Chapter 31 Chapter Twenty Seven

"Do you know who I am?" The girl's eyes blinked. "Do you know what happened?" The girl's lips moved.She closes her eyes.He swallowed a mouthful of saliva.Her hand touched the left side of her face.She said something. Mariam bent down and moved closer. "My ears," the girl said angrily, "I can't hear anything." The first week, with the help of the pink pill, the girl slept most of the time.Rashid paid for her medical bills.She muttered to herself in her sleep.Sometimes she mumbled incomprehensible gibberish, yelled, and called names Mariam didn't know.She cried in bed, became irritable, kicked off the blanket, and Mariam had to pin her down on the bed.Sometimes she retched constantly and threw up everything Mariam fed her.

When she wasn't agitated, the girl under the blanket would stare sadly and utter a few words feebly, answering Mariam's and Rasheed's questions.Some days, when Mariam and Rasheed fed her one after the other, she shook her head like a child like a rattle.Mariam became stubborn when she saw her coming up with a spoon.But she tires easily and eventually succumbs to their relentless cajoling and cajoling exhortations.After surrendering, she would whimper and cry non-stop. Rasheed had Mariam apply antibiotic ointment to the wounds on the girl's face and neck, as well as to the stitches on her shoulders, forearms, and lower legs.Mariam bandages them; she washes and recycles the bandages when they get dirty.When the girl couldn't help throwing up, Mariam wiped the hair from her face and tucked it back behind her head with her hands.

"How long will she be here?" she asked Rasheed. "Stay until she's better. Look at her. She's no longer human. Where can she go? Poor thing." It was Rasheed who found the girl and dug her out of the rubble. "Fortunately I'm home," he said to the girl.The girl was lying on Mariam's bunk, and he sat on a folding chair beside the bed. "I mean you're lucky. I dug you out with my own hands. There's a piece of metal the size of that??" He gestured to her with his thumb and forefinger; Twice larger than its actual size. "It's so big. It's on your right shoulder. It's literally in there. I thought I'd have to use a vice for this. But you're fine now. You'll be fine soon. Good It’s like it’s never happened before.”

It was Rashid who saved several of Hakim's books. "Most are reduced to ashes. I'm afraid the rest have been snatched away." For the first week he helped Mariam with the girl.One day he came home from get off work with a new blanket and a new pillow.Bring back a bottle of pills another day. "Vitamins," he said. Rasheed also told Laila that her friend Tariq's home was now occupied. "As a gift," he said, "to three of his men from General Sayyaf. Gift, haha!" The three men were actually boys, and their faces were young and sunburnt.Mariam could see them, always in camouflage, squatting by the front door, smoking and playing cards, their Kalashnikovs leaning against the wall as they passed the Tariqs' house.The leader is physically strong and looks bossy.The youngest one is the quietest, and he seems very disapproving of his friend Gu Pan Zixiong's posture.He would smile and nod to Mariam as she passed.At this time, the arrogant look on his face would fade a little, and Mariam could see that he was still a child.

Then, one morning, rockets hit the house.It was later said that the rockets had been fired by Fine Gael Hazaras.For a while neighbors kept finding the bodies of the three boys in pieces. "They deserved to die," Rasheed said. Mariam considered the girl extremely lucky that she survived the rocket that blew her home into a smoky heap of rubble, with only minor injuries.In this way, the girl recovered slowly.She ate more and started brushing her hair.She bathes herself.She started downstairs to eat with Mariam and Rasheed. But something from the past pops up, without warning, followed by stony silence or bewitched brutality.Depression and breakdown.Confused eyes.Nightmares and sudden sorrows.

Vomit. Sometimes regret. "I shouldn't even be here," she said one day. Mariam was changing the sheets.The girl sat on the floor with her injured knees pressed against her chest, looking up at her. "My dad was trying to move those boxes out. Those books. He said they were too heavy for me. But I wouldn't let him. I couldn't wait. The guy who was in the house when the rockets went off It should have been me." Mariam shook the clean sheet and spread it on the bed.She looked at the girl, at her golden curly hair, her thin neck, her green eyes, her high cheekbones and her full lips.Mariam remembered seeing the girl on the street when she was younger, staggering to follow her mother to the oven, sometimes riding on her brother—younger with a pinch in his ear. The hairy one - on the shoulders.Throwing stones sometimes with the carpenter's boys.

The girl looked at Mariam too, as if expecting something wise, something encouraging.But what insightful thing could Mariam have said?What encouragement can I give her?Mariam remembered the day Nana was buried, and she felt that the verses Mullah Faizullah had read to her were of no consolation.He is in charge of the world, he rules over all things, he created death and life, it is your honor to be tested by him.His words did not comfort her when she felt guilty, and it is not good for you to think so, Mariam dear.Did you hear what I said, boy?is bad.Thinking like that will destroy you.this is not your fault.it's not your fault.

What could she say to lighten the girl's burden? Mariam didn't say a word after all.Because the girl's face was contorted, she lay on her back, and said she wanted to throw up. "Wait! Hold on. I'm going to get a basin. Don't spit on the floor. I just mopped it?? Ahh. Ahhhhhhhh." One day, a month after the girl's parents were killed, a man knocked on the door.Mariam opened the door.He explained his purpose. "There's a man coming for you," Mariam said. The girl's head lifted from the pillow. "He said his name was Abdullah Sharif."

"I don't know anyone named Abdullah Sharif." "Okay, but he said he wanted to see you. You go down and talk to him."