But he said he liked the enchanting sounds the Arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue.
He said they comforted him, eased his heart. “They'll comfort you too, Mariam jo,” he said.
“You can summon them in your time of need, and they won't fail you. God's words will never betray you, my girl.”
Mullah Faizullah listened to stories as well as he told them.
When Mariam spoke, his attention never wavered. He nodded slowly and smiled with a look of gratitude, as if he had been granted a coveted privilege.
It was easy to tell Mullah Faizullah things that Mariam didn't dare tell Nana.
One day, as they were walking, Mariam told him that she wished she would be allowed to go to school.
“I mean a real school, akhund sahib. Like in a classroom. Like my father's other kids.” Mullah Faizullah stopped.
The week before, Bibi jo had brought news that Jalil's daughters Saideh and Naheed were going to the Mehri School for girls in Herat.
Since then, thoughts of classrooms and teachers had rattled around Mariam's head,
images of notebooks with lined pages, columns of numbers, and pens that made dark, heavy marks.
She pictured herself in a classroom with other girls her age. Mariam longed to place a ruler on a page and draw important-looking lines.
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