Page 208 - Leadership in the Indian Army

the stores in Kabul and that I was going back to finish up the paperwork.

It wasn't much. But it occupied him. At least, I like to think it did.
"Sometimes he talked too. Half the time, I couldn't make out what he

was saying, but I caught enough. He described where he'd lived.

He talked about his uncle in Ghazni. And his mother's cooking and his
father's carpentry, him playing the accordion.
"But, mostly, he talked about you, hamshira. He said you were-how did

he put it-his earliest memory. I think that's right, yes. I could tell he

cared a great deal about you. Balay, that much was plain to see. But he
said he was glad you weren't there. He said he didn't want you seeing

him like that."

Laila's feet felt heavy again, anchored to the floor, as if all her blood

had suddenly pooled down there. But her mind was far away, free and
fleet, hurtling like a speeding missile beyond Kabul, over craggy brown

hills and over deserts ragged with clumps of sage, past canyons of

jagged red rock and over snowcapped mountains…

"When I told him I was going back to Kabul, he asked me to find you.
To tell you that he was thinking of you. That he missed you. I promised

him I would I'd taken quite a liking to him, you see. He was a decent

sort of boy, I could tell."
Abdul Sharif wiped his brow with the handkerchief.

"I woke up one night," he went on, his interest in the wedding band

renewed, "I think it was night anyway, it's hard

to tell in those places. There aren't any windows. Sunrise, sundown, you
just don't know. But I woke up, and there was some sort of commotion

around the bed next to mine. You have to understand that I was full of

drugs myself, always slipping in and out, to the point where it was hard

to tell what was real and what you'd dreamed up. All I remember is,
doctors huddled around the bed, calling for this and that, alarms