laila fall 1999it was mariam's idea to dig the hole. one morning, shepointed to a patch of soil behind the toolshed. "we can do ithere," she said. "this is a good spot"they took turns striking the ground with a spade, thenshoveling the loose dirt aside. they hadn't planned on a bighole, or a deep one, so the work of digging shouldn't havebeen as demanding as it turned out. it was the drought,started in 1998, in its second year now, that was wreakinghavoc everywhere. it had hardly snowed that past winter anddidn't rain at all that spring. all over the country, farmers wereleaving behind their parched lands, selling off their goods,roaming from village to village looking for water. they movedto pakistan or iran. they settled in kabul. but water tableswere low in the city too, and the shallow wells had dried up.

the lines at the deep wells were so long, laila and mariamwould spend hours waiting their turn. the kabul river, withoutits yearly spring floods, had turned bone-dry. it was a publictoilet now, nothing in it but human waste and rubble.

so they kept swinging the spade and striking, but thesun-blistered ground had hardened like a rock, the dirtunyielding, compressed, almost petrified.

mariam was forty now. her hair, rolled up above her face,had a few stripes of gray in it. pouches sagged beneath hereyes, brown and crescent-shaped. she'd lost two front teeth.

one fell out, the other rasheed knocked out when she'daccidentally dropped zalmai. her skin had coarsened, tannedfrom all the time they were spending in the yardsitting beneaththe brazen sun. they would sit and watch zalmai chase aziza.

when it was done, when the hole was dug, they stood over itand looked down.

"it should do," mariam said.

* * *zalmai was twonow. he was a plump little boy with curlyhair. he had small brownisheyes, and a rosy tint tohis cheeks,like rasheed, no matter the weather. he hadhis father'shairlinetoo, thick and half-moon-shaped,set low on his brow.

when laila was alone with him, zalmai was sweet,good-humored, and playful. he liked to climb laila'sshoulders,play hide-and-seek in the yard with her and aziza. sometimes,inhis calmer moments, he liked tosit on laila's lap and haveher sing tohim. his favorite song was "mullah mohammadjan." he swung his meaty little feet as she sang into his curlyhair and joined in when she got to the chorus, singing whatwords he could make with his raspy voice:

come and lei's go to mazar, mullah mohammadjan, to seethe fields of tulips, o beloved companion.

laila loved the moist kisses zalmai planted on her cheeks,loved his dimpled elbows and stout little toes. she loved ticklinghim, building tunnels with cushions and pillows for him to crawlthrough, watching him fall asleep in her arms with one of hishands always clutching her ear. her stomach turned when shethought of that afternoon, lying on the floor with the spoke ofa bicycle wheel between her legs. how close she'd come. itwas unthinkable to her now that she could have evenentertained the idea. her son was a blessing, and laila wasrelieved to discover that her fears had proved baseless, thatshe loved zalmai with the marrow of her bones, just as shedid aziza.

but zalmai worshipped his father, and, because he did, hewas transformed when his father was around to dote on him.

zalmai was quick then with a defiant cackle or an impudentgrin. in his father's presence, he was easily offended. he heldgrudges. he persisted in mischief in spite of laila's scolding,which he never did when rasheed was away.

rasheed approved of all of it. "a sign of intelligence," he said.

he said the same of zalmai's recklessness-when he swallowed,then pooped, marbles; when he lit matches; when he chewedon rasheed's cigarettes.

when zalmai was born, rasheed had moved him into the bedhe shared with laila. he had bought him a new crib and hadlions and crouching leopards painted on the side panels. he'dpaid for new clothes, new rattles, new bottles, new diapers,even though they could not afford them and aziza's old oneswere still serviceable. one day, he came home with abattery-run mobile, which he hung over zalmai's crib. littleyellow-and-black bumblebees dangled from a sunflower, andthey crinkled and squeaked when squeezed. a tune playedwhen it was turned on.

"i thought you said business was slow," laila said.

"i have friends i can borrowfrom," he saiddismissively.

