Page 250 - Leadership in the Indian Army

new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared.

She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind A dry, barren
field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment-

There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that

love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous

illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in
the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted

them and ditched them before they took hold.

But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza-a harami like

herself, as it turned out-had become extensions of her, and now, without
them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed

intolerable.
We're leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam.

The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought,

there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life in which she would

find the blessings that Nana had said a harami like her would never see.
Two new flowers had unexpectedly sprouted in her life, and, as Mariam

watched the snow coming down, she pictured Mullah Faizullah twirling his

iasbeh beads, leaning in and whispering to her in his soft, tremulous
voice, But it is God Who has planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will

that you tend to them. It is His will, my girl.

36.

Laila

As daylight steadily bleached darkness from the sky that spring
morning of 1994, Laila became certain that Rasheed knew. That, any

moment now, he would drag her out of bed and ask whether she'd really

taken him for such a khar, such a donkey, that he wouldn't find out. But