Wajma

Wajma is the elderly midwife who delivers Laila on the night of the April 1978 coup, a figure of continuity and traditional female knowledge in the Kabul neighborhood of Deh-Mazang. She is present at the birth, marveling at the baby's light hair and pink cheeks, and later becomes a recurring presence at the family's most significant gatherings, both joyful and sorrowful.

Role as Midwife and Witness to Birth

On the night of April 27, 1978, as communist tanks seize Kabul and Rasheed and Mariam listen to the radio, an exhausted Fariba gives birth with Wajma's assistance. Wajma watches as Fariba's husband Hakim and sons Ahmad and Noor pass around the newborn, marveling at her light hair, pink cheeks, and jade green eyes. It is Wajma who hears Noor compare the baby's eyes to gemstones and Ahmad sing theazan in his sister's ear. The baby is named Laila, meaning "Night Beauty," and Wajma is the first to hold her, a witness to the beginning of a life that will be marked by war and loss.

Presence at Family Celebrations and Mourning

Years later, Wajma appears at the lunch party Fariba throws in April 1992, when the Mujahideen have finally taken Kabul and Fariba emerges from years of depression. Wajma sits with Fariba and Tariq's mother, peeling boiled eggs while Fariba speaks excitedly of presenting Commander Massoud with a picture of her martyred sons. Wajma nods and tries to look interested and sincere, a quiet participant in the fragile celebration. She is also the source of neighborhood gossip: at a gathering years before, Wajma told the women that Rasheed's son drowned at Ghargha Lake because Rasheed was drunk, passed out on a lounge chair, and that the boy went into the water unnoticed. This story, which Laila remembers after she gives birth to Aziza, reveals the hidden tragedy in Rasheed's past and the community's knowledge of it.

Witness to Grief and Loss

When Giti is killed by a stray rocket in June 1992, Wajma is present at thefatiha, the mourning ceremony. Laila sees her there, a familiar face among the weeping women. Wajma's presence at these rituals of birth and death marks her as a keeper of the community's collective memory, a woman who has seen generations pass from infancy to the grave. She represents the traditional female sphere that persists through Afghanistan's upheavals, a witness to the relentless cycles of hope and devastation that define the lives of the novel's women.