A thousand Splendid Suns

I'm all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You'll have nothing. You are nothing!

Like the wind through the willows around the kolba, gusts of an inexpressible blackness kept passing through Mariam.

On Mariam's second full day at Jalil's house, a little girl came into the room.

"I have to get something," she said.

Mariam sat up on the bed and crossed her legs, pulled the blanket on her lap.

The girl hurried across the room and opened the closet door. She fetched a square-shaped gray box.

"You know what this is?" she said. She opened the box. "It's called a gramophone. Gramo. Phone. It plays records. You know, music. A gramophone."

"You're Niloufar. You're eight."

The little girl smiled. She had Jalil's smile and his dimpled chin. "How did you know?"

Mariam shrugged. She didn't say to this girl that she'd once named a pebble after her.

"Do you want to hear a song?"

Mariam shrugged again.

Niloufar plugged in the gramophone. She fished a small record from a pouch beneath the box's lid. She put it on, lowered the needle. Music began to play.

I will use a flower petal for paper,

And write you the sweetest letter,

You are the sultan of my heart,

the sultan of my heart

"Do you know it?"

"No."

"It's from an Iranian film. I saw it at my father's cinema. Hey, do you want to see something?"

Before Mariam could answer, Niloufar had put her palms and forehead to the ground. She pushed with her soles and then she was standing upside down, on her head, in a three-point stance.

"Can you do that?" she said thickly.

"No."

Niloufar dropped her legs and pulled her blouse back down. "I could teach you," she said, pushing hair from her flushed brow. "So how long will you stay here?"

"I don't know."

"My mother says you're not really my sister like you say you are."

"I never said I was," Mariam lied.

"She says you did. I don't care. What I mean is, I don't mind if you did say it, or if you are my sister. I don't mind."

Mariam lay down. "I'm tired now."

"My mother says a jinn made your mother hang herself."

"You can stop that now," Mariam said, turning to her side. "The music, I mean."

Bibi jo came to see her that day too. It was raining by the time she came. She lowered her large body onto the chair beside the bed, grimacing.

"This rain, Mariam jo, it's murder on my hips. Just murder, I tell you. I hope… Oh, now, come here, child. Come here to Bibi jo. Don't cry. There, now. You poor thing. Tsk. You poor, poor thing."

That night, Mariam couldn't sleep for a long time. She lay in bed looking at the sky, listening to the footsteps below, the voices muffled by walls and the sheets of rain punishing the window. When she did doze off, she was startled awake by shouting. Voices downstairs, sharp and angry. Mariam couldn't make out the words. Someone slammed a door.

The next morning, Mullah Faizullah came to visit her. When she saw her friend at the door, his white beard and his amiable, toothless smile, Mariam felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes again. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and hurried over. She kissed his hand as always and he her brow. She pulled him up a chair.

He showed her the Koran he had brought with him and opened it. "I figured no sense in skipping our routine, eh?"

"You know I don't need lessons anymore, Mullah sahib. You taught me every surrah and ayat in the Koran years ago."

He smiled, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I confess, then. I've been found out. But I can think of worse excuses to visit you."

"You don't need excuses. Not you."

"You're kind to say that, Mariam jo."

He passed her his Koran. As he'd taught her, she kissed it three times – touching it to her brow between each kiss – and gave it back to him.

"How are you, my girl?"

"I keep," Mariam began. She had to stop, feeling like a rock had lodged itself in her throat. "I keep thinking of what she said to me before I left. She-"