Laila, daughter of Fariba and Hakim, is now 9 years old. Her two elder brothers have gone to fight in Mujahideen’s army and by this stage, her parents’ once-happy marriage has become fractious. Laila is very pretty, with blonde curls and turquoise eyes, and is a promising student. Her university-educated father, a former high-school teacher before the Communists fired him, hopes that she will pursue an education and, unlike the fathers of her friends, believes marriage can wait. Her school-teacher, Shanzai, is also progressive, and forbids the girls to cover in her classroom. She calls Laila “Inquilabi girl” because she was born on the night of the Communist Revolution.

Laila is close friends with Tariq, a neighborhood boy with one leg, whose other leg was blown off by a land mine. At this stage in the novel, Tariq is going away with his parents to visit a sick uncle. She misses him deeply, feeling that “time stretched or contracted depending on Tariq’s absence or presence” (108). She notices that a Benz with a Herat number plate is parked opposite the house Rasheed shares with his reclusive wife,