Free A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Page B

comfort, and, after a while, she did not mind so much the music, the smoke, even the people. And the
     burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered
     from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets
     of her past.
    On the streets, Rasheed named various buildings with authority; this is the American Embassy, he said, that the Foreign Ministry.
     He pointed to cars, said their names and where they were made: Soviet Volgas, American Chevrolets, German Opels.
    “Which is your favorite?” he asked.
    Mariam hesitated, pointed to a Volga, and Rasheed laughed.
    Kabul was far more crowded than the little that Mariam had seen of Herat. There were fewer trees and fewer gari s pulled by horses, but more cars, taller buildings, more traffic lights and more paved roads. And everywhere Mariam heard
     the city’s peculiar dialect: “Dear” was jan instead of jo, “sister” became hamshira instead of hamshireh, and so on.
    From a street vendor, Rasheed bought her ice cream. It was the first time she’d eaten ice cream and Mariam had never imagined
     that such tricks could be played on a palate. She devoured the entire bowl, the crushed-pistachio topping, the tiny rice noodles
     at the bottom. She marveled at the bewitching texture, the lapping sweetness of it.
    They walked on to a place called Kocheh-Morgha, Chicken Street. It was a narrow, crowded bazaar in a neighborhood that Rasheed
     said was one of Kabul’s wealthier ones.
    “Around here is where foreign diplomats live, rich businessmen, members of the royal family—that sort of people. Not like
     you and me.”
    “I don’t see any chickens,” Mariam said.
    “That’s the one thing you can’t find on Chicken Street.” Rasheed laughed.
    The street was lined with shops and little stalls that sold lambskin hats and rainbow-colored chapan s. Rasheed stopped to look at an engraved silver dagger in one shop, and, in another, at an old rifle that the shopkeeper
     assured Rasheed was a relic from the first war against the British.
    “And I’m Moshe Dayan,” Rasheed muttered. He half smiled, and it seemed to Mariam that this was a smile meant only for her.
     A private, married smile.
    They strolled past carpet shops, handicraft shops, pastry shops, flower shops, and shops that sold suits for men and dresses
     for women, and, in them, behind lace curtains, Mariam saw young girls sewing buttons and ironing collars. From time to time,
     Rasheed greeted a shopkeeper he knew, sometimes in Farsi, other times in Pashto. As they shook hands and kissed on the cheek,
     Mariam stood a few feet away. Rasheed did not wave her over, did not introduce her.
    He asked her to wait outside an embroidery shop. “I know the owner,” he said. “I’ll just go in for a minute, say my salaam. ”
    Mariam waited outside on the crowded sidewalk. She watched the cars crawling up Chicken Street, threading through the horde
     of hawkers and pedestrians, honking at children and donkeys who wouldn’t move. She watched the bored-looking merchants inside
     their tiny stalls, smoking, or spitting into brass spittoons, their faces emerging from the shadows now and then to peddle
     textiles and fur-collared poostin coats to passersby.
    But it was the women who drew Mariam’s eyes the most.
    The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighborhoods—like the one where she and
     Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully. These women were—what was the word Rasheed had used?—“modern.” Yes,
     modern Afghan women married to modern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their
     faces and nothing on their heads. Mariam watched them cantering uninhibited down the street, sometimes with a man, sometimes
     alone, sometimes with rosy-cheeked children who