In Kabul, particularly in western Kabul, fires raged, and black palls of smoke mushroomed over snow-clad buildings.
Embassies closed down. Schools collapsed. In hospital waiting rooms, Rasheed said, the wounded were bleeding to death.
In operating rooms, limbs were being amputated without anesthesia.
“But don't worry,” he said. “You're safe with me, my flower, my gul. Anyone tries to harm you, I'll rip out their liver and make them eat it.”
That winter, everywhere Laila turned, walls blocked her way.
She thought longingly of the wide-open skies of her childhood, of her days of going to buzkashi tournaments with Babi
and shopping at Mandaii with Mamany, of her days of running free in the streets and gossiping about boys with Giti and Hasina.
Her days of sitting with Tariq in a bed of clover on the banks of a stream somewhere, trading riddles and candy, watching the sun go down.
The season's first snowfall was light, the flakes no sooner fallen than melted.
Then the roads froze, and snow gathered in heaps on the rooftops, piled halfway up frost-caked windows.
With snow came the kites, once the rulers of Kabul's winter skies, now timid trespassers in territory claimed by streaking rockets and fighter jets.
Rasheed kept bringing home news of the war, and Laila was baffled by the allegiances that Rasheed tried to explain to her.
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