"howwill you pay them back?""thingswill turn around. they always do. look,he likes it.

see?"mostdays, laila was deprived ofher son. rasheed took him tothe shop, let him crawl around under his crowded workbench,play with old rubber soles and spare scraps of leather. rasheeddrove in his iron nails and turned the sandpaper wheel, andkept a watchful eye on him. if zalmai toppled a rack of shoes,rasheed scolded him gently, in a calm, half-smiling way. if hedid it again, rasheed put downhis hammer, sat him up on hisdesk, and talked to him softly.

hispatience with zalmaiwas a well that ran deep and neverdried.

they came home together in the evening, zalmai's headbouncing on rasheed's shoulder, both of them smelling of glueand leather. they grinned the way people who share a secretdo,slyly, like they'd satin thatdim shoe shop all day not makingshoes at all butdevising secret plots. zalmai liked to sit besidehisfather at dinner, where they played private games, as mariam,laila, and azizaset plates onthesojrah. they took turns pokingeach otheron the chest, giggling, pelting each other with breadcrumbs, whispering things the others couldn't hear. if lailaspoke tothem, rasheed looked up with displeasure at theunwelcome intrusion. if she asked to hold zalmai-or, worse,ifzalmai reached for her-rasheed glowered at her.

laila walked away feeling stung.

* * *then one night, a few weeks after zalmai turned two,rasheed came home with a television and a vcr. the dayhad been warm, almost balmy, but the evening was cooler andalready thickening into a starless, chilly night-he set it down onthe living-room table. he said he'd bought it on the blackmarket. "another loan?" laila asked. "it'samagnavox."aziza came into the room. when she saw the tv, she ran toit. "careful, aziza jo," saidmariam. "don't touch."aziza's hair had become as light as laila's. laila could see herown dimples on her cheeks. aziza had turned into a calm,pensive little girl, with a demeanor that to laila seemed beyondher six years. laila marveled at her daughter's manner ofspeech, her cadence and rhythm, her thoughtful pauses andintonations, so adult, so at odds with the immature body thathoused the voice. it was aziza who with lightheaded authorityhad taken it upon herself to wake zalmai every day, to dresshim, feed him his breakfast, comb his hair. she was the onewho put him down to nap, who played even-temperedpeacemaker to her volatile sibling. around him, aziza had takento giving an exasperated, queerly adult headshake.

aziza pushed the tv's power button. rasheed scowled,snatched her wrist and set it on the table, not gently at all.

"this is zalmai's tv," he said.

aziza went over to mariam and climbed in her lap. the twoof them were inseparable now. of late, with laila's blessing,mariam had started teaching aziza verses from the koran.

aziza could already recite by heart the surah ofikhlas, the surahof'fatiha,and already knew how to perform the fourruqats ofmorning prayer.

it's oil i have to give her,mariam had said to laila,thisknowledge, these prayers. they're the only true possession i'veever had.

zalmai came into the room now. as rasheed watched withanticipation, the way people wait the simple tricks of streetmagicians, zalmai pulled on the tv's wire, pushed the buttons,pressed his palms to the blank screen. when he lifted them,the condensed little palms faded from the glass. rasheed smiledwith pride, watched as zalmai kept pressing his palms andlifting them, over and over.

the taliban had banned television. videotapes had beengouged publicly, the tapes ripped out and strung on fenceposts. satellite dishes had been hung from lampposts. butrasheed said just because things were banned didn't mean youcouldn't find them.

"i'll start looking for some cartoon videos tomorrow," he said.

"it won't be hard. you can buy anything in undergroundbazaars.""then maybe you'll buy us a new well," laila said, and thiswon her a scornful gaze from him.

it was later, after another dinner of plain white rice had beenconsumed and tea forgone again on account of the drought,after rasheed had smoked a cigarette, that he told laila abouthis decision.

"no," laila said.

he said he wasn't asking.

