Page 40 - Leadership in the Indian Army

honeysuckle growing along the path, and milkweed too. Bees were

buzzing over twinkling wildflowers. The driver took her hand and helped
her cross the stream. Then he let go, and he was talking about how

Herat's famous one hundred and twenty days' winds would start blowing

soon, from midmorning to dusk, and how the sand flies would go on a

feeding frenzy, and then suddenly he was standing in front of her, trying
to cover her eyes, pushing her back the way they had come and saying,

"Go back! No. Don't look now. Turn around! Go back!"

But he wasn't fast enough. Mariam saw. A gust of wind blew and parted
the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain, and Mariam

caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed

chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling
at the end of it.

6.

1 hey buried Nana in a corner of the cemetery in Gul Daman. Mariam

stood beside Bibi jo, with the women, as Mullah Faizullah recited prayers

at the graveside and the men lowered Nana's shrouded body into the
ground-Afterward, Jalil walked Mariam to the kolba, where, in front of

the villagers who accompanied them, he made a great show of tending to

Mariam. He collected a few of her things, put them in a suitcase. He sat

beside her cot, where she lay down, and fanned her face. He stroked her
forehead, and, with a woebegone expression on his face, asked if she

needed anything? anything?- he said it like that, twice.

"I want Mullah Faizullah," Mariam said.

"Of course. He's outside. I'll get him for you."