Page 343 - Leadership in the Indian Army

Laila

Laila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and
foreboding eyes. She was dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence

beyond the face, of her fists raining down. Above them was the ceiling,

and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark markings of mold

spreading across it like ink on a dress, the crack in the plaster that was a
stolid smile or a frown, depending on which end of the room you looked

at it from. Laila thought of all the times she had tied a rag around the

end of a broom and cleaned cobwebs from this ceiling. The three times

she and Mariam had put coats of white paint on it. The crack wasn't a
smile any longer now but a mocking leer. And it was receding. The

ceiling was shrinking, lifting, rising away from her and toward some hazy

dimness beyond. It rose until it shrank to the size of a postage stamp,
white and bright, everything around it blotted out by the shuttered

darkness. In the dark, Rasheed's face was like a sunspot.

Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars

exploding. Bizarre geometric forms in the light, worms, egg-shaped

things, moving up and down, sideways, melting into each other, breaking

apart, morphing into something else, then fading, giving way to
blackness.

Voices muffled and distant.

Behind the lids of her eyes, her children's faces flared and fizzled.

Aziza, alert and burdened, knowing, secretive. Zalmai, looking up at his

father with quivering eagerness.