Page 321 - Leadership in the Indian Army

Laila
Iariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had a cousin who'd

been publicly flogged once for painting flamingos. He, the cousin, had a

seemingly incurable thing for them.

"Entire sketchbooks," Tariq said. "Dozens of oil paintings of them,

wading in lagoons, sunbathing in marshlands. Flying into sunsets too, I'm

afraid."
"Flamingos," Laila said. She looked at him sitting against the wall, his

good leg bent at the knee. She had an urge to touch him again, as she

had earlier by the front gate when she'd run to him. It embarrassed her
now to think of how she'd thrown her arms around his neck and wept into

his chest, how she'd said his name over and over in a slurring, thick

voice. Had she acted too eagerly, she wondered, too desperately? Maybe

so. But she hadn't been able to help it. And now she longed to touch him
again, to prove to herself again that he was really here, that he was not

a dream, an apparition.

"Indeed," he said. "Flamingos."

When the Taliban had found the paintings, Tariq said, they'd taken

offense at the birds' long, bare legs. After they'd tied the cousin's feet
and flogged his soles bloody, they had presented him with a choice:

Either destroy the paintings or make the flamingos decent. So the cousin

had picked up his brush and painted trousers on every last bird

"And there you have it. Islamic flamingos," Tariq said-Laughter came

up, but Laila pushed it back down. She was ashamed of her yellowing

teeth, the missing incisor-Ashamed of her withered looks and swollen lip.