But he wasn't fast enough. Mariam saw. A gust of wind blew and parted the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain,
and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight backed chair, overturned.
The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.
6.
They buried Nana in a corner of the cemetery in Gul Daman.
Mariam stood beside Bibi jo, with the women, as Mullah Faizullah recited prayers at the graveside
and the men lowered Nana's shrouded body into the ground.
Afterward, Jalil walked Mariam to the kolba, where, in front of the villagers who accompanied them, he made a great show of tending to Mariam.
He collected a few of her things, put them in a suitcase. He sat beside her cot, where she lay down, and fanned her face.
He stroked her forehead, and, with a woebegone expression on his face, asked if she needed anything? anything? he said it like that, twice.
“I want Mullah Faizullah,” Mariam said. “Of course. He's outside. I'll get him for you.”
It was when Mullah Faizullah's slight, stooping figure appeared in the kolba's doorway that Mariam cried for the first time that day.
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