Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Laila remembered Mammy telling Babi once that she had married a man who had no convictions. Mammy didn't understand. She didn't understand that if she looked into a mirror, she would find the one unfailing conviction of his life looking right back at her.
A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...
Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.
A stubborn ass needs a stubborn driver
Mariam always held her breath as she watched him go. She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second that she didn't breathe God would grant her another day with Jalil.
And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.
Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.
And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them.
Marriage can wait, education cannot.
Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.
But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her
She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies, and sometimes not.
Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer.
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.
She would grab whatever she could -a look , a whisper , a moan - to salvage from perishing , to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires , and she couldn't , in the end , save it all .
I will follow you to the ends of the world.
She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.
I'll die if you go. The Jinn will come, and I'll have one of my fits. You'll see, I'll swallow my tongue and die. Don't leave me, Mariam jo. Please stay. I'll die if you go.
Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.
I'm all you have in this world Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You ARE nothing!
Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.
In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory,what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could-a look, a whisper, a moan-to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires,and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.
You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.
Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories