Page 228 - Leadership in the Indian Army

clothes outside in a big copper lagoon. Sometimes she saw herself as if

hovering above her own body, saw herself squatting over the rim of the
logoon, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, pink hands wringing soapy water

from one of Rasheed's undershirts. She felt lost then, casting about, like

a shipwreck survivor, no shore in sight, only miles and miles of water.

When it was too cold to go outside, Laila ambled around the house. She
walked, dragging a fingernail along the wall, down the hallway, then

back, down the steps, then up, her face unwashed, hair uncombed. She

walked until she ran into Mariam, who shot her a cheerless glance and

went back to slicing the stem off a bell pepper and trimming strips of fat
from meat. A hurtful silence would fill the room, and Laila could almost

see the wordless hostility radiating from Mariam like waves of heat rising

from asphalt. She would retreat back to her room, sit on the bed, and
watch the snow falling.

* * *

Rasheed took her to his shoe shop one day.
When they were out together, he walked alongside her, one hand

gripping her by the elbow. For Laila, being out in the streets had become

an exercise in avoiding injury. Her eyes were still adjusting to the

limited, gridlike visibility of the burqa, her feet still stumbling over the
hem. She walked in perpetual fear of tripping and falling, of breaking an

ankle stepping into a pothole. Still, she found some comfort in the

anonymity that the burqa provided. She wouldn't be recognized this way

if she ran into an old acquaintance of hers. She wouldn't have to watch
the surprise in their eyes, or the pity or the glee, at how far she had

fallen, at how her lofty aspirations had been dashed.

Rasheed's shop was bigger and more brightly lit than Laila had