Page 356 - Leadership in the Indian Army

unmindful of the Talib guards until one smacked them.

Mariam had no visitors. That was the first and only thing she had asked

the Talib officials here. No visitors.

* * *

None of the women in Mariam's cell were serving time for violent

crime-they were all there for the common offense of "running away from
home." As a result, Mariam gained some notoriety among them, became

a kind of celebrity. The women eyed her with a reverent, almost

awestruck, expression. They offered her their blankets. They competed

to share their food with her.

The most avid was Naghma, who was always hugging her elbows and

following Mariam everywhere she went. Naghma was the sort of person

who found it entertaining to dispense news of misfortune, whether others'
or her own. She said her father had promised her to a tailor some thirty

years older than her.

"He smells like goh, and has fewer teeth than fingers," Naghma said of
the tailor.

She'd tried to elope to Gardez with a young man she'd fallen in love

with, the son of a local mullah. They'd barely made it out of Kabul. When

they were caught and sent back, the mullah's son was flogged before he
repented and said that Naghma had seduced him with her feminine

charms. She'd cast a spell on him, he said. He promised he would

rededicate himself to the study of the Koran. The mullah's son was freed.

Naghma was sentenced to five years.