Laila becomes a teacher at the orphanage

Laila becomes a teacher at the orphanage where she once left her daughter Aziza, transforming her personal grief into a public act of rebuilding and hope in post-Taliban Kabul.

Identity and Background

Laila, now in her mid-twenties, returns to Kabul after a year in Murree, Pakistan, with her husband Tariq, her daughter Aziza, and her son Zalmai. The orphanage is the same squat, barracks-style building in Karteh-Seh where, two years earlier, she and Mariam had delivered Aziza because the family could no longer feed her. Laila still remembers how they had to pry Aziza's fingers from her wrist, and she remembers running down the hallway, holding back a howl, while Aziza screamed with panic. The orphanage is now run by Zaman, the stooping, narrow-chested man with a pleasantly lined face and a chipped lens in his eyeglasses, who had gently shooed away peeking children and told Laila that it was not her fault, that the savages were to blame.

The Transformation of the Orphanage

Since Laila's return, the orphanage has been transformed. Tariq and Zaman have 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 hallway walls are now 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. The playground has a row of apple saplings along the east-facing wall, a new swing set, new monkey bars, and a jungle gym. Zaman has built a classroom by knocking down the wall between two adjacent rooms; the floor is still badly cracked and covered with tarpaulin, but Tariq has promised to cement new tiles and lay down carpeting soon. Nailed above the classroom doorway is a rectangular board that Zaman has sanded and painted in gleaming white, on which he has written four lines from his favorite of Hafez's ghazals: "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."

Laila's Role and the Children

Laila teaches the children in this classroom. When she walks through the hallways, the children spot her and come running at full tilt. She is swarmed by a flurry of high-pitched greetings, of shrill voices, of patting, clutching, tugging, groping, of jostling with one another to climb into her arms. There are outstretched little hands and appeals for attention. Some of them call her "Mother." Laila does not correct them. She has to calm them down, get them to form a proper queue, and usher them into the classroom. The children open their Farsi books and flip pages. 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. Laila drops her own books on her desk and tells the children to open their Farsi books.

Thematic Significance

Laila's decision to teach at the orphanage is a direct response to the legacy of Mariam, who sacrificed herself so that Laila could live. Laila has moved on, because in the end she knows that's all she can do, that and hope. She has resigned herself to not being crippled by resentment, knowing that Mariam would not want it that way. Mariam is never very far: she is in these walls they have repainted, in the trees they have planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these 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 go through her—a sign that she is pregnant again. She smiles and tells Aziza she is all right, very much all right, and walks to her desk at the front of the class.