april 2003thedrought has ended. it snowed at last this past winter,kneedeep, and now it has been raining for days.the kabulriver is flowing once again. its spring floods have washed awaytitanic city.
there is mud on the streets now. shoes squish. cars gettrapped. donkeys loaded with apples slog heavily, their hoovessplattering muck from rain puddles. but no one is complainingabout the mud, no one is mourning titanic city.we need kabulto be green again, people say.
yesterday, laila watched her children play in the downpour,hopping from one puddle to another in their backyard beneatha lead-colored sky. she was watching from the kitchen windowof the small two-bedroom house that they are renting indeh-mazang. there is a pomegranate tree in the yard and athicket of sweetbriar bushes. tariq has patched the walls andbuilt the children a slide, a swing set, a little fenced area forzalmai's new goat. laila watched the rain slide off zalmai'sscalp-he has asked that he be shaved, like tariq, who is incharge now of saying thebabaloo prayers. the rain flattenedaziza's long hair, turned it into sodden tendrils that sprayedzalmai when she snapped her head.
zalmai is almost six. aziza is ten. they celebrated her birthdaylast week, took her to cinema park, where, at last,titanic wasopenly screened for the people of kabul.
* * *"come on, children, we're going to be late," laila calls, puttingtheir lunches in a paper bag-it's eight o'clock in the morning.
laila was up at five. as always, it was aziza who shook herawake for morningnamaz. the prayers, laila knows, are aziza'sway of clinging to mariam, her way of keeping mariam closeawhile yet before time has its way, before it snatches mariamfrom the garden of her memory like a weed pulled by itsroots.
afternamaz, laila had gone back to bed, and was still asleepwhen tariq left the house. she vaguely remembers him kissingher cheek. tariq has found work with a french ngo that fitsland mine survivors and amputees with prosthetic limbs.
zalmai comes chasing aziza into the kitchen.
"you have your notebooks, you two? pencils? textbooks?""right here," aziza says, lifting her backpack. again, lailanotices how her stutter is lessening.
"let's go, then."laila lets the children out of the house, locks the door. theystep out into the cool morning. it isn't raining today. the skyis blue, and laila sees no clumps of clouds in the horizon.
holding hands, the three of them make their way to the busstop. the streets are busy already, teeming with a steadystream of rickshaws, taxicabs, un trucks, buses, isaf jeeps.
sleepy-eyed merchants are unlocking store gates that had beenrolled down for the night-vendors sit behind towers of chewinggum and cigarette packs. already the widows have claimed theirspots at street corners, asking the passersby for coins.
laila finds it strange to be back in kabul the city haschanged every day now she sees people planting saplings,painting old houses, carrying bricks for new ones. they diggutters and wells. on windowsills, laila spots flowers potted inthe empty shells of old mujahideen rockets-rocket flowers,kabulis call them. recently, tariq took laila and the children tothe gardens of babur, which are being renovated. for the firsttime in years, laila hears music at kabul's street corners,rubaband tabla,dooiar, harmonium and tamboura, old ahmad zahirsongs.
laila wishes mammy and babi were alive to see thesechanges. but, like mil's letter, kabul's penance has arrived toolate.
laila and the children are about to cross the street to the busstop when suddenly a black land cruiser with tinted windowsblows by. it swerves at the last instant and misses laila by lessthan an arm's length. it splatters tea-colored rainwater all overthe children's shirts.
laila yanks her children back onto the sidewalk, heartsomersaulting in her throat.
the land cruiser speeds down the street, honks twice, andmakes a sharp left.
laila stands there, trying to catch her breath, her fingersgripped tightly around her children's wrists.
it slays laila. it slays her that the warlords have been allowedback to kabul that her parents' murderers live in posh homeswith walled gardens, that they have been appointed minister ofthis and deputy minister of that, that they ride with impunity inshiny, bulletproof suvs through neighborhoods that theydemolished. it slays her.
but laila has decided that she will not be crippled byresentment. mariam wouldn't want it that way.what's thesense? she would say with a smile both innocent andwise.what good is it, laila jo? and so laila has resignedherself to moving on. for her own sake, for tariq's, for herchildren's. and for mariam, who still visits laila in her dreams,who is never more than a breath or two below herconsciousness. laila has moved on. because in the end sheknows that's all she can do. that and hope.
