Mariam was twenty years old when she found out that she was pregnant for the third time. That night, she felt a mix of nervousness and happiness, unsure of how to explain her feelings. She looked at the moon and stars from her windowed room and said to the moon, “You know, when I was a child, I asked my mother where children come from. She always said to me, ‘They come from the moon.’” She said with a smile, “But now, I am the mother of my own stars. Are you the mother of the stars? Hey moon, don’t laugh at me,” she said to herself. “I will surprise my husband with this news in the new year.”

The weather is a little cloudy. It seems like the first day of the new year will be rainy. When she woke up in the early morning, she could hear the sounds of sparrows and the rooster crowing. When Mariam heard this sound, she knew that spring had come. She guessed that people were still not waking up to go to provinces like Herat, Bamian, Kapisa, and others for picnics, especially Mazar for the “Meli Gul Serkh” or red flower picnic.

She turned on the radio and listened to Ahmad Zaher sing, “Gar zulf perishanat bar dast saba aftad”:
“If your hair is tangled, my love,
Then your lover is restless.
What sorrow can I tell
When you are the cure and the ailment?”

Her husband, Shams, had already left the house. He was a cart driver in Kabul city. Mariam lived with her husband’s family. Her mother-in-law, Shakila, was her aunt.
Mariam had two daughters named Farah, who was four years old, and Asma, who was two years old. All of them had short hair. Mariam always remembered her mother’s advice to dress her younger daughter in boys’ clothes, in the hope that the next child would be a boy.

When Mariam woke up, she didn’t wake her daughters. When they woke up, they would say, “Let me go to the yard. Let me feed the chickens mother.”

Mariam washed clothes for her daughters, her husband, and her mother-in-law. She hung the clothes on the rope to dry. She drew a pail of water from the well and washed every window with a rag. Suddenly, she noticed Freshta the neighbour is gesturing from the second floor of her house and drew an imaginary mustache above his lip to show that his sister-in-law had given birth to a boy; if she gestured with her hand as if wearing a headscarf, it meant that a girl had been born.

With yearning Mariam started to sweep the floors and open the windows, as usual, to air out the house. She used flour to make fresh dough, kneading it the way her mother had shown her. When she pushed the dough, she remembered her father’s advice—he was a farmer. “For a girl: first, pray four times daily. Second, morality. And lastly, cooking is important.”

Mariam pushed the dough with the heel of her hand, folded the outer edge, turned it, and pushed it away again. Once she had floured it, she wrapped it in a moist cloth, put on a hijab, and set out for the communal tandoor, which was located down their alley.

In her neighbour’s house, lived Frishta, a barren woman who had been married for fifteen years and still did not have any children. She was thin and five years older than Mariam. Her husband, Ghani, was the wealthiest man in the city and ten years older than Frishta. Mariam and Frishta often discussed their mothers-in-law. Frishta would complain to Mariam about how critical her mother-in-law was, constantly criticizing everything from the food she cooked to the cleanliness of the rooms.

When Mariam and Frishta were young and living in neighbouring houses, Mariam didn’t have any siblings, so she would often come to Frishta’s house to play with her. Mariam could never forget the day Frishta got married and how much she cried when she was just five years old, while Frishta was ten. Frishta would often tell Mariam, “Before going to the public tandoor, knock on my house door. It’s good to go to the public tandoor together.”

Women in groups of two or three, all of them wearing hijabs. When Mariam and Frishta arrived at the public tandoor, they joined the other women. Some of the women were too fat or too thin, some wore panjanbi, others wore long dresses, and the aroma of the fresh bread from the tandoor filled the air.

At that moment, an old woman named Gulali, with a face full of wrinkles and missing teeth, joined the conversation. She directed her words towards Frishta, referring to her as “sterile soil” and suggesting she should swallow a goldfish alive. Addressing Mariam, Gulali asked if she was eating cockfighting. Both Frishta and Mariam simply smiled and chose not to respond.

Shortly after, Shafiqa, a woman who had five boys, arrived. Gulali, who had nine sons and two daughters herself, commented, “Are you still not eating chilijam? But your situation is better than these two queens. Boys are saving the family name when you have a boy. Don’t worry. You have everything. You are honorable people whom others respect,” Gulali said patronizingly.
It is worth noting that Gulali herself lived with her older daughter in the same alley as Frishta and Mariam.
When Frishta and Mariam came out of the tandoor, they put their bread on the top of their heads.

Mariam noticed that Freshta's eyes filled with tears. 

Mariam didn’t say anything. Freshta sobbed, “I wish I had a blind daughter, but I wasn't worthy to have a blind daughter.”