For Laila, life in Murree is one of comfort and tranquillity. The work is not cumbersome, and, on
their days off, she and Tariq take the children to ride the chairlift to Patriata hill, or go to Pindi Point,
where, on a clear day, you can see as far as Islamabad and downtown Rawalpindi. There, they spread
a blanket on the grass and eat meatball sandwiches with cucumbers and drink cold ginger ale.
It is a good life, Laila tells herself, a life to be thankful for. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of life she
used to dream for herself in her darkest days with Rasheed. Every day, Laila reminds herself of this.
Then one warm night in July 2002, she and Tariq are lying in bed talking in hushed voices about all
the changes back home. There have been so many. The coalition forces have driven the Taliban out of
every major city, pushed them across the border to Pakistan and to the mountains in the south and east
of Afghanistan. ISAF, an international peacekeeping force, has been sent to Kabul. The country has an
interim president now, Hamid Karzai.
Laila decides that now is the time to tell Tariq.
A year ago, she would have gladly given an arm to get out of Kabul. But in the last few months, she
has found herself missing the city of her childhood. She misses the bustle of Shor Bazaar, the Gardens
of Babur, the call of the water carriers lugging their goatskin bags. She misses the garment hagglers at
Chicken Street and the melon hawkers in Karteh-Parwan.
But it isn't mere homesickness or nostalgia that has Laila thinking of Kabul so much these days. She
has become plagued by restlessness. She hears of schools built in Kabul, roads repaved, women
returning to work, and her life here, pleasant as it is, grateful as she is for it, seems… insufficient to
her. Inconsequential Worse yet, wasteful. Of late, she has started hearing Babi's voice in her
head.You can be anything you want, Laila, he says.I know this about you. And Ialso know that when
this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you.
Laila hears Mammy's voice too. She remembers Mammy's response to Babi when he would suggest
that they leave Afghanistan.Iwant to see my sons' dream come true. I want to be there when it happens,
when Afghanistan is free, so the boys see it too. They'll see it through my eyes. There is a part of
Laila now that wants to return to Kabul, for Mammy and Babi, for them to see it throughher eyes.
And then, most compellingly for Laila, there is Mariam. Did Mariam die for this? Laila asks herself.
Did she sacrifice herself so she, Laila, could be a maid in a foreign land? Maybe it wouldn't matter to
Mariam what Laila did as long as she and the children were safe and happy. But it matters to Laila.
Suddenly, it matters very much.
"I want to go back," she says.Tariq sits up in bed and looks down at her.
Laila is struck again by how beautiful he is, the perfect curve of his forehead, the slender muscles of
his arms, his brooding, intelligent eyes. A year has passed, and still there are times, at moments like
this, when Laila cannot believe that they have found each other again, that he is really here, with her,
that he is her husband.
"Back? To Kabul?" he asks.
"Onlyif you want it too."
"Are you unhappy here? You seem happy. The children too."
Laila sits up. Tariq shifts on the bed, makes room for her.
"Iam happy," Laila says. "Of course I am. But…where do we go from here, Tariq? How long do we
stay? This isn't home. Kabul is, and back there so much is happening, a lot of it good. I want to be a
part of it all. I want todo something. I want to contribute. Do you understand?"
Tariq nods slowly. "This is what you want, then? You're sure?"
"I want it, yes, I'm sure. But it's more than that. I feel like Ihave to go back. Staying here, it doesn't
feel right anymore."
Tariq looks at his hands, then back up at her.
"But only-only-if you want to go too."
Tariq smiles. The furrows from his brow clear, and for a brief moment he is the old Tariq again, the
Tariq who did not get headaches, who had once said that in Siberia snot turned to ice before it hit the
ground. It may be her imagination, but Laila believes there are more frequent sightings of this old
Tariq these clays.
"Me?" he says. "I'll follow you to the end of the world, Laila."
She pulls him close and kisses his lips. She believes she has never loved him more than at this
moment. "Thank you," she says, her forehead resting against his.
"Let's go home."
"But first, I want to go to Herat," she says.
"Herat?"
Laila explains.
* * *
The children need reassuring, each in their own way. Laila has to sit down with an agitated Aziza,
who still has nightmares, who'd been startled to tears the week before when someone had shot rounds
into the sky at a wedding nearby. Laila has to explain to Aziza that when they return to Kabul the
Taliban won't be there, that there will not be any fighting, and that she will not be sent back to the
orphanage. "We'll all live together. Your father, me, Zalmai. And you, Aziza. You'll never, ever, have
to be apart from me again. I promise." She smiles at her daughter. "Until the dayyou want to, that is.
When you fall in love with some young man and want to marry him."
On the day they leave Murree, Zalmai is inconsolable. He has wrapped his arms around Alyona's
neck and will not let go.
"I can't pry him off of her, Mammy," says Aziza.
"Zalmai. We can't take a goat on the bus," Laila explains again.
It isn't until Tariq kneels down beside him, until he promises Zalmai that he will buy him a goat just
like Alyona in Kabul, that Zalmai reluctantly lets go.
There are tearful farewells with Sayeed as well For good luck, he holds a Koran by the doorway for
Tariq, Laila, and the children to kiss three times, then holds it high so they can pass under it. He helps
Tariq load the two suitcases into the trunk of his car. It is Sayeed who drives them to the station, who
stands on the curb waving good-bye as the bus sputters and pulls away.
As she leans back and watches Sayeed receding in the rear window of the bus, Laila hears the voice
of doubt whispering in her head. Are they being foolish, she wonders, leaving behind the safety of
Murree? Going back to the land where her parents and brothers perished, where the smoke of bombs
is only now settling?
And then, from the darkened spirals of her memory, rise two lines of poetry, Babi's farewell ode to
Kabul:
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide
behind her -walls.
Laila settles back in her seat, blinking the wetness from her eyes. Kabul is waiting. Needing. This
journey home is the right thing to do.
But first there is one last farewell to be said.
* * *
The wars in Afghanistan have ravaged the roads connecting Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar. The easiest
way to Herat now is through Mashad, in Iran. Laila and her family are there only overnight. They
spend the night at a hotel, and, the next morning, they board another bus.
Mashad is a crowded, bustling city. Laila watches as parks, mosques, andchelo kebab restaurants
pass by. When the bus passes the shrine to Imam Reza, the eighth Shi'a imam, Laila cranes her neck to get a better view of its glistening tiles, the minarets, the magnificent golden dome, all of it
immaculately and lovingly preserved. She thinks of the Buddhas in her own country. They are grains
of dust now, blowing about the Bamiyan Valley in the wind.
The bus ride to the Iranian-Afghan border takes almost ten hours. The terrain grows more desolate,
more barren, as they near Afghanistan. Shortly before they cross the border into Herat, they pass an
Afghan refugee camp. To Laila, it is a blur of yellow dust and black tents and scanty structures made
of corrugated-steel sheets. She reaches across the seat and takes Tariq's hand.
* * *
In Herat, most of the streets are paved, lined with fragrant pines. There are municipal parks and
libraries in reconstruction, manicured courtyards, freshly painted buildings. The traffic lights work,
and, most surprisingly to Laila, electricity is steady. Laila has heard that Herat's feudal-style warlord,
Ismail Khan, has helped rebuild the city with the considerable customs revenue that he collects at the
Afghan-Iranian border, money that Kabul says belongs not to him but to the central government. There
is both a reverential and fearful tone when the taxi driver who takes them to Muwaffaq Hotel
mentions Ismail Khan's name.
The two-night stay at the Muwaffaq will cost them nearly a fifth of their savings, but the trip from
Mashad has been long and wearying, and the children are exhausted. The elderly clerk at the desk
tells Tariq, as he fetches the room key, that the Muwaffaq is popular with journalists and NGO
workers.
"Bin Laden slept here once," he boasts.
The room has two beds, and a bathroom with running cold water. There is a painting of the poet
Khaja Abdullah Ansary on the wall between the beds. From the window, Laila has a view of the busy
street below, and of a park across the street with pastel-colored-brick paths cutting through thick
clusters of flowers. The children, who have grown accustomed to television, are disappointed that
there isn't one in the room. Soon enough, though, they are asleep. Soon enough, Tariq and Laila too
have collapsed. Laila sleeps soundly in Tariq's arms, except for once in the middle of the night when
she wakes from a dream she cannot remember.
* * *
The next morning, after a breakfast of tea with fresh bread, quince marmalade, and boiled eggs,
Tariq finds her a taxi.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come along?" Tariq says. Aziza is holding his hand Zalmai isn't,
but he is standing close to Tariq, leaning one shoulder on Tariq's hip.
"I'm sure."
"I worry."
"I'll be fine," Laila says. "I promise. Take the children to a market. Buy them something."Zalmai begins to cry when the taxi pulls away, and, when Laila looks back, she sees that he is
reaching for Tariq. That he is beginning to accept Tariq both eases and breaks Laila's heart.
* * *
"You're not from herat," the driver says.
He has dark, shoulder-length hair-a common thumbing of the nose at the departed Taliban, Laila has
discovered-and some kind of scar interrupting his mustache on the left side. There is a photo taped to
the windshield, on his side. It's of a young girl with pink cheeks and hair parted down the middle into
twin braids.
Laila tells him that she has been in Pakistan for the last year, that she is returning to Kabul. "Deh-
Mazang."
Through the windshield, she sees coppersmiths welding brass handles to jugs, saddlemakers laying
out cuts of rawhide to dry in the sun.
"Have you lived here long, brother?" she asks.
"Oh, my whole life. I was born here. I've seen everything. You remember the uprising?"
Laila says she does, but he goes on.
"This was back in March 1979, about nine months before the Soviets invaded. Some angry Heratis
killed a few Soviet advisers, so the Soviets sent in tanks and helicopters and pounded this place. For
three days,hamshira, they fired on the city. They collapsed buildings, destroyed one of the minarets,
killed thousands of people.Thousands. I lost two sisters in those three days. One of them was twelve
years old." He taps the photo on his windshield. "That's her."
"I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and
unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on. Laila thinks of her own
life and all that has happened to her, and she is astonished that she too has survived, that she is alive
and sitting in this taxi listening to this man's
story.
* * *
Gul Daman is a village of a few walled houses rising among flatkolbas built with mud and straw.
Outside thekolbas, Laila sees sunburned women cooking, their faces sweating in steam rising from
big blackened pots set on makeshift firewood grills. Mules eat from troughs. Children giving chase to
chickens begin chasing the taxi. Laila sees men pushing wheelbarrows filled with stones. They stop
and watch the car pass by. The driver takes a turn, and they pass a cemetery with a weather-worn
mausoleum in the center of it. The driver tells her that a village Sufi is buried there.
There is a windmill too. In the shadow of its idle, rust-colored vanes, three little boys are squatting,
playing with mud. The driver pulls over and leans out of the window. The oldest-looking of the three
boys is the one to answer. He points to a house farther up the road. The driver thanks him, puts the car
back in gear.
He parks outside the walled, one-story house. Laila sees the tops of fig trees above the walls, some
of the branches spilling over the side.
"I won't be long," she says to the driver.
* * *
The middle-aged man who opens the door is short, thin, russet-haired. His beard is streaked with
parallel stripes of gray. He is wearing achapan over hispirhan-tumban.
They exchangesalaam alaykums.
"Is this Mullah Faizullah's house?" Laila asks.
"Yes. I am his son, Hamza. Is there something I can do for you,hamshireh? "
"I've come here about an old friend of your father's, Mariam."
Hamza blinks. A puzzled look passes across his face. "Mariam…"
"Jalil Khan's daughter."
He blinks again. Then he puts a palm to his cheek and his face lights up with a smile that reveals
missing and rotting teeth. "Oh!" he says. It comes out sounding likeOhhhhhh, like an expelled breath.
"Oh! Mariam! Are you her daughter? Is she-" He is twisting his neck now, looking behind her eagerly,
searching. "Is she here? It's been so long! Is Mariam here?"
"She has passed on, I'm afraid."
The smile fades from Hamza's face.
For a moment, they stand there, at the doorway, Hamza looking at the ground. A donkey brays
somewhere.
"Come in," Hamza says. He swings the door open. "Please come in."
* * *
They srr on the floor in a sparsely furnished room. There is a Herati rug on the floor, beaded
cushions to sit on, and a framed photo of Mecca on the wall They sit by the open window, on either
side of an oblong patch of sunlight- Laila hears women's voices whispering from another room. A
little barefoot boy places before them a platter of green tea and pistachiogaaz nougats. Hamza nods at him.
"My son."
The boy leaves soundlessly.
"So tell me," Hamza says tiredly.
Laila does. She tells him everything. It takes longer than she'd imagined. Toward the end, she
struggles to maintain composure. It still isn't easy, one year later, talking about Mariam.
When she's done, Hamza doesn't say anything for a long time. He slowly turns his teacup on its
saucer, one way, then the other.
"My father, may he rest in peace, was so very fond of her," he says at last. "He was the one who
sangazan in her ear when she was born, you know. He visited her every week, never missed.
