A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini [132]
Zalmai’s cold is a little better. He is asleep, and Laila is rubbing Vicks on his chest.
“I heard,” she says.
The Taliban have announced that they won’t relinquish bin Laden because he is a mehman, a guest, who has found sanctuary in Afghanistan and it is against the Pashtunwali code of ethics to turn over a guest. Tariq chuckles bitterly, and Laila hears in his chuckle that he is revolted by this distortion of an honorable Pashtun custom, this misrepresentation of his people’s ways.
A few days after the attacks, Laila and Tariq are in the hotel lobby again. On the TV screen, George W. Bush is speaking. There is a big American flag behind him. At one point, his voice wavers, and Laila thinks he is going to weep.
Sayeed, who speaks English, explains to them that Bush has just declared war.
“On whom?” says Tariq.
“On your country, to begin with.”
* * *
“IT MAY NOT be such a bad thing,” Tariq says.
They have finished making love. He’s lying beside her, his head on her chest, his arm draped over her belly. The first few times they tried, there was difficulty. Tariq was all apologies, Laila all reassurances. There are still difficulties, not physical now but logistical. The shack they share with the children is small. The children sleep on cots below them and so there is little privacy. Most times, Laila and Tariq make love in silence, with controlled, muted passion, fully clothed beneath the blanket as a precaution against interruptions by the children. They are forever wary of the rustling sheets, the creaking bedsprings. But for Laila, being with Tariq is worth weathering these apprehensions. When they make love, Laila feels anchored, she feels sheltered. Her anxieties, that their life together is a temporary blessing, that soon it will come loose again in strips and tatters, are allayed. Her fears of separation vanish.
“What do you mean?” she says now.
“What’s going on back home. It may not be so bad in the end.”
Back home, bombs are falling once again, this time American bombs—Laila has been watching images of the war every day on the television as she changes sheets and vacuums. The Americans have armed the warlords once more, and enlisted the help of the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban and find bin Laden.
But it rankles Laila, what Tariq is saying. She pushes his head roughly off her chest.
“Not so bad? People dying? Women, children, old people? Homes destroyed again? Not so bad?”
“Shh. You’ll wake the children.”
“How can you say that, Tariq?” she snaps. “After the so-called blunder in Karam? A hundred innocent people! You saw the bodies for yourself!”
“No,” Tariq says. He props himself up on his elbow, looks down at Laila. “You misunderstand. What I meant was—”
“You wouldn’t know,” Laila says. She is aware that her voice is rising, that they are having their first fight as husband and wife. “You left when the Mujahideen began fighting, remember? I’m the one who stayed behind. Me. I know war. I lost my parents to war. My parents, Tariq. And now to hear you say that war is not so bad?”
“I’m sorry, Laila. I’m sorry.” He cups her face in his hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Forgive me. What I meant was that maybe there will be hope at the other end of this war, that maybe for the first time in a long time—”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Laila says, surprised at how she has lashed out at him. It’s unfair, she knows, what she said to him—hadn’t war taken his parents too?—and whatever flared in her is softening already. Tariq continues to speak gently, and, when he pulls her to him, she lets him. When he kisses her hand, then her brow, she lets him. She knows that he is probably right. She knows how his comment was intended. Maybe this is necessary. Maybe there will be hope when Bush’s bombs stop falling. But she cannot bring herself to say it, not when what happened to Babi and Mammy is happening to someone now in Afghanistan, not when some unsuspecting girl or boy back home has just been orphaned by a rocket as she was.