Leila remains standing, paralysed.

‘I said it was OK by me, but I would ask you,’ says Bibi Gul.

Leila has always done what her mother wanted. Now she says nothing. Wakil’s son. With him her life will be exactly as it is now, only with more work and for more people. In addition she will acquire a husband with three fingers, one who has never opened a book.

Bibi Gul dips a piece of bread in the grease on her plate and puts it in her mouth. She takes a bone from Shakila’s plate, and sucks up the marrow whilst regarding her daughter.

Leila feels how life, her youth, hope leave her – without being able to save herself. She feels her heart, heavy and lonely like a stone, condemned to be crushed for ever.

Leila turns, takes three paces to the door, closes it quietly behind her and goes out. Her crushed heart she leaves behind. Soon it blends with the dust, which blows in through the window, the dust that lives in the carpets. That evening she will sweep it up and throw it out into the backyard.

Epilogue

A few weeks after I left Kabul, the family split up. An argument resulted in a fight and the words that fell between Sultan and the two wives on one side, and Leila and Bibi Gul on the other, were so irreconcilable that it would have been difficult to continue living together. When Yunus came home after the quarrel Sultan took him aside and said that he, the sisters and mother were duty-bound to show him the respect he deserved, because Sultan was the oldest and they ate at his table.

The following day, before daylight, Bibi Gul, Yunus, Leila and Bulbula left the apartment taking only what they were wearing. None of them has been back since. They moved in with Farid, Sultan’s other ostracised brother, his nine months pregnant wife and three children.

‘Afghan brothers are not nice to each other,’ Sultan concludes on the telephone from Kabul. ‘It is time we lived independent lives. When they live in my house, they should respect me, shouldn’t they?’ he asks. ‘If the families don’t have rules, how can we form a society that respects rules and laws, and not just guns and rockets? This is a society in chaos, it is a lawless society, right out of a civil war. If the families are not guided by authority, we can expect an even worse chaos to follow.’

Leila has heard no more from Karim. When his relationship with Mansur cooled it was difficult for Karim to contact the family. Besides, he became uncertain of what he really wanted. He was awarded a scholarship from Egypt to study Islam at the al-Azhar University in Cairo.

‘He’s going to be a mullah,’ Mansur guffaws from Kabul on a crackly telephone line.

The carpenter went to jail for three years. Sultan was merciless. ‘Scoundrels cannot be let loose on society. I am sure he stole at least seven thousand postcards. What he said about his poor family is all lies. I’ve calculated that he must have made pots of money, but he’s hidden it.’

Sultan’s huge textbook contract fell through. Oxford University drew the longest straw. Sultan didn’t really care. ‘It would have sapped all my strength, the order was simply too large.’

Otherwise the bookshops are flourishing. Sultan has been awarded gilt-edged contracts in Iran; he also sells books to the western embassies’ libraries. He is trying to buy one of the unused cinemas in Kabul to set up a centre with bookshop, lecture room and library, a place where researchers can have access to his vast collection. Next year he promises to send Mansur on a business trip to India. ‘He needs to learn responsibility; that will be character-building,’ he says. ‘Maybe I’ll send the other boys to school.’ In addition, Sultan has granted his three sons a holiday on Fridays; to do with what they like.

The political situation worries Sultan. ‘Dangerous. The Northern Alliance was given too much power by Loya Jirga, there is no balance. Karzai is too weak; he is unable to rule the country. The best thing would be to have a government consisting of technocrats appointed by the Europeans. When we Afghans try to appoint leaders, everything goes wrong. Without cooperation the people suffer. And besides, our intellectuals have not returned. There is an empty space where they should have been.’

Mansur has forbidden his mother to work as a teacher. ‘Not good,’ is all he says. Sultan did not mind her working again, but as long as Mansur, her oldest son, forbade it, nothing came of it. Nor has anything come of Leila’s second attempt to register as a teacher.

Bulbula got her Rasul in the end. Sultan chose to stay at home and forbade his wives and sons to attend the wedding.

Mariam, who was so terrified of giving birth to a daughter, had Allah on her side and produced a son.

Sonya and Sharifa are the only women left in Sultan’s house. When Sultan and the sons are at work the women are alone in the apartment, sometimes as mother and daughter, sometimes as rivals. In a few months Sonya will give birth. She prays to Allah that it will be a son. She asked me if I could pray for her too.

‘What if it’s another girl!’

Another little catastrophe in the Khan family.

Åsne Seierstad

Åsne Seierstad was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She worked as a correspondent in Russia between 1993 and 1996, and in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2000 she published With Their Backs to the Wall: Portraits from Serbia. In autumn 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.

Åsne Seierstad has received numerous awards for her journalism. The Bookseller of Kabul is one of the bestselling Norwegian books of all time, and has been translated into many languages.