Sometimes he took me with him. He was her tutor, yes, but he was a friend too. He was a charitable
man, my father. It nearly broke him when Jalil Khan gave her away."
"I'm sorry to hear about your father. May God forgive him."
Hamza nods his thanks. "He lived to be a very old man. He outlived Jalil Khan, in fact. We buried
him in the village cemetery, not far from where Mariam's mother is buried. My father was a dear,
dear man, surely heaven-bound."
Laila lowers her cup.
"May I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Can you show me?" she says. "Where Mariam lived. Can you take me there?"
* * *
The driver agrees to wait awhile longer.
Hamza and Laila exit the village and walk downhill on the road that connects Gul Daman to Herat.
After fifteen minutes or so, he points to a narrow gap in the tall grass that flanks the road on both
sides.
"That's how you get there," he says. "There is a path there."
The path is rough, winding, and dim, beneath the vegetation and undergrowth. The wind makes the
tall grass slam against Laila's calves as she and Hamza climb the path, take the turns. On either side
of them is a kaleidoscope of wilciflowers swaying in the wind, some tall with curved petals, others
low, fan-leafed. Here and there a few ragged buttercups peep through the low bushes. Laila hears the twitter of swallows overhead and the busy chatter of grasshoppers underfoot.
They walk uphill this way for two hundred yards or more. Then the path levels, and opens into a
flatter patch of land. They stop, catch their breath. Laila dabs at her brow with her sleeve and bats at
a swarm of mosquitoes hovering in front of her face. Here she sees the low-slung mountains in the
horizon, a few cottonwoods, some poplars, various wild bushes that she cannot name.
"There used to be a stream here," Hamza says, a little out of breath. "But it's long dried up now."
He says he will wait here. He tells her to cross the dry streambed, walk toward the mountains.
"I'll wait here," he says, sitting on a rock beneath a poplar. "You go on."
"I won't-"
"Don't worry. Take your time. Go on,hamshireh. "
Laila thanks him. She crosses the streambed, stepping from one stone to another. She spots broken
soda bottles amid the rocks, rusted cans, and a mold-coated metallic container with a zinc lid half
buried in the ground.
She heads toward the mountains, toward the weeping willows, which she can see now, the long
drooping branches shaking with each gust of wind. In her chest, her heart is drumming. She sees that
the willows are arranged as Mariam had said, in a circular grove with a clearing in the middle. Laila
walks faster, almost running now. She looks back over her shoulder and sees that Hamza is a tiny
figure, hischapan a burst of color against the brown of the trees' bark. She trips over a stone and
almost falls, then regains her footing. She hurries the rest of the way with the legs of her trousers
pulled up. She is panting by the time she reaches the willows.
Mariam'skolba is still here.
When she approaches it, Laila sees that the lone windowpane is empty and that the door is gone.
Mariam had described a chicken coop and a tandoor, a wooden outhouse too, but Laila sees no sign
of them. She pauses at the entrance to thekolba She can hear flies buzzing inside.
To get in, she has to sidestep a large fluttering spiderweb. It's dim inside. Laila has to give her eyes
a few moments to adjust. When they do, she sees that the interior is even smaller than she'd imagined.
Only half of a single rotting, splintered board remains of the floorboards. The rest, she imagines, have
been ripped up for burning as firewood. The floor is carpeted now with dry-edged leaves, broken
bottles, discarded chewing gum wrappers, wild mushrooms, old yellowed cigarette butts. But mostly
with weeds, some stunted, some springing impudently halfway up the walls.
Fifteen years, Laila thinks. Fifteen years in this place.
Laila sits down, her back to the wall. She listens to the wind filtering through the willows. There are
more spiderwebs stretched across the ceiling. Someone has spray-painted something on one of the
walls, but much of it has sloughed off, and Laila cannot decipher what it says. Then she realizes the letters are Russian. There is a deserted bird's nest in one corner and a bat hanging upside down in
another corner, where the wall meets the low ceiling.
Laila closes her eyes and sits there awhile.
In Pakistan, it was difficult sometimes to remember the details of Mariam's face. There were times
when, like a word on the tip of her tongue, Mariam's face eluded her. But now, here in this place, it's
easy to summon Mariam behind the lids of her eyes: the soft radiance of her gaze, the long chin, the
coarsened skin of her neck, the tight-lipped smile. Here, Laila can lay her cheek on the softness of
Mariam's lap again, can feel Mariam swaying back and forth, reciting verses from the Koran, can feel
the words vibrating down Mariam's body, to her knees, and into her own ears.
