Chereads / A Thousand splendid suns / Chapter 49 - chapter 48

Chapter 49 - chapter 48

Tariq has headaches now.

Some nights, Laila awakens and finds him on the edge of their bed, rocking, his undershirt pulled

over his head The headaches began in Nasir Bagh, he says, then worsened in prison. Sometimes they

make him vomit, blind him in one eye. He says it feels like a butcher's knife burrowing in one temple,

twisting slowly through his brain, then poking out the other side.

"I can taste the metal, even, when they begin."

Sometimes Laila wets a cloth and lays it on his forehead and that helps a little. The little round

white pills Sayeed's doctor gave Tariq help too. But some nights, all Tariq can do is hold his head

and moan, his eyes bloodshot, his nose dripping. Laila sits with him when he's in the grip of it like

that, rubs the back of his neck, takes his hand in hers, the metal of his wedding band cold against her

palm.

They married the day that they arrived in Murree. Sayeed looked relieved when Tariq told him they

would. He would not have to broach with Tariq the delicate matter of an unmarried couple living in

his hotel. Sayeed is not at all as Laila had pictured him, ruddy-faced and pea-eyed. He has a salt-and-

pepper mustache whose ends he rolls to a sharp tip, and a shock of long gray hair combed back from

the brow. He is a soft-spoken, mannerly man, with measured speech and graceful movements.

It was Sayeecl who summoned a friend and a mullah for thenikka that day, Sayeed who pulled Tariq

aside and gave him money. Tariq wouldn't take it, but Sayeed insisted. Tariq went to the Mall then

and came back with two simple, thin wedding bands. They married later that night, after the children

had gone to bed.

In the mirror, beneath the green veil that the mullah draped over their heads, Laila's eyes met

Tariq's. There were no tears, no wedding-day smiles, no whispered oaths of long-lasting love. In

silence, Laila looked at their reflection, at faces that had aged beyond their years, at the pouches and

lines and sags that now marked their once-scrubbed, youthful faces. Tariq opened his mouth and

began to say something, but, just as he did, someone pulled the veil, and Laila missed what it was that

he was going to say.

That night, they lay in bed as husband and wife, as the children snored below them on sleeping cots.

Laila remembered the ease with which they would crowd the air between them with words, she and

Tariq, when they were younger, the haywire, brisk flow of their speech, always interrupting each

other, tugging each other's collar to emphasize a point, the quickness to laugh, the eagerness to delight.

So much had happened since those childhood days, so much that needed to be said. But that first night

the enormity of it all stole the words from her. That night, it was blessing enough to be beside him. It

was blessing enough to know that he was here, to feel the warmth of him next to her, to lie with him,their heads touching, his right hand laced in her left.

In the middle of the night, when Laila woke up thirsty, she found their hands still clamped together,

in the white-knuckle, anxious way of children clutching balloon strings.

* * *

Laila likes Mukree'S cool, foggy mornings and its dazzling twilights, the dark brilliance of the sky at

night; the green of the pines and the soft brown of the squirrels darting up and down the sturdy tree

trunks; the sudden downpours that send shoppers in the Mall scrambling for awning cover. She likes

the souvenir shops, and the various hotels that house tourists, even as the locals bemoan the constant

construction, the expansion of infrastructure that they say is eating away at Murree's natural beauty.

Laila finds it odd that people should lament thebuilding of buildings. In Kabul, they would celebrate

it.

She likes that they have a bathroom, not an outhouse but an actual bathroom, with a toilet that

flushes, a shower, and a sink too, with twin faucets from which she can draw, with a flick of her

wrist, water, either hot or cold. She likes waking up to the sound of Alyona bleating in the morning,

and the harmlessly cantankerous cook, Adiba, who works marvels in the kitchen.

Sometimes, as Laila watches Tariq sleep, as her children mutter and stir in their own sleep, a great

big lump of gratitude catches in her throat, makes her eyes water.

In the mornings, Laila follows Tariq from room to room. Keys jingle from a ring clipped to his waist

and a spray bottle of window cleaner dangles from the belt loops of his jeans. Laila brings a pail

filled with rags, disinfectant, a toilet brush, and spray wax for the dressers. Aziza tags along, a mop in

one hand, the bean-stuffed doll Mariam had made for her in the other. Zalmai trails them reluctantly,

sulkily, always a few steps behind.

