Page 241 - Leadership in the Indian Army

"Which was it?"
"He was like both."

"But brothers and sisters are creatures of curiosity. Yes. Sometimes a
brother lets his sister see his pecker, and a sister will-"

"You sicken me," Laila said.

"So there was nothing."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
Rasheed tilted his head, pursed his lips, nodded. "People gossiped, you

know. I remember. They said all sorts of things about you two. But

you're saying there was nothing."
She willed herself to glare at him.

He held her eyes for an excruciatingly long time in an unblinking way

that made her knuckles go pale around the milk bottle, and it took all

that Laila could muster to not falter.

She shuddered at what he would do if he found out that she had been
stealing from him. Every week, since Aziza's birth, she pried his wallet

open when he was asleep or in the outhouse and took a single bill.
Some weeks, if the wallet was light, she took only a five-afghani bill, or

nothing at all, for fear that he would notice. When the wallet was plump,

she helped herself to a ten or a twenty, once even risking two twenties.

She hid the money in a pouch she'd sewn in the lining of her checkered
winter coat.

She wondered what he would do if he knew that she was planning to

run away next spring. Next summer at the latest. Laila hoped to have a
thousand afghanis or more stowed away, half of which would go to the

bus fare from Kabul to Peshawar. She would pawn her wedding ring

when the time drew close, as well as the other jewelry that Rasheed had

given her the year before when she was still the malika of his palace.