Earlier in that September of 1996, they had captured the cities of Jalalabad and Sarobi.
The Taliban had one thing the Mujahideen did not, Rasheed said. They were united.
“Let them come,” he said. “I, for one, will shower them with rose petals.”
They went out that day, the four of them, Rasheed leading them from one bus to the next, to greet their new world, their new leaders.
In every battered neighborhood, Mariam found people materializing from the rubble and moving into the streets.
She saw an old woman wasting handfuls of rice, tossing it at passersby, a drooping, toothless smile on her face.
Two men were hugging by the remains of a gutted building,
in the sky above them the whistle, hiss, and pop of a few firecrackers set off by boys perched on rooftops.
The national anthem played on cassette decks, competing with the honking of cars.
“Look, Mayam!” Aziza pointed to a group of boys running down Jadeh Maywand.
They were pounding their fists into the air and dragging rusty cans tied to strings.
They were yelling that Massoud and Rabbani had withdrawn from Kabul. Everywhere, there were shouts: Allah u akbar!
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