Laila vacuums, makes the bed, and dusts. Tariq washes the bathroom sink and tub, scrubs the toilet

and mops the linoleum floor. He stocks the shelves with clean towels, miniature shampoo bottles, and

bars of almond-scented soap. Aziza has laid claim to the task of spraying and wiping the windows.

The doll is never far from where she works.

Laila told Aziza about Tariq a few days after thenikka

It is strange, Laila thinks, almost unsettling, the thing between Aziza and Tariq. Already, Aziza is

finishing his sentences and he hers. She hands him things before he asks for them. Private smiles shoot

between them across the dinner table as if they are not strangers at all but companions reunited after a

lengthy separation.

Aziza looked down thoughtfully at her hands when Laila told her.

"I like him," she said, after a long pause.

"He lovesyou.""He said that?"

"He doesn't have to, Aziza."

"Tell me the rest, Mammy. Tell me so I know."

And Laila did.

"Your father is a good man. He is the best man I've ever known."

"What if he leaves?" Aziza said

"He will never leave. Look at me, Aziza. Your father will never hurt you, and he will never leave."

The relief on Aziza's face broke Laila's heart.

* * *

Tariq has bought Zalmai a rocking horse, built him a wagon. From a prison inmate, he learned to

make paper animals, and so he has folded, cut, and tucked countless sheets of paper into lions and

kangaroos for Zalmai, into horses and brightly plumed birds. But these overtures are dismissed by

Zalmai unceremoniously, sometimes venomously.

"You're a donkey!" he cries. "I don't want your toys!"

"Zalmai!" Laila gasps.

"It's all right," Tariq says. "Laila, it's all right. Let him."

"You're not my Baba jan! My real Baba jan is away on a trip, and when he gets back he's going to

beat you up! And you won't be able to run away, because he has two legs and you only have one!"

At night, Laila holds Zalmai against her chest and recitesBabaloo prayers with him. When he asks,

she tells him the lie again, tells him his Baba jan has gone away and she doesn't know when he would

come back. She abhors this task, abhors herself for lying like this to a child

Laila knows that this shameful lie will have to be told again and again. It will have to because

Zalmai will ask, hopping down from a swing, waking from an afternoon nap, and, later, when he's old

enough to tie his own shoes, to walk to school by himself, the lie will have to be delivered again.

At some point, Laila knows, the questions will dry up. Slowly, Zalmai will cease wondering why

his father has abandoned him. He will not spot his father any longer at traffic lights, in stooping old

men shuffling down the street or sipping tea in open-fronted samovar houses. And one day it will hit

him, walking along some meandering river, or gazing out at an untracked snowfield, that his father's

disappearance is no longer an open, raw wound. That it has become something else altogether,

something more soft-edged and indolent. Like a lore. Something to be revered, mystified by.Laila is happy here in Murree. But it is not an easy happiness. It is not a happiness without cost.

* * *

On his days off, Tariq takes Laila and the children to the Mall, along which are shops that sell

trinkets and next to which is an Anglican church built in the mid-nineteenth century. Tariq buys them

spicychapli kebabs from street vendors. They stroll amid the crowds of locals, the Europeans and

their cellular phones and digital cameras, the Punjabis who come here to escape the heat of the plains.

Occasionally, they board a bus to Kashmir Point. From there, Tariq shows them the valley of the

Jhelum River, the pine-carpeted slopes, and the lush, densely wooded hills, where he says monkeys

can still be spotted hopping from branch to branch. They go to the mapleclad Nathia Gali too, some

thirty kilometers from Murree, where Tariq holds Laila's hand as they walk the tree-shaded road to

the Governor's House. They stop by the old British cemetery, or take a taxi up a mountain peak for a

view of the verdant, fog-shrouded valley below.

Sometimes on these outings, when they pass by a store window, Laila catches their reflections in it.

Man, wife, daughter, son. To strangers, she knows, they must appear like the most ordinary of

families, free of secrets, lies, and regrets.

* * *

Azizahas nightmares from which she wakes up shrieking. Laila has to lie beside her on the cot, dry

her cheeks with her sleeve, soothe her back to sleep.

Laila has her own dreams. In them, she's always back at the house in Kabul, walking the hall,

climbing the stairs.

She is alone, but behind the doors she hears the rhythmic hiss of an iron, bedsheets snapped, then

folded. Sometimes she hears a woman's low-pitched humming of an old Herati song. But when she

walks in, the room is empty. There is no one there.

The dreams leave Laila shaken. She wakes from them coated in sweat, her eyes prickling with tears.

It is devastating. Every time, it is devastating.