A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini [51]
“At one point,” he said, “there were five thousand monks living as hermits in these caves.”
Tariq was badly out of breath when they reached the top. Babi was panting too. But his eyes shone with excitement.
“We’re standing atop its head,” he said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “There’s a niche over here where we can look out.”
They inched over to the craggy overhang and, standing side by side, with Babi in the middle, gazed down on the valley.
“Look at this!” said Laila.
Babi smiled.
The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields. Babi said they were green winter wheat and alfalfa, potatoes too. The fields were bordered by poplars and crisscrossed by streams and irrigation ditches, on the banks of which tiny female figures squatted and washed clothes. Babi pointed to rice paddies and barley fields draping the slopes. 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. The main road going through the town was poplar-lined too. There were small shops and teahouses and street-side barbers on either side of it. Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams, Laila saw foothills, bare and dusty brown, and, beyond those, as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the snowcapped Hindu Kush.
The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.
“It’s so quiet,” Laila breathed. She could see tiny sheep and horses but couldn’t hear their bleating and whinnying.
“It’s what I always remember about being up here,”
Babi said. “The silence. The peace of it. I wanted you to experience it. But I also wanted you to see your country’s heritage, children, to learn of its rich past. 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.”
“Look,” said Tariq.
They watched a hawk, gliding in circles above the village.
“Did you ever bring Mammy up here?” Laila asked.
“Oh, many times. Before the boys were born. After too. Your mother, she used to be adventurous then, and . . . so alive. She was just about the liveliest, happiest person I’d ever met.” He smiled at the memory. “She had this laugh. I swear it’s why I married her, Laila, for that laugh. It bulldozed you. You stood no chance against it.”
A wave of affection overcame Laila. From then on, she would always remember Babi this way: reminiscing about Mammy, with his elbows on the rock, hands cupping his chin, his hair ruffled by the wind, eyes crinkled against the sun.
“I’m going to look at some of those caves,” Tariq said.
“Be careful,” said Babi.
“I will, Kaka jan,” Tariq’s voice echoed back.
Laila watched a trio of men far below, talking near a cow tethered to a fence. Around them, the trees had started to turn, ochre and orange, scarlet red.
“I miss the boys too, you know,” Babi said. His eyes had welled up a tad. His chin was trembling. “I may not . . . With your mother, both her joy and sadness are extreme. She can’t hide either. She never could. Me, I suppose I’m different. I tend to . . . But it broke me too, the boys dying. I miss them too. Not a day passes that I . . . It’s very hard, Laila. So very hard.” He squeezed the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. When he tried to talk, his voice broke. He pulled his lips over his teeth and waited. He took a long, deep breath, looked at her. “But I’m glad I have you. Every day, I thank God for you. Every single day. Sometimes, when your mother’s having one of her really dark days, I feel like you’re all I have, Laila.”
Laila drew closer to him and rested her cheek up against his chest. He seemed slightly startled—unlike Mammy, he rarely expressed his affection physically. He planted a brisk kiss on the top of her head and hugged her back awkwardly. They stood