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used to the dark.”
    “It’ll get cold too. Why don’t you let me drive you home? I’ll tell him you were here.”
    Mariam only looked at him.
    “I’ll take you to a hotel, then. You can sleep comfortably there. We’ll see what we can do in the morning.”
    “Let me in the house.”
    “I’ve been instructed not to. Look, no one knows when he’s coming back. It could be days.”
    Mariam crossed her arms.
    The driver sighed and looked at her with gentle reproach.
    Over the years, Mariam would have ample occasion to think about how things might have turned out if she had let the driver
     take her back to the kolba. But she didn’t. She spent the night outside Jalil’s house. She watched the sky darken, the shadows engulf the neighboring
     house-fronts. The tattooed girl brought her some bread and a plate of rice, which Mariam said she didn’t want. The girl left
     it near Mariam. From time to time, Mariam heard footsteps down the street, doors swinging open, muffled greetings. Electric
     lights came on, and windows glowed dimly. Dogs barked. When she could no longer resist the hunger, Mariam ate the plate of
     rice and the bread. Then she listened to the crickets chirping from gardens. Overhead, clouds slid past a pale moon.
    In the morning, she was shaken awake. Mariam saw that during the night someone had covered her with a blanket.
    It was the driver shaking her shoulder.
    “This is enough. You’ve made a scene. Bas. It’s time to go.”
    Mariam sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her back and neck were sore. “I’m going to wait for him.”
    “Look at me,” he said. “Jalil Khan says that I need to take you back now. Right now. Do you understand? Jalil Khan says so.”
    He opened the rear passenger door to the car. “ Bia.
    Come on,” he said softly.
    “I want to see him,” Mariam said. Her eyes were tearing over.
    The driver sighed. “Let me take you home. Come on, dokhtar jo. ”
    Mariam stood up and walked toward him. But then, at the last moment, she changed direction and ran to the front gates. She
     felt the driver’s fingers fumbling for a grip at her shoulder. She shed him and burst through the open gates.
    In the handful of seconds that she was in Jalil’s garden, Mariam’s eyes registered seeing a gleaming glass structure with
     plants inside it, grape vines clinging to wooden trellises, a fishpond built with gray blocks of stone, fruit trees, and bushes
     of brightly colored flowers everywhere. Her gaze skimmed over all of these things before they found a face, across the garden,
     in an upstairs window. The face was there for only an instant, a flash, but long enough. Long enough for Mariam to see the
     eyes widen, the mouth open. Then it snapped away from view. A hand appeared and frantically pulled at a cord. The curtains
     fell shut.
    Then a pair of hands buried into her armpits and she was lifted off the ground. Mariam kicked. The pebbles spilled from her
     pocket. Mariam kept kicking and crying as she was carried to the car and lowered onto the cold leather of the backseat.
    THE DRIVER TALKED in a muted, consoling tone as he drove. Mariam did not hear him. All during the ride, as she bounced in
     the backseat, she cried. They were tears of grief, of anger, of disillusionment. But mainly tears of a deep, deep shame at
     how foolishly she had given herself over to Jalil, how she had fretted over what dress to wear, over the mismatching hijab, walking all the way here, refusing to leave, sleeping on the street like a stray dog. And she was ashamed of how she had dismissed
     her mother’s stricken looks, her puffy eyes. Nana, who had warned her, who had been right all along.
    Mariam kept thinking of his face in the upstairs window. He let her sleep on the street. On the street. Mariam cried lying down. She didn’t sit up, didn’t want to be seen. She imagined all of Herat knew this morning how she’d
     disgraced herself. She wished Mullah Faizullah were here so she could put her head on