Best Quotes from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini with Page Numbers

You are a clumsy little harami.

It is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.

That she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.

Jalil said she was his little flower.

What rich lies!

He cast us out of his big fancy house like we were nothing to him.

Around Jalil, Mariam did not feel at all like a harami.

Sometimes, I wish my father had had the stomach to sharpen one of his knives and do the honorable thing.

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman.

Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: A man's accusing finger always finds a woman.

"To Jalil and his wives, I was a pokeroot. A mugwort. You too. And you weren't even born yet."

"Unlike weeds, I had to be replanted, you see, given food and water."

"And, believe me, it was a relief to your father having me out of sight. It suited him just fine."

"He sounded like a warden bragging about the clean walls and shiny floors of his prison."

"Perhaps for the only time in her life, during those days leading up to her wedding, Nana had been genuinely happy."

"When the news reached Shindand, the parakeet seller's family called off the wedding. 'They got spooked' was how Nana put it."

"Jalil could have hired laborers to build the kolba. Nana said, but he didn't. 'His idea of penance.'"

"I lay all alone on the kolba's floor, a knife by my side, sweat drenching my body."

"I cut the cord between us myself. That's why I had a knife."

"Even in birth you were a good daughter."

"God's words will never betray you, my girl."

"If the girl wants to learn, let her, my dear. Let the girl have an education."

"Only one skill. And it's this: iahamuL. Endure."

"It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It's all we have."

"You can summon them in your time of need, and they won't fail you."

"They'll laugh at you in school. They will. They'll call you harami!"

"It’s like shining a spittoon."

"Look at me. Only one skill... Endure."

"There is nothing out there for her. Nothing but rejection and heartache."

"You're all I have. I won't lose you to them."

Mariam loved having visitors at the kolba.

Mariam would leap to her feet when she spotted him hopping stones across the stream, all smiles and hearty waves.

She liked that no matter the weather he always wore a suit on his visits.

Mariam would squeal. Suspended in the air, Mariam would see Jalil's upturned face below her.

But Mariam did not believe that Jalil would drop her.

Jalil was Mariam's link, her proof that there existed a world at large.

He was the one who told her that Afghanistan is no longer a monarchy.

'Try it on, Mariam jo.' 'What do you think?' 'I think you look like a queen.'

She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds.

One day soon, Mariam decided, she would tell Jalil these things.

"I want you to take me to your cinema," Mariam said now. "I want to see the cartoon. I want to see the puppet boy."

"It's what I want," she said.

"A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed, it won't stretch to make room for you."

"I'm the only one who loves you. I'm all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You'll have nothing. You are nothing!"

"You are afraid that I might find the happiness you never had. And you don’t want me to be happy."

"Maybe they had landed on the walls of Jalil's home, on the front steps of his cinema."

"How daring he would find her. How brave!"

"She wished Mullah Faizullah could see her now. How daring he would find her. How brave!"

"For a while, Mariam stood by an oval-shaped pool in the center of a big park where pebble paths crisscrossed."

"She gave herself over to the new life that awaited her in this city, a life with a father, with sisters and brothers, a life in which she would love and be loved back, without reservation or agenda, without shame."

"Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you."

"Behind every trial and every sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason."

"I’m all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You are nothing!"

"You could eat downstairs with the rest of us," he said, but without much conviction.

"But where do I belong? What am I going to do now?"

"You stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. You hear me, child? No good. They will destroy you."

"Your mother, may Allah forgive her, was a troubled and unhappy woman... This was not your fault. It wasn't your fault, my girl."

"You see, I knew your mother before you were born, when she was a little girl, and I tell you that she was unhappy then."

"What I mean to say is that this was not your fault. It wasn't your fault."

"No, nafahmidi, you don't understand. You medio come down. We have to talk to you. It's important."

"I don't want to," Mariam said.

"You can't spend the rest of your life here."

"Don't you want a family of your own?"

"Yes. A home, children of your own?"

"True that it would be preferable that you marry a local, a Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy, and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That's all that really matters, isn't it?"

"I'll live with Mullah Faizullah," she said. "He'll take me in. I know he will."

"He’s so old and weak," Khadija said.

"You may not get another opportunity this good."

"As you are now to us."

"Say something," Mariam said.

"Actually, she herself has to answer. And she should wait until I ask three times. The point is, he's seeking her, not the other way around."

"You are now husband and wife," the mullah said. "Tabreek. Congratulations."

"It ends here for you and me. Say your good-byes."

"I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you'd live to be a hundred years old. I didn't know. I didn't know that you were ashamed of me."

"Don't come. I won't see you. Don't you come. I don't want to hear from you. Ever.Ever."

"There now, girl. There. There," he said.

"I used to worship you," she said.

"I can't bring myself to allow it."

"She signed her name-themeem, thereh, the 3^ and themeem again-conscious of all the eyes on her hand."

"In it, Mariam saw her own face first, the archless, unshapely eyebrows... and yet, oddly enough, the whole of these unmemorable parts made for a face that was not pretty but, somehow, not unpleasant to look at either."

You can thank me then.

This is my room.

I hope you don't mind. I'm accustomed to sleeping alone.

It's good for you. Well, this is your home now.

You'll see.

You're shaking. Maybe I scare you. Do I scare you? Are you frightened of me?

That's one thing I can't stand, the sound of a woman crying.

I won't take that personally. This time.

That's the Asmai mountain directly in front of us — see?

I want to go home.

Mariam felt uprooted, displaced, like an intruder on someone else's life.

She missed the winter afternoons of reading with Mullah Faizullah, the clink of icicles falling on her roof.

Mariam was hyperventilating. Her ears buzzed, her pulse fluttered... she spotted Fariba.

What if he was disappointed or angry? What if he pushed his plate away in displeasure?

Careful, it’s hot.

A flare of pride caught her off guard. She had done well - maybe better than good, even.

But they're here too, Mariam, in this very neighborhood, these soft men.

Where I come from, one wrong look, one improper word, and blood is spilled.

I want you to remember that. Do you understand?

This man's will felt to Mariam as imposing and immovable as the Safid-koh mountains looming over Gul Daman.

You'll get used to it. With time, I bet you'll even like it.

Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers.

I know the owner.

It's beautiful.

There is no shame in this, Mariam.

It's what married people do.

Those women mystified Mariam.

They walked in high heels, and quickly, as if on perpetually urgent business.

This shawl... was a true gift.

Mariam watched the cars crawling up Chicken Street.

For the first time in her life, Mariam saw how the sighting of the new crescent moon could transform an entire city, alter its rhythm and mood.

Her honor, her namoos, was something worth guarding to him. She felt prized by his protectiveness. Treasured and significant.

Mariam wished her mother were alive to see this. To see her, amid all of it. To see at last that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things.

Mariam sat on his bed, embarrassed and confused. She cupped her face with her hands and closed her eyes. She breathed and breathed until she felt calmer.

He too had had a hard life, a life marked by loss and sad turns of fate.

Mariam was relieved when Ramadan ended.

Mariam saw festive lanterns hanging from shop windows, heard music blaring from loudspeakers.

This year, for the first time, Mariam saw with her eyes the Eid of her childhood imaginings.

What Mariam felt now was sorrow for Rasheed.

Mariam tried the bottom drawer of the dresser.

It was as though a rainbow had melted into her eyes.

What was it about a season's first snowfall, Mariam wondered, that was so entrancing? Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden?

How glorious it was to know that her love for it already dwarfed anything she had ever felt.

I'm going to be a mother,

All the loss, all the grief, all the loneliness and self-abasement of her life washed away.

This was why God had brought her here, all the way across the country. She knew this now.

Mariam lay down her prayer rug and did namaz.

You pay a doctor his fee, you want a better answer than 'God's will.'

Each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world.

How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

The grief kept surprising Mariam.

Mariam was dumbfounded that she could miss in such a crippling manner a being she had never even seen.

Some had seven or eight and didn't understand how fortunate they were, how blessed that their children had flourished in their wombs.

He was not a petty God.

Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things.

I want to remember this baby.

It didn’t seem right, not to mark this loss in some way that was permanent.

Give sustenance to me.

Mariam dreaded going outside.

...it did no good, all this fault laying, all these harangues of accusations bouncing in her head.

But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid.

Mariam dreaded the sound of him coming home in the evening.

These were sounds that set her heart racing.

She could not give him his son back. In this most essential way, she had failed him.

She was a burden to him.

It wasn't easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults.

She felt her pulse quickening, her skin shrinking.

Mariam knelt to the ground and tried to pick up the grains of rice and put them back on the plate.

Now you know what your rice tastes like. Now you know what you've given me in this marriage.

He had become a shadow, a ghost that she lived with.

"... I know you're still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now, marriage can wait, education cannot."

"Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance."

"... I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more."

"You're a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila."

"Mammy always told Laila that she had inherited her hair color... from her great-grandmother... Her beauty was the talk of the valley."

"Laila learned a fundamental truth about time: like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence."

"... you must report anyone who might know about these rebels. It's your duty. You must listen, then report."

"She said women and men were equal in every way and there was no reason women should cover if men didn't."

"So what is today?" he said now, smiling coyly. "Day five? Or is it six?"

"Thirteen days? It’s not so long. You’re making a face, Laila."

"Sometimes Laila wondered why Mammy had even bothered having her. People, she believed now, shouldn't be allowed to have new children if they'd already given away all their love to their old ones."

"I have a headache."

"You just don't know."

"You should have seen the face on him!"

"It wasn't fair."

"I should tell you that while you were dreaming, a boy shot piss out of a water gun on my hair."

"Your mother eats cock!"

"This would have never happened if Tariq had been with her, she thought as she put on a clean shirt and fresh trousers."

"It happens to everybody, Mammy."

"Strangest thing."

Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

It struck her again that Tariq's parents could easily pass for his grandparents.

But, to Laila, Tariq's mother never looked pitiable in it.

Laila liked how they started each meal with a bowl of fresh yogurt, how they squeezed sour oranges on everything... how they made small, harmless jokes at each other's expense.

It was the first time he'd shown her his stump.

Babi liked to say sarcastically. Then he would sigh, and say, Laila, my love, the only enemy an Afghan cannot defeat is himself.

Laila loved everything about this house.

Her time with Tariq's family always felt natural to Laila, effortless, uncomplicated by differences in tribe or language.

When he looked up, Laila saw that his cheeks and brow had sunburned.

In Tariq's grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard.

It's under control. You go on now, girl, and do something else. Leave your mother be.

Keep him away from me.

Laila kneeled before her mother and took her hands.

I am so sorry, Laila.

But, in Laila's heart, her true brother was alive and well.

The magnitude of the disaster that had struck her family would register with Laila.

The possibilities denied. The hopes dashed.

But Mammy did not seem to notice.

Viewing her mother as the rarest and most fragile doll in the world.

Women who relished all things that had to do with death.

Some days, I listen to that clock ticking in the hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them.

I want to see my sons' dream come true. I want to see the day the Soviets go home disgraced, the day the Mujahideen come to Kabul in victory.

You're a good daughter.

And I haven't been much of a mother to you.

I wish there was something I could do.

It's true. I know it and I'm sorry for it, my love.

I thought about it the night we got the news.

I won't lie to you, I've thought about it since too. But, no.

They'll see it through my eyes.

My heart is like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow.

But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

Some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel.

I may not… With your mother, both her joy and sadness are extreme. She can't hide either. She never could.

But I'm glad I have you. Every day, I thank God for you. Every single day.

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel.

It's so quiet... It's what I always remember about being up here.

I would find work, and, in a few years, when we had enough saved up, we'd open a little Afghan restaurant.

We're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

It was autumn, and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofs of mud brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry.

It's what I always remember about being up here: the silence. The peace of it.

"Weddings are stupid. All the fuss. All the money spent. For what? For clothes you'll never wear again."

"If I ever do get married, they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head."

"I’m never getting married." "Me neither," said Laila, but not before a moment of nervous hesitation.

"Laila felt strangely conspicuous all at once. She became intensely aware of her heart thumping, of the blood thudding in her ears..."

"She sensed that Tariq was observing her—one eye on the kiss, the other on her—as she was observing him."

"Just when one became fatigued, the other would snort, and off they would go on another round."

"Tariq burst out cackling. And, soon, they both were in the grips of a hopeless attack of laughter."

"Laila was glad to see Tariq like this, like his old self again."

"Mammy was hoisting a photo of Ahmad and Noor high over her head."

"They stood in muddy snow and watched the line of tanks, armored trucks, and jeeps as light snow flew across the glare of the passing headlights."

When she was agitated, which happened frequently, the slurring got worse.

Giti was inconsolable.

In Kabul, Najibullah changed tactics and tried to portray himself as a devout Muslim. 'Too little and far too late,' said Babi.

Mammy's heroes, Ahmad's and Noor's brothers-in-war, had won.

This brought to fruition all those years of waiting.

Her voice was shrill with merriment.

A party is in order.

But now. Now. I notice you're wearing a bra, Laila.

There is no one like your brothers.

But this was a big day, an important day, for all of them.

It wasn't so much the whistling itself, but the seconds between the start of it and impact.

The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict.

But the flip side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn't.

It was a harmless thing to sit here beneath a tree and kiss Tariq.

In the midst of all this killing and looting, it was a small thing. An easily forgivable indulgence.

Babi tried again to convince Mammy to leave Kabul.

‘All these people know is war,’ said Babi.

In his element, amid his books, Babi looked taller to Laila.

When he was teaching, Babi was transformed.

This was the first time that someone whom Laila had known, been close to, loved, had died.

"In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next... to salvage from perishing, to preserve."

"The bleak isolation awaiting her, the murderous loneliness, it didn't have to be."

"I want to marry you, Laila."

"For the first time since they were on the floor, she raised her eyes to meet his."

"How long had she waited to hear those words from him? How many times had she dreamed them uttered? There they were, spoken at last, and the irony crushed her."

"It's my father I can't leave. I'm all he has left."

"Tariq knew this. He knew she could not wipe away the obligations of her life any more than he could his."

"She listened to his uneven footsteps until they faded, until all was quiet, save for the gunfire cracking in the hills and her own heart thudding in her belly."

"But Laila was thinking of Mammy, as obstinate and uncompromising as the Mujahideen, the air around her choked with rancor and despair."

"Laila was struck blind."

"There would come a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longer bewail his loss."

"Every once in a long while, when Laila was a grown woman, something trivial would set off a memory of that afternoon together."

"But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave her deflated, feeling nothing but a vague restlessness."

"All the same, Laila had an urge to run through those streets. She could barely contain her own happiness."

"There’s nothing left for us here," Babi said. "Our sons are gone, but we still have Laila. We still have each other, Fariba. We can make a new life."

"It's strange to think that I'll be sleeping beneath another city's skies soon."

"We’ll come back. When this war is over. We’ll come back to Kabul, inshallah. You’ll see."

"With each trip, she knew that she was that much closer to seeing Tariq again, and, with each trip, her legs became more sprightly, her arms more tireless."

"It was like ripping off a Band-Aid in one stroke."

"She could see cars parked behind a low fence of chipped white paint beneath a row of windswept palm trees."

"But I wouldn’t let him. I was so eager. I should have been the one inside the house when it happened."

"What wisdom did Mariam have to offer? What encouragement?"

"These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. They will destroy you. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault."

"The girl was extraordinarily lucky, Mariam thought, to escape with relatively minor injuries..."

"Mariam remembered the day they'd buried Nana and how little comfort she had found..."

"As it turned out, Mariam didn't have to say anything."

"When she wasn't agitated, the girl was a sullen pair of eyes staring from under the blanket..."

"It was Rasheed who found the girl, who dug her out from beneath the rubble."

"How long is she staying?" she asked Rasheed. "Until she's better. Look at her. She's in no shape to go."

"Sometimes she spoke gibberish, cried out, called out names Mariam did not recognize."

Stubborn ass needs a stubborn driver.

God give her a long life.

He said you were-how did he put it-his earliest memory.

I could tell he cared a great deal about you.

He said he was glad you weren't there. He said he didn't want you seeing him like that.

He fought valiantly.

In the end, I think he would have wanted you to know.

She let her mind fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place.

Where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams beneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleached rock.

Sometimes he talked too. It was hard for him to.

Better the CIA had armed Commander Massoud.

What does jihad have to do with killing women and children?

What do you think, Laila jan?

I don't want this.

It's not your decision. It's hers and mine.

I'm too old for you to do this to me.

The roads out there are unforgiving, Mariam, believe me.

People living under scraps of cardboard. TB, dysentery, famine, crime.

A beauty like her ought to bring in a small fortune, don't you think?

Haven't you noticed all the widows sleeping on the streets?

A part of Tariq still alive inside her, sprouting tiny arms, growing translucent hands.

Even though the baby inside her was no bigger than a mulberry, Laila already saw the sacrifices a mother had to make.

Virtue was only the first.

How could she jeopardize the only thing she had left of him, of her old life?

But, miraculously, something of her former life remained.

She could hear Mariam downstairs, the hissing of her iron.

Laila would remember the muted ceremony in bits and fragments.

She was shaking even before his fingers worked her shirt buttons.

Through chattering teeth, she asked him to turn out the lights.

I think I love you.

I won't be your servant.

I won't be thrown out. I won't have you cast me out.

I have no use for your company. I don't want it.

You may be the palacemalika and me adehati, but I won't take orders from you.

I will still cook and wash the dishes. You will do the laundry and the sweeping.

What I want is to be alone. You will leave me be, and I will return the favor.

This is my reward for everything I've endured.

One mustn't speak ill of the dead much less the, shaheed.

The point is, I am your husband now, and it falls on me to guard not only your honor but ours.

If a person hasn't got much to say she might as well be stingy with words.

This is why the Holy Koran forbids sharab. Because it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.

She reminded herself that Mariam was the only innocent party in this arrangement.

Laila's thighs, swollen as they were, carried her up the stairs.

But thinking of Tariq was treacherous... a deep, paralyzing grief would come rising up Laila's chest.

She felt lost then, casting about, like a shipwreck survivor, no shore in sight, only miles and miles of water.

She wouldn't be recognized this way if she ran into an old acquaintance of hers.

His voice ringing high and proud.

It filled her with fear when he spoke like this.

But the truth was, part of her had liked it, had liked how it felt to scream at Mariam.

The baby had just kicked for the first time.

"She had fits of laughter when the baby passed gas. The tiniest changes in the baby enchanted her, and everything it did was declared spectacular."

"Mariam found it exhausting to watch the girl's lolloping enthusiasm—and had to admit, if only privately, to a degree of admiration."

"The girl's mere presence used to overwhelm him. Everything she said used to please him, intrigue him, make him look up from his plate and nod with approval."

"Every week, without fail, the girl heated a black metal brazier over a flame, tossed a pinch of wild rue seeds in it, and wafted the espandi smoke in her baby's direction to ward off evil."

"He had to yank his arm free of her grip."

"The baby squeaked, as she flexed her plump legs at the hips and kicked air."

"Mariam listened to him complain about the baby—always the baby— the insistent crying, the smells…"

"You should not get so attached," Rasheed said one night.

"When she heard their door close, Mariam climbed back into bed, buried her head beneath the pillow, and waited for the shaking to stop."

"Mariam had her first real close-up look at the baby, the tuft of dark hair, the thick-lashed hazel eyes, the pink cheeks, and lips the color of ripe pomegranate."

Oh, your father was handsome, Aziza. He was perfect. Perfect, like you are.

He was like a brother to me.

I couldn't let him, I wasn't raised in a household where people did things like that.

This is your household now. You ought to get used to it.

He'll turn on you too, you know,

I know it's chilly outside, but what do you say we sinners have us a cup of chai in the yard?

The Chinese say it's better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.

In this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew that they were not enemies any longer.

It was either your daughter or the moths.

If she stayed, would this be her own face, Laila wondered, twenty years from now?

Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.

Mariam had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.

What have I got to give you?

Her heart took flight.

But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza…had become extensions of her.

Without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable.

The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still.

A new life, a life in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said aharami like her would never see.

But it is God Who has planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will that you tend to them.

And it is His will, my girl.

"You won't have to."

"The Koran says Allah is the East and the West, therefore wherever you turn there is Allah's purpose."

"Thank you, brother. This is sawab, a good deed. God will remember."

"I don't think I could do this alone."

"What a man does in his home is his business."

"If you send us back, there is no saying what he will do to us."

"It's a matter of qanoon, hamshira, a matter of law."

"What does it matter to you to let a mere two women go? What's the harm in releasing us? We are not criminals."

"It's not your fault, Mariam. It's mine. It's all my fault. Everything is my fault."

"But she bit her tongue."

They may have no past.

At least the Taliban are pure and incorruptible.

Let them come, I, for one, will shower them with rose petals.

People won't get shot anymore going out for milk.

It's not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets.

You will stay inside your homes at all times.

If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative.

You will not show your face.

They can't make half the population stay home and do nothing.

What the Taliban did to Najibullah looked serious to me.

It would have crippled him.

Isn't dying once enough?

What good are all your smarts to you now?

That's a big word. I've always disliked that about you.

What a terrible thing it was, Laila thought now, for a mother to fear that she could not summon love for her own child.

Sometimes in war innocent life had to be taken. Her war was against Rasheed. The baby was blameless.

But in the morning, and for several mornings after that, the queasiness in her gut persisted.

It's an interesting eye color she has, Aziza. Don't you think? It's neither yours nor mine.

Every word Rasheed had uttered, every last one, was true.

Laila had seen enough killing of innocents caught in the cross fire of enemies.

What about Ali Abaci Hospital?

My wife's having a baby!

What are we supposed to do?

There is nothing there.

I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise.

It's almost eight-thirty now, so you'll probably get arrested for breaking curfew.

But how will she stand it?

Cut me open and give me my baby.

They want us to operate in burqa.

Take heart, little sister.

It should do.

They're the only true possession I've ever had.

It's only for a while.

This is Zalmai's TV.

I won't let you turn my daughter into a street beggar!

The collective hardships of their lives... simply dropped away, vaporized like Zalmai's palms from the TV screen.

It seemed worthwhile, if absurdly so, to have endured all they'd endured for this one crowning moment, for this act of defiance.

Laila's fear had proved baseless, that she loved Zalmai with the marrow of her bones.

Rasheed's patience with Zalmai was a well that ran deep and never dried.

But Laila walked away feeling stung.

"But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead."

"They are not," Mariam said. "I won't let them. It's going to be all right, Laila jo. I know what to do."

"I wish I hadn't destroyed his letter."

"What would have been the harm to let him in, sit with him, let him say what he'd come to say?"

"How ordinary his faults seemed now, how forgivable, when compared to Rasheed's malice..."

"A man's deep voice spoke in her ear and informed her that she'd reached the mayor's office in Herat."

"It's a question of life and death I am calling about."

"I pictured Jalil smiling, reaching into his pocket."

"I think you look like a queen."

"She was struck by bouts of dizziness, and twice she had to stop, wait for it to pass."

"If President Bush doesn't help us, these terrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon."

"What kind of mother abandons her own child?"

"It isn't your fault. Do you hear me? Not you. It's those savages... who are to blame."

"Allah is good and kind, and Allah provides, and, as long He provides, I will see to it that Aziza is fed and clothed."

"If it kills me, I'll come and see you."

"I smell her sleep smell. Do you? Do you smell it?"

"Don't let her see you cry."

"Sometimes, the shifting of rocks is powerful and scary down there, but all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor."

"We get mothers like you all the time... who can't feed their children because the Taliban won't let them go out and make a living."

"Even in these ordinary gestures, Laila noted a laborious quality to his movements."

"Where is it? I want it! I want it!" his voice rising and becoming more shrill with each word.

"I just know it's lost, and this was a fake one, where had his real ball gone?"

"From atop the staircase, all she could see of Tariq were his long legs, the real one and the artificial one, in khaki pants, stretched out on the uncarpeted living-room floor."

"Mariam waited outside the room."

"He had eyed Tariq with suspicion."

"It was then that she realized why the doorman at the Continental had looked familiar..."

"But Mariam remembered now, from nine years before, remembered him sitting downstairs, patting his brow with a handkerchief and asking for water."

"Even when his parent was trying to console him, he just knew that something was lost to him forever."

"Mariam was going to explain, say something about him and Laila growing up together, but Zalmai cut her off..."

"All manner of questions raced through her mind..."

He painted those trousers with watercolor. When the Taliban are gone, he'll just wash them off.

Here was a place where a man can get on.

It was a place not only worlds removed from the wretchedness he'd known but one that made even the notion of hardship and sorrow somehow obscene, unimaginable.

I wish I'd taken you with me.

I should have tried harder. I should have married you when I had the chance. Everything would have been different, then.

If you want me to leave, if you want me to go back to Pakistan, say the word, Laila.

It's good to see you, Laila.

I know you're a married woman and a mother now. And here I am, after all these years, after all that's happened, showing up at your doorstep.

I wished I hadn't, but I did. And then I felt so alone and scared.

This is… I don't know. I have to think.

Now!

But just as he was bearing down on her, Mariam saw Laila behind him pick something up from the ground.

He'd taken so much from her in twenty-seven years of marriage. She would not watch him take Laila too.

Some jobs, that thump said, were meant to be done with bare hands.

Maybe he saw some trace of all the self-denial, all the sacrifice, all the sheer exertion it had taken her to live with him for all these years.

It occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life.

Mariam steadied her feet and tightened her grip around the shovel's handle.

Mariam swung.

The blow knocked him off Laila.

And, with that, Mariam brought down the shovel. This time, she gave it everything she had.

What was done was done.

There is a way, and I just have to find it.

We would leave this house, and this unforgiving city.

Somewhere with trees.

They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful, solitary lives.

They would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.

I want it to be just like you said, Mariam.

Think like a mother, Laila jo. Think like a mother.

It's all right, Laila jo. This is all right.

Believe me that I'm so very sorry for all your pain and sadness.

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman.

It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.

He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient.

This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

You're the best friend I ever had,

I have a picture of my father... but he told me he was crying like a child the morning the communists took him.

Earlier that morning, she had been afraid... but Mariam's legs did not buckle.

But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.

Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.

I have something to give you.