Laila teaches at orphanage

After returning to Kabul from Murree in 2003, Laila becomes a teacher at the orphanage where she had once left her daughter Aziza. This act transforms her personal grief into a public commitment to rebuilding her war-torn city and honoring the memory of Mariam, who sacrificed herself so Laila could live.

Identity and Role

Laila is no longer a victim or a refugee but a teacher, a role that gives her life structure and purpose. She teaches Farsi to the orphanage children, who call her "Mother," a title she does not correct. The classroom is a converted space: Tariq and Zaman, the orphanage director, knocked down a wall between two adjacent rooms to create it. The floor is still badly cracked and missing tiles, covered with tarpaulin, but Tariq has promised to cement new tiles and lay down carpeting soon. Above the classroom doorway, Zaman has nailed a rectangular board he sanded and painted gleaming white, on which he wrote four lines of poetry from Hafez: "Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, / Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. / If a flood should arrive, to drown all that's alive, / Noah is your guide in the typhoon's eye, grieve not." This inscription is Zaman's answer to those who grumble that the promised aid money to Afghanistan is not coming, that the rebuilding is going too slowly, that there is corruption, that the Taliban are regrouping already and will come back with a vengeance, that the world will forget once again about Afghanistan.

The Orphanage and Its Transformation

The orphanage itself has been renovated. Laila, Tariq, and Zaman have repainted both the exterior and interior. Tariq and Zaman repaired all the roof leaks, patched the walls, replaced the windows, and carpeted the rooms where the children sleep and play. Laila bought beds for the children's sleeping quarters, pillows, proper wool blankets, and had cast-iron stoves installed for the winter. The playground now has a row of apple saplings along the east-facing wall, a new swing set, new monkey bars, and a jungle gym. Laila is planning to plant more saplings on the south wall as soon as it is rebuilt. The hallway walls are covered with posters of dinosaurs, cartoon characters, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and displays of artwork by the orphans, many of which depict tanks running over huts, men brandishing AK-47s, refugee camp tents, and scenes of jihad. Anis, one of Kabul's newspapers, ran a story on the renovation of the orphanage, with a photo of Zaman, Tariq, Laila, and an attendant standing behind the children. When Laila saw the article, she thought of her childhood friend Hasina, who had predicted that Laila would one day be somebody and that her picture would appear on the front page of a newspaper.

Teaching and the Children

Laila's days begin early. She is up at five, awakened by Aziza for morning namaz, a ritual that is Aziza's way of clinging to Mariam. After prayers, Laila goes back to bed and is still asleep when Tariq leaves for his work with a French NGO that fits land mine survivors and amputees with prosthetic limbs. In the morning, Laila packs lunches for her children and walks them to the bus stop. At the orphanage, the children swarm her when they spot her, running at full tilt, with a flurry of high-pitched greetings, patting, clutching, tugging, and jostling to climb into her arms. Some of them call her "Mother." Laila does not correct them. She ushers them into the classroom, where they open their Farsi books. Aziza is in the class, talking to a girl in the adjacent row. A paper airplane floats across the room in a high arc. Someone tosses it back.

Thematic Significance

Laila's teaching is an act of defiance against the Taliban's prohibition on girls' education and a fulfillment of her father Hakim's belief that a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated. It is also her way of making Mariam's sacrifice meaningful. Mariam is never very far: she is in the walls they have repainted, in the trees they have planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in the pillows and books and pencils, in the children's laughter, in the verses Aziza recites and in the prayers she mutters when she bows westward. But mostly, Mariam is in Laila's own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns. As Laila stands at the curtainless window, flattening her palms against the warm glass panes and letting the sunlight fall on her cheeks, her eyelids, her brow, she feels a wave of movement in her belly—she is pregnant again. She smiles and tells Aziza she is all right, very much so. As she walks to her desk, she thinks of the naming game they played over dinner the night before, a nightly ritual since she gave Tariq and the children the news. They go back and forth, making cases for their own choices: Tariq likes Mohammad, Zalmai is puzzled as to why an Afghan boy cannot be named Clark, Aziza is campaigning hard for Aman, and Laila likes Omar. But the game involves only male names, because if it is a girl, Laila has already named her.