False report of Tariq's death
In the aftermath of the rocket attack that killed her parents, Laila lay recovering in Rasheed's house, her body and spirit broken. She had lost everything: her mother Fariba, her father Hakim, and her childhood home. The only thread of hope she clung to was the memory of Tariq, who had left Kabul months earlier with his parents, promising to return for her. It was into this fragile state that Abdul Sharif arrived, a thin, small-headed man with a bulbous nose and cratered cheeks, claiming to have news from Peshawar.
The Messenger and His Story
Abdul Sharif presented himself as a businessman who owned clothing stores in Kabul and Peshawar. He told Laila that he had been hospitalized in Peshawar with blood poisoning and had shared a ward with a young man named Mohammad Tariq Walizai. According to Abdul Sharif, Tariq had been traveling in a lorry full of refugees when it was caught in crossfire near the border. A rocket hit the vehicle, killing most of the passengers. Tariq, Abdul Sharif said, had been badly injured—he had lost his remaining leg, suffered internal injuries requiring multiple operations, and was badly burned. The man described tubes coming out of Tariq everywhere, and how he had spoken of Laila constantly, calling her his "earliest memory." Abdul Sharif claimed that Tariq had asked him to find Laila and tell her he missed her. Then came the final blow: one night, Abdul Sharif said, he woke to a commotion around Tariq's bed, and in the morning, the bed was empty. A nurse told him Tariq had "fought valiantly" but died.
Laila's Response and the Aftermath
Laila received the news with a numbness that mirrored her mother Fariba's reaction to the deaths of Ahmad and Noor years before. She could not scream or tear her hair; she could hardly move. Her mind fled to the safe place of memory—the trip to Bamiyan with Babi and Tariq, standing atop the great Buddha, watching a hawk circle over the green valley below. The false report of Tariq's death, combined with the loss of her parents, left her utterly alone in the world. She had no family, no money, no safe place to go. The war-torn streets of Kabul offered only danger, and the refugee camps in Pakistan, she knew, were places of disease and desperation.
The Hidden Truth and Its Consequences
What Laila did not know—and would not learn for years—was that Abdul Sharif was a paid actor. The entire story was a fabrication orchestrated by Rasheed, who had plotted the lie to crush Laila's hope and make her dependent on him. The convincing details—the hospital ward, the burned body, the dying words—were all designed to be believable. Rasheed had calculated that with Tariq "dead" and her parents gone, Laila would have no choice but to accept his proposal of marriage. The deception worked. Within days, Laila agreed to marry Rasheed, not out of love or desire, but because she was pregnant with Tariq's child and saw no other way to survive. The false report of Tariq's death thus set in motion the central tragedy of the novel's second half: Laila's marriage to a violent, controlling man, her eventual friendship with Mariam, and the desperate acts that would lead to Rasheed's murder and Mariam's execution.
Thematic Significance
The false report of Tariq's death exemplifies the novel's recurring theme of how men's lies and manipulations trap women in cycles of suffering. Rasheed's deception is a calculated act of psychological violence, more insidious than his physical beatings because it targets Laila's last remaining hope. The event also mirrors the novel's broader pattern of false news and manipulated information—from the communist propaganda Laila learned in school to the Taliban's decrees—showing how those in power control reality for the vulnerable. Years later, when Tariq returns alive to Kabul, the revelation of the lie becomes the catalyst for the final confrontation between Laila, Mariam, and Rasheed, proving that even the most carefully constructed deception cannot withstand the truth.
