All the way home, leaning on Mariam, Laila heard Aziza's shrill cries.
In her head, she saw Zaman's thick, calloused hands close around Aziza's arms;
she saw them pull, gently at first, then harder, then with force to pry Aziza loose from her.
She saw Aziza kicking in Zaman's arms as he hurriedly turned the corner,
heard Aziza screaming as though she were about to vanish from the face of the earth.
And Laila saw herself running down the hallway, head down, a howl rising up her throat. “I smell her,” she told Mariam at home.
Her eyes swam unseeingly past Mariam's shoulder, past the yard, the walls, to the mountains, brown as smoker's spit.
“I smell her sleep smell. Do you? Do you smell it?” “Oh, Laila jo,” said Mariam. “Don't. What good is this? What good?”
At first, Rasheed humored Laila, and accompanied them—her, Mariam, and Zalmai—to the orphanage,
though he made sure, as they walked, that she had an eyeful of his grievous looks,
an earful of his rants over what a hardship she was putting him through,
how badly his legs and back and feet ached walking to and from the orphanage.
전체재생
다음페이지
문장검색