* * *zamanis standing at the free throw line, his knees bent,bouncing a basketball. he is instructing a group of boys inmatching jerseys sitting in a semicircle on the court. zamanspots laila, tucks the ball under his arm, and waves. he sayssomething to the boys, who then wave and cry out,"salaam,moalim sahib!"laila waves back.
the orphanage playground has a row of apple saplings nowalong the east-facing wall. laila is planning to plant some onthe south wall as well as soon as it is rebuilt. there is a newswing set, new monkey bars, and a jungle gym.
laila walks back inside through the screen door.
they have repainted both the exterior and the interior of theorphanage. tariq and zaman have repaired all the roof leaks,patched the walls, replaced the windows, carpeted the roomswhere the children sleep and play. this past winter, lailabought a few beds for the children's sleeping quarters, pillowstoo, and proper wool blankets. she had cast-iron stovesinstalled for the winter.
anis,one of kabul's newspapers, had run a story the monthbefore on the renovation of the orphanage. they'd taken aphoto too, of zaman, tariq, laila, and one of the attendants,standing in a row behind the children. when laila saw thearticle, she'd thought of her childhood friends giti and hasina,and hasina saying,by the time we're twenty, giti and i, we'llhave pushed out four, five kids each bui you, laila, you'll makeus two dummies proud. you 're going to be somebody. i knowone day i'll pick up a newspaper and find your picture on thefrontpage. the photo hadn't made the front page, but there itwas nevertheless, as hasina had predicted.
laila takes a turn and makes her way down the samehallway where, two years before, she and mariam had deliveredaziza to zaman. laila still remembers how they had to pryaziza's fingers from her wrist. she remembers running downthis hallway, holding back a howl, mariam calling after her,aziza screaming with panic. the hallway's walls are coverednow with posters, of dinosaurs, cartoon characters, the buddhasof bamiyan, and displays of artwork by the orphans. many ofthe drawings depict tanks running over huts, men brandishingak-47s, refugee camp tents, scenes of jihad.
laila turns a corner in the hallway and sees the children now,waiting outside the classroom. she is greeted by their scarves,their shaved scalps covered by skullcaps, their small, leanfigures, the beauty of their drabness.
when the children spot laila, they come running. they comerunning at full tilt. laila is swarmed. there is a flurry ofhigh-pitched greetings, of shrill voices, of patting, clutching,tugging, groping, of jostling with one another to climb into herarms. there are outstretched little hands and appeals forattention. some of them call hermother. laila does not correctthem.
it takes laila some work this morning to calm the childrendown, to get them to form a proper queue, to usher them intothe classroom.
it was tariq and zaman who built the classroom by knockingdown the wall between two adjacent rooms. the floor is stillbadly cracked and has missing tiles. for the time being, it iscovered with tarpaulin, but tariq has promised to cement somenew tiles and lay down carpeting soon.
nailed above the classroom doorway is a rectangular board,which zaman has sanded and painted in gleaming white. on it,with a brush, zaman has written four lines of poetry, hisanswer, laila knows, to those who grumble that the promisedaid money to afghanistan isn't coming, that the rebuilding isgoing too slowly, that there is corruption, that the taliban areregrouping already and will come back with a vengeance, thatthe world will forget once again about afghanistan. the linesare from his favorite of hafez'sghazals:
joseph shall return to canaan, grieve not, hovels shall turn torose gardens, grieve not. if a flood should arrive, to drown allthat's alive, noah is your guide in the typhoon's eye, grieve notlaila passes beneath the sign and enters the classroom. thechildren are taking their seats, flipping notebooks open,chattering- aziza is talking to a girl in the adjacent row. apaper airplane floats across the room in a high arc. someonetosses it back.
"open your farsi books, children," laila says, dropping herown books on her desk.
to a chorus of flipping pages, laila makes her way to thecurtainless window. through the glass, she can see the boys inthe playground lining up to practice their free throws. abovethem, over the mountains, the morning sun is rising. it catchesthe metallic rim of the basketball hoop, the chain link of thetire swings, the whistle hanging around zaman's neck, his new,unchipped spectacles. laila flattens her palms against the warmglass panes. closes her eyes. she lets the sunlight fall on hercheeks, her eyelids, her brow.
when they first came back to kabul, it distressed laila thatshe didn't know where the taliban had buried mariam. shewished she could visit mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile,leave a flower or two. but laila sees now that it doesn'tmatter. mariam is never very far. she is here, in these wallsthey've repainted, in the trees they've planted, in the blanketsthat keep the children warm, in these pillows and books andpencils. she is in the children's laughter. she is in the versesaziza recites and in the prayers she mutters when she bowswestward. but, mostly, mariam is in laila's own heart, whereshe shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.
someone has been calling her name, laila realizes. she turnsaround, instinctively tilts her head, lifting her good ear just atad. it's aziza.
"mammy? are you all right?"the room has become quiet. the children are watching her.
laila is about to answer when her breath suddenly catches.
her hands shoot down. they pat the spot where, a momentbefore, she'd felt a wave go through her. she waits. but thereis no more movement.
"mammy?""yes, my love." laila smiles. "i'm all right. yes. very much."as she walks to her desk at the front of the class, lailathinks of the naming game they'd played again over dinner thenight before. it has become a nightly ritual ever since lailagave tariq and the children the news. back and forth they go,making a case for their own choice. tariq likes mohammad.
zalmai, who has recently watchedsuperman on tape, is puzzledas to why an afghan boy cannot be named clark. aziza iscampaigning hard for aman. laila likes omar.
but the game involves only male names. because, if it's a girl,laila has already named her.
afterwordfor almost three decades now, the afghan refugee crisis hasbeen one of the most severe around the globe. war, hunger,anarchy, and oppression forced millions of people-like tariq andhis family in this tale-to abandon their homes and fleeafghanistan to settle in neighboring pakistan and iran. at theheight of the exodus, as many as eight million afghans wereliving abroad as refugees. today, more than two million afghanrefugees remain in pakistan.
over the past year, i have had the privilege of working as au.s. envoy for unhcr, the un refugee agency, one of theworld's foremost humanitarian agencies. unhcr's mandate is toprotect the basic human rights of refugees, provide emergencyrelief, and to help refugees restart their lives in a safeenvironment. unhcr provides assistance to more than twentymillion displaced people around the world, not only inafghanistan but also in places such as colombia, burundi, thecongo, chad, and the datfur region of sudan. working withunhcr to help refugees has been one of the most rewardingand meaningful experiences of my life.
to help, or simply to learn more about unhcr, its work, orthe plight of refugees in general, please visit:www.unrefugees.org.
thank you.
khaled hosseini january 31, 2007acknowledgmentsa few clarifications before i give thanks. the village of guldaman is a fictional place-as far as i know. those who arefamiliar with the city of herat will notice that i have takenminor liberties describing the geography around it. last, the titleof this novel comes from a poem composed by saeb-e-tabrizi,a seventeenth-century persian poet. those who know theoriginal farsi poem will doubtless note that the englishtranslation of the line containing the title of this novel is not aliteral one. but it is the generally accepted translation, by dr.
josephine davis, and i found it lovely. i am grateful to her.
i would like to thank qayoum sarwar, hekmat sadat, elysehathaway, rosemary stasek, lawrence quill, and haleemajazmin quill for their assistance and support.
very special thanks to my father, baba, for reading thismanuscript, for his feedback, and, as ever, for his love andsupport. and to my mother, whose selfless, gentle spiritpermeates this tale. you are my reason, mother jo. my thanksgo to my in-laws for their generosity and many kindnesses. tothe rest of my wonderful family, i remain indebted and gratefulto each and every one of you.
i wish to thank my agent, elaine koster, for always, alwaysbelieving, jody hotchkiss (onward!), david grossman, helenheller, and the tireless chandler crawford. i am grateful andindebted to every single person at riverhead books. inparticular, i want to thank susan petersen kennedy andgeoffrey kloske for their faith in this story. my heartfelt thanksalso go to marilyn ducksworth, mih-ho cha, catharine lynch,craig d. burke, leslie schwartz, honi werner, and wendypearl. special thanks to my sharp-eyed copy editor, tony davis,who missesnothing, and, lastly, to my talented editor, sarah mcgrath, forher patience, foresight, and guidance.
finally, thank you, roya. for reading this story, again andagain, for weathering my minor crises of confidence (and acouple of major ones), for never doubting. this book wouldnot be without you. i love you.