“But peace is coming, and I, for one, am going to wait for it.”
The streets became so unsafe that Babi did an unthinkable thing: He had Laila drop out of school.
He took over the teaching duties himself. Laila went into his study every day after sundown,
and, as Hekmatyar launched his rockets at Massoud from the southern outskirts of the city,
Babi and she discussed the ghazals of Hafez and the works of the beloved Afghan poet Ustad Khalilullah Khalili.
Babi taught her to derive the quadratic equation, showed her how to factor polynomials and plot parametric curves.
When he was teaching, Babi was transformed. In his element, amid his books, he looked taller to Laila.
His voice seemed to rise from a calmer, deeper place, and he didn't blink nearly as much.
Laila pictured him as he must have been once, erasing his blackboard with graceful swipes,
looking over a student's shoulder, fatherly and attentive.
But it wasn't easy to pay attention. Laila kept getting distracted.
“What is the area of a pyramid?” Babi would ask, and all Laila could think of was the fullness of Tariq's lips,
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