Out the words came, like blood gushing from an artery. Mariam told her about Bibijo, Mullah Faizullah, the trek to Jalil's house, Nana's suicide.
She told about Jalil's wives, and the hurried nikka with Rasheed, the trip to Kabul, her pregnancies,
the endless cycles of hope and disappointment, Rasheed's turning on her.
After, Laila sat at the foot of Mariam's chair. Absently, she removed a scrap of lint entangled in Aziza's hair.
A silence ensued. “I have something to tell you too,” Laila said.
Mariam did not sleep that night. She sat in bed, watched the snow falling soundlessly.
Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered;
an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out.
But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind.
A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter.
And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.
And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them.
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