Naghma

Naghma is a short, flat-chested girl with black frizzy hair who becomes Mariam's cellmate in the Walayat women's prison in Kabul under Taliban rule. She is sentenced to five years for attempting to elope with a young man, the son of a local mullah, to Gardez. When they were caught and sent back, the mullah's son was flogged before he repented and claimed that Naghma had seduced him with her feminine charms and cast a spell on him. He promised to rededicate himself to the study of the Koran and was freed; Naghma was sentenced to five years. Her father swore that the day she was released he would take a knife to her throat. Naghma is the sort of person who finds it entertaining to dispense news of misfortune, whether others' or her own. She says her father had promised her to a tailor some thirty years older than her, who she says "smells like goh, and has fewer teeth than fingers."

Role in the Prison and Relationship with Mariam

None of the women in Mariam's cell are serving time for violent crime—they are all there for the common offense of "running away from home." As a result, Mariam gains some notoriety among them, becoming a kind of celebrity. The women eye her with a reverent, almost awestruck, expression. They offer her their blankets and compete to share their food with her. The most avid is Naghma, who is always hugging her elbows and following Mariam everywhere she goes. At night, when there is electrical power, the women hoist Naghma up to the ceiling, where a wire has had its coating stripped. Naghma hand-wraps the live wire around the base of the lightbulb to make a circuit, providing light for the cell.

Final Encounter and Thematic Significance

On Mariam's last day at Walayat, Naghma gives her a tangerine, puts it in Mariam's palm, and closes her fingers around it. Then she bursts into tears and says, "You're the best friend I ever had." Naghma's story—betrayed by a mullah's son who claimed she seduced him—echoes Nana's warning that "like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always." Her presence in the prison underscores the brutal legal and social punishments faced by women who defy patriarchal control, and her devotion to Mariam highlights the bonds of solidarity that form among women in the face of shared oppression.