11.Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking around her room in it and kept steppi
9.It was early evening the following day by the time they arrived at Rasheed’s house.I“We’re in Deh-Mazang,” he said. They were outside, on the sidewalk. He had her suitcase in one hand and was unlocking the wooden front gate with the other. “In the
7.They sat across from her, Jalil and his wives, at a long, dark brown table. Between them, in the center of the table, was a crystal vase of fresh marigolds and a sweating pitcher of water. The red-haired woman who had introduced herself as Niloufar
5.I know what I want,” Mariam said to Jalil. It was the spring of 1974, the year Mariam turned fifteen. The three of them were sitting outside the kolba, in a patch of shade thrown by the willows, on folding chairs arranged in a triangle.“For my
The writer Bi Shumin was once asked: "How did you get through the low ebb in your life?" Her answer is just: "Wait quietly." No one can escape the point of bottleneck,and we usually feel lost,depressed,helpless,even desperate.Actu
3.One of Mariam’s earliest memories was the sound of a wheelbarrow’s squeaky iron wheels bouncing over rocks. The wheelbarrow came once a month, filled with rice, flour, tea, sugar, cooking oil, soap, toothpaste. It was pushed by two of Mariam’s half