Then, suddenly, the weeds begin to recede, as if something is pulling them by the roots from beneath
the ground. They sink lower and lower until the earth in thekolba has swallowed the last of their spiny
leaves. The spiderwebs magically unspin themselves. The bird's nest self-disassembles, the twigs
snapping loose one by one, flying out of thekolba end over end. An invisible eraser wipes the Russian
graffiti off the wall.
The floorboards are back. Laila sees a pair of sleeping cots now, a wooden table, two chairs, a
cast-iron stove in the corner, shelves along the walls, on which sit clay pots and pans, a blackened
teakettle, cups and spoons. She hears chickens clucking outside, the distant gurgling of the stream.
A young Mariam is sitting at the table making a doll by the glow of an oil lamp. She's humming
something. Her face is smooth and youthful, her hair washed, combed back. She has all her teeth.
Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yam onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be
a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on
that she too has had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will
be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied butshaped by the
turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes,
something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as
hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will beher undoing and Laila's
salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts down the doll. Smiles.
Laila jo?
Laila's eyes snap open. She gasps, and her body pitches forward. She startles the bat, which zips
from one end of thekolba to the other, its beating wings like the fluttering pages of a book, before it
flies out the window.
Laila gets to her feet, beats the dead leaves from the seat of her trousers. She steps out of thekolba
Outside, the light has shifted slightly. A wind is blowing, making the grass ripple and the willow
branches click. Before she leaves the clearing, Laila takes one last look at thekolba where Mariam had slept, eaten,
dreamed, held her breath for Jalil. On sagging walls, the willows cast crooked patterns that shift with
each gust of wind. A crow has landed on the flat roof. It pecks at something, squawks, flies off.
"Good-bye, Mariam."
And, with that, unaware that she is weeping, Laila begins to run through the grass.
She finds Hamza still sitting on the rock. When he spots her, he stands up.
"Let's go back," he says. Then, "I have something to give you."
* * *
Laila watts for Hamza in the garden by the front door. The boy who had served them tea earlier is
standing beneath one of the fig trees holding a chicken, watching her impassively. Laila spies two
faces, an old woman and a young girl inhijab observing her demurely from a window.
The door to the house opens and Hamza emerges. He is carrying a box.
He gives it to Laila.
"Jalil Khan gave this to my father a month or so before he died/' Hamza says. "He asked my father to
safeguard it for Mariam until she came to claim it. My father kept it for two years. Then, just before
he passed away, he gave it to me, and asked me to save it for Mariam. But she…you know, she never
came."
Laila looks down at the oval-shaped tin box. It looks like an old chocolate box. It's olive green, with
fading gilt scrolls all around the hinged lid There is a little rust on the sides, and two tiny dents on the
front rim of the lid. Laila tries to open the box, but the latch is locked.
"What's in it?" she asks.
Hamza puts a key in her palm. "My father never unlocked it. Neither did 1.Isuppose it was God's
will that it be you."
* * *
Back at the hotel, Tariq and the children are not back yet.
Laila sits on the bed, the box on her lap. Part of her wants to leave it unopened, let whatever Jalil
had intended remain a secret. But, in the end, the curiosity proves too strong. She slides in the key. It
takes some rattling and shaking, but she opens the box.
In it, she finds three things: an envelope, a burlap sack, and a videocassette.
Laila takes the tape and goes down to the reception desk. She learns from the elderly clerk who had greeted them the day before that the hotel has only one VCR, in its biggest suite. The suite is vacant at
the moment, and he agrees to take her. He leaves the desk to a mustachioed young man in a suit who is
talking on a cellular phone.
The old clerk leads Laila to the second floor, to a door at the end of a long hallway. He works the
lock, lets her in.
Laila's eyes find the TV in the corner. They register nothing else about the suite-She turns on the TV,
turns on the VCR. Puts the tape in and pushes the play button. The screen is blank for a few moments,
and Laila begins to wonder why Jalil had gone to the trouble of passing a blank tape to Mariam. But
then there is music, and images begin to play on the screen.
Laila frowns. She keeps watching for a minute or two. Then she pushes stop, fast-forwards the tape,
and pushes play again. It's the same film.
The old man is looking at her quizzically.
The film playing on the screen is Walt Disney'sPinocchio. Laila does not understand.
