Rasheed didn't say anything. And, really, what could be said, what needed saying, when you'd shoved the barrel of your gun into your wife's mouth?
It was the raids, the reason they were in the yard digging. Sometimes monthly raids, sometimes weekly. Of late, almost daily.
Mostly, the Taliban confiscated stuff, gave a kick to someone's rear, whacked the back of a head or two.
But sometimes there were public beatings, lashings of soles and palms.
“Gently,” Mariam said now, her knees over the edge. They lowered the TV into the hole
by each clutching one end of the plastic sheet in which it was wrapped. “That should do it,” Mariam said.
They patted the dirt when they were done, filling the hole up again. They tossed some of it around so it wouldn't look conspicuous.
“There,” Mariam said, wiping her hands on her dress.
When it was safer, they'd agreed, when the Taliban cut down on their raids, in a month or two or six, or maybe longer, they would dig the TV up.
In Laila's dream, she and Mariam are out behind the toolshed digging again.
But, this time, it's Aziza they're lowering into the ground. Aziza's breath fogs the sheet of plastic in which they have wrapped her.
Laila sees her panicked eyes, the whiteness of her palms as they slap and push against the sheet.
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