and Tariq's people, the Pashtuns, who were the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
“Tajiks have always felt slighted,” Babi had said.
“Pashtun kings ruled this country for almost two hundred and fifty years, Laila, and Tajiks for all of nine months, back in 1929.”
“And you,” Laila had asked, “do you feel slighted, Babi?” Babi had wiped his eyeglasses clean with the hem of his shirt.
“To me, it's nonsense and very dangerous nonsense at that, all this talk of I'm Tajik and you're Pashtun and he's Hazara and she's Uzbek.”
We're all Afghans, and that's all that should matter. But when one group rules over the others for so long... There is contempt.
Rivalry. There is. There always has been.Maybe so.
But Laila never felt it in Tariq's house, where these matters never even came up.
Her time with Tariq's family always felt natural to Laila, effortless, uncomplicated by differences in tribe or language,
or by the personal spites and grudges that infected the air at her own home.
“How about a game of cards?” Tariq said. “Yes, go upstairs,” his mother said, swiping disapprovingly at her husband's cloud of smoke.
“I'll get the shorwa going.” They lay on their stomachs in the middle of Tariq's room and took turns dealing for panjpar.
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