* * *
Tariq and the children come back to the hotel just after six o'clock. Aziza runs to Laila and shows
her the
earrings Tariq has bought for her, silver with an enamel butterfly on each. Zalmai is clutching an
inflatable dolphin that squeaks when its snout is squeezed.
"How are you?" Tariq asks, putting his arm around her shoulder.
"I'm fine," Laila says. "I'll tell you later."
They walk to a nearby kebab house to eat. It's a small place, with sticky, vinyl tablecloths, smoky
and loud But the lamb is tender and moist and the bread hot. They walk the streets for a while after.
Tariq buys the children rosewater ice cream from a street-side kiosk. They eat, sitting on a bench, the
mountains behind them silhouetted against the scarlet red of dusk. The air is warm, rich with the
fragrance of cedar.
Laila had opened the envelope earlier when she'd come back to the room after viewing the
videotape. In it was a letter, handwritten in blue ink on a yellow, lined sheet of paper.
It read:
May 13, 1987
My dear Mariam:
I pray that this letter finds you in good health As you kno w, I came to Kabul a month ago to speak with you. Bui you would not see me. Iwas
disappointed but could not blame you. In your place, Imight have done the same. Ilost the privilege of
your good graces a long time ago and for that I only have myself to blame. Bui if you are reading this
letter, then you have read the letter that Ilefi at your door. You have read it and you have come to see
Mullah Faizullah, as I had asked that you do. Iam grateful that you did, Mariam jo. Iam grateful for
this chance to say a few words to you.
Where do I begin?
Your father has known so much sorrow since we last spoke, Mariamjo. Your stepmother Afsoon
was killed on the first day of the 1979 uprising. A stray bullet killed your sister Niloufar that same
day. Ican still see her, my Utile Niloufar, doing headsiands to impress guests. Your brother Farhad
joined the jihad in J 980. The Soviets killed him in J 982, just outside ofHelmand. I never got to see
his body. I don 'i know if you have children of your own, Mariamjo, but if you do I pray that God look
after them and spare you the grief that Ihave known. I still dream of them. I still dream of my dead
children.
I have dreams of you too, Mariam jo. Imiss you. Imiss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss
reading to you, and all those times we fished together. Do you remember all those times we fished
together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame
and regret. Regret… When it comes to you, Mariamjo, I have oceans of it. I regret that I did not see
you the day you came to Herat. I regret that I did not open the door and take you in. I regret that I did
not make you a daughter to me, ihatl leiyou live in that place for all those years. Andfor what? Fear of
losing face? Of staining my so-called good name? How Utile those things matter to me now after all
the loss, all the terrible things Ihave seen in this cursed war. Bui now, of course, it is too late.
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing
can be undone. Now all Ican do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariamjo, and that Inever
deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariamjo. Forgive me.
Forgive me. Forgive me.
I am not the wealthy man you once knew. The communists confiscated so much of my land, and all of
my stores as well. But it is petty to complain, for God-for reasons that I do not understand-has still
blessed me with far more than most people. Since my return from Kabul, Ihave managed to sell what
Utile remained of my land. I have enclosed for you your share of the inheritance. You can see that it is
far from afortune, but it is something. It is something. (You will also notice that I have taken the
liberty of exchanging the money into dollars. I think it is for the best God alone knows the fate of our
own beleaguered currency.)
I hope you do not think that I am trying to buy your forgiveness. I hope you will credit me with
knowing that your forgiveness is not for sale. It never was. I am merely giving you, if belatedly, what
was rightfully yours all along. I was not a dutiful father to you in life. Perhaps in death I can be.
Ah, death. I won't burden you with details, but death is within sight for me now. Weak heart, the
doctors say. It is a fitting manner of death, I think, for a weak man.
Mariamjo,
I dare, I dare allow myself the hope that, after you read this, you will be more charitable to me than I
ever was to you. That you might find it in your heart to come and see your father. That you will knock
on my door one more time and give me the chance to open it this time, to welcome you, to take you in
my arms, my daughter, as I should have all those years ago. It is a hope as weak as my heart. This I
know. But I will be waiting. I will be listening for your knock I will be hoping.
May God grant you a long and prosperous life, my daughter. May God give you many healthy and
beautiful children. May you find the happiness, peace, and acceptance that I did not give you. Be
well. I leave you in the loving hands of God.
Your undeserving father, Jalil
That night, after they return to the hotel, after the children have played and gone to bed, Laila tells
Tariq about the letter. She shows him the money in the burlap sack. When she begins to cry, he kisses
her face and holds her in his arms.