Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden?
To catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted?
“If it's a girl,” Rasheed said, “and it isn't, but, if it is a girl, then you can choose whatever name you want.”
Mariam awoke the next morning to the sound of sawing and hammering. She wrapped a shawl around her and went out into the snow-blown yard.
The heavy snowfall of the previous night had stopped. Now only a scattering of light, swirling flakes tickled her cheeks.
The air was windless and smelled like burning coal. Kabul was eerily silent, quilted in white, tendrils of smoke snaking up here and there.
She found Rasheed in the toolshed, pounding nails into a plank of wood. When he saw her, he removed a nail from the corner of his mouth.
“It was going to be a surprise. He'll need a crib. You weren't supposed to see until it was done.”
Mariam wished he wouldn't do that, hitch his hopes to its being a boy.
As happy as she was about this pregnancy, his expectation weighed on her.
Yesterday, Rasheed had gone out and come home with a suede winter coat for a boy, lined inside with soft sheepskin,
the sleeves embroidered with fine red and yellow silk thread.
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