"i don't care if you are or not.""you would if you knew the full story."he said he had borrowed from more friends than he let on,that the money from the shop alone was no longer enough tosustain the five of them. "i didn't tell you earlier to spare youthe worrying.""besides," he said, "you'd be surprised how much they canbring in."laila said no again. they were in the living room. mariamand the children were in the kitchen. laila could hear theclatter of dishes, zalmai's high-pitched laugh, aziza sayingsomething to mariam in her steady, reasonable voice.

"there will be others like her, younger even," rasheed said.

"everyone in kabul is doing the same."laila told him she didn't care what other people did with theirchildren.

"i'll keep a close eye on her," rasheed said, less patientlynow. "it's a safe corner. there's a mosque across the street.""i won't let you turn my daughter into a street beggar!" lailasnapped.

the slap made a loud smacking sound, the palm of histhick-fingered hand connecting squarely with the meat of laila'scheek. it made her head whip around. it silenced the noisesfrom the kitchen. for a moment, the house was perfectly quiet.

then a flurry of hurried footsteps in the hallway before mariamand the children were in the living room, their eyes shiftingfrom her to rasheed and back.

then laila punched him.

it was the first time she'd struck anybody, discounting theplayful punches she and tariq used to trade. but those hadbeen open-fisted, more pats than punches, self-consciouslyfriendly, comfortable expressions of anxieties that were bothperplexing and thrilling. they would aim for the muscle thattariq, in a professorial voice, called thedeltoidlaila watched the arch of her closed fist, slicing through theair, felt the crinkle of rasheed's stubbly, coarse skin under herknuckles. it made a sound like dropping a rice bag to thefloor. she hit him hard. the impact actually made him staggertwo steps backward.

from the other side of the room, a gasp, a yelp, and ascream. laila didn't know who had made which noise. at themoment, she was too astounded to notice or care, waiting forher mind to catch up with what her hand had done. when itdid, she believed she might have smiled. she might havegrinnedwhen, to her astonishment, rasheed calmly walked out of theroom.

suddenly, it seemed to laila that the collective hardships oftheir lives-hers, aziza's, mariam's-simply dropped away,vaporized like zalmai's palms from the tv screen. it seemedworthwhile, if absurdly so, to have endured all they'd enduredfor this one crowning moment, for this act of defiance thatwould end the suffering of all indignities.

laila did not notice that rasheed was back in the room. untilhis hand was around her throat. until she was lifted off herfeet and slammed against the wall.

up close, his sneering face seemed impossibly large. lailanoticed how much puffier it was getting with age, how manymore broken vessels charted tiny paths on his nose. rasheeddidn't say anything. and, really, what could be said, whatneeded saying, when you'd shoved the barrel of your gun intoyour wife's mouth?

* * *it was the raids, the reason they were in the yard digging.

sometimes monthly raids, sometimes weekly. of late, almostdaily. mostly, the taliban confiscated stuff, gave a kick tosomeone's rear, whacked the back of a head or two. butsometimes there were public beatings, lashings of soles andpalms.

"gently," mariam said now, her knees over the edge. theylowered the tv into the hole by each clutching one end of theplastic sheet in which it was wrapped"that should do it," mariam said.

they patted the dirt when they were done, filling the hole upagain. they tossed some of it around so it wouldn't lookconspicuous.

"there," mariam said, wiping her hands on her dress.

when it was safer, they'd agreed, when the taliban cut downon their raids, in a month or two or six, or maybe longer,they would dig the tv up.

* * *in laila's dream, she and mariam are out behind the toolsheddigging again. but, this time, it's aziza they're lowering into theground. aziza's breath fogs the sheet of plastic in which theyhave wrapped her. laila sees her panicked eyes, the whitenessof her palms as they slap and push against the sheet. azizapleads. laila can't hear her screams.only for a while, she callsdown,it's only for a while. it's the raids, don't you know, mylove? when the raids are over, mammy and khala mariam willdig you out. i promise, my love. then we can play. we canplay all you want. she fills the shovel. laila woke up, out ofbreath, with a taste of soil in her mouth, when the firstgranular lumps of dirt hit the plastic.