Dying flower

Mariam

The night left Mariam restless. She tosses and turns but can't get a blink of sleep. How cruel could the world be to a woman? It is a question even she doesn't know the answer to. 

At last, Mariam decided on staring outside the barred window of the cell, counting the tiny dots that filled the sky. Lila once told her that the setareh, stars, were made out of fire and hot gasses and that the sun was also a star. Mariam wishes that she could see them up close, and wishes to study them. 

There are a lot of things Mariam wishes to do before her last night ends. She wishes to see Laila and Aziza living a happy life with Tariq. She wishes to see Zalami moving on and living a happy life with his new father. She wishes to go back to Herat, back to her kolba. She wishes to meet Mullah Faizullah and listen to his wise words. But she could only wish and do none. And before she will know it, Mariam will be driven to the Ghazi stadium for her punishment. So Mariam holds onto the memories, remembering her good days and bad. 

She remembers about her days in the kolba. She remembers about her days with Rasheed. She remembers about the blissful days with Lila and the kids. She remembers the little lessons Laila used to give back before the Taliban took over, the days when the mujahideen were still fighting. And Mariam realizes that her whole life she suffered not because of her cowardice, but her ignorance towards her own situation, her naivety. She remembers thinking about her situation before, but never gathered the courage to do anything about it.

June 1995 

Mariam would have been doing something more productive if Lila hadn't dragged her for a small lesson about zalzala, tremor. There were dishes to be washed, laundry to be done, house to be cleaned and food to be made, but Mariam was sitting on the floor with Lila instead, listening to the younger woman blabber about the tremors caused by the earth moving, not by the loud booms that Mariam was quite acquainted with.

"So it's zameen larzah," Mariam said before gulping a glass of water. The dry air and the summer heat of June made Mariam crave for juicy fruits, but she couldn't go out to buy anything, not after the attempted escape of her and Lila. 

If Mariam could, she would have laughed at herself, at her cowardice because she knew that unlike her, Lilah wouldn't back down. If she were to guess, Mariam would say that Lila was still devising a plan to escape to Pakistan once Aziza was old enough.

"Yes! You are right," Lila said enthusiastically which made Mariam smile "In English they call it earthquakes." 

"Erdh-eggs?" Mariam repeated as she slipped her fingers, rough from the hard labor, between Lila's golden locks to braid them.