Page 217 - Leadership in the Indian Army

Not with this daily retching.
This new fullness in her breasts.

And the awareness, somehow, amid all of this turmoil, that she had
missed a cycle.

Laila pictured herself in a refugee camp, a stark field with thousands of

sheets of plastic strung to makeshift poles flapping in the cold, stinging
wind. Beneath one of these makeshift tents, she saw her baby, Tariq's

baby, its temples wasted, its jaws slack, its skin mottled, bluish gray.

She pictured its tiny body washed by strangers, wrapped in a tawny
shroud, lowered into a hole dug in a patch of windswept land under the

disappointed gaze of vultures.

How could she run now?

Laila took grim inventory of the people in her life. Ahmad and Noor,
dead. Hasina, gone. Giti, dead. Mammy, dead. Babi, dead. Now Tariq…

But, miraculously, something of her former life remained, her last link

to the person that she had been before she had become so utterly alone.

A part of Tariq still alive inside her, sprouting tiny arms, growing
translucent hands.

How could she jeopardize the only thing she had left of him, of her old
life?
She made her decision quickly. Six weeks had passed since her time

with Tariq. Any longer and Rasheed would grow suspicious.

She knew that what she was doing was dishonorable. Dishonorable,
disingenuous, and shameful. And spectacularly unfair to Mariam. But

even though the baby inside her was no bigger than a mulberry, Laila

already saw the sacrifices a mother had to make. Virtue was only the
first.

She put a hand on her belly. Closed her eyes.