didn’t even hold you until you were a month old. And then only to look down once, comment on your longish
face, and hand you back to me.”
Mariam came to disbelieve this part of the story as well. Yes, Jalil admitted, he had been horseback riding in Takht-e-Safar,
but, when they gave him the news, he had not shrugged. He had hopped on the saddle and ridden back to Herat. He had bounced
her in his arms, run his thumb over her flaky eyebrows, and hummed a lullaby. Mariam did not picture Jalil saying that her
face was long, though it was true that it was long.
Nana said she was the one who’d picked the name Mariam because it had been the name of her mother. Jalil said he chose the
name because Mariam, the tuberose, was a lovely flower.
“Your favorite?” Mariam asked.
“Well, one of,” he said and smiled.
3.
O ne of Mariam’s earliest memories was the sound of a wheelbarrow’s squeaky iron wheels bouncing over rocks. The wheelbarrow
came once a month, filled with rice, flour, tea, sugar, cooking oil, soap, toothpaste. It was pushed by two of Mariam’s half
brothers, usually Muhsin and Ramin, sometimes Ramin and Farhad. Up the dirt track, over rocks and pebbles, around holes and
bushes, the boys took turns pushing until they reached the stream. There, the wheelbarrow had to be emptied and the items
hand-carried across the water. Then the boys would transfer the wheelbarrow across the stream and load it up again. Another
two hundred yards of pushing followed, this time through tall, dense grass and around thickets of shrubs. Frogs leaped out
of their way. The brothers waved mosquitoes from their sweaty faces.
“He has servants,” Mariam said. “He could send a servant.”
“His idea of penance,” Nana said.
The sound of the wheelbarrow drew Mariam and Nana outside. Mariam would always remember Nana the way she looked on Ration
Day: a tall, bony, barefoot woman leaning in the doorway, her lazy eye narrowed to a slit, arms crossed in a defiant and mocking
way. Her short-cropped, sunlit hair would be uncovered and uncombed. She would wear an ill-fitting gray shirt buttoned to
the throat. The pockets were filled with walnut-sized rocks.
The boys sat by the stream and waited as Mariam and Nana transferred the rations to the kolba. They knew better than to get any closer than thirty yards, even though Nana’s aim was poor and most of the rocks landed well
short of their targets. Nana yelled at the boys as she carried bags of rice inside, and called them names Mariam didn’t understand.
She cursed their mothers, made hateful faces at them. The boys never returned the insults.
Mariam felt sorry for the boys. How tired their arms and legs must be, she thought pityingly, pushing that heavy load. She
wished she were allowed to offer them water. But she said nothing, and if they waved at her she didn’t wave back. Once, to
please Nana, Mariam even yelled at Muhsin, told him he had a mouth shaped like a lizard’s ass—and was consumed later with
guilt, shame, and fear that they would tell Jalil. Nana, though, laughed so hard, her rotting front tooth in full display,
that Mariam thought she would lapse into one of her fits. She looked at Mariam when she was done and said, “You’re a good
daughter.”
When the barrow was empty, the boys scuffled back and pushed it away. Mariam would wait and watch them disappear into the
tall grass and flowering weeds.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes, Nana.”
“They laugh at you. They do. I hear them.”
“I’m coming.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Here I am.”
“You know I love you, Mariam jo.”
IN THE MORNINGS, they awoke to the distant bleating of sheep and the high-pitched toot of a flute as Gul Daman’s shepherds
led their flock to graze on the grassy hillside. Mariam and Nana milked the goats, fed the hens, and collected eggs. They
made bread together. Nana showed her how to knead dough, how to kindle the