A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Read Free Book Online

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?”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œYou don’t need excuses. Not you.”
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œHow are you, my girl?”
    â€œI 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—”
    â€œNay, 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.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have left her. I should have—”
    â€œYou stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. You hear me, child? No good. They will destroy you. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. No.”
    Mariam nodded, but as desperately as she wanted to she could not bring herself to believe him.
    Â * * * 
    O NE AFTERNOON, a week later, there was a knock on the door, and a tall woman walked in. She was fair-skinned, had reddish hair and long fingers.
    â€œI’m Afsoon,” she said. “Niloufar’s mother. Why don’t you wash up, Mariam, and come downstairs?”
    Mariam said she would rather stay in her room.
    â€œNo, na fahmidi, you don’t understand. You need to come down. We have to talk to you. It’s important.”

7.
    T hey sat across from her, Jalil and his wives, at a long, dark brown table. Between them, in the center of the table, was a crystal vase of fresh marigolds and a sweating pitcher of water. The red-haired woman who had introduced herself as Niloufar’s mother, Afsoon, was sitting on Jalil’s right. The other two, Khadija and Nargis, were on his left. The wives each had on a flimsy black scarf, which they wore not on their heads but tied loosely around the neck like an afterthought. Mariam, who could not imagine that they would wear black for Nana, pictured one of them suggesting it, or maybe Jalil, just before she’d been summoned.
    Afsoon poured water from the pitcher and put the glass before Mariam on a checkered cloth coaster. “Only spring and it’s warm already,” she said. She made a fanning motion with her hand.
    â€œHave you been comfortable?” Nargis,