19.I need to speak to your parents, dokhtar jan,” he said when Laila opened the door. He was a stocky man, with a sharp, weather-roughened face. He wore a potato-colored coat, and a brown wool pakol on his head.“Can I tell them who’s here?”Then
17.The gun was red, the trigger guard bright green. Behind the gun loomed Khadim’s grinning face. Khadim was eleven, like Tariq. He was thick, tall, and had a severe underbite. His father was a butcher in Deh-Mazang, and, from time to time, Khadim wa
15.APRIL 1978On April 17, 1978, the year Mariam turned nineteen, a man named Mir Akbar Khyber was found murdered. Two days later, there was a large demonstration in Kabul. Everyone in the neighborhood was in the streets talking about it. Through the
13.On the bus ride home from the doctor, the strangest thing was happening to Mariam. Everywhere she looked, she saw bright colors: on the drab, gray concrete apartments, on the tin-roofed, open-fronted stores, in the muddy water flowing in the gutte
11.Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking around her room in it and kept steppi
9.It was early evening the following day by the time they arrived at Rasheed’s house.I“We’re in Deh-Mazang,” he said. They were outside, on the sidewalk. He had her suitcase in one hand and was unlocking the wooden front gate with the other. “In the