Now all manner of questions raced through her mind: Had the sulfa pills too been part of the ruse?
Which one of them had plotted the lie, provided the convincing details?
And how much had Rasheed paid Abdul Sharif—if that was even his name—to come and crush Laila with the story of Tariq's death?
44. Laila
Tariq said that one of the men who shared his cell had a cousin who'd been publicly flogged once for painting flamingos.
He, the cousin, had a seemingly incurable thing for them. “Entire sketchbooks,” Tariq said.
“Dozens of oil paintings of them, wading in lagoons, sunbathing in marshlands. Flying into sunsets too, I'm afraid.”
“Flamingos,” Laila said. She looked at him sitting against the wall, his good leg bent at the knee.
She had an urge to touch him again, as she had earlier by the front gate when she'd run to him.
It embarrassed her now to think of how she'd thrown her arms around his neck and wept into his chest,
how she'd said his name over and over in a slurring, thick voice.
Had she acted too eagerly, she wondered, too desperately? Maybe so. But she hadn't been able to help it.
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