lailaiariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had acousin who'd been publicly flogged once for painting flamingos.

he, the cousin, had a seemingly incurable thing for them.

"entire sketchbooks," tariq said. "dozens of oil paintings ofthem, wading in lagoons, sunbathing in marshlands. flying intosunsets too, i'm afraid.""flamingos," laila said. she looked at him sitting against thewall, his good leg bent at the knee. she had an urge to touchhim again, as she had earlier by the front gate when she'drun to him. it embarrassed her now to think of how she'dthrown her arms around his neck and wept into his chest,how she'd said his name over and over in a slurring, thickvoice. had she acted too eagerly, she wondered, toodesperately? maybe so. but she hadn't been able to help it.

and now she longed to touch him again, to prove to herselfagain that he was really here, that he was not a dream, anapparition.

"indeed," he said. "flamingos."when the taliban had found the paintings, tariq said, they'dtaken offense at the birds' long, bare legs. after they'd tied thecousin's feet and flogged his soles bloody, they had presentedhim with a choice: either destroy the paintings or make theflamingos decent. so the cousin had picked up his brush andpainted trousers on every last bird"and there you have it. islamic flamingos," tariq said-laughtercame up, but laila pushed it back down. she was ashamed ofher yellowing teeth, the missing incisor-ashamed of her witheredlooks and swollen lip. she wished she'd had the chance towash her face, at least comb her hair.

"but he'll have the last laugh, the cousin," tariq said- "hepainted those trousers with watercolor. when the taliban aregone, he'll just wash them off" he smiled-laila noticed that hehad a missing tooth of his own-and looked down at his hands.

"indeed"he was wearingapakol on his head, hiking boots, and a blackwool sweater tucked into thewaist of khaki pants. he was halfsmiling, nodding slowly. laila didn't remember him saying thisbefore, this wordindeed, and this pensive gesture,the fingersmaking a tent in his lap, the nodding, it was new too. such anadult word, such an adult gesture, and why should it be sostartling? hewas an adult now, tariq, a twenty-five-year-oldman with slow movements and a tiredness to his smile. tall,bearded, slimmer than in her dreams of him, but withstrong-looking hands, workman's hands, with tortuous, full veins.

his face was still lean and handsome but not fair-skinned anylonger; his brow had a weathered look to it, sunburned, likehis neck, the brow of a traveler at the end of a long andwearying journey. hispakol was pushed back on his head, andshe could see that he'd started to lose his hair. the hazel ofhis eyes was duller than she remembered, paler, or perhaps itwas merely the light in the room.

laila thought of tariq's mother, her unhurried manners, theclever smiles, the dull purple wig. and his father, with hissquinty gaze, his wry humor. earlier, at the door, with a voicefull of tears, tripping over her own words, she'd told tariqwhat she thought had happened to him and his parents, andhe had shaken his head. so now she asked him how theywere doing, his parents. but she regretted the question whentariq looked down and said, a bit distractedly, "passed on.""i'm so sorry.""well. yes. me too. here." he fished a small paper bag fromhis pocket and passed it to her. "compliments of alyona."inside was a block of cheese in plastic wrap.

"alyona. it's a pretty name." laila tried to say this nextwithout wavering. "your wife?""my goat." he was smiling at her expectantly, as thoughwaiting for her to retrieve a memory.

then laila remembered. the soviet film. alyona had been thecaptain's daughter, the girl in love with the first mate. that wasthe day that she, tariq, and hasina had watched soviet tanksand jeeps leave kabul, the day tariq had worn that ridiculousrussian fur hat.

"i had to tie her to a stake in the ground," tariq was saying.

"and build a fence. because of the wolves. in the foothillswhere i live, there's a wooded area nearby, maybe a quarterof a mile away, pine trees mostly, some fir, deodars. theymostly stick to the woods, the wolves do, but a bleating goat,one that likes to go wandering, that can draw them out. sothe fence. the stake."laila asked him which foothills.

"pir panjal pakistan," he said "where i live is called murree;it's a summer retreat, an hour from islamabad. it's hilly andgreen, lots of trees, high above sea level so it's cool in thesummer. perfect for tourists."the british had built it as a hill station near their militaryheadquarters in rawalpindi, he said, for the victorians to escapethe heat. you could still spot a few relics of the colonial times,tariq said, the occasional tearoom, tin-roofed bungalows, calledcottages, that sort of thing. the town itself was small andpleasant. the main street was called the mall, where there wasa post office, a bazaar, a few restaurants, shops thatovercharged tourists for painted glass and handknotted carpets.

curiously, the mall's one-way traffic flowed in one direction oneweek, the opposite direction the next week.

"the locals say that ireland's traffic is like that too in places,"tariq said. "i wouldn't know. anyway, it's nice. it's aplain life, but i like it. i like living there.""with your goat. with alyona."laila meant this less as a joke than as a surreptitious entryinto another line of talk, such as who else was there with himworrying about wolves eating goats. but tariq only went onnodding.

"i'm sorry about your parents too," he said.

"you heard.""i spoke to some neighbors earlier," he said. a pause, duringwhich laila wondered what else the neighbors had told him. "idon't recognize anybody. from the old days, i mean.""they're all gone. there's no one left you'd know.""i don't recognize kabul.""neither do i," laila said. "and i never left."* * *"mammy has a new friend," zalmai said after dinner later thatsame night, after tariq had left. "a man."rasheed looked up."does she, now?"* * *tariqasked ifhecould smoke.

they had stayed awhile at thenasir bagh refugee camp nearpeshawar, tariq said, tapping ash into a saucer. there weresixty thousand afghans living there already when he and hisparents arrived.

"it wasn't as bad as some of the other camps like, godforbid, jalozai," he said. "i guess at one point it was evensome kind of model camp, back during the cold war, a placethe west could point to and prove to the world they weren'tjust funnel ing arms into afghanistan."but that had been during the soviet war, tariq said, the daysof jihad and worldwide interest and generous funding and visitsfrom margaret thatcher.

"you know the rest, laila. after the war, the soviets fell apart,and the west moved on. there was nothing at stake for themin afghanistan anymore and the money dried up. now nasirbagh is tents, dust, and open sewers. when we got there, theyhanded us a stick and a sheet of canvas and told us to buildourselves a tent."tariq said what he remembered most about nasir bagh,where they had stayed for a year, was the color brown.

"brown tents. brown people. brown dogs. brown porridge."there was a leafless tree he climbed every day, where hestraddled a branch and watched the refugees lying about in thesun, their sores and stumps in plain view. he watched littleemaciated boys carrying water in their jerry cans, gathering dogdroppings to make fire, carving toy ak-47s out of wood withdull knives, lugging the sacks of wheat flour that no one couldmake bread from that held together. all around the refugeetown, the wind made the tents flap. it hurled stubbles of weedeverywhere, lifted kites flown from the roofs of mud hovels.

"a lot of kids died. dysentery, tb, hunger-you name it.

mostly, that damn dysentery. god, laila. i saw so many kidsburied. there's nothing worse a person can see."he crossed his legs. it grew quiet again between them for awhile.

"my father didn't survive that first winter," he said. "he diedin his sleep. i don't think there was any pain."that same winter, he said, his mother caught pneumonia andalmost died, would have died, if not for a camp doctor whoworked out of a station wagon made into a mobile clinic. shewould wake up all night long, feverish, coughing out thick,rust-colored phlegm. the queues were long to see the doctor,tariq said. everyone was shivering in line, moaning, coughing,some with shit running down their legs, others too tired orhungry or sick to make words.

"but he was a decent man, the doctor. he treated mymother, gave her some pills, saved her life that winter."that same winter, tariq had cornered a kid.

"twelve, maybe thirteen years old," he said evenly. "i held ashard of glass to his throat and took his blanket from him. igave it to my mother."he made a vow to himself, tariq said, after his mother'sillness, that they would not spend another winter in camp. he'dwork, save, move them to an apartment in peshawar withheating and clean water. when spring came, he looked forwork. from time to time, a truck came to camp early in themorning and rounded up a couple of dozen boys, took themto a field to move stones or an orchard to pick apples inexchange for a little money, sometimes a blanket, a pair ofshoes. but they never wanted him, tariq said.

"one look at my leg and it was over."there were other jobs. ditches to dig, hovels to build, waterto carry, feces to shovel from outhouses. but young menfought over these jobs, and tariq never stood a chance-thenhe met a shopkeeper one day, that fall of 1993.

"he offered me money to take a leather coat to lahore. nota lot but enough, enough for one or maybe two months'

apartment rent."the shopkeeper gave him a bus ticket, tariq said, and theaddress of a street corner near the lahore rail station wherehe was to deliver the coat to a friend of the shopkeeper's.

"i knew already. of course i knew," tariq said. "he said thatif i got caught, i was on my own, that i should rememberthat he knew where my mother lived. but the money was toogood to pass up. and winter was coming again.""how far did you get?" laila asked.

"not far," he said and laughed, sounding apologetic, ashamed.

"never even got on the bus. but i thought i was immune, youknow, safe. as though there was some accountant up theresomewhere, a guy with a pencil tucked behind his ear whokept track of these things, who tallied things up, and he'd lookdown and say, 'yes, yes, he can have this, we'll let it go. he'spaid some dues already, this one.'"it was in the seams, the hashish, and it spilled all over thestreet when the police took a knife to the coat.

tariq laughed again when he said this, a climbing, shaky kindof laugh, and laila remembered how he used to laugh like thiswhen they were little, to cloak embarrassment, to make light ofthings he'd done that were foolhardy or scandalous.

* * *"he has a limp," zalmai said. "is this who ithink it is?""he was only visiting," mariam said.

"shut up, you," rasheed snapped, raising a finger. he turnedback to laila. "well, what do you know? laili and majnoonreunited. just like old times." his face turned stony. "so you lethim in. here. in my house. you let him in. he was in herewith my son.""you duped me. you lied to me," laila said, gritting her teeth.

"you had that man sit across from me and… you knew iwould leave if i thought he was alive.""and you didn't lie to me?" rasheed roared. "youthink i didn't figure it out? about yourharamil you take me fora fool, you whore?"* * *the more tariq talked, the more laila dreaded the momentwhen he would stop. the silence that would follow, the signalthat it was her turn to give account, to provide the why andhow and when, to make official what he surely already knew.

she felt a faint nausea whenever he paused. she averted hiseyes. she looked down at his hands, at the coarse, dark hairsthat had sprouted on the back of them in the interveningyears.

tariq wouldn't say much about his years in prison save thathe'd learned to speak urdu there. when laila asked, he gavean impatient shake of his head. in this gesture, laila saw rustybars and unwashed bodies, violent men and crowded halls, andceilings rotting with moldy deposits. she read in his face that ithad been a place of abasement, of degradation and despair.

tariq said his mother tried to visit him after his arrest.

"three times she came. but i never got to see her," he said.

he wrote her a letter, and a few more after that, eventhough he doubted that she would receive them.

"and i wrote you.""you did?""oh,volumes," he said. "your friend rumi would have enviedmy production." then he laughed again, uproariously this time,as though he was both startled at his own boldness andembarrassed by what he had let on.

zalmai began bawling upstairs.

* * *"just like old times, then," rasheed said. "the two of you. isuppose you let him see your face.""she did," said zalmai. then, to laila, "you did, mammy. isaw you."* * *"your son doesn't care for me much," tariq said when lailareturned downstairs.

"i'm sorry," she said. "it's not that. he just…don't mind him."then quickly she changed the subject because it made her feelperverse and guilty to feel that about zalmai, who was a child,a little boy who loved his father, whose instinctive aversion tothis stranger was understandable and legitimate.

and i wrote you.

volumes. volumes.

"how long have you been in murree?""less than a year," tariq said-he befriended an older man inprison, he said, a fellow named salim, a pakistani, a formerfield hockey player who had been in and out of prison foryears and who was serving ten years for stabbing anundercover policeman. every prison has a man like salim, tariqsaid. there was always someone who was cunning andconnected, who worked the system and found you things,someone around whom the air buzzed with both opportunityand danger-it was salim who had sent out tariq's queriesabout his mother, salim who had sat him down and told him,in a soft, fatherly voice, that she had died of exposure.

tariq spent seven years in the pakistani prison. "i got offeasy," he said. "i was lucky. the judge sitting on my case, itturned out, had a brother who'd married an afghan woman.

maybe he showed mercy. i don't know."when tariq's sentence was up, early in the winter of 2000,salim gave him his brother's address and phone number. thebrother's name was sayeed.

"he said sayeed owned a small hotel in murree," tariq said.

"twenty rooms and a lounge, a little place to cater to tourists.

he said tell him i sent you."tariq had liked murree as soon as he'd stepped off the bus:

the snow-laden pines; the cold, crisp air; the shuttered woodencottages, smoke curling up from chimneys.

here was a place, tariq had thought, knocking on sayeed'sdoor, a place not only worlds removed from the wretchednesshe'd known but one that made even the notion of hardshipand sorrow somehow obscene, unimaginable.

"i said to myself, here is a place where a man can get on."tariq was hired as a janitor and handyman. he did well, hesaid, during the one-month trial period, at half pay, that sayeedgranted him. as tariq spoke, laila saw sayeed, whom sheimagined narrow-eyed and ruddy-faced, standing at thereception office window watching tariq chop wood and shovelsnow off the driveway. she saw him stooping over tariq's legs,observing, as tariq lay beneath the sink fixing a leaky pipe.

she pictured him checking the register for missing cash.

tariq's shack was beside the cook's little bungalow, he said.

the cook was a matronly old widow named adiba. bothshacks were detached from the hotel itself, separated from themain building by a scattering of almond trees, a park bench,and a pyramid-shaped stone fountain that, in the summer,gurgled water all day. laila pictured tariq in his shack, sittingup in bed, watching the leafy world outside his window.

at the end of the grace period, sayeed raised tariq's pay tofull, told him his lunches were free, gave him a wool coat, andfitted him for a new leg. tariq said he'd wept at the man'skindness.

with his first month's full salary in his pocket, tariq had goneto town and bought alyona.

"her fur is perfectly white," tariq said, smiling. "somemornings, when it's snowed all night, you look out the windowand all you see of her is two eyes and a muzzle."laila nodded another silence ensued upstairs, zalmai hadbegun bouncing his ball again against the wall.

"i thought you were dead," laila said.

"i know. you told me."laila's voice broke. she had to clear her throat, collect herself.

"the man who came to give the news, he was soearnest…ibelieved him, tariq. i wish i hadn't, but i did. andthen i felt so alone and scared. otherwise, i wouldn't haveagreed to marry rasheed. i wouldn't have…""you don't have to do this," he said softly, avoiding her eyes.

there was no hidden reproach, no recrimination, in the way hehad said this. no suggestion of blame.

"but i do. because there was a bigger reason why i marriedhim. there's something you don't know, tariq.someone. i haveto tell you."* * *"did you srr and talk with him too?" rasheed asked zalmai.

zalmai said nothing. laila saw hesitation and uncertainty in hiseyes now, as if he had just realized that what he'd disclosedhad turned out to be far bigger than he'd thought.

"i asked you a question, boy."zalmai swallowed. his gaze kept shifting. "i was upstairs,playing with mariam.""and your mother?"zalmai looked at laila apologetically, on the verge of tears.

"it's all right, zalmai," laila said. "tell the truth.""she was…she was downstairs, talking to that man," he saidin a thin voice hardly louder than a whisper.

"i see," said rasheed. "teamwork."* * *as he was leaving, tariq said, "i want to meet her. i want tosee her.""i'll arrange it," laila said.

"aziza. aziza." he smiled, tasting the word. whenever rasheeduttered her daughter's name, it came out soundingunwholesome to laila, almost vulgar.

"aziza. it's lovely.""so is she. you'll see.""i'll count the minutes."almost ten years had passed since they had last seen eachother. laila's mind flashed to all the times they'd met in thealley, kissing in secret. she wondered how she must seem tohim now. did he still find her pretty? or did she seemwithered to him, reduced, pitiable, like a fearful, shuffling oldwoman? almost ten years. but, for a moment, standing therewith tariq in the sunlight, it was as though those years hadnever happened. her parents' deaths, her marriage to rasheed,the killings, the rockets, the taliban, the beatings, the hunger,even her children, all of it seemed like a dream, a bizarredetour, a mere interlude between that last afternoon togetherand this moment.

then tariq's face changed, turned grave. she knew thisexpression. it was the same look he'd had on his face thatday, all those years ago when they'd both been children, whenhe'd unstrapped his leg and gone after khadim. he reachedwith one hand now and touched the comer of her lower lip.

"he did this to you," he said coldly.

at his touch, laila remembered the frenzy of that afternoonagain when they'd conceived aziza. his breath on her neck, themuscles of his hips flexing, his chest pressing against herbreasts, their hands interlocked.

"i wish i'd taken you with me," tariq nearly whispered.

laila had to lower her gaze, try not to cry.

"i know you're a married woman and a mother now. andhere i am, after all these years, after all that's happened,showing up at your doorstep. probably, it isn't proper, or fair,but i've come such a long way to see you, and… oh, laila, iwish i'd never left you.""don't," she croaked.

"i should have tried harder. i should have married you wheni had the chance. everything would have been different, then.""don't talk this way. please. it hurts."he nodded, started to take a step toward her, then stoppedhimself. "i don't want to assume anything. and i don't meanto turn your life upside down, appearing like this out ofnowhere. if you want me to leave, if you want me to go backto pakistan, say the word, laila. i mean it. say it and i'll go.

i'll never trouble you again. i'll-""no!" laila said more sharply than she'd intended to. she sawthat she'd reached for his arm, that she was clutchingit. shedropped her hand. "no. don't leave, tariq. no. please stay."tariq nodded.

"he works from noon to eight. come back tomorrowafternoon. i'll take you to aziza.""i'm not afraid of him, you know.""i know. come back tomorrow afternoon.""and then?""and then…idon't know. i have to think. this is…""i know it is," he said. "i understand. i'm sorry. i'm sorry fora lot of things.""don't be. you promised you'd come back. and you did."his eyes watered. "it's good to see you, laila."she watched him walk away, shivering where she stood. shethought,volumes, and another shudder passed through her, acurrent of something sad and forlorn, but also something eagerand recklessly hopeful.