She thought of their disorderly games and their boisterous laughs, their secretive glances.
A pall of shame and grief for her son fell over Laila. “Where did he go?” “I don't know, my love.”
When was he coming back? Would Baba jan bring a present with him when he returned? She did the prayers with Zalmai.
Twenty-one Bismillah-e-rahman-e-rahims—one for each knuckle of seven fingers.
She watched him cup his hands before his face and blow into them, then place the back of both hands on his forehead
and make a casting away motion, whispering, “Babaloo, be gone, do not come to Zalmai, he has no business with you.”
“Babaloo, be gone.” Then, to finish off, they said Allahu akbar three times.
And later, much later that night, Laila was startled by a muted voice: “Did Babajan leave because of me?”
“Because of what I said, about you and the man downstairs?”
She leaned over him, meaning to reassure, meaning to say, “It had nothing to do with you, Zalmai. No. Nothing is your fault.”
But he was asleep, his small chest rising and sinking. When Laila went to bed, her mind was muffled up, clouded,
incapable of sustained rational thought. But when she woke up, to the muezzin's call for morning prayer, much of the dullness had lifted.
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