It's true, she tells him. It's the friction, of grain against grain. Listen.
He does. He frowns. They wait. They hear it again.
A groaning sound, when the wind is soft, when it blows hard, a mewling, high pitched chorus.
Babi said they should take only what was absolutely necessary. They would sell the rest.
“That should hold us in Peshawar until I find work.”
For the next two days, they gathered items to be sold. They put them in big piles.
In her room, Laila set aside old blouses, old shoes, books, toys.
Looking under her bed, she found a tiny yellow glass cow Hasina had passed to her during recess in fifth grade.
A miniature soccer ball key chain, a gift from Giti. A little wooden zebra on wheels.
A ceramic astronaut she and Tariq had found one day in a gutter.
She'd been six and he eight. They'd had a minor row, Laila remembered, over which one of them had found it.
Mammy too gathered her things. There was a reluctance in her movements, and her eyes had a lethargic, faraway look in them.
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