Page 135 - Leadership in the Indian Army

it's nonsense-and very dangerous nonsense at that-all this talk of I'm
Tajik and you 're Pashiun and he's Hazara and she's Uzbek. We 're all

Afghans, and that's all that should matter. But when one group rules over
f
the others for so long… There s contempt. Rivalry. There is. There always

has been.

Maybe so. But Laila never felt it in Tariq's house, where these matters

never even came up. Her time with Tariq's family always felt natural to

Laila, effortless, uncomplicated by differences in tribe or language, or by

the personal spites and grudges that infected the air at her own home.

"How about a game of cards?" Tariq said.

"Yes, go upstairs," his mother said, swiping disapprovingly at her

husband's cloud of smoke. "I'll get the shorwa going."

They lay on their stomachs in the middle of Tariq's room and took turns
dealing for panjpar. Pedaling air with his foot, Tariq told her about his

trip. The peach saplings he had helped his uncle plant. A garden snake

he had captured.
This room was where Laila and Tariq did their homework, where they

built playing-card towers and drew ridiculous portraits of each other. If it
was raining, they leaned on the windowsill, drinking warm, fizzy orange
Fanta, and watched the swollen rain droplets trickle down the glass.

"All right, here's one," Laila said, shuffling. "What goes around the

world but stays in a corner?"

"Wait." Tariq pushed himself up and swung his artificial left leg around.

Wincing, he lay on his side, leaning on his elbow. "Hand me that pillow."