Abdul Sharif

Abdul Sharif is a minor but pivotal character in the novel, a clothing merchant who unwittingly becomes the instrument of Rasheed's deception. He appears in the narrative only once, but his visit to the house in Deh-Mazang, where Laila is recovering after the rocket attack that killed her parents, delivers a blow that reshapes the rest of her life. He is a thin, small-headed man with a bulbous nose pocked with cratered scars, and his manner is nervous and apologetic, dabbing at his brow with a handkerchief and complaining of an illness that required sulfa pills. He claims to be a businessman who owns clothing stores in Kabul and Peshawar, and that he travels frequently between the two cities.

The False Report of Tariq's Death

Abdul Sharif tells Laila that he met Tariq in a hospital in Peshawar, where both were patients in a special unit for the critically ill. He describes Tariq as being badly injured in a rocket attack on a lorry full of refugees near the Pakistani border. According to Abdul Sharif, Tariq had lost his right leg in the attack, suffered internal injuries requiring multiple operations, and was badly burned. He says Tariq spoke of Laila constantly, calling her his "earliest memory," and that he asked Abdul Sharif to find her and tell her he missed her. Abdul Sharif then delivers the devastating news that Tariq died from his injuries, saying the nurses told him Tariq "fought valiantly." He admits he initially doubted Laila's existence, thinking Tariq's talk was the morphine, but that he came back to tell her because he believed Tariq would have wanted her to know.

The Orchestrated Deception

It is later revealed that Abdul Sharif's entire story was a fabrication, a cruel plot devised by Rasheed to eliminate Laila's hope of reuniting with Tariq and to make her vulnerable to his own marriage proposal. Mariam, piecing together the clues, realizes that the doorman at the Intercontinental Hotel, whom she had seen with Rasheed, was the same man who had posed as Abdul Sharif. She understands that the sulfa pills, the detailed account of Tariq's injuries, and the emotional delivery were all part of a calculated ruse. The lie succeeds: Laila, believing herself utterly alone and pregnant with Tariq's child, agrees to marry Rasheed to secure a future for her baby. Abdul Sharif, whether a willing accomplice or a dupe paid for his performance, vanishes from the story after his single, devastating appearance, leaving behind a trail of grief and a marriage built on a foundation of lies.