Page 400 - Leadership in the Indian Army

give you many healthy and beautiful children. May you find the
happiness, peace, and acceptance that I did not give you. Be well. I leave

you in the loving hands of God.

Your undeserving father, Jalil

That night, after they return to the hotel, after the children have played

and gone to bed, Laila tells Tariq about the letter. She shows him the

money in the burlap sack. When she begins to cry, he kisses her face and
holds her in his arms.

51.

April 2003

The drought has ended. It snowed at last this past winter, kneedeep,

and now it has been raining for days. The Kabul River is flowing once
again. Its spring floods have washed away Titanic City.

There is mud on the streets now. Shoes squish. Cars get trapped.
Donkeys loaded with apples slog heavily, their hooves splattering muck

from rain puddles. But no one is complaining about the mud, no one is

mourning Titanic City. We need Kabul to be green again, people say.

Yesterday, Laila watched her children play in the downpour, hopping
from one puddle to another in their backyard beneath a lead-colored sky.

She was watching from the kitchen window of the small two-bedroom

house that they are renting in Deh-Mazang. There is a pomegranate tree
in the yard and a thicket of sweetbriar bushes. Tariq has patched the

walls and built the children a slide, a swing set, a little fenced area for