The little girl looks up. Puts down the doll. Smiles. “Laila jo?” Laila's eyes snap open. She gasps, and her body pitches forward.
She startles the bat, which zips from one end of the kolba to the other,
its beating wings like the fluttering pages of a book, before it flies out the window.
Laila gets to her feet, beats the dead leaves from the seat of her trousers. She steps out of the kolba.
Outside, the light has shifted slightly. A wind is blowing, making the grass ripple and the willow branches click.
Before she leaves the clearing, Laila takes one last look at the kolba where Mariam had slept, eaten, dreamed, held her breath for Jalil.
On sagging walls, the willows cast crooked patterns that shift with each gust of wind. A crow has landed on the flat roof.
It pecks at something, squawks, flies off. “Good-bye, Mariam.” And, with that, unaware that she is weeping, Laila begins to run through the grass.
She finds Hamza still sitting on the rock. When he spots her, he stands up. “Let's go back,” he says. Then, “I have something to give you.”
Laila waits for Hamza in the garden by the front door.
The boy who had served them tea earlier is standing beneath one of the fig trees holding a chicken, watching her impassively.
Laila spies two faces, an old woman and a young girl in hijab observing her demurely from a window.
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