested the doors, then went around the back of the shed and fetched a ladder.
A few minutes later, his face was in Laila's window, nails tucked in the comer of his mouth. His hair
was disheveled. There was a swath of blood on his brow. At the sight of him, Aziza shrieked and
buried her face in Laila's armpit.
Rasheed began nailing boards across the window.
* * *
The dark was total, impenetrable and constant, without layer or texture. Rasheed had filled the
cracks between the boards with something, put a large and immovable object at the foot of the door so
no light came from under it. Something had been stuffed in the keyhole.
Laila found it impossible to tell the passage of time with her eyes, so she did it with her good
ear.Azan and crowing roosters signaled morning. The sounds of plates clanking in the kitchen
downstairs, the radio playing, meant evening.
The first day, they groped and fumbled for each other in the dark. Laila couldn't see Aziza when she
cried, when she went crawling.
"Aishee,"Aziza mewled."Aishee."
"Soon." Laila kissed her daughter, aiming for the forehead, finding the crown of her head instead.
"We'll have milk soon. You just be patient. Be a good, patient little girl for Mammy, and I'll get you
someaishee. "Laila sang her a few songs.
Azanrang out a second time and still Rasheed had not given them any food, and, worse, no water.
That day, a thick, suffocating heat fell on them. The room turned into a pressure cooker. Laila dragged
a dry tongue over her lips, thinking of the well outside, the water cold and fresh. Aziza kept crying,
and Laila noticed with alarm that when she wiped her cheeks her hands came back dry. She stripped
the clothes off Aziza, tried to find something to fan her with, settled for blowing on her until she
became light-headed. Soon, Aziza stopped crawling around. She slipped in and out of sleep.
Several times that day, Laila banged her fists against the walls, used up her energy screaming for
help, hoping that a neighbor would hear. But no one came, and her shrieking only frightened Aziza,
who began to cry again, a weak, croaking sound. Laila slid to the ground. She thought guiltily of
Mariam, beaten and bloodied, locked in this heat in the toolshed.
Laila fell asleep at some point, her body baking in the heat. She had a dream that she and Aziza had
run into Tariq. He was across a crowded street from them, beneath the awning of a tailor's shop. He
was sitting on his haunches and sampling from a crate of figs.That's your father, Laila said.That man
there, you see him? He's your real baba. She called his name, but the street noise drowned her voice,
and Tariq didn't hear.
She woke up to the whistling of rockets streaking overhead. Somewhere, the sky she couldn't see
erupted with blasts and the long, frantic hammering of machine-gun fire. Laila closed her eyes. She
woke again to Rasheed's heavy footsteps in the hallway. She dragged herself to the door, slapped her
palms against it.
"Just one glass, Rasheed. Not for me. Do it for her. You don't want her blood on your hands." He
walked past-She began to plead with him. She begged for forgiveness, made promises. She cursed
him. His door closed. The radio came on.
The muezzin calledazan a third time. Again the heat. Aziza became even more listless. She stopped
crying, stopped moving altogether.
Laila put her ear over Aziza's mouth, dreading each time that she would not hear the shallow
whooshing of breath. Even this simple act of lifting herself made her head swim. She fell asleep, had
dreams she could not remember. When she woke up, she checked on Aziza, felt the parched cracks of
her lips, the faint pulse at her neck, lay down again. They would die here, of that Laila was sure now,
but what she really dreaded was that she would outlast Aziza, who was young and brittle. How much
more could Aziza take? Aziza would die in this heat, and Laila would have to lie beside her stiffening
little body and wait for her own death. Again she fell asleep. Woke up. Fell asleep. The line between
dream and wakefulness blurred.
It wasn't roosters orazan that woke her up again but the sound of something heavy being dragged. She
heard a rattling- Suddenly, the room was flooded with light. Her eyes screamed in protest. Laila
raised her head, winced, and shielded her eyes. Through the cracks between her fingers, she saw a
big, blurry silhouette standing in a rectangle of light. The silhouette moved. Now there was a shape
crouching beside her, looming over her, and a voice by her ear."You try this again and I will find you. I swear on the Prophet's name that I will find you. And, when
I do, there isn't a court in this godforsaken country that will hold me accountable for what I will do.
To Mariam first, then to her, and you last. I'll make you watch. You understand me?I'll make you
watch."
And, with that, he left the room. But not before delivering a kick to the flank that would have Laila
pissing blood for days.