Page 30 - Leadership in the Indian Army

"I'll die if you go. The jinn will come, and I'll have one of my fits. You'll

see, I'll swallow my tongue and die. Don't leave me, Mariam jo. Please
stay. I'll die if you go."

Mariam said nothing.

"You know I love you, Mariam jo."

Mariam said she was going for a walk.

She feared she might say hurtful things if she stayed: that she knew the

jinn was a lie, that Jalil had told her that what Nana had was a disease

with a name and that pills could make it better. She might have asked

Nana why she refused to see Jalil's doctors, as he had insisted she do,
why she wouldn't take the pills he'd bought for her. If she could articulate

it, she might have said to Nana that she was tired of being an

instrument, of being lied to, laid claim to, used. That she was sick of
Nana twisting the truths of their life and making her, Mariam, another of

her grievances against the world.

You 're afraid, Nana, she might have said. You 're afraid that 1 might

find the happiness you never had. And you don 'i want me to be happy.

You don't want a good life for me. You 're the one with the wretched
heart

* * *

There was A lookout, on the edge of the clearing, where Mariam liked
to go. She sat there now, on dry, warm grass. Herat was visible from

here, spread below her like a child's board game: the Women's Garden