Page 179 - Leadership in the Indian Army

And when the rockets began to rain down on Kabul, people ran for

cover. Mammy did too, literally. She changed into black again, went to
her room, shut the curtains, and pulled the blanket over her head.

24.

It's the whistling," Laila said to Tariq, "the damn whistling, I hate more

than anything" Tariq nodded knowingly.

It wasn't so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the

seconds between the start of it and impact. The brief and interminable

time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a

defendant about to hear the verdict.

Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table.

When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling,

forks in midair, unchewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflection
of their half-lit faces in the pitch-black window, their shadows unmoving

on the wall. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed

by an expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared
for now while somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke,

there was a scrambling, a barehanded frenzy of digging, of pulling from

the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, a grandchild.

But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who

hadn't. After every rocket blast, Laila raced to the street, stammering a

prayer, certain that, this time, surely this time, it was Tariq they would

find buried beneath the rubble and smoke.