A Thousand Splendid Suns(31)

"It happens to everybody, Mammy."

"Strangest thing."

"I should tell you that while you were dreaming, a boy shot piss out of a water gun on my hair."

"Shot what? What was that? I'm sorry."

"Piss. Urine."

"That's . . . that's terrible. God. I'm sorry. Poor you. I'll have a talk with him first thing in the morning. Or maybe with his mother. Yes, that would be better, I think."

"I haven't told you who it was."

"Oh. Well, who was it?"

"Never mind."

"You're angry."

"You were supposed to pick me up."

"I was," Mammy croaked. Laila could not tell whether this was a question. Mammy began picking at her hair. This was one of life's great mysteries to Laila, that Mammy's picking had not made her bald as an egg. "What about . . . What's his name, your friend, Tariq? Yes, what about him?"

"He's been gone for a week."

"Oh." Mammy sighed through her nose. "Did you wash?"

"Yes."

"So you're clean, then." Mammy turned her tired gaze to the window. "You're clean, and everything is fine."

Laila stood up. "I have homework now."

"Of course you do. Shut the curtains before you go, my love," Mammy said, her voice fading. She was already sinking beneath the sheets.

As Laila reached for the curtains, she saw a car pass by on the street tailed by a cloud of dust. It was the blue Benz with the Herat license plate finally leaving. She followed it with her eyes until it vanished around a turn, its back window twinkling in the sun.

"I won't forget tomorrow," Mammy was saying behind her. "I promise."

"You said that yesterday."

"You don't know, Laila."

"Know what?" Laila wheeled around to face her mother. "What don't I know?"

Mammy's hand floated up to her chest, tapped there. "In here. What's in here." Then it fell flaccid. "You just don't know."

Chapter 18

A week passed, but there was still no sign of Tariq. Then another week came and went.

ATo fill the time, Laila fixed the screen door that Babi still hadn't got around to. She took down Babi's books, dusted and alphabetized them. She went to Chicken Street with Hasina, Giti, and Giti's mother, Nila, who was a seamstress and sometime sewing partner of Mammy's. In that week, Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

Another week passed.

Laila found herself caught in a net of terrible thoughts.

He would never come back. His parents had moved away for good; the trip to Ghazni had been a ruse. An adult scheme to spare the two of them an upsetting farewell.

A land mine had gotten to him again. The way it did in 1981, when he was five, the last time his parents took him south to Ghazni. That was shortly after Laila's third birthday. He'd been lucky that time, losing only a leg; lucky that he'd survived at all.

Her head rang and rang with these thoughts.

Then one night Laila saw a tiny flashing light from down the street. A sound, something between a squeak and a gasp, escaped her lips. She quickly fished her own flashlight from under the bed, but it wouldn't work. Laila banged it against her palm, cursed the dead batteries. But it didn't matter. He was back. Laila sat on the edge of her bed, giddy with relief, and watched that beautiful, yellow eye winking on and off.

ON HER WAY to Tariq's house the next day, Laila saw Khadim and a group of his friends across the street. Khadim was squatting, drawing something in the dirt with a stick. When he saw her, he dropped the stick and wiggled his fingers. He said something and there was a round of chuckles. Laila dropped her head and hurried past.

"What did you do?" she exclaimed when Tariq opened the door. Only then did she remember that his uncle was a barber.

Tariq ran his hand over his newly shaved scalp and smiled, showing white, slightly uneven teeth.

"Like it?"

"You look like you're enlisting in the army."

"You want to feel?" He lowered his head.

The tiny bristles scratched Laila's palm pleasantly. Tariq wasn't like some of the other boys, whose hair concealed cone-shaped skulls and unsightly lumps. Tariq's head was perfectly curved and lump-free.

When he looked up, Laila saw that his cheeks and brow had sunburned.

"What took you so long?" she said.

"My uncle was sick. Come on. Come inside."

He led her down the hallway to the family room. Laila loved everything about this house. The shabby old rug in the family room, the patchwork quilt on the couch, the ordinary clutter of Tariq's life: his mother's bolts of fabric, her sewing needles embedded in spools, the old magazines, the accordion case in the corner waiting to be cracked open.

"Who is it?"

It was his mother calling from the kitchen.

"Laila," he answered.

He pulled her a chair. The family room was brightly lit and had double windows that opened into the yard. On the sill were empty jars in which Tariq's mother pickled eggplant and made carrot marmalade.

"You mean our aroos, our daughter-in-law," his father announced, entering the room. He was a carpenter, a lean, white-haired man in his early sixties. He had gaps between his front teeth, and the squinty eyes of someone who had spent most of his life outdoors. He opened his arms and Laila went into them, greeted by his pleasant and familiar smell of sawdust. They kissed on the cheek three times.