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Authors: Khaled Hosseini
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saw his broad, thick-shouldered figure disappear around the turn at the end of the street.
For most of the days, Mariam stayed in bed, feeling adrift and forlorn. Sometimes she went downstairs to the kitchen, ran
her hands over the sticky, grease-stained counter, the vinyl, flowered curtains that smelled like burned meals. She looked
through the ill-fitting drawers, at the mismatched spoons and knives, the colander and chipped, wooden spatulas, these would-be
instruments of her new daily life, all of it reminding her of the havoc that had struck her life, making her feel uprooted,
displaced, like an intruder on someone else’s life.
At the kolba, her appetite had been predictable. Here, her stomach rarely growled for food. Sometimes she took a plate of leftover white
rice and a scrap of bread to the living room, by the window. From there, she could see the roofs of the one-story houses on
their street. She could see into their yards too, the women working laundry lines and shooing their children, chickens pecking
at dirt, the shovels and spades, the cows tethered to trees.
She thought longingly of all the summer nights that she and Nana had slept on the flat roof of the kolba, looking at the moon glowing over Gul Daman, the night so hot their shirts would cling to their chests like a wet leaf to a
window. She missed the winter afternoons of reading in the kolba with Mullah Faizullah, the clink of icicles falling on her roof from the trees, the crows cawing outside from snow-burdened
branches.
Alone in the house, Mariam paced restlessly, from the kitchen to the living room, up the steps to her room and down again.
She ended up back in her room, doing her prayers or sitting on the bed, missing her mother, feeling nauseated and homesick.
It was with the sun’s westward crawl that Mariam’s anxiety really ratcheted up. Her teeth rattled when she thought of the
night, the time when Rasheed might at last decide to do to her what husbands did to their wives. She lay in bed, wracked with
nerves, as he ate alone downstairs.
He always stopped by her room and poked his head in.
“You can’t be sleeping already. It’s only seven. Are you awake? Answer me. Come, now.”
He pressed on until, from the dark, Mariam said, “I’m here.”
He slid down and sat in her doorway. From her bed, she could see his large-framed body, his long legs, the smoke swirling
around his hook-nosed profile, the amber tip of his cigarette brightening and dimming.
He told her about his day. A pair of loafers he had custom-made for the deputy foreign minister—who, Rasheed said, bought
shoes only from him. An order for sandals from a Polish diplomat and his wife. He told her of the superstitions people had
about shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left
shoe first.
“Unless it was done unintentionally on a Friday,” he said. “And did you know it’s supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together
and hang them from a nail?”
Rasheed himself believed none of this. In his opinion, superstitions were largely a female preoccupation.
He passed on to her things he had heard on the streets, like how the American president Richard Nixon had resigned over a
scandal.
Mariam, who had never heard of Nixon, or the scandal that had forced him to resign, did not say anything back. She waited
anxiously for Rasheed to finish talking, to crush his cigarette, and take his leave. Only when she’d heard him cross the hallway,
heard his door open and close, only then would the metal fist gripping her belly let go.
Then one night he crushed his cigarette and instead of saying good night leaned against the doorway.
“Are you ever going to unpack that thing?” he said, motioning with his head toward her suitcase. He crossed his arms. “I figured
you might need some time. But this is absurd. A week’s gone and . . . Well, then, as of tomorrow
For most of the days, Mariam stayed in bed, feeling adrift and forlorn. Sometimes she went downstairs to the kitchen, ran
her hands over the sticky, grease-stained counter, the vinyl, flowered curtains that smelled like burned meals. She looked
through the ill-fitting drawers, at the mismatched spoons and knives, the colander and chipped, wooden spatulas, these would-be
instruments of her new daily life, all of it reminding her of the havoc that had struck her life, making her feel uprooted,
displaced, like an intruder on someone else’s life.
At the kolba, her appetite had been predictable. Here, her stomach rarely growled for food. Sometimes she took a plate of leftover white
rice and a scrap of bread to the living room, by the window. From there, she could see the roofs of the one-story houses on
their street. She could see into their yards too, the women working laundry lines and shooing their children, chickens pecking
at dirt, the shovels and spades, the cows tethered to trees.
She thought longingly of all the summer nights that she and Nana had slept on the flat roof of the kolba, looking at the moon glowing over Gul Daman, the night so hot their shirts would cling to their chests like a wet leaf to a
window. She missed the winter afternoons of reading in the kolba with Mullah Faizullah, the clink of icicles falling on her roof from the trees, the crows cawing outside from snow-burdened
branches.
Alone in the house, Mariam paced restlessly, from the kitchen to the living room, up the steps to her room and down again.
She ended up back in her room, doing her prayers or sitting on the bed, missing her mother, feeling nauseated and homesick.
It was with the sun’s westward crawl that Mariam’s anxiety really ratcheted up. Her teeth rattled when she thought of the
night, the time when Rasheed might at last decide to do to her what husbands did to their wives. She lay in bed, wracked with
nerves, as he ate alone downstairs.
He always stopped by her room and poked his head in.
“You can’t be sleeping already. It’s only seven. Are you awake? Answer me. Come, now.”
He pressed on until, from the dark, Mariam said, “I’m here.”
He slid down and sat in her doorway. From her bed, she could see his large-framed body, his long legs, the smoke swirling
around his hook-nosed profile, the amber tip of his cigarette brightening and dimming.
He told her about his day. A pair of loafers he had custom-made for the deputy foreign minister—who, Rasheed said, bought
shoes only from him. An order for sandals from a Polish diplomat and his wife. He told her of the superstitions people had
about shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left
shoe first.
“Unless it was done unintentionally on a Friday,” he said. “And did you know it’s supposed to be a bad omen to tie shoes together
and hang them from a nail?”
Rasheed himself believed none of this. In his opinion, superstitions were largely a female preoccupation.
He passed on to her things he had heard on the streets, like how the American president Richard Nixon had resigned over a
scandal.
Mariam, who had never heard of Nixon, or the scandal that had forced him to resign, did not say anything back. She waited
anxiously for Rasheed to finish talking, to crush his cigarette, and take his leave. Only when she’d heard him cross the hallway,
heard his door open and close, only then would the metal fist gripping her belly let go.
Then one night he crushed his cigarette and instead of saying good night leaned against the doorway.
“Are you ever going to unpack that thing?” he said, motioning with his head toward her suitcase. He crossed his arms. “I figured
you might need some time. But this is absurd. A week’s gone and . . . Well, then, as of tomorrow
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