A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini [57]
One of the men was fanning skewers of lamb sizzling over a makeshift grill. Babi and Tariq’s father were playing a game of chess in the shade of the old pear tree. Their faces were scrunched up in concentration. Tariq was sitting at the board too, in turns watching the match, then listening in on the political chat at the adjacent table.
The women gathered in the living room, the hallway, and the kitchen. They chatted as they hoisted their babies and expertly dodged, with minute shifts of their hips, the children tearing after each other around the house. An Ustad Sarahang ghazal blared from a cassette player.
Laila was in the kitchen, making carafes of dogh with Giti. Giti was no longer as shy, or as serious, as before. For several months now, the perpetual severe scowl had cleared from her brow. She laughed openly these days, more frequently, and—it struck Laila—a bit flirtatiously.
She had done away with the drab ponytails, let her hair grow, and streaked it with red highlights. Laila learned eventually that the impetus for this transformation was an eighteen-year-old boy whose attention Giti had caught. His name was Sabir, and he was a goalkeeper on Giti’s older brother’s soccer team.
“Oh, he has the most handsome smile, and this thick, thick black hair!” Giti had told Laila. No one knew about their attraction, of course. Giti had secretly met him twice for tea, fifteen minutes each time, at a small teahouse on the other side of town, in Taimani.
“He’s going to ask for my hand, Laila! Maybe as early as this summer. Can you believe it? I swear I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“What about school?” Laila had asked. Giti had tilted her head and given her a We both know better look.
By the time we’re twenty, Hasina used to say, Giti and I, we’ll have pushed out four, five kids each. But you, Laila, you’ll make us two dummies proud. You’re going to be somebody. I know one day I’ll pick up a newspaper and find your picture on the front page.
Giti was beside Laila now, chopping cucumbers, with a dreamy, far-off look on her face.
Mammy was nearby, in her brilliant summer dress, peeling boiled eggs with Wajma, the midwife, and Tariq’s mother.
“I’m going to present Commander Massoud with a picture of Ahmad and Noor,” Mammy was saying to Wajma as Wajma nodded and tried to look interested and sincere.
“He personally oversaw the burial. He said a prayer at their grave. It’ll be a token of thanks for his decency.”
Mammy cracked another boiled egg. “I hear he’s a reflective, honorable man. I think he would appreciate it.”
All around them, women bolted in and out of the kitchen, carried out bowls of qurma, platters of mastawa, loaves of bread, and arranged it all on the sofrah spread on the living-room floor.
Every once in a while, Tariq sauntered in. He picked at this, nibbled on that.
“No men allowed,” said Giti.
“Out, out, out,” cried Wajma.
Tariq smiled at the women’s good-humored shooing.
He seemed to take pleasure in not being welcome here, in infecting this female atmosphere with his half-grinning, masculine irreverence.
Laila did her best not to look at him, not to give these women any more gossip fodder than they already had. So she kept her eyes down and said nothing to him, but she remembered a dream she’d had a few nights before, of his face and hers, together in a mirror, beneath a soft, green veil. And grains of rice, dropping from his hair, bouncing off the glass with a tink.