A Thousand Splendid Suns(33)

Laila had burst into tears.

What are you crying for? He'd strapped his leg back on. You asked to see it, you giryanok, you crybaby! If I'd known you were going to bawl, I wouldn't have shown you.

"A stamp," he said.

"What?"

"The riddle. The answer is a stamp. We should go to the zoo after lunch."

"You knew that one. Did you?"

"Absolutely not."

"You're a cheat."

"And you're envious."

"Of what?"

"My masculine smarts."

"Your masculine smarts? Really? Tell me, who always wins at chess?"

"I let you win." He laughed. They both knew that wasn't true.

"And who failed math? Who do you come to for help with your math homework even though you're a grade ahead?"

"I'd be two grades ahead if math didn't bore me."

"I suppose geography bores you too."

"How did you know? Now, shut up. So are we going to the zoo or not?"

Laila smiled. "We're going."

"Good."

"I missed you."

There was a pause. Then Tariq turned to her with a half-grinning, half-grimacing look of distaste. "What's the matter with you?"

How many times had she, Hasina, and Giti said those same three words to each other, Laila wondered, said it without hesitation, after only two or three days of not seeing each other? I missed you, Hasina. Oh, I missed you too. In Tariq's grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard. They didn't make a show of friendship. They felt no urge, no need, for this sort of talk. Laila imagined it had been this way for her brothers too. Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.

"I was trying to annoy you," she said.

He gave her a sidelong glance. "It worked."

But she thought his grimace softened. And she thought that maybe the sunburn on his cheeks deepened momentarily.

LAILA DIDN'T MEAN to tell him. She'd, in fact, decided that telling him would be a very bad idea. Someone would get hurt, because Tariq wouldn't be able to let it pass. But when they were on the street later, heading down to the bus stop, she saw Khadim again, leaning against a wall. He was surrounded by his friends, thumbs hooked in his belt loops. He grinned at her defiantly.

And so she told Tariq. The story spilled out of her mouth before she could stop it.

"He did what?"

She told him again.

He pointed to Khadim. "Him? He's the one?

You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

Tariq clenched his teeth and muttered something to himself in Pashto that Laila didn't catch. "You wait here," he said, in Farsi now.

"No, Tariq - "

He was already crossing the street.

Khadim was the first to see him. His grin faded, and he pushed himself off the wall. He unhooked his thumbs from the belt loops and made himself more upright, taking on a self-conscious air of menace. The others followed his gaze.

Laila wished she hadn't said anything. What if they banded together? How many of them were there - ten? eleven? twelve? What if they hurt him?

Then Tariq stopped a few feet from Khadim and his band. There was a moment of consideration, Laila thought, maybe a change of heart, and, when he bent down, she imagined he would pretend his shoelace had come undone and walk back to her. Then his hands went to work, and she understood.

The others understood too when Tariq straightened up, standing on one leg. When he began hopping toward Khadim, then charging him, his unstrapped leg raised high over his shoulder like a sword.

The boys stepped aside in a hurry. They gave him a clear path to Khadim.

Then it was all dust and fists and kicks and yelps.

Khadim never bothered Laila again.

THAT NIGHT, as most nights, Laila set the dinner table for two only. Mammy said she wasn't hungry. On those nights that she was, she made a point of taking a plate to her room before Babi even came home. She was usually asleep or lying awake in bed by the time Laila and Babi sat down to eat.

Babi came out of the bathroom, his hair - peppered white with flour when he'd come home - washed clean now and combed back.

"What are we having, Laila?"

"Leftover aush soup."

"Sounds good," he said, folding the towel with which he'd dried his hair. "So what are we working on tonight?

Adding fractions?"

"Actually, converting fractions to mixed numbers."

"Ah. Right."

Every night after dinner, Babi helped Laila with her homework and gave her some of his own. This was only to keep Laila a step or two ahead of her class, not because he disapproved of the work assigned by the school - the propaganda teaching notwithstanding. In fact, Babi thought that the one thing the communists had done right - or at least intended to - ironically, was in the field of education, the vocation from which they had fired him. More specifically, the education of women. The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women now, Babi said, women who were studying law, medicine, engineering.

Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they're probably more free now, under the communists, and have more rights than they've ever had before, Babi said, always lowering his voice, aware of how intolerant Mammy was of even remotely positive talk of the communists. But it's true, Babi said, it's a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan. And you can take advantage of that, Laila. Of course, women's freedom - here, he shook his head ruefully - is also one of the reasons people out there took up arms in the first place.