Page 232 - Leadership in the Indian Army

only a iumban tied with a floppy knot. His white hair was straggly,

pointing every which way. "This crying. I can't stand it."
Downstairs, the girl was walking the baby across the floor, trying to

sing to her.

"I haven't had a decent night's sleep in two months," Rasheed said.

"And the room smells like a sewer. There's shit cloths lying all over the
place. I stepped on one just the other night."

Mariam smirked inwardly with perverse pleasure.

"Take her outside!" Rasheed yelled over his shoulder. "Can't you take

her outside?"
The singing was suspended briefly. "She'll catch pneumonia!"

"It's summertime!"

'What?

Rasheed clenched his teeth and raised his voice. "I said, It's warm out!"
"I'm not taking her outside!"
The singing resumed
"Sometimes, I swear, sometimes I want to put that thing in a box and

let her float down Kabul River. Like baby Moses."

Mariam never heard him call his daughter by the name the girl had
given her, Aziza, the Cherished One. It was always the baby, or, when he

was really exasperated, thai thing.

Some nights, Mariam overheard them arguing. She tiptoed to their

door, listened to him complain about the baby-always the baby-the

insistent crying, the smells, the toys that made him trip, the way the
baby had hijacked Laila's attentions from him with constant demands to

be fed, burped, changed, walked, held. The girl, in turn, scolded him for

smoking in the room, for not letting the baby sleep with them.
There were other arguments waged in voices pitched low.

"The doctor said six weeks."