A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Read Free Book Online

lowered the
     needle. Music began to play.
    I will use a flower petal for paper,
    And write you the sweetest letter,
    You are the sultan of my heart,
    the sultan of my heart.
    “Do you know it?”
    “No.”
    “It’s from an Iranian film. I saw it at my father’s cinema.
    Hey, do you want to see something?”
    Before Mariam could answer, Niloufar had put her palms and forehead to the ground. She pushed with her soles and then she
     was standing upside down, on her head, in a three-point stance.
    “Can you do that?” she said thickly.
    “No.”
    Niloufar dropped her legs and pulled her blouse back down. “I could teach you,” she said, pushing hair from her flushed brow.
     “So how long will you stay here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “My mother says you’re not really my sister like you say you are.”
    “I never said I was,” Mariam lied.
    “She says you did. I don’t care. What I mean is, I don’t mind if you did say it, or if you are my sister. I don’t mind.”
    Mariam lay down. “I’m tired now.”
    “My mother says a jinn made your mother hang herself.”
    “You can stop that now,” Mariam said, turning to her side. “The music, I mean.”
    Bibi jo came to see her that day too. It was raining by the time she came. She lowered her large body onto the chair beside
     the bed, grimacing.
    “This rain, Mariam jo, it’s murder on my hips. Just murder, I tell you. I hope . . . Oh, now, come here, child.
    Come here to Bibi jo. Don’t cry. There, now. You poor thing. Tsk. You poor, poor thing.”
    That night, Mariam couldn’t sleep for a long time. She lay in bed looking at the sky, listening to the footsteps below, the
     voices muffled by walls and the sheets of rain punishing the window. When she did doze off, she was startled awake by shouting.
     Voices downstairs, sharp and angry. Mariam couldn’t make out the words. Someone slammed a door.
    The next morning, Mullah Faizullah came to visit her.
    When she saw her friend at the door, his white beard and his amiable, toothless smile, Mariam felt tears stinging the corners
     of her eyes again. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and hurried over. She kissed his hand as always and he her
     brow. She pulled him up a chair.
    He showed her the Koran he had brought with him and opened it. “I figured no sense in skipping our routine, eh?”
    “You know I don’t need lessons anymore, Mullah sahib.
    You taught me every surrah and ayat in the Koran years ago.”
    He smiled, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I confess, then. I’ve been found out. But I can think of worse
     excuses to visit you.”
    “You don’t need excuses. Not you.”
    “You’re kind to say that, Mariam jo.”
    He passed her his Koran. As he’d taught her, she kissed it three times—touching it to her brow between each kiss—and gave
     it back to him.
    “How are you, my girl?”
    “I keep,” Mariam began. She had to stop, feeling like a rock had lodged itself in her throat. “I keep thinking of what she
     said to me before I left. She—”
    “ Nay, nay, nay.” Mullah Faizullah put his hand on her knee. “Your mother, may Allah forgive her, was a troubled and unhappy woman, Mariam jo.
     She did a terrible thing to herself. To herself, to you, and also to Allah. He will forgive her, for He is all-forgiving,
     but Allah is saddened by what she did. He does not approve of the taking of life, be it another’s or one’s own, for He says
     that life is sacred. You see—” He pulled his chair closer, took Mariam’s hand in both of his own. “You see, I knew your mother
     before you were born, when she was a little girl, and I tell you that she was unhappy then. The seed for what she did was
     planted long ago, I’m afraid. What I mean to say is that this was not your fault. It wasn’t your fault, my girl.”
    “I shouldn’t have left her. I should have—”
    “You stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo.
    You hear me, child? No good.