Around Ahmad's neck was a glittering Allah pendant.
Fariba must have recognized her, walking in burqa beside Rasheed. She waved, and called out, “Eid Mubarak!”
From inside the burqa, Mariam gave her a ghost of a nod. “So you know that woman, the teacher's wife?” Rasheed said.
Mariam said she didn't. “Best you stay away. She's a nosy gossiper, that one.”
“And the husband fancies himself some kind of educated intellectual. But he's a mouse. Look at him.”
“Doesn't he look like a mouse?” They went to Shar-e-Nau, where kids romped about in new shirts and beaded, brightly colored vests.
Women brandished platters of sweets. Mariam saw festive lanterns hanging from shop windows, heard music blaring from loudspeakers.
Strangers called out “Eid Mubarak” to her as they passed.
That night they went to Chaman, and, standing behind Rasheed, Mariam watched fireworks light up the sky, in flashes of green, pink, and yellow.
She missed sitting with Mullah Faizullah outside the kolba, watching the fireworks explode over Herat in the distance,
the sudden bursts of color reflected in her tutor's soft, cataract-riddled eyes.
But, mostly, she missed Nana. Mariam wished her mother were alive to see this. To see her, amid all of it.
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