laila sat across from abdul sharif, who was a thin,small-headed man with a bulbous nose pocked with the samecratered scars that pitted his cheeks. his hair, short andbrown, stood on his scalp like needles in a pincushion.

"you'll have to forgive me,hamshira," he said, adjusting hisloose collar and dabbing at his brow with a handkerchief "i stillhaven't quite recovered, i fear. five more days of these, whatare they called…sulfa pills."laila positioned herself in her seat so that her right ear, thegood one, was closest to him. "were you a friend of myparents?""no, no," abdul sharif said quickly. "forgive me." he raised afinger, took a long sip of the water that mariam had placed infront of him.

"i should begin at the beginning, i suppose." he dabbed athis lips, again at his brow. "i am a businessman. i ownclothing stores, mostly men's clothing.chapans, hats,iumban%,suits, ties-you name it. two stores here in kabul, in taimaniand shar-e-nau, though i just sold those. and two in pakistan,in peshawar. that's where my warehouse is as well. so i travela lot, back and forth. which, these days"-he shook his headand chuckled tiredly-"let's just say that it's an adventure.

"i was in peshawar recently, on business, taking orders, goingover inventory, that sort of thing. also to visit my family. wehave three daughters,alhamdulellah. i moved them and my wifeto peshawar after the mujahideen began going at each other'sthroats. i won't have their names added to theshaheedlist. normine, to be honest. i'll be joining them there verysoon,inshallah.

"anyway, i was supposed to be back in kabul the wednesdaybefore last. but, as luck would have it, i came down with anillness. i won't bother you with it,hamshira, suffice it to say thatwhen i went to do my private business, the simpler of the two,it felt like passing chunks of broken glass. i wouldn't wish it onhekmatyar himself. my wife, nadia jan, allah bless her, shebegged me to see a doctor. but i thought i'd beat it withaspirin and a lot of water. nadia jan insisted and i said no,back and forth we went. you know the saying^stubborn assneeds a stubborn driver. this time, i'm afraid, the ass won.

that would be me."he drank the rest of this water and extended the glass tomariam. "if it's not too muchzahmat."mariam took the glass and went to fill it.

"needless to say, i should have listened to her. she's alwaysbeen the more sensible one, god give her a long life. by thetime i made it to the hospital, i was burning with a fever andshaking like abeid tree in the wind. i could barely stand. thedoctor said i had blood poisoning. she said two or three moredays and i would have made my wife a widow.

"they put me in a special unit, reserved for really sick people,i suppose. oh,iashakor." he took the glass from mariam andfrom his coat pocket produced a large white pill. "thesize ofthese things."laila watched him swallow his pill she was aware that herbreathing had quickened her legs felt heavy, as though weightshad been tethered to them. she told herself that he wasn'tdone, that he hadn't told her anything as yet. but he would goon in a second, and she resisted an urge to get up and leave,leave before he told her things she didn't want to hear.

abdul sharif set his glass on the table.

"that's where i met your friend, mohammad tariq walizai."laila's heart sped up. tariq in a hospital? a special unit?forreally sick people?

she swallowed dry spit. shifted on her chair. she had to steelherself. if she didn't, she feared she would come unhinged. shediverted her thoughts from hospitals and special units andthought instead about the fact that she hadn't heard tariqcalled by his full name since the two of them had enrolled in afarsi winter course years back. the teacher would call roll afterthe bell and say his name like that-mohammad tariq walizai. ithad struck her as comically officious then, hearing his full nameuttered.

"what happened to him i heard from one of the nurses,"abdul sharif resumed, tapping his chest with a fist as if to easethe passage of the pill. "with all the time i've spent inpeshawar, i've become pretty proficient in urdu. anyway, whati gathered was that your friend was in a lorry full of refugees,twenty-three of them, all headed for peshawar. near theborder, they were caught in cross fire. a rocket hit the lorry.

probably a stray, but you never know with these people, younever know. there were only six survivors, all of themadmitted to the same unit. three died within twenty-four hours.

two of them lived-sisters, as i understood it-and had beendischarged.

your friend mr. walizai was the last. he'd been there foralmost three weeks by the time i arrived."so he was alive. but how badly had they hurt him? lailawondered frantically. how badly? badly enough to be put in aspecial unit, evidently. laila was aware that she had startedsweating, that her face felt hot. she tried to think of somethingelse, something pleasant, like the trip to bamiyan to see thebuddhas with tariq and babi. but instead an image of tariq'sparents presented itself: tariq's mother trapped in the lorry,upside down, screaming for tariq through the smoke, her armsand chest on fire, the wig melting into her scalp…laila had to take a series of rapid breaths.

"he was in the bed next to mine. there were no walls, onlya curtain between us. so i could see him pretty well."abdul sharif found a sudden need to toy with his weddingband. he spoke more slowly now.

"your friend, he was badly-very badly-injured, you understand.

he had rubber tubes coming out of him everywhere. at first-"he cleared his throat. "at first, i thought he'd lost both legs inthe attack, but a nurse said no, only the right, the left one wason account of an old injury. there were internal injuries too.

they'd operated three times already. took out sections ofintestines, i don't remember what else. and he was burned.

quite badly. that's all i'll say about that. i'm sure you haveyour fair share of nightmares,hamshira. no sense in me addingto them."tariq was legless now. he was a torso with twostumps.legless. laila thought she might collapse. with deliberate,desperate effort, she sent the tendrils of her mind out of thisroom, out the window, away from this man, over the streetoutside, over the city now, and its flat-topped houses andbazaars, its maze of narrow streets turned to sand castles.

"he was drugged up most of the time. for the pain, youunderstand. but he had moments when the drugs werewearing off when he was clear. in pain but clear of mind iwould talk to him from my bed. i told him who i was, wherei was from. he was glad, i think, that there was ahamwaiannext to him.

"i did most of the talking. it was hard for him to. his voicewas hoarse, and i think it hurt him to move his lips. so i toldhim about my daughters, and about our house in peshawarand the veranda my brother-in-law and i are building out inthe back. i told him i had sold the stores in kabul and that iwas going back to finish up the paperwork. it wasn't much.

but it occupied him. at least, i like to think it did.

"sometimes he talked too. half the time, i couldn't make outwhat he was saying, but i caught enough. he described wherehe'd lived.

he talked about his uncle in ghazni. and his mother's cookingand his father's carpentry, him playing the accordion.

"but, mostly, he talked about you,hamshira. he said youwere-how did he put it-his earliest memory. i think that's right,yes. i could tell he cared a great deal about you.balay, thatmuch was plain to see. but he said he was glad you weren'tthere. he said he didn't want you seeing him like that."laila's feet felt heavy again, anchored to the floor, as if all herblood had suddenly pooled down there. but her mind was faraway, free and fleet, hurtling like a speeding missile beyondkabul, over craggy brown hills and over deserts ragged withclumps of sage, past canyons of jagged red rock and oversnowcapped mountains…"when i told him i was going back to kabul, he asked me tofind you. to tell you that he was thinking of you. that hemissed you. i promised him i would i'd taken quite a liking tohim, you see. he was a decent sort of boy, i could tell."abdul sharif wiped his brow with the handkerchief.

"i woke up one night," he went on, his interest in thewedding band renewed, "i think it was night anyway, it's hardto tell in those places. there aren't any windows. sunrise,sundown, you just don't know. but i woke up, and there wassome sort of commotion around the bed next to mine. youhave to understand that i was full of drugs myself, alwaysslipping in and out, to the point where it was hard to tell whatwas real and what you'd dreamed up. all i remember is,doctors huddled around the bed, calling for this and that,alarms bleeping, syringes all over the ground.

"in the morning, the bed was empty. i asked a nurse. shesaid he fought valiantly."laila was dimly aware that she was nodding. she'd known. ofcourse she'd known. she'd known the moment she had satacross from this man why he was here, what news he wasbringing.

"at first, you see, at first i didn't think you even existed," hewas saying now. "i thought it was the morphine talking. maybei evenhopedyou didn't exist; i've always dreaded bearing badnews. but i promised him. and, like i said, i'd become ratherfond of him. so i came by here a few days ago. i askedaround for you, talked to some neighbors. they pointed to thishouse. they also told me what had happened to your parents.

when i heard about that, well, i turned around and left. iwasn't going to tell you. i decided it would be too much foryou. for anybody."abdul sharif reached across the table and put a hand on herkneecap. "but i came back. because, in the end, i think hewould have wanted you to know. i believe that. i'm so sorry. iwish…"laila wasn't listening anymore. she was remembering the daythe man from panjshir had come to deliver the news ofahmad's and noor's deaths. she remembered babi, white-faced,slumping on the couch, and mammy, her hand flying to hermouth when she heard. laila had watched mammy comeundone that day and it had scared her, but she hadn't feltany true sorrow. she hadn't understood the awfulness of hermother's loss. now another stranger bringing news of anotherdeath. nowshe was the one sitting on the chair. was this herpenalty, then, her punishment for being aloof to her ownmother's suffering?

laila remembered how mammy had dropped to the ground,how she'd screamed, torn at her hair. but laila couldn't evenmanage that. she could hardly move. she could hardly move amuscle.

she sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyesstaring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. she let it fly onuntil it found the place, the good and safe place, where thebarley fields were green, where the water ran clear and thecottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; wherebabi was reading a book beneath an acacia and tariq wasnapping with his hands laced across his chest, and where shecould dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreamsbeneